At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

This was a bold new direction for Monsanto, which needed a big change to distance them from a controversial past. As a chemical company, they had polluted the landscape with some of the most poisonous substances ever produced, contaminated virtually every human and animal on earth, and got fined and convicted of deception and wrongdoing. According to a former Monsanto vice president, “We were despised by our customers.”

So they redefined themselves as a “life sciences” company, and then proceeded to pollute the landscape with toxic herbicide, contaminate the gene pool for all future generations with genetically modified plants, and get fined and convicted of deception and wrongdoing. Monsanto’s chief European spokesman admitted in 1999, “Everybody over here hates us.” Now the rest of the world is catching on.

“Saving the world,” and other lies

Monsanto’s public relations story about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are largely based on five concepts.

1. GMOs are needed to feed the world.
2. GMOs have been thoroughly tested and proven safe.
3. GMOs increase yield.
4. GMOs reduce the use of agricultural chemicals.
5. GMOs can be contained, and therefore coexist with non-GM crops.

All five are pure myths — blatant falsehoods about the nature and benefit of this infant technology. The experience of former Monsanto employee Kirk Azevedo helps expose the first two lies, and provides some insight into the nature of the people working at the company.

In 1996, Monsanto recruited young Kirk Azevedo to sell their genetically engineered cotton. Azevedo accepted their offer not because of the pay increase, but due to the writings of Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro. Shapiro had painted a picture of feeding the world and cleaning up the environment with his company’s new technology. When he visited Monsanto’s St. Louis headquarters for new employee training, Azevedo shared his enthusiasm for Shapiro’s vision during a meeting. When the session ended, a company vice president pulled him aside and set him straight. “Wait a second,” he told Azevedo. “What Robert Shapiro says is one thing. But what we do is something else. We are here to make money. He is the front man who tells a story. We don’t even understand what he is saying.” Azevedo realized he was working for “just another profit-oriented company,” and all the glowing words about helping the planet were just a front.

A few months later he got another shock. A company scientist told him that Roundup Ready cotton plants contained new, unintended proteins that had resulted from the gene insertion process. No safety studies had been conducted on the proteins, none were planned, and the cotton plants, which were part of field trials near his home, were being fed to cattle. Azevedo “was afraid at that time that some of these proteins may be toxic.”

He asked the PhD in charge of the test plot to destroy the cotton rather than feed it to cattle, arguing that until the protein had been evaluated, the cows’ milk or meat could be harmful. The scientist refused. Azevedo approached everyone on his team at Monsanto to raise concerns about the unknown protein, but no one was interested. “I was somewhat ostracized,” he said. “Once I started questioning things, people wanted to keep their distance from me. . . . Anything that interfered with advancing the commercialization of this technology was going to be pushed aside.” Azevedo decided to leave Monsanto. He said, “I’m not going to be part of this disaster.”

Monsanto’s toxic past

Azevedo got a small taste of Monsanto’s character. A verdict in a lawsuit a few years later made it more explicit. On February 22, 2002, Monsanto was found guilty for poisoning the town of Anniston, Alabama with their PCB factory and covering it up for decades. They were convicted of negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. According to Alabama law, to be guilty of outrage typically requires conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”(1)

The $700 million fine imposed on Monsanto was on behalf of the Anniston residents, whose blood levels of Monsanto’s toxic PCBs were hundreds or thousands of times the average. This disease-producing chemical, used as coolants and lubricants for over 50 years, are now virtually omnipresent in the blood and tissues of humans and wildlife around the globe. Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group says that based on Monsanto documents made public during a trial, the company “knew the truth from the very beginning. They lied about it. They hid the truth from their neighbors.” One Monsanto memo explains their justification: “We can’t afford to lose one dollar of business.” Welcome to the world of Monsanto.

Infiltrating the minds and offices of the government

To get their genetically modified products approved, Monsanto has coerced, infiltrated, and paid off government officials around the globe. In Indonesia, Monsanto gave bribes and questionable payments to at least 140 officials, attempting to get their genetically modified (GM) cotton accepted.(2) In 1998, six Canadian government scientists testified before the Senate that they were being pressured by superiors to approve rbGH, that documents were stolen from a locked file cabinet in a government office, and that Monsanto offered them a bribe of $1-2 million to pass the drug without further tests. In India, one official tampered with the report on Bt cotton to increase the yield figures to favor Monsanto.(3) And Monsanto seems to have planted their own people in key government positions in India, Brazil, Europe, and worldwide.

Monsanto’s GM seeds were also illegally smuggled into countries like Brazil and Paraguay, before GMOs were approved. Roberto Franco, Paraguay’s Deputy Agriculture Ministry, tactfully admits, “It is possible that [Monsanto], let’s say, promoted its varieties and its seeds” before they were approved. “We had to authorize GMO seeds because they had already entered our country in an, let’s say, unorthodox way.”

In the US, Monsanto’s people regularly infiltrate upper echelons of government, and the company offers prominent positions to officials when they leave public service. This revolving door has included key people in the White House, regulatory agencies, even the Supreme Court. Monsanto also had George Bush Senior on their side, as evidenced by footage of Vice President Bush at Monsanto’s facility offering help to get their products through government bureaucracy. He says, “Call me. We’re in the ‘de-reg’ business. Maybe we can help.”

Monsanto’s influence continued into the Clinton administration. Dan Glickman, then Secretary of Agriculture, says, “there was a general feeling in agro-business and inside our government in the US that if you weren’t marching lock-step forward in favor of rapid approvals of biotech products, rapid approvals of GMO crops, then somehow, you were anti-science and anti-progress.” Glickman summarized the mindset in the government as follows:

“What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good, and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn’t good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. . . . And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you’re against it, you’re Luddites, you’re stupid. That, frankly, was the side our government was on. Without thinking, we had basically taken this issue as a trade issue and they, whoever ‘they’ were, wanted to keep our product out of their market. And they were foolish, or stupid, and didn’t have an effective regulatory system. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view on some of the issues being raised. So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric that everybody else around here spouted; it was written into my speeches.”(4)

He admits, “when I opened my mouth in the Clinton Administration [about the lax regulations on GMOs], I got slapped around a little bit.”

Hijacking the FDA to promote GMOs

In the US, new food additives must undergo extensive testing, including long-term animal feeding studies.(5) There is an exception, however, for substances that are deemed “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). GRAS status allows a product to be commercialized without any additional testing. According to US law, to be considered GRAS the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies (or equivalent) and there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe. GM foods had neither. Nonetheless, in a precedent-setting move that some experts contend was illegal, in 1992 the FDA declared that GM crops are GRAS as long as their producers say they are. Thus, the FDA does not require any safety evaluations or labels whatsoever. A company can even introduce a GM food to the market without telling the agency.

Such a lenient approach to GM crops was largely the result of Monsanto’s legendary influence over the US government. According to the New York Times, “What Monsanto wished for from Washington, Monsanto and, by extension, the biotechnology industry got. . . . When the company abruptly decided that it needed to throw off the regulations and speed its foods to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing.” According to Dr. Henry Miller, who had a leading role in biotechnology issues at the FDA from 1979 to 1994, “In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do.”

The person who oversaw the development of the FDA’s GMO policy was their Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Michael Taylor, whose position had been created especially for him in 1991. Prior to that, Taylor was an outside attorney for both Monsanto and the Food Biotechnology Council. After working at the FDA, he became Monsanto’s vice president. He’s now back at the FDA, as the US food safety czar.

Covering up health dangers

The policy Taylor oversaw in 1992 needed to create the impression that unintended effects from GM crops were not an issue. Otherwise their GRAS status would be undermined. But internal memos made public from a lawsuit showed that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. Various departments and experts spelled these out in detail, listing allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases as potential problems. They had urged superiors to require long-term safety studies.(6) In spite of the warnings, according to public interest attorney Steven Druker who studied the FDA’s internal files, “References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists).”(7)

FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl wrote about the policy, “What has happened to the scientific elements of this document? Without a sound scientific base to rest on, this becomes a broad, general, ‘What do I have to do to avoid trouble’-type document. . . . It will look like and probably be just a political document. . . . It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended effects.”(8)

The FDA scientists’ concerns were not only ignored, their very existence was denied. Consider the private memo summarizing opinions at the FDA, which stated, “The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks.”(9) Contrast that with the official policy statement issued by Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney: “The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.”(10) On the basis of this false statement, the FDA does not require GM food safety testing.

Fake safety assessments

Monsanto participates in a voluntary consultation process with the FDA that is derided by critics as a meaningless exercise. Monsanto submits whatever information it chooses, and the FDA does not conduct or commission any studies of its own. Former EPA scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman, who analyzed FDA review records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, says the FDA consultation process “misses obvious errors in company-submitted data summaries, provides insufficient testing guidance, and does not require sufficiently detailed data to enable the FDA to assure that GE crops are safe to eat.”(11)

But that is not the point of the exercise. The FDA doesn’t actually approve the crops or declare them safe. That is Monsanto’s job! At the end of the consultation, the FDA issues a letter stating:

“Based on the safety and nutritional assessment you have conducted, it is our understanding that Monsanto has concluded that corn products derived from this new variety are not materially different in composition, safety, and other relevant parameters from corn currently on the market, and that the genetically modified corn does not raise issues that would require premarket review or approval by FDA. . . . As you are aware, it is Monsanto’s responsibility to ensure that foods marketed by the firm are safe, wholesome and in compliance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.”(12)

The National Academy of Sciences and even the pro-GM Royal Society of London(13) describe the US system as inadequate and flawed. The editor of the prestigious journal Lancet said, “It is astounding that the US Food and Drug Administration has not changed their stance on genetically modified food adopted in 1992. . . . Governments should never have allowed these products into the food chain without insisting on rigorous testing for effects on health.”(14)

One obvious reason for the inflexibility of the FDA is that they are officially charged with both regulating biotech products and promoting them — a clear conflict. That is also why the FDA does not require mandatory labeling of GM foods. They ignore the desires of 90 percent of American citizens in order to support the economic interests of Monsanto and the four other GM food companies.

Monsanto’s studies are secret, inadequate, and flawed

The unpublished industry studies submitted to regulators are typically kept secret based on the claim that it is “confidential business information.” The Royal Society of Canada is one of many organizations that condemn this practice. Their Expert Panel called for “completely transparent” submissions, “open to full review by scientific peers” They wrote, “Peer review and independent corroboration of research findings are axioms of the scientific method, and part of the very meaning of the objectivity and neutrality of science.”(15)

Whenever Monsanto’s private submissions are made public through lawsuits or Freedom of Information Act Requests, it becomes clear why they benefit from secrecy. The quality of their research is often miserable, and would never stand up to peer-review. In December 2009, for example, a team of independent researchers published a study analyzing the raw data from three Monsanto rat studies. When they used proper statistical methods, they found that the three varieties of GM corn caused toxicity in the liver and kidneys, as well as significant changes in other organs.(16) Monsanto’s studies, of course, had claimed that the research showed no problems. The regulators had believed Monsanto, and the corn is already in our food supply.

Monsanto rigs research to miss dangers

(17)
Monsanto has plenty of experience cooking the books of their research and hiding the hazards. They manufactured the infamous Agent Orange, for example, the cancer and birth-defect causing defoliant sprayed over Vietnam. It contaminated more than three million civilians and servicemen. But according to William Sanjour, who led the Toxic Waste Division of the Environmental Protection Agency, “thousands of veterans were disallowed benefits” because “Monsanto studies showed that dioxin [the main ingredient in Agent Orange] was not a human carcinogen.” But his EPA colleague discovered that Monsanto had allegedly falsified the data in their studies. Sanjour says, “If they were done correctly, [the studies] would have reached just the opposite result.”

Here are examples of tinkering with the truth about Monsanto’s GM products:

• When dairy farmers inject cows with genetically modified bovine growth hormone (rbGH), more bovine growth hormone ends up in the milk. To allay fears, the FDA claimed that pasteurization destroys 90 percent of the hormone. In reality, the researchers of this drug (then owned by Monsanto) pasteurized the milk 120 times longer than normal. But they only destroyed 19 percent. So they spiked the milk with a huge amount of extra growth hormone and then repeated the long pasteurization. Only under these artificial conditions were they able to destroy 90 percent.

• To demonstrate that rbGH injections didn’t interfere with cows’ fertility, Monsanto appears to have secretly added cows to their study that were pregnant BEFORE injection.

• FDA Veterinarian Richard Burroughs said that Monsanto researchers dropped sick cows from studies, to make the drug appear safer.

• Richard Burroughs ordered more tests on rbGH than the industry wanted and was told by superiors he was slowing down the approval. He was fired and his tests canceled. The remaining whistle-blowers in the FDA had to write an anonymous letter to Congress, complaining of fraud and conflict of interest in the agency. They complained of one FDA scientist who arbitrarily increased the allowable levels of antibiotics in milk 100-fold, in order to facilitate the approval of rbGH. She had just become the head of an FDA department that was evaluating the research that she had recently done while an employee of Monsanto.

• Another former Monsanto scientist said that after company scientists conducted safety studies on bovine growth hormone, all three refused to drink any more milk, unless it was organic and therefore not treated with the drug. They feared the substantial increase of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in the drugged milk. IGF-1 is a significant risk factor for cancer.

• When independent researchers published a study in July 1999 showing that Monsanto’s GM soy contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens, Monsanto responded with its own study, concluding that soy’s phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. Researchers failed to disclose, however, that they had instructed the laboratory to use an obsolete method of detection — one that had been prone to highly variable results.

• To prove that GM protein breaks down quickly during simulated digestion, Monsanto uses thousands of times the amount of digestive enzymes and a much stronger acid than what the World Health Organization recommends.

• Monsanto told government regulators that the GM protein produced in their high-lysine GM corn was safe for humans, because it is also found in soil. They claimed that since people consume small residues of soil on fruits and vegetables, the protein has a safe history as part of the human diet. The actual amount of the GM corn protein an average US citizen would consume, however, if all their corn were Monsanto’s variety, would be “about 30 billion to four trillion times” the amount normally consumed in soil residues. For equivalent exposure, people would have to eat as much as 22,000 pounds of soil every second of every day.

• Monsanto’s high-lysine corn also had unusual levels of several nutritional components, such as protein and fiber. Instead of comparing it to normal corn, which would have revealed this significant disparity, Monsanto compared their GM corn to obscure corn varieties that were also far outside the normal range on precisely these values. On this basis, Monsanto could claim that there were no statistically significant differences in their GM corn content.

Methods used by Monsanto to hide problems are varied and plentiful. For example, researchers:

• Use animals with varied starting weights, to hinder the detection of food-related changes;
• Keep feeding studies short, to miss long-term impacts;
• Test Roundup Ready soybeans that have never been sprayed with Roundup — as they always are in real world conditions;
• Avoid feeding animals the GM crop, but instead give them a single dose of GM protein produced from GM bacteria;
• Use too few subjects to obtain statistical significance;
• Use poor or inappropriate statistical methods, or fail to even mention statistical methods, or include essential data; and
• Employ insensitive detection techniques — doomed to fail.

Monsanto’s 1996 Journal of Nutrition study, which was their cornerstone article for “proving” that GM soy was safe, provides plenty of examples of masterfully rigged methods.

• Researchers tested GM soy on mature animals, not the more sensitive young ones. GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai says the older animals “would have to be emaciated or poisoned to show anything.”

• Organs were never weighed.

• The GM soy was diluted up to 12 times which, according to an expert review, “would probably ensure that any possible undesirable GM effects did not occur.”

• The amount of protein in the feed was “artificially too high,” which would mask negative impacts of the soy.

• Samples were pooled from different locations and conditions, making it nearly impossible for compositional differences to be statistically significant.

• Data from the only side-by-side comparison was removed from the study and never published. When it was later recovered, it revealed that Monsanto’s GM soy had significantly lower levels of important constituents (e.g. protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid) and that toasted GM soy meal had nearly twice the amount of a lectin — which interferes with the body’s ability to assimilate nutrients. Moreover, the amount of trypsin inhibitor, a known soy allergen, was as much as seven times higher in cooked GM soy compared to a cooked non-GM control. Monsanto named their study, “The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans.”

A paper published in Nutrition and Health analyzed all peer-reviewed feeding studies on GM foods as of 2003. It came as no surprise that Monsanto’s Journal of Nutrition study, along with the other four peer-reviewed animal feeding studies that were “performed more or less in collaboration with private companies,” reported no negative effects of the GM diet. “On the other hand,” they wrote, “adverse effects were reported (but not explained) in [the five] independent studies.” They added, “It is remarkable that these effects have all been observed after feeding for only 10 to 14 days.”(18)

A former Monsanto scientist recalls how colleagues were trying to rewrite a GM animal feeding study, to hide the ill-effects. But sometimes when study results are unmistakably damaging, Monsanto just plain lies. Monsanto’s study on Roundup, for example, showed that 28 days after application, only 2 percent of their herbicide had broken down. They nonetheless advertised the weed killer as “biodegradable,” “leaves the soil clean,” and “respects the environment.” These statements were declared false and illegal by judges in both the US and France. The company was forced to remove “biodegradable” from the label and pay a fine.

Monsanto attacks labeling, local democracy, and news coverage

• On July 3, 2003, Monsanto sued Oakhurst dairy because their labels stated, “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones.” Oakhurst eventually settled with Monsanto, agreeing to include a sentence on their cartons saying that according to the FDA no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbGH-treated and non-rbGH-treated cows. The statement is not true. FDA scientists had acknowledged the increase of IGF-1, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, and pus, in milk from treated cows. Nonetheless, the misleading sentence had been written years earlier by the FDA’s deputy commissioner of policy, Michael Taylor, the one who was formerly Monsanto’s outside attorney and later their vice president.

• Monsanto’s public relations firm created a group called the Dairy Coalition, which pressured editors of the USA Today, Boston Globe, New York Times and others, to limit negative coverage of rbGH.

• A Monsanto attorney wrote a letter to Fox TV, promising dire consequences if the station aired a four-part exposé on rbGH. The show was ultimately canceled.

• A book critical of Monsanto’s GM foods was three days away from being published. A threatening letter from Monsanto’s attorney forced the small publisher to cancel publication.

• 14,000 copies of Ecologist magazine dedicated to exposing Monsanto were shredded by the printer due to fears of a lawsuit.

• After a ballot initiative in California established Mendocino County as a GM-free zone — where planting GMOs is illegal, Monsanto and others organized to push through laws in 14 states that make it illegal for cities and counties to declare similar zones.

Monsanto’s promises of riches come up short

Biotech advocates have wooed politicians, claiming that their new technology is the path to riches for their city, state, or nation. “This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable,” said Joseph Cortright, an Oregon economist who co-wrote a report on the subject. “This is a bad-idea virus that has swept through governors, mayors and economic development officials.”(19) Indeed, The Wall Street Journal observed, “Not only has the biotech industry yielded negative financial returns for decades, it generally digs its hole deeper every year.”(20) The Associated Press says it “remains a money-losing, niche industry.”(21)

Nowhere in the biotech world is the bad-idea virus more toxic than in its application to GM plants. Not only does the technology under-deliver, it consistently burdens governments and entire sectors with losses and problems.

Under the first Bush administration, for example, the White House’s elite Council on Competitiveness chose to fast track GM food in hopes that it would strengthen the economy and make American products more competitive overseas. The opposite ensued. US corn exports to Europe were virtually eliminated, down by 99.4 percent. The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) calculated that the introduction of GM corn caused a drop in corn prices by 13 to 20 percent.(22) Their CEO said, “The ACGA believes an explanation is owed to the thousands of American farmers who were told to trust this technology, yet now see their prices fall to historically low levels while other countries exploit US vulnerability and pick off our export customers one by one.”(23) US soy sales also plummeted due to GM content.

According to Charles Benbrook, PhD, former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Agriculture, the closed markets and slashed prices forced the federal government to pay an additional $3 to $5 billion every year.(24) He says growers have only been kept afloat by the huge jump in subsidies.(25)

Instead of withdrawing support for failed GM crops, the US government has been convinced by Monsanto and others that the key to success is to force open foreign markets to GMOs. But many nations are also reeling under the false promise of GMOs.

Canola crashes on GM

When Canada became the only major producer to adopt GM canola in 1996, it led to a disaster. The premium-paying EU market, which took about one-third of Canada’s canola exports in 1994 and one-fourth in 1995, stopped all imports from Canada by 1998. The GM canola was diverted to the low-priced Chinese market. Not only did Canadian canola prices fall to a record low,(26) Canada even lost their EU honey exports due to the GM pollen contamination.

Australia benefited significantly from Canada’s folly. By 2006, the EU was buying 38 percent of Australia’s canola exports.(27) Nonetheless, Monsanto’s people in Australia claimed that GM canola was the way to get more competitive. They told farmers that Roundup Ready canola would yield up to 30 percent more. But when an investigator looked at the best trial yields on Monsanto’s web site, it was 17 percent below the national average canola yield. When that was publicized, the figures quickly disappeared from the Monsanto’s site. Two Aussie states did allow GM canola and sure enough, they are suffering from loss of foreign markets.

In Australia and elsewhere, the non-GMO farmers also suffer. Market prices drop, and farmers spend more to set up segregation systems, GMO testing, buffer zones, and separate storage and shipping channels to try to hold onto non-GMO markets. Even then, they risk contamination and lost premiums.

GM farmers don’t earn or produce more

Monsanto has been quite successful in convincing farmers that GM crops are the ticket to greater yields and higher profits. You still hear that rhetoric at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But a 2006 USDA report “could not find positive financial impacts in either the field-level nor the whole-farm analysis” for adoption of Bt corn and Roundup Ready soybeans. They said, “Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of [GM] crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.”(28)

Similarly, the Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) flatly states, “The claim that GM seeds make our farms more profitable is false.”(29) Net farm incomes in Canada plummeted since the introduction of GM canola, with the last five years being the worst in Canada’s history.

In spite of numerous advertising claims that GM crops increase yield, the average GM crop from Monsanto reduces yield. This was confirmed by the most comprehensive evaluation on the subject, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2009. Called Failure to Yield, the report demonstrated that in spite of years of trying, GM crops return fewer bushels than their non-GM counterparts. Even the 2006 USDA report stated that “currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential of a hybrid variety. . . . In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars.”(30)

US farmers had expected higher yields with Roundup Ready soybeans, but independent studies confirm a yield loss of 4 to 11percent.(31) Brazilian soybean yields are also down since Roundup Ready varieties were introduced.(32) In Canada, a study showed a 7.5 percent lower yield with Roundup Ready canola.(33)

The Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) observed, “Corporate and government managers have spent millions trying to convince farmers and other citizens of the benefits of genetically-modified (GM) crops. But this huge public relations effort has failed to obscure the truth: GM crops do not deliver the promised benefits; they create numerous problems, costs, and risks. . . . It would be too generous even to call GM crops a solution in search of a problem: These crops have failed to provide significant solutions.”(34)

Herbicide use rising due to GMOs

Monsanto bragged that their Roundup Ready technology would reduce herbicide, but at the same time they were building new Roundup factories to meet their anticipated increase in demand. They got it. According to USDA data, the amount of herbicide used in the US increased by 382.6 million pounds over 13 years. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans accounted for 92 percent of the total increase. Due to the proliferation of Roundup resistant weeds, herbicide use is accelerating rapidly. From 2007 to 2008, herbicide used on GM herbicide tolerant crops skyrocketed by 31.4 percent.(35) Furthermore, as weeds fail to respond to Roundup, farmers also rely on more toxic pesticides such as the highly poisonous 2,4-D.

Contamination happens

In spite of Monsanto’s assurances that it wouldn’t be a problem, contamination has been a consistent and often overwhelming hardship for seed dealers, farmers, manufacturers, even entire food sectors. The biotech industry recommends buffer zones between fields, but these have not been competent to protect non-GM, organic, or wild plants from GMOs. A UK study showed canola cross-pollination occurring as far as 26 km away.(36)

But pollination is just one of several ways that contamination happens. There is also seed movement by weather and insects, crop mixing during harvest, transport, and storage, and very often, human error. The contamination is North America is so great, it is difficult for farmers to secure pure non-GM seed. In Canada, a study found 32 of 33 certified non-GM canola seeds were contaminated.(37) Most of the non-GM soy, corn, and canola seeds tested in the US also contained GMOs.(38)

Contamination can be very expensive. StarLink corn — unapproved for human consumption — ended up the US food supply in 2000 and resulted in an estimated price tag of $1 billion. The final cost of GM rice contamination in the US in 2006 could be even higher.

Deadly deception in India

Monsanto ran a poster series called, “TRUE STORIES OF FARMERS WHO HAVE SOWN BT COTTON.” One featured a farmer who claimed great benefits, but when investigators tracked him down, he turned out to be a cigarette salesman, not a farmer. Another poster claimed yields by the pictured farmer that were four times what he actually achieved. One poster showed a farmer standing next to a tractor, suggesting that sales of Bt cotton allowed him to buy it. But the farmer was never told what the photo was to be used for, and said that with the yields from Bt, “I would not be able to buy even two tractor tires.”

In addition to posters, Monsanto’s cotton marketers used dancing girls, famous Bollywood actors, even religious leaders to pitch their products. Some newspaper ads looked like a news stories and featured relatives of seed salesmen claiming to be happy with Bt. Sometimes free pesticides were given away with the seeds, and some farmers who helped with publicity got free seeds.

Scientists published a study claiming that Monsanto’s cotton increased yields in India by 70 to 80 percent. But they used only field trial data provided to them by Monsanto. Actual yields turn out to be quite different:

• India News(39) reported studies showing a loss of about 18 percent.

• An independent study in Andhra Pradesh “done on [a] season-long basis continuously for three years in 87 villages” showed that growing Bt cotton cost 12 percent more, yielded 8.3 percent less, and the returns over three years were 60 percent less.(40)

• Another report identified a yield loss in the Warangal district of 30 to 60 percent. The official report, however, was tampered with. The local Deputy Director of Agriculture confirmed on Feb. 1, 2005 that the yield figures had been secretly increased to 2.7 times higher than what farms reported. Once the state of Andhra Pradesh tallied all the actual yields, they demanded approximately $10 million USD from Monsanto to compensate farmers for losses. Monsanto refused.

In sharp contrast to the independent research done by agronomists, Monsanto commissioned studies to be done by market research agencies. One, for example, claimed four times the actual reduction in pesticide use, 12 times the actual yield, and 100 times the actual profit.(41)

In Andhra Pradesh, where 71 percent of farmers who used Bt cotton ended up with financial losses, farmers attacked the seed dealer’s office and even “tied up Mahyco Monsanto representatives in their villages,” until the police rescued them.(42)

In spite of great losses and unreliable yields, Monsanto has skillfully eliminated the availability of non-GM cotton seeds in many regions throughout India, forcing farmers to buy their varieties.

Farmers borrow heavily and at high interest rates to pay four times the price for the GM varieties, along with the chemicals needed to grow them. When Bt cotton performs poorly and can’t even pay back the debt, desperate farmers resort to suicide, often drinking unused pesticides. In one region, more than three Bt cotton farmers take their own lives each day. The UK Daily Mail estimates that the total number of Bt cotton-related suicides in India is a staggering 125,000.

Doctors orders: no genetically modified food

A greater tragedy may be the harm from the dangerous GM foods produced by Monsanto. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has called on all physicians to prescribe diets without GM foods to all patients.(43) They called for a moratorium on GMOs, long-term independent studies, and labeling. They stated, “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation…”

Former AAEM President Dr. Jennifer Armstrong says, “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions.” Renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava believes that GMOs are a major contributor to the deteriorating health in America.

Pregnant women and babies at great risk

GM foods are particularly dangerous for pregnant moms and children. After GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died — compared to 10 percent deaths among controls fed natural soy.(44) GM-fed babies were smaller, and possibly infertile.(45)

Testicles of rats fed GM soy changed from the normal pink to dark blue.(46) Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm.(47) Embryos of GM soy-fed parent mice had changed DNA.(48) And mice fed GM corn had fewer, and smaller, babies.(49)

In Haryana, India, most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had reproductive complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, and infertility; many calves died. About two dozen US farmers said thousands of pigs became sterile from certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile.(50)

In the US, incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating.

Food that produces poison

Monsanto’s GM corn and cotton are engineered to produce a built-in pesticide called Bt-toxin — produced from soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. When bugs bite the plant, poison splits open their stomach and kills them. Organic farmers and others use natural Bt bacteria spray for insect control, so Monsanto claims that Bt-toxin must be safe.

The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic,(51) has properties of an allergen, and cannot be washed off the plant.

Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural spray can be harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in Washington and Vancouver, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms.(52)(53) The same symptoms are now reported by farm workers from handling Bt cotton throughout India.(54)

GMOs provoke immune reactions

GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai says changes in immune status are “a consistent feature of all the [animal] studies.”(55) From Monsanto’s own research to government funded trials, rodents fed Bt corn had significant immune reactions.(56)(57)

Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50 percent. Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says “I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it.”

GM soy and corn contain new proteins with allergenic properties,(58) and GM soy has up to seven times more of a known soy allergen.(59) Perhaps the US epidemic of food llergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation.

Animals dying in large numbers

In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton plants, thousands died. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin.”(60) In one small study, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died; those fed natural plants remained healthy.

In an Andhra Pradesh village, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On Jan. 3, 2008, 13 buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All died within three days.(61) Monsanto’s Bt corn is also implicated in the deaths horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in the Philippines.(62)

Lab studies of GM crops by other companies also show mortalities. Twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died; seven of 40 rats fed a GM tomato died within two weeks.(63) And a farmer in Germany says his cows died after exclusively eating Syngenta’s GM corn.

GMOs remain inside of us

The only published human feeding study revealed that even after we stop eating GMOs, harmful GM proteins may be produced continuously inside of us; genes inserted into Monsanto’s GM soy transfer into bacteria inside our intestines and continue to function.(64) If Bt genes also transfer, eating corn chips might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories.

Hidden dangers

Biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute says, “If there are problems [with GMOs], we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop.” In the nine years after GM crops were introduced in 1996, Americans with three or more chronic diseases jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent.(65) But without any human clinical trials or post marketing surveillance, we may never know if GMOs are a contributor.

Un-recallable contamination

In spite of the enormous health dangers, the environmental impacts may be worse still. That is because we don’t have a technology to fully clean up the contaminated gene pool. The self-propagating genetic pollution released into the environment from Monsanto’s crops can outlast the effects of climate change and nuclear waste.

Replacing nature: “Nothing shall be eaten that we don’t own”

As Monsanto has moved forward with its master plan to replace nature, they have led the charge in buying up seed businesses and are now the world’s largest. At least 200 independent seed companies have disappeared over 13 years, non-GMO seed availability is dwindling, and Monsanto is jacking up their seed prices dramatically. Corn is up more than 30 percent and soy nearly 25 percent, over 2008 prices.(66)

An Associated Press exposé (67) reveals how Monsanto’s onerous contracts allowed them to manipulate, then dominate, the seed industry using unprecedented legal restrictions. One contract provision, for example, “prevented bidding wars” and “likely helped Monsanto buy 24 independent seed companies throughout the Farm Belt over the last few years: that corn seed agreement says that if a smaller company changes ownership, its inventory with Monsanto’s traits ’shall be destroyed immediately.’”

With that restriction in place, the seed companies couldn’t even think of selling to a company other than Monsanto. According to attorney David Boies, who represents DuPont — owner of Pioneer Seeds: “If the independent seed company is losing their license and has to destroy their seeds, they’re not going to have anything, in effect, to sell,” Boies said. “It requires them to destroy things — destroy things they paid for — if they go competitive. That’s exactly the kind of restriction on competitive choice that the antitrust laws outlaw.” Boies was a prosecutor on the antitrust case against Microsoft. He is now working with DuPont in their civil antitrust lawsuit against Monsanto.

Monsanto also has the right to cancel deals and wipe out the inventory of a business if the confidentiality clauses are violated:

“We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable,’ said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades.”

Monsanto also controls and manipulates farmers through onerous contracts. Troy Roush, for example, is one of hundreds accused by Monsanto of illegally saving their seeds. The company requires farmers to sign a contract that they will not save and replant GM seeds from their harvest. That way Monsanto can sell its seeds — at a premium — each season.

Although Roush maintains his innocence, he was forced to settle with Monsanto after two and a half years of court battles. He says his “family was just destroyed [from] the stress involved.” Many farmers are afraid, according to Roush, because Monsanto has “created a little industry that serves no other purpose than to wreck farmers’ lives.” Monsanto has collected an estimated $200 million from farmers thus far.

Roush says, “They are in the process of owning food, all food.” Paraguayan farmer Jorge Galeano says, “Its objective is to control all of the world’s food production.” Renowned Indian physicist and community organizer Vandana Shiva says, “If they control seed, they control food; they know it, it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs; it’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world.”

Our food security lies in diversity — both biodiversity, and diversity of owners and interests. Any single company that consolidates ownership of seeds, and therefore power over the food supply, is a dangerous threat. Of all the corporations in the world, however, the one we should trust the least is Monsanto. With them at the helm, the impact could be cataclysmic.

To learn more about the health dangers of GMOs, and what you can do to help end the genetic engineering of our food supply, visit www.ResponsibleTechnology.org.

To learn how to choose healthier non-GMO brands, visit www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.

Greece is to mobilise military vehicles to restore fuel supplies cut by a lorry drivers’ strike, officials have said

Army lorries and naval vessels will ensure the supply of fuel to “critical sectors”, the government said after a crisis cabinet meeting.

Earlier, lorry drivers defied an emergency order from the government to end their strike.

The stoppage, now in its fifth day, has led to widespread fuel shortages and caused tourists to cancel holidays.

“The armed forces with their own means are already assuring the supply of critical sectors such as airports, electricity plants and hospitals,” a government statement said.

“Navy landing craft will also contribute if necessary to cover the needs of islands by transporting tanker trucks.”

On Friday, baton-wielding riot police clashed with strikers outside an oil refinery in the city of Thessaloniki.

The strikers were trying to stop a truck from leaving the refinery, Reuters news agency reported.

“We exhausted every limit of good faith,” said Transport Minister Dimitris Reppas following the cabinet meeting.

“The state is not unfortified and society is not defenceless,” he added.

But strike leaders remained defiant.

“We will continue [the strike] in dynamic fashion,” said George Tzortzatos, the head of the Greek truck-owners’ confederation, following a union meeting.

The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the strike has been the most serious challenge to the government during Greece’s eight-month financial crisis.

The tourist industry – critical to Greece’s economic survival – has been in despair and the strike has triggered countless cancellations, he says.

Hoteliers across the mainland have been worst hit, because they rely on holidaymakers driving to their destinations, he adds.

On Thursday, riot police clashed with protesters outside the transport ministry in Athens.

The rare emergency order signed by Prime Minister George Papandreou on Thursday meant drivers who refused to work could be arrested or lose their licences.

Talks between the two sides continued on Friday.

Lorry drivers are protesting against plans to cut licence charges – part of reforms to boost competition and one of the conditions of an International Monetary Fund bail-out.

Correspondents say road freight is one of the most closed professions in Greece with no new licences issued for nearly 40 years. Instead, licences are sold from person to person for hundreds of thousands of euros.

Greece has suffered waves of strikes and protests over austerity measures the government had to agree to in order to win the bail-out.

View the original article at BBC News

China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Depending on how fast its exchange rate rises, China is on course to overtake the United States and vault into the No.1 spot sometime around 2025, according to projections by the World Bank, Goldman Sachs and others.

China came close to surpassing Japan in 2009 and the disclosure by a senior official that it had now done so comes as no surprise. Indeed, Yi Gang, China’s chief currency regulator, mentioned the milestone in passing in remarks published on Friday.

Full article here

Glenn Beck, the Fox News talking heads, and no shortage of Tea Party activists like to characterize Barry Obama as a Marxist. In an article gaining a lot of traction across the blogosphere, Wayne Allyn Root, who considers himself a Libertarian Republican, says Obama is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure in order to turn the U.S. into a socialist/Marxist state.

Obamacare, cap-and-trade, legalizing 12 million illegal aliens, increased taxation, and endless bailouts and stimulus boondoggles, Root argues, are schemes designed to overwhelm the system and pave the way for a Marxist takeover of America.

It cannot be denied these schemes will destroy America. It also cannot be denied they are intentional. However, it has nothing to do with Marxism.

Marx advocated a proletarian revolution. He said that in order to overcome the restraint of private property the working class must seize political power through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Marx said the ultimate goal is a a classless and stateless form of communism beneficial to the interests of the proletariat or the working class.

Is it possible the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs operatives in the Obama administration truly desire a communist revolution as Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root insist?

During the 2008 election cycle, Goldman Sachs donated nearly a million bucks to Obama. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase donated nearly $1.5 million to the Obama campaign while Morgan Stanley pitched in over a half million dollars. “When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain,” the New York Times wrote on July 1, 2008.

Is it possible all these folks are clueless about the supposed Marxist philosophy of Obama? Is it possible transnational corporations and international banks savvy enough to game the system for trillions of dollars support a communist system that would ultimately strip them of that wealth?

Goldman along with the Federal Reserve rule the Obama administration. William C. Dudley was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a partner and managing director at Goldman. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, spent 18 years at Goldman. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Tim Geithner, is a former Goldman lobbyist. Philip Murphy, nominated for ambassador to Germany, is a former Goldman executive. Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, is a former Goldman employee. Emil Michael, White House fellow, used to be an investment banker at Goldman.

Obama functionaries are connected to the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, two organizations established to implement world government. Tim Geithner, Susan Rice, Pete Peterson, Gen. James Jones, Thomas Donilion, Paul Volker, Dennis Blair, Richard Haass, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and others have connections to the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, the CFR, and Bilderbergers.

“We can be quite sure that somewhere between 400 to 500 high-level members of the Obama administration will be members of the CFR. How can we say that? Because that’s about how many CFR members occupy the current Bush administration (beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, an in-again, out-again member of the CFR board of directors). And about the same number occupied posts in the Clinton administration,” John F. McManus wrote in November of 2008 after Obama was selected to be the front man for the banksters.

Obama’s mischaracterized socialism is a control mechanism created by the bankers. It has nothing to do with liberating downtrodden workers. The Soviet system was financed by Wall Street, as Rep. Louis T. McFadden, chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee throughout the 1920-30s, explained: “The course of Russian history has, indeed, been greatly affected by the operations of international bankers… The Soviet Government has been given United States Treasury funds by the Federal Reserve Board… acting through the Chase Bank.”

The late Antony Sutton’s exhaustive research demonstrates how Wall Street bankers supported and financed the Russian revolution, supported the Soviet Union financially, technologically and military both before and after the Second World War, and also supported Hitler and Nazi Germany financially and military both before and during the Second World War.

The monopoly men who exported jobs from America to slave labor gulags in China and are now in the process of looting the financial system are not dedicated Marxists. The late Gary Allen wrote:

If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want… a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. “Communism” is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world…. first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a “Great Merger,” into an all-powerful world, socialist super-state.

The Obama banker-CFR-Trilat-Bilderberg administration is the process of forging this “Great Merger” and is moving inexorably toward an all-powerful world, socialist super-state. Obama’s socialism will not emancipate the workers of America. It will further impoverish and enslave them.

As we approach the mid-term elections, the deceptive claim that Obama is a Marxist will pick up steam and will be exploited by the Tea Party movement as it attempts to get Republicans masquerading as patriots and constitutionalists elected to office.

Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root need to reexamine and stop chanting the ludicrous Obama is a Marxist chant and point out what Obama really is — a sock puppet reading a teleprompter for his employer: the control freaks at the international banks and multinational corporations.

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform

The Ruling Elite Called

I just got off the horn with the Ruling Elite. We had an emergency conference call and to tell you the truth, they ain’t happy. You little people are not responding the way you are supposed to. A significant portion of you are not getting more optimistic because they tell you to. Instead of just reading the headline on Bloomberg that durable goods orders skyrocketed in June, you actually read the details that said durable goods orders plunged. It is getting difficult for the ruling elite to keep the masses sedated and dumbed down. These damn bloggers, with their facts and critical thinking, are throwing a wrench into the gears. Obama and his crack team are working round the clock to lock down the internet, but it will take time. Not that they are totally dissatisfied. They’ve been able to renovate their penthouses and purchase new mansions in the Hamptons with the billions in bonuses you supplied through TARP. The $1.2 trillion supplied by your children and grandchildren to buy up toxic mortgages off their balances sheets was a godsend. They will never call you suckers, to your face.

Their spirits were buoyed by the 2,600 pages DONK (Dodd/Frank) financial reform bill. So many loopholes, so little time. Obama and his crack team of Obamanistas in the White House, supported by their mouthpieces in the mainstream media, have been able to easily manipulate the non-thinking masses into believing this bill would have stopped the last financial crash and will stop the next one. The Ministry of Truth has been working overtime utilizing Federal Reserve paid shill economists like Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi to perpetuate the myth that the actions taken in the last 18 months have averted a Depression, saved 8 million jobs, created a long-lasting recovery, wiped out Swine Flu, and earned Paul Krugman a nobel prize in fiction.

This is where we have a problem. The worshippers of Keynes, that rule the country, are pissed off at you. Don’t you realize that government spending of your money, borrowed from the Chinese, with the bill passed to your grandchildren, was supposed to reinvigorate your animal spirits. They handed you other people’s money to buy cars and homes and what do you do? You stop buying cars and homes as soon as they stop paying you to buy cars and homes. You ungrateful bastards. Bennie has been hugely successful at ruining the retirements of millions of grandmothers by paying them .20% on their money market accounts while forcing mortgage rates for 30 years down to 4.5%. And still you don’t buy houses. Timmy has instructed Fannie Mae to make home loans to anyone with a pulse who can make an X on a piece of paper. No money down, no proof of income, no assets. Just like the good old days. Still you don’t buy houses. What is wrong with you?

The criminal banking elite have more than bent over backwards to get this economy humming. They have patiently stood by while you haven’t made your mortgage payments for two years while still residing in the house. They’ve pretended to go along with the brilliant HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) plan, masterminded by the rocket scientists in the White House. Just because virtually no one has been able to qualify for the plan and the redefault rate is 75%, doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked wonders for the economy. The awesome part of not making people pay their mortgages is that they were able to make payments on their credit cards. That allowed the mega elite banks to pretend that consumers are flush and relieve their loan loss reserves while not writing off the bad mortgages and reporting billions in profits for the 2nd Quarter. It is good to be the ruling elite.

The ruling elite are letting you slide on your mortgages and you have the gall to withdraw $20 billion from U.S. equity funds and not buy into this fake stock rally. Don’t you realize that when the stock market goes up, the economy follows? Everyone knows this. But, instead you sit on the sidelines and refuse to invest in the stock market. The super computers of the mega-banks are getting tired of trading with each other and single-handedly making the stock market appear safe. Just because the ruling elite have vaporized $10 trillion of your net worth in the last two years, you hold a grudge? Remember the mantra “Stocks For the Long Run” that the ruling elite burned into your brains through CNBC and the rest of the shillstream media? Why are you so suspicious of our advice. Ignore the fact that the S&P 500 today is at the exact level it reached on March 24, 1998. They meant the really really long term.

Here is the message from the ruling elite to you ignorant masses: Debt got us into this mess and it sure as hell is going to get us out. They have convinced the mainstream media that the reason the economy is sputtering is because the average Joe is not doing their part. This crazy concept of saving for a rainy day seems to be catching on. This is very dangerous. Savings could lead to investment and long-term stability. The ruling elite will have none of that foolishness. The mainstream media is telling you that this new found austerity will push us back into recession. The talking heads continue to pound away that you have reduced your spending too much, when anyone with a calculator and half a brain (Krugman doesn’t make the cut) can determine that the decrease in consumer debt outstanding is completely the result of write-offs by the mega elite banks. Consumers are living off their credit cards at this point.

The military industrial complex continues to do the heavy lifting for this economy. If they weren’t blowing up bridges, power plants and orphanages in foreign countries and then rebuilding them at ten times the expected cost, how would they possibly spend $895 billion per year. It ain’t easy to waste that kind of money annually. Whenever some crazy dude like Ron Paul questions the need to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, some potential terrorists are captured in the nick of time and the threat level is raised to Orange (thanks Tom Ridge). The “professional” journalists on the major networks then do their part in this farce by spreading fear among the general population. Rinse and repeat.

So, we now find ourselves at the edge of the abyss again. The ruling elite have a great plan. It involves more debt, more stimulus, more printing, more accounting fraud, more pain for the masses, and of course more bonuses for Wall Street. If you, the little people, will just follow this 10 step plan, the ruling elite will be just fine:

1. Stocks are undervalued according to the same “experts” who told you they were undervalued in October 2007. Take out a loan and buy mega-banks stocks, commercial real estate developers, and bankrupt car companies.
2. General Motors, in a brilliant strategic coup, has bought  “subprime” auto loan company Americredit. What else does a government/union owned car company need? The fact that GMAC has lost $10 billion of taxpayer funds in the last year shouldn’t worry you about your investment in GM. If you can’t sell cars to people with no income, no job and no prospects for repaying the seven year 0% loan, who can you sell a car to. When the government pays Goldman Sachs millions to convince you to buy the stock of GM in its Fall IPO, ask no questions and just buy buy buy.
3. Ignore the fact that Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo would be declared insolvent if the FASB had not caved into threats from the Federal Reserve and Treasury. Just buy their stocks. Trust Wall Street.
4. Enough austerity already. You haven’t bought a new HDTV in six months. It’s like you’ve been living in a 3rd world country. If you have any equity left in your house, borrow against it and buy something big and glitzy. Make sure you show it off to your shallowest neighbors. They will go out and buy something bigger and glitzier on credit. Before you know it we have a recovery. Keynesianism 101.
5. Stop frequenting financial blogs like Naked Capitalism, Credit Writedowns, Dollar Collapse, Market Oracle, 321Gold, Jesse’s Cafe Americain, Of Two Minds, Zero Hedge, Mike Shedlock, or Barry Ritholtz. These sites will just shower you with facts, analysis and truth. Watch CNBC, Fox, MSNBC and the other corporate media to get the ruling elite approved view of the world.
6. If you are currently renting or living in your mother’s basement, have no job, no savings and no prospects, Fannie Mae wants to put you in your very own house. Mortgage payments are optional. The 50% of Americans that pay taxes will gladly fund your new abode.
7. If you are approaching the 99th week of unemployment, have no fear. The ruling elite will use the MSM to run hundreds of sob stories about only two years on the dole being immoral and cruel. The White House will present a study from “impartial” economists that proves that extending unemployment benefits to 156 weeks will create or save 3 million jobs.
8. The stress of this recession has been too much. You need to whip out that credit card and book a trip to Disney World or Dollywood. Worry about funding that 401k sometime in the future.
9. Unquestioningly accept the fact that Iran is an imminent threat to your safety and liberty. Support the obliteration of this evil nation based upon information provided by the CIA (WMD slamdunk) and the Israelis.
10. Lastly, call your Congressman and tell them to extend the tax cuts for the rich. As you have probably concluded, the ruling elite are rich. They don’t like paying taxes. That is why they employ thousand of tax lawyers. Since the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will hurt the ruling elite the most, a full court press of disinformation is in order.

The ruling elite expect you to comply without question. Have they ever led you astray before?

“WHAT IF WE GIVE EVERYONE A HOUSE AND A PRE-APPROVED CREDIT CARD?”

“CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY GAVE US $700 BILLION? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR $40 MILLION BONUS?

WHAT COMES AFTER A QUADRILLION?

Vulture

- It nests with corporations, squawking for tax breaks, bailouts and military contracts that have little to do with national security -

By Chuck Collins at IPS

There’s an invasive species in our national discourse, a recent arrival in our civic forest. It’s the “yellow-bellied deficit vulture,” recently spotted circling the Capitol building and heard squawking on syndicated talk shows.

View the original article at Veterans Today

“While you here do snoring lie, Open-eyed conspiracy His time doth take.”

–William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

In the following article, we set out to trace the steps of two brothers, both of whom are grandsons of Bilderberg-founder Bernhard, who have now been destined to carry along the torch of treason. The objective: to dismantle the nation-state, strip the people of their self-determination and free will, and position themselves as sovereign rulers of the planet. Their common cause does not deviate from the age-old directive, but their means are custom-made to fit current times.

Children of the Dutch royal family are destined to carry along the torch of treason.

To those who feel that the quest for a worldwide grid, a prison-planet, is too great an effort to conceal from public scrutiny, we can say there’s hardly any concealment on the part of the elite. We can even say that the perpetrators are generally committing their acts in the full light of day, as they speak quite openly about their vision for the world. Those who have been instructed to conceal and “repackage” information to a ready-made format are our trusted media-empires. They can be perfectly trusted with the job of keeping the lid on vital information about the scientific dictatorship emerging in our everyday lives.

For example, when the third born son to queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, prince Constantijn van Oranje, published a series of RAND-policy papers, calling for the “global governance of the internet”, none of this ever filtered down to the masses, who were instead being spoon-fed the scores of an arbitrary football-match or some low-grade soap star’s latest fling.

Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau

In 2009, the official website of the Dutch royal family published Constantijn’s résumé. One of his functions, according to the royal family, was that of “programme associate of the Bilderberg conference.” Regrettably, since one of the authors (Maessen) published it on InfoWars.Com, the Bilderberg-reference was scrapped from the royal website before a screen-shot of it could be salvaged. The current web page does however mention his earlier commissions with key-institutions within the New World Order architecture.

	Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau.

As the royal families own website reports, from 2001 to 2003 prince Constantijn worked as a strategic policy consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton operating out of London, England. Booz Allen is a globally operating, self-proclaimed ‘private consulting firm’ right out of a John Grisham novel with all the dark intrigue that goes along with it. Since its creation in the early 1900s, Booz, Allen & Hamilton has been intimately tied to the military-industrial complex including ‘long-standing relationships with federal intelligence agencies’- as a superficial glance on Wikipedia reveals. A March 8 2008 article in CorpWatch reported that the the firm ‘is a key advisor and prime contractor to all of the major U.S. intelligence agencies.(…) Among the many services Booz Allen provides to intelligence agencies, according to its website, are war-gaming- simulated drills in which military and intelligence officials test their response to potential threats like terrorist attacks.’ A most interesting speciality of the firm is the development of electronic surveillance equipment and other spy-tools to be used against the people. When the queen selected the ‘prestigious’ firm as an employer for her son, she must have known that you can’t get more New World Order than Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Or can you?

In the summer of 2003 the prince began working for the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs as ‘advisor on European Communications’. In this function, Constantijn specialised in ‘communication strategies’ with the stated aim of getting the Dutch behind further ‘European cooperation’. The prince obviously wasn’t very successful as the Dutch convincingly rejected the European Constitution in 2005. After the young prince checked out of the office of the Dutch European Commissioner he checked into a more comfortable office at RAND Europe’s Brussels division to further tinker on his ’strategies’. Here he co-wrote several technical reports on a range of subjects: from web 2.0, to RFID technology and other matters concerning ‘global governance’. In 2008 Constantijn was promoted to head the Brussels RAND office, expanding his influence even more. In Daniel Estulin’s 2005 bestseller “The Bilderberg Group” the author clarifies the ties between the RAND-corporation and the big globalist foundations:

“The interlocking leadership between the trustees at RAND, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations”, writes Estulin, “is a classic case of Bilderberg modus operandi. The Ford foundation gave one million dollars to RAND in 1952, at a time when the president of the Ford Foundation was simultaneously the chairman of RAND.”

It wasn’t long before Constantijn was promoted to the next level in the New World Order hierarchy. Earlier this year, the young prince was appointed senior advisor to the private office of European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Ms Neelie Kroes.

Now it so happens that Ms. Kroes attends Bilderberg almost annually, where she keeps close quarters with the queen. No wonder that she chose of the queen’s offspring to become senior advisor at her office. Of all of the prime research areas the prince could envelop himself in, throughout his short career he specifically chose the subjects we identify with the worldwide surveillance grid and the New World Order: RFID tracking technology, a top-down controlled Internet and the promotion of more ‘cooperation’ worldwide through inflated transnational institutions.

“Enlightened Leadership”

In 2009 Constantijn published his “discussion paper on critical issues” under the RAND-umbrella titled The Future of the Internet Economy. In it, he is quite uninhibited in his call for the emergence of an overall system of control to steer the course of events globally.

“(…) the Internet as a global infrastructure needs a global governance structure”, Van Oranje writes.

“International governance is necessary to deal with global issues and ensuring effective functioning of the Internet, following principles of good governance.”

The deliberately vague addition of “good governance” is a smart way to circumvent explaining that only a tyrannical transnational system can guarantee “effective functioning of the Internet.” Furthermore, the prince advocates the ideal tool for future slavery: one common, global electronic denominator hooked into a hive-like supercomputer:

“Though a sectoral, geographic and multi-layered patchwork is likely, a scenario with a more unified system is not impossible either. There are significant benefits for citizens, governments and commercial operators to have a more standardised system that would support a large range of eGovernment services and functions. One system would eliminate the need for multiple cards, would increase the possibility for interconnecting systems”, and the list goes on.

The warnings of Aaron Russo immediately spring to mind, don’t they? As one of the determinants of such a common system through which all of human traffic should be channelled, the report mentions:

“The level of Pan-European ambition towards the use of a single eIdentity throughout Europe by 2015: Will policy makers of Commission (European Commission) and Member States agree on a system that is to support only simple identity; will Pan-European services be build/transformed in a way that they benefit directly from eID; or will there be a natural evolution towards one single European IDM, adequate for most national and Pan-European Government Services?”

In another 2009 document titled Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts, the prince arrives at the logical conclusion of his train of thought: world government.

“ (…) both policy issues and effective responses must be defined at a global level; to influence the solution a global coordination and ‘enlightened leadership’ is required.” and “policy issues, not always solutions, will be defined at a global level. Those few countries or regional blocks like the EU where these technologies are already at an advanced stage may take a more or less enlightened lead role.”

These are just a few out of literally hundreds of examples where the global elite imagine themselves to be enlightened leaders, who because of their ‘royal blood’ are destined to steer the course of world events. Besides the fact that Constantijn has shown great interest in pursuing matters of tyranny, which no doubt helps to attain such a ‘prestigious’ position at Bilderberg, the young prince above all owes his current position to the blue blood running through his veins- which makes a comfortable seat around the camp fire of the New World Order an absolute guarantee.

Johan Friso van Oranje-Nassau

From Constantijn, the queen’s third son, we move to Johan Friso, her second (1968) and least known of the three. As we shall see, the secrecy surrounding Friso has more than one reason. We can begin by stating that he is not even mentioned on the official website of the royal family, www.koninklijkhuis.nl; the reason is that the highly controversial woman he married in 2004 –Mabel Wisse Smit- who established ties with organized crime through her liaison in 1989 and 1990 with top drugs-trafficker Klaas Bruinsma, shot to his death in 1991 in front of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. Bruinsma, according to the Dutch Wikipedia, ‘can be considered as the founding father of Dutch drugs trafficking’.

Prince Johan Friso and Mabel Wisse Smit on their wedding day in 2004.

When this –utterly secret- liaison was revealed in 2003 in what can be considered as one of the last heroic facts of Dutch journalism, the young prince had to beg the Dutch parliament for the green light, as controversial marriages of members of the royal family in the Netherlands are subject to parliamentary approval. But prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, known as the perfect ‘royal puppet’, refused to subject the marriage to parliamentary voting. He considered the risk of a humiliating ‘royal defeat’ too great to take. Instead, he let Friso draw up a letter to the effect that the prince chose not to let parliament vote, accepting all consequences that may result from his risky union. One of these was that he would have to abstain from the Dutch throne and would no longer –officially- be considered a member of the royal family with all the related benefits and entitlements. Later Friso and his wife apologized on Dutch national television for ‘not having given full disclosure about the relations of Mrs Wisse-Smit with Mr Bruinsma’ but that they had ‘nothing bad in mind’. Nice to meet you: prince Johan Friso, count of Oranje-Nassau, son of the queen of the Netherlands.

Ties with Drugs Trafficking

By introducing Wisse Smit in their (private) family fold, the Dutch royal family continued its long established ties with drugs trafficking which originated with king William I who in 1824 founded the Netherlands Trading Society, in essence a Bruinsma-like organization for trafficking and distributing opium throughout the colonies. The enormous family capital of the Orange family dates back to that illustrious era.

In regards to the life Friso and Mabel lead these days with their two children, near to nothing is known. The only function that is openly published is (from 2004 onwards) his ‘part time directorship with TNO Space’, an organization with strong ties to the military-industrial complex and leading in the field of ‘earth observation’ through satellites. Friso obtained a master degree in Aviation and Space Technology at the university of Delft before continuing his studies in California.

His wife Mabel, just before beginning a relationship with the Dutch Al Capone, became (1997) director of the Brussels-based Open Society Institute, a play toy of billionaire-investor (and prominent Bilderberger) George Soros. Until recently she worked for this organization form its London office. Everything that is known about Mabel however points in just one direction: unbridled promiscuity. In the Netherlands it is said: either you slept with her or you know someone who did- a type of behavior that seems ill positioned to go together with what is known about Friso: he is a homosexual and has been frequently spotted as such, especially in Berkeley, California where he studied form 1986 to 1988. The main source for this is the late Willem Oltmans, a famous Dutch –homosexual- journalist who was demonized by the Dutch State for his ongoing revelations and later compensated for the destruction of his career with 8 million guilders. So this leads to one of the most tantalizing questions surrounding the Dutch royals: why does a homosexual prince marry the most promiscuous woman of the country who also has ties to the greatest criminal of the country whereby he looses his claim to the throne and is damned to a life of lies and secrecy about his private preferences?

Homosexuality and Pedophilia

Nothing is known about a courting-period; and Friso looked famously unhappy on his wedding-day, even to the point that on the web all stories about his homosexuality started popping up again. The only possible answer lies in the fact that the Dutch Royals also had ties to the criminal Bruinsma-group, and that Wisse Smit could blackmail her way into the family –and to fame and invulnerability- by threatening to expose these ties, knowledge of which she obtained through her relationship with the capo himself. Partly these ties were already in the open, to say the least.

In one of the most damning episodes of the criminal history of this family, it was revealed that the personal lawyer of Beatrix, Frits Salomonson, who also was a member of the Committee of Guardians of the crown prince, was the prime whitewasher of the Bruinsma drug-millions, transporting them from the criminal underworld to the ‘legal’ business communities through a criminal stock-exchange listed phantom-company that was only there for whitewashing drugs money. So the ‘groundwork’ for possible further revelations about criminal activities of ‘the family’ was already there, giving Mabel Wisse Smit an easy ride. In an horrendous –and still widely debated- epilogue to this chapter of Dutch royal history, the politician that broke the news of the criminal role of her majesties counsel, Maarten van Traa, died in a car accident shortly after the revelations that is till this day shrouded in clouds and mysteries.

The name Frits Salomonson is not only tied to whitewashing of drugs money. The man was a well known homosexual and pedophile against whom is strong evidence of having raped, brutalized and even tortured young children. This same lawyer introduced the late husband of Beatrix, Claus, the father of Friso, into the New York gay scene as has been published by the MSM. Claus’ homosexuality was a public secret but became a threat to public safety and the nation as such when it became obvious that the State was blackmailed as a result of Claus’ being seen and identified in the most dirty of homosexual and pedo-sexual localities. This problem was ‘solved’ by eliminating him from the public domain in 1982 as a result of a ‘grave psychiatric condition’. The man eventually ended high up on a mountain in Switzerland and has never regained any position of significance.

The main source for this string of events is a very detailed article in German that was meant to be published by Der Spiegel but never made its way to the public. In many ways this sad story of Claus’ life is repeated in that of Friso: a homosexual being married to a woman, experimenting with sexual preferences in the USA because it is ‘far from home’, the (danger of) being blackmailed and- on an even more sinister note- evidence of pedophilia and other forms of child abuse. Of course, these kind of allegations and stories are mostly impossible to verify for obvious reasons. But in the case of the Dutch royals there is much that can be established as fact concerning child-abuse and ritual, sometimes even sadistic maltreatment:

The great-grandfather from Friso’s mother’s side, a German prince named Hendrik, raped his own daughter, the mother of queen Beatrix, as a result of which a daughter was born. The father of Friso, Claus, was a homosexual who also used children for sexual pleasure. The lawyer of the Queen and main guardian of the crown prince, Friso’s brother, was a sadistic pedophile against whom even testimony of child executions exists.

Is it against this factual background, outrageous or beyond imagination, that recently a witness has come forward claiming –from first hand- that Friso was present at a satanic execution of a young woman in the province of Friesland in the night after queens day in 1999? This murder case –Marianne Vaatstra- is still the most high profile so-called ‘cold case’ in Dutch criminal history and it is established fact that the police is still doing everything to prevent the truth from surfacing, like smuggling the prime suspects out of the country just days after the murder took place.

Confessions of a Royal Hitman

Johan Friso is the grandson of Bilderberg-founder Bernhard and the son of queen Beatrix who, according to knowledgeable sources, holds the third position in the current Bilderberg hierarchy. Sources say Beatrix once took Friso with her to a Bilderberg meeting. This seems all the more factual as we take into consideration the strong –and up to now still largely unpublished- ties between Friso and prominent Bilderberger James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, a prime Bilderberg-tool in establishing the NWO. Since 2006 Friso acts as managing director for Wolfensohn & Company in the London office of the firm. What exactly is this firm concocting in the ‘emerging market economies’? It advises and consults on behalf of ‘governments’ and ‘large corporations’ doing business there, according to the company’s website. A more accurate impression can no doubt be gained by reading John Perkin’s famous whistle-blower treatise Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

In short: with organizations like these it’s all about bringing weak countries into the NWO power-structure by ‘advising’ them to take on large loans –from the World Bank, the IMF, Goldman Sachs- that they can never pay back. The loaner then can lay hands on natural resources of the debtor, other valuable assets like harbors and airports and even exert political backing for NWO-related proposals in organizations like the UN and WTO. This is the game Perkins describes and Wolfensohn excels in, with the help of the Dutch prince Johan Friso of Oranje Nassau. Interestingly enough, this type of work of Friso as a ‘royal hitman’ is of exactly the same category as what his wife Mabel is doing as a party-girl for George Soros and for an organization named The Elders of which she is (since 2008) director, an ‘independent group of eminent global leaders’ brought together by Nelson Mandela with names such as Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu; this group ‘takes initiatives’ on behalf of countries like Sudan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Big Bilderberg Brother is Watching You

We already mentioned Friso’s ties to the military-industrial complex through his activities for TNO Space that specializes in developing techniques for controlling the population from outer space. What can now also be revealed is that Friso in 2005 and 2006 has been a partner with venture capital investment firm Logispring in Geneva, Switzerland. This firm, led by a Dutchman named Frans van Schaik, is active on the same big brother-chessboard and invests in companies like Xterprise (Texas, USA) specializing in NWO dream-tools like RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, a technique we already stumbled upon in the previous section on Constantijn. These activities of Friso have never been published by Dutch media outlets and have only become known through the website of Wolfensohn & Company short business biography of Friso. (click: “Investment team” and then “Friso van Oranje” through link provided). The same applies to Friso’s co-foundership of MRI Centre that excels in body scanning-techniques for the medical sector. The same Wolfensohn website also sheds some light on what Friso was doing with Goldman Sachs in London where he was executive director from 1998 to 2003. Friso was into investment banking in the sectors media and technology and was also assigned to Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs. This banking conglomerate is these days considered as a criminal organization pur sang and countries like Spain, Greece and Germany have stopped doing business with Goldman’s suicide bankers, as they’ve been called by journalist Max Keiser. Currently GS is investing through its Capital Partners VI-fund (more than 20 billion dollars).

No doubt Friso was hired by GS to look for high potential possibilities in the field of big brother-technologies for optimizing the NWO control grid of the world population through micro-chipping, radio-tracking, body-scanning and satellite-spying.

William-Alexander of Orange-Nassau

Concluding, a word about the oldest brother: William-Alexander, heir to the throne, who accompanies his mother to the annual Bilderberg-meetings. He is certainly no stranger to the long-term ambitions of his family, but- as heir to the throne- keeps his actions much more in the dark than his two brothers. As he is subject to a high degree of scrutiny, this prince passes his time with ‘global water-management’ for the UN. And even in this apparently innocent day job, the prince can hardly refrain from pushing global governance. It’s in his blood, you might say. In a document prepared by the prince for the Johannesburg Summit, he states:

“The most important area of global governance with a substantial potential impact on the water sector is the system of international trade.”

Lamenting that: “The effort to develop a much-needed institutional framework for international water governance has met with resistance and been relatively unsuccessful”, the prince recommends to “Have the World Trade Organization develop and consider virtual water balances, using a resource accounting framework, when assessing and negotiating agriculture subsidies and trade in agricultural products.”

Here they go again, have the WTO strangle nation-states into submission by lending and retracting agricultural funding.

“In the international arena”, says the prince, “water has shown to be a good catalyst for cooperation between nations.”

At a 2004 meeting of the International Institute for Sustainable Development held at United Nations headquarters in New York, the prince of Orange sat side by side with Bilderberger and Executive Director of UNEP Klaus Töpfer, discussing the “overall review of implementation of Agenda 21.” This, by the way, is the same Töpfer that admitted to an “international consensus on worldwide population control” back in 2000.

In Conclusion

Slowly but surely a picture is emerging from the plethora of facts. Both prince’s former and current employers are without exception notorious and regular Bilderbergers: No doubt a big Bilderberg future lies ahead for both princes, sons of the current Bilderberg number three and grandsons of its founder.

Although the New World Order’s quest for total control of the world’s natural (and human) resources is one that spans many decades and even centuries, the latest generation is as fervent to accomplish the destruction of nation-states as their forefathers ever were. History points out to us that decisive developments and events are not simply the children of coincidence, they are brought about at the hands of ruling elites throughout the ages.

Micha Kat is an investigative journalist and the foremost Bilderberg-hunter in the Netherlands. His website is www.klokkenluideronline.nl.

Jurriaan Maessen is a writer and freelance investigative journalist.

End War

- Nation-building starts at home -

By Sherwood Ross

The solution to our fiscal crisis, The Nation magazine editorializes, is to “end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth.” That’s because nearly the entire deficit this year and those projected at least for the short term are the result of “the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession,” the publication says in its lead editorial of August 2nd. 

Yet, while the Obama administration has just pushed through $59 billion more to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan to intensify that war and for “nation-building”, it has done way too little to help the States maintain needed jobs. “Spending on local projects plummets,” was a June 25th headline in “USA Today.”

“The cutbacks are hitting the nation’s 90,000 state and local governments, including cities, counties, school districts, universities and utilities,” reports Dennis Cauchon.  “States and local governments are slashing spending on schools, roads, offices and other construction projects so fast that even federal stimulus money hasn’t filled in the gap,” he wrote.

Of course, the big reason local and state governments are broke is because the Federal government—which is siphoning off more than $2 trillion annually from the public— is fleecing taxpayers for its wars. As a result, broke taxpayers are voting down bond issues for needed local improvements. They don’t have any money left to fund them. Schools are being built in Iraq, not Iowa.

About 54 cents of every dollar spent by the Feds last year went for past and present conflicts, says the pacifist War Resisters League of New York. Put another way, Washington spends more for war each year than all 50 state governments combined spend for the health, education, safety and general welfare of 308 million Americans.

In 2008, for example, the states collected $781 billion in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C.  And that’s, essentially, to run the entire United States. For a rough comparison, the Pentagon this year, says Wikipedia, will spend between $880 billion and $1 trillion on war—-more than the next high-spending 45 countries combined. 

It now costs $1.1 million a year to keep a soldier in Afghanistan, according to The New York Times of July 25th. While some of this money flows back into America in point of fact a number of non-military outlays do more to stimulate the American economy in terms of jobs created and wages and benefits, studies show. If Congress wants to get America moving, morals aside, it’s far better off investing our taxes in education, health care, transportation, and construction than in war.

Besides, the Pentagon is so incredibly fiscally irresponsible that, according to an Associated Press report of July 27th, a U.S. audit found the Pentagon “cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money”—that it took from the people of Iraqi it was supposedly managing in their behalf.

Instead of bribing our enemies in Afghanistan not to shoot up our wagon trains, the Obama administration might invest those dollars in creating jobs at home that will put purchasing power back into the hands of American workers. It needs urgently to slash that 9.8 percent unemployment level. “More than 14 million people are out of work and many more are either underemployed or so discouraged they’ve just stopped looking,” writes Bob Herbert in The New York Times of July 27th.

While “big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money” from second quarter profits, notes former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, they continue to invest in their overseas ops rather than in U.S. production. General Motors, he observes, has slashed its U.S. work force from 468,000 in 1970 to 52,000 hourly workers today—while building its Chinese labor force to 32,000.

Reich writes, “Bottom line: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We’re witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs.” So don’t look to the private sector to get the stimulus ball rolling. 

“Long-term solutions that have to do with extensive job creation and a strengthening of the safety net are required. But that doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s agenda,” Herbert adds.

One way to give purchasing power a boost would be to reduce payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security.  Help the working folk at the bottom of the economic pyramid keep more of what they earn. Another way would be Federal job creation: say half a million more nurses and like numbers of day care workers and teachers for openers. “We’re told we can’t extend unemployment or pay to keep cops on the beat or teachers in the classroom, but we’re asked to borrow another $33 billion for nation-building in Afghanistan,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) is quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “I think we need to do more nation-building here at home.”

That nation-building could include legislation that will allow workers to vote in labor unions once again. The relentless decline in good-paying union jobs has been a big factor in taking the purchasing punch out of the economy.

If you oppose on principle federal subsidies for hiring nurses and others, how do you feel about subsidizing Afghan warlords?                                                      

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based media consultant. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

View the original article at Veterans Today

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.”

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.

If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not have sent them to a war, the purpose of which he cannot identify. Earlier in his regime, Obama admitted that he did not know what the mission was in Afghanistan. He vowed to find out what the mission was and to tell us, but he never did. After being read the riot act by the military/security complex, which recycles war profits into political campaign contributions, Obama simply declared the war to be “necessary.” No one has ever explained why the war is necessary.

The government cannot explain why the war is necessary, because it is not necessary to the American people. Any necessary reason for the war has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.

The Obama regime has made war the business of America. Escalation in Afghanistan has gone hand in hand with drone attacks on Pakistan and the use of proxy forces to conduct wars in Pakistan and North Africa. Currently, the US is conducting provocative naval exercises off the coasts of China and North Korea and instigating war between Columbia and Venezuela in South America. Former CIA director Michael Hayden declared on July 25 that an attack on Iran seems unavoidable.

With the print and TV media captive, why doesn’t Washington simply tell us that the country is at war without going to the trouble of war? That way the munitions industry can lay off its workers and put the military appropriations directly into profits. We could avoid the war crimes and wasted lives of our soldiers.

The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being sacrificed to the regime’s wars. The states are broke and laying off teachers. Even “rich” California, formerly touted as “the seventh largest economy in the world,” is reduced to issuing scrip and cutting its state workers’ pay to the minimum wage.

Supplemental war appropriations have become routine affairs, but the budget deficit is invoked to block any aid to Americans — but not to Israel. On July 25 the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the US and Israel had signed a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing to provide Israel with a missile system.

Americans can get no help out of Washington, but the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security is “not negotiable.” Washington’s commitment to California and to the security of the rest of us is negotiable. War spending has run up the budget deficit, and the deficit precludes any help for Americans.

With the US bankrupting itself in wars, America’s largest creditor, China, has taken issue with America’s credit rating. The head of China’s largest credit rating agency declared: “The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation.”

On July 12, Niall Ferguson, an historian of empire, warned that the American empire could collapse suddenly from weakness brought on by its massive debts and that such a collapse could be closer than we think.

Deaf, dumb, and blind, Washington policymakers prattle on about “thirty more years of war.”

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.