A US campaign watchdog has accused presumptive Republican president nominee John McCain of violating election laws by accepting campaign contributions from two prominent Londoners.
At issue is a fundraising luncheon held in March at London's Spencer House, during McCain's swing through the United Kingdom. An invitation to the event lists Lord Rothschild and Nathaniel Rothschild as hosts, and indicates the event was made possible with their "kind permission".
Judicial Watch, a Washington organisation instrumental in the March release of Hillary Clinton's White House schedules, has asked US election monitors to investigate whether the Rothschilds improperly sponsored the fundraiser. US political campaigns are forbidden from accepting contributions from foreign nationals.
"The question is whether or not the Rothschilds paid for the event, the venue, the catering, or any other related costs," said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.
Tickets to the event cost $1,000 to $2,300, and the luncheon dress code was "lounge suits," the Washington Post reported in March.
The McCain campaign did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Judicial Watch also complained to the US election authority, the federal election commission, about Elton John's involvement in Clinton's campaign. The group alleged the British rocker broke US campaign laws by performing at a fundraiser for the New York senator. The Clinton campaign argued US law allowed the British musician to volunteer his time and solicit Americans for contributions.
The federal election commission is unlikely to act soon on the group's McCain complaint. It is currently short-handed, a result of a political squabble between the Democratic-led senate and the Bush administration, and lacks a quorum to take action.
The Rothschilds operate in modern politics exactly as their forebearers did in previous wars: they back both sides. Thus ensuring that whoever wins they've backed a winner.
So while on the one hand, Lord Rothschild and Nathaniel Rothschild are reported to have hosted a fundraising event for McCain at London's Spencer House in March; on the other Sir Evelyn Rothschild and his wife are reported to be on good terms with Hilary Clinton
But just to make sure they have the next U.S. election entirely sewn up, the Rothschild's North American allies the Rockefellers are reported to be backing Barack Obama, through their minion and general fixer Zbigniew Brzezinski
Thus ensuring that whoever ends up sitting in the Oval Office will be in the pocket of the Global Oligarchs; ready to do their bidding rather that that of the American people.
Source: Thetruthseeker.co.uk
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
MAYDAY ALERT! -- Terror Drills Could Go Live!
An impressive array of military men join Captain Eric H. May, the Internet intelligence writer, in issuing a false flag alert for May 1-8, when the Bush administration will be conducting nationwide terror exercises.
The name "false flag" comes from the old pirate's ruse of flying another country's flag during an attack, thereby shifting blame for the attack to a party that had nothing to do with it. Governments use false flag attacks to push their nations into dictatorship or war. As military experts, we fear that national terror drills, scheduled for May 1-8, could be used to camouflage a false flag attack in the United States.
Strategic Signals
Yesterday an American-flagged ship fired on the Iranian Navy, and now Pentagon sources say that they have been ordered to prepare attack plans. Admiral "Fox" Fallon, the Centcom commander who opposed war with Iran, has been ousted in favor of Bush loyalist General David Petraeus, who has spent the last month accusing Iran for our increasing problems with the Iraqi resistance.
Saudi Arabia has been preparing for nuclear fallout from an attack on Iran since last month, when Dick Cheney paid a visit. Israel has just finished its largest-ever domestic war drills. Israel and the Bush administration are insisting that Syria and North Korea are nuclear collaborators. Syria is preparing for the contingency of an Israeli attack. Iran is preparing for the contingency of a US attack. US government insiders speculate that Bush has promised Israel an expanded Middle East war before he leaves office.
The Neo-Cons are pounding their war drums again, according to Dr. James H. Fetzer, the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, and he believes that nothing would help them spread their imperial war in the Middle East as much as another 9/11.
He has just published "9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda." amfirstbooks.com The article is a must-read introduction for anyone wanting to understand the origins and aims of the " global war on terror."
Domestic Discord
Inside the US, Bush approval ratings are well below 30%, and approval ratings for the U.S. Congress and mainstream media are even lower. Over three quarters of the American people believe that the country is on the wrong track, and just as many want to end the quicksand war in the Middle East. The economy is crashing as fuel prices are skyrocketing. The Establishment is losing its grip on power. It would take another 9/11 to make the nation forget its domestic woes and resume its lost zeal for the Neo-Con "new American century" of foreign wars and a domestic police state.
In his much-discussed February article, "False Flag Prospects, 2008," http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/08/02/25/may.htm Captain Eric H. May documented the disturbing fact that military and police exercises were occurring at the same time as the 9/11 US attacks in 2001 and the 7/7 UK bombings in 2005. In that prescient article, he designated the Pacific Northwest as one of the top three target zones for the next US false flag attack, and the Pacific Northwest will be the target of terror drills May 1-8.
Should a major event occur during the drills, the Bush administration is prepared to implement National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 51, which establishes dictatorship "in the event of a man-made or natural catastrophe." It is an extraordinary measure, and the White House has stonewalled Homeland Security Committee members from the House of Representatives who wanted to read it. One of those members, Oregon's Peter DeFazio summed up the feeling of many Americans about NSPD 51 when he said "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."
Fears that a false flag attack might result in martial law are nourished by last week's militaristic Operation Sudden Impact, reported by Infowars.net writer Steve Watson: "Three States Subjected to Martial Law Sweeps" http://www.infowars.net/articles/april2008/180408impact.htm
National Level Exercise 8-02
NLE 2-08 will involve the very highest levels of Homeland Security and the US Northern Command. Both "Homesec" and "Northcom" were established by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 to take control of the nation in the event of another terrorist attack. They will be joined by FEMA in the May 1-8 exercise, which is one of the two largest terror drills scheduled this year.
On Thursday, May 1, the exercise begins in Washington, when an explosion collapses the Alaska Way viaduct in downtown Seattle and damages surrounding buildings. Twenty minutes later, terrorists explode a highjacked tanker ship filled with highly toxic chemicals at the Seattle Ferry Terminal. Deadly gas soon permeates downtown Seattle.
Emergency responders come in waves. Police and firemen, first to arrive, are quickly overwhelmed. The state deploys its 22-member Civil Support Team, a National Guard unit, to assess the damage and coordinate support. Later, 100 soldiers from a chemical battalion based in Yakima arrive to rescue, decontaminate and treat survivors. Finally, 5,000 troops arrived to handle logistics and security.
On Monday, May 5, the scenario shifts to Oregon where VX, the most toxic nerve agent ever synthesized, erupts from the Umatilla Army Depot.
The next day, terrorists blow up a chemical tanker in Ferndale, Washington. The county sheriff requests national support, and a Marine Corps chemical warfare detachment from Ft. Lewis, Washington responds.
According to sources at Northcom, NLE 2-08 will involve "robust play," with "surprise injects" of unanticipated events in which participants are "stretched to the limit" and have "everything thrown at them except the kitchen sink." All of this makes it easier for the exercise to "go live" by having a real catastrophe occur.
As the Pacific Northwest scenario is playing out, Washington, DC will be simulating a catastrophic hurricane as part of the same exercise. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest that this puts Dick Cheney back in the bunker he occupied during 9/11.
Citizens interested in understanding how local, state and national levels of the military can be manipulated into working against us should read "The Real Drill" by Major William B. Fox, about Portland area terror drills last year. http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=2006&z=186
Mission of Conscience
Many American citizens are deeply concerned about police militarization, and about government and media preconditioning of our nation for future terror attacks and martial law. We recommend that they monitor NLE 2-08 closely. Armed with cell phones, cameras and the Internet, they are the single greatest deterrent against false flag terror.
If we, the co-authors of this alert, are in error about anything, then we invite reasonable officials to investigate us and our assertions at the very highest levels. In the past we have too often met with hostility, evasion or deception by officials involved in terror drills. We have been stonewalled when we have requested access to an extended schedule of unclassified military and police terror drills.
We believe that there is a pattern of official retaliation against patriotic service members who ask questions about 9/11 and false flags.
In 2006, Sergeant First Class Donald Buswell, an Army military intelligence NCO, suggested that 9/11 might have been a false flag operation. Within a month the decorated 40-year-old Iraq war veteran suffered a freak pulmonary embolism, which nearly killed him. After he was released from the hospital, his command accused him of disloyalty for his remarks, and subjected him to an extensive military investigation. Ultimately, he was fully exonerated, and the now-retired Buswell has become widely known on the Internet as the "9/11 NCO." Stephen Webster, writing for The Lone Star Iconoclast, gained national attention with his story about Buswell, "Under Fire! U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Targeted for Suggesting New Independent 9/11 Investigation." http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=426&z=40
The duty to keep the government honest isn't optional for those of us who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It has always been difficult, and even dangerous, to serve the American people. We call on all active-duty soldiers, police and first responders to obey their oaths by asking questions that need to be asked, and by thinking twice before blindly carrying out orders that may result in an a false flag attack against their country. We urge leaders of those soldiers, police and first responders to explain that diligence is not disloyalty, and that no one ceases to be a free American citizen by putting on a uniform.
Issuing an alert -- as we are doing now -- is not an instance of "crying wolf," as Bush administration apologists often assert. As military-trained experts, we are convinced that the US 9/11 and UK 7/7 attacks were set up under the camouflage of terror drills. The existence of a wolf is not in question. The wolf of false flag terror has killed our fellow citizens and frightened our country into needless wars. It's our mission of conscience to keep it from striking again.
Source: Portland.indymedia.org
The name "false flag" comes from the old pirate's ruse of flying another country's flag during an attack, thereby shifting blame for the attack to a party that had nothing to do with it. Governments use false flag attacks to push their nations into dictatorship or war. As military experts, we fear that national terror drills, scheduled for May 1-8, could be used to camouflage a false flag attack in the United States.
Strategic Signals
Yesterday an American-flagged ship fired on the Iranian Navy, and now Pentagon sources say that they have been ordered to prepare attack plans. Admiral "Fox" Fallon, the Centcom commander who opposed war with Iran, has been ousted in favor of Bush loyalist General David Petraeus, who has spent the last month accusing Iran for our increasing problems with the Iraqi resistance.
Saudi Arabia has been preparing for nuclear fallout from an attack on Iran since last month, when Dick Cheney paid a visit. Israel has just finished its largest-ever domestic war drills. Israel and the Bush administration are insisting that Syria and North Korea are nuclear collaborators. Syria is preparing for the contingency of an Israeli attack. Iran is preparing for the contingency of a US attack. US government insiders speculate that Bush has promised Israel an expanded Middle East war before he leaves office.
The Neo-Cons are pounding their war drums again, according to Dr. James H. Fetzer, the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, and he believes that nothing would help them spread their imperial war in the Middle East as much as another 9/11.
He has just published "9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda." amfirstbooks.com The article is a must-read introduction for anyone wanting to understand the origins and aims of the " global war on terror."
Domestic Discord
Inside the US, Bush approval ratings are well below 30%, and approval ratings for the U.S. Congress and mainstream media are even lower. Over three quarters of the American people believe that the country is on the wrong track, and just as many want to end the quicksand war in the Middle East. The economy is crashing as fuel prices are skyrocketing. The Establishment is losing its grip on power. It would take another 9/11 to make the nation forget its domestic woes and resume its lost zeal for the Neo-Con "new American century" of foreign wars and a domestic police state.
In his much-discussed February article, "False Flag Prospects, 2008," http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/08/02/25/may.htm Captain Eric H. May documented the disturbing fact that military and police exercises were occurring at the same time as the 9/11 US attacks in 2001 and the 7/7 UK bombings in 2005. In that prescient article, he designated the Pacific Northwest as one of the top three target zones for the next US false flag attack, and the Pacific Northwest will be the target of terror drills May 1-8.
Should a major event occur during the drills, the Bush administration is prepared to implement National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 51, which establishes dictatorship "in the event of a man-made or natural catastrophe." It is an extraordinary measure, and the White House has stonewalled Homeland Security Committee members from the House of Representatives who wanted to read it. One of those members, Oregon's Peter DeFazio summed up the feeling of many Americans about NSPD 51 when he said "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."
Fears that a false flag attack might result in martial law are nourished by last week's militaristic Operation Sudden Impact, reported by Infowars.net writer Steve Watson: "Three States Subjected to Martial Law Sweeps" http://www.infowars.net/articles/april2008/180408impact.htm
National Level Exercise 8-02
NLE 2-08 will involve the very highest levels of Homeland Security and the US Northern Command. Both "Homesec" and "Northcom" were established by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 to take control of the nation in the event of another terrorist attack. They will be joined by FEMA in the May 1-8 exercise, which is one of the two largest terror drills scheduled this year.
On Thursday, May 1, the exercise begins in Washington, when an explosion collapses the Alaska Way viaduct in downtown Seattle and damages surrounding buildings. Twenty minutes later, terrorists explode a highjacked tanker ship filled with highly toxic chemicals at the Seattle Ferry Terminal. Deadly gas soon permeates downtown Seattle.
Emergency responders come in waves. Police and firemen, first to arrive, are quickly overwhelmed. The state deploys its 22-member Civil Support Team, a National Guard unit, to assess the damage and coordinate support. Later, 100 soldiers from a chemical battalion based in Yakima arrive to rescue, decontaminate and treat survivors. Finally, 5,000 troops arrived to handle logistics and security.
On Monday, May 5, the scenario shifts to Oregon where VX, the most toxic nerve agent ever synthesized, erupts from the Umatilla Army Depot.
The next day, terrorists blow up a chemical tanker in Ferndale, Washington. The county sheriff requests national support, and a Marine Corps chemical warfare detachment from Ft. Lewis, Washington responds.
According to sources at Northcom, NLE 2-08 will involve "robust play," with "surprise injects" of unanticipated events in which participants are "stretched to the limit" and have "everything thrown at them except the kitchen sink." All of this makes it easier for the exercise to "go live" by having a real catastrophe occur.
As the Pacific Northwest scenario is playing out, Washington, DC will be simulating a catastrophic hurricane as part of the same exercise. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest that this puts Dick Cheney back in the bunker he occupied during 9/11.
Citizens interested in understanding how local, state and national levels of the military can be manipulated into working against us should read "The Real Drill" by Major William B. Fox, about Portland area terror drills last year. http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=2006&z=186
Mission of Conscience
Many American citizens are deeply concerned about police militarization, and about government and media preconditioning of our nation for future terror attacks and martial law. We recommend that they monitor NLE 2-08 closely. Armed with cell phones, cameras and the Internet, they are the single greatest deterrent against false flag terror.
If we, the co-authors of this alert, are in error about anything, then we invite reasonable officials to investigate us and our assertions at the very highest levels. In the past we have too often met with hostility, evasion or deception by officials involved in terror drills. We have been stonewalled when we have requested access to an extended schedule of unclassified military and police terror drills.
We believe that there is a pattern of official retaliation against patriotic service members who ask questions about 9/11 and false flags.
In 2006, Sergeant First Class Donald Buswell, an Army military intelligence NCO, suggested that 9/11 might have been a false flag operation. Within a month the decorated 40-year-old Iraq war veteran suffered a freak pulmonary embolism, which nearly killed him. After he was released from the hospital, his command accused him of disloyalty for his remarks, and subjected him to an extensive military investigation. Ultimately, he was fully exonerated, and the now-retired Buswell has become widely known on the Internet as the "9/11 NCO." Stephen Webster, writing for The Lone Star Iconoclast, gained national attention with his story about Buswell, "Under Fire! U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Targeted for Suggesting New Independent 9/11 Investigation." http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=426&z=40
The duty to keep the government honest isn't optional for those of us who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It has always been difficult, and even dangerous, to serve the American people. We call on all active-duty soldiers, police and first responders to obey their oaths by asking questions that need to be asked, and by thinking twice before blindly carrying out orders that may result in an a false flag attack against their country. We urge leaders of those soldiers, police and first responders to explain that diligence is not disloyalty, and that no one ceases to be a free American citizen by putting on a uniform.
Issuing an alert -- as we are doing now -- is not an instance of "crying wolf," as Bush administration apologists often assert. As military-trained experts, we are convinced that the US 9/11 and UK 7/7 attacks were set up under the camouflage of terror drills. The existence of a wolf is not in question. The wolf of false flag terror has killed our fellow citizens and frightened our country into needless wars. It's our mission of conscience to keep it from striking again.
Source: Portland.indymedia.org
Monday, 28 April 2008
Why Food Prices Will Go Through the Roof in the Coming Months
A deadly fungus, known as Ug99, which kills wheat, has likely spread to Pakistan from Africa according to reports. If true, that threatens the vital Asian Bread Basket including the Punjab region. The spread of the deadly virus, stem rust, against which an effective fungicide does not exist, comes as world grain stocks reach the lowest in four decades and government subsidized bio-ethanol production, especially in the USA, Brazil and EU are taking land out of food production at alarming rates. The deadly fungus is being used by Monsanto and the US Government to spread patented GMO seeds.
Stem rust is the worst of three rusts that afflict wheat plants. The fungus grows primarily in the stems, plugging the vascular system so carbohydrates can't get from the leaves to the grain, which shrivels. Ug99 is a race of stem rust that blocks the vascular tissues in cereal grains including wheat, oats and barley. Unlike other rusts that may reduce crop yields, Ug99-infected plants may suffer up to 100 percent loss.
In the 1950s, the last major outbreak destroyed 40% of the spring wheat crop in North America. At that time governments started a major effort to breed resistant wheat plants, led by Norman Borlaug of the Rockefeller Foundation. That was the misnamed Green Revolution. The result today is far fewer varieties of wheat that might resist such a new fungus outbreak.
The first strains of Ug99 were detected in 1999 in Uganda. It spread to Kenya by 2001, to Ethiopia by 2003 and to Yemen when the cyclone Gonu spread its spores in 2007. Now the deadly fungus has been found in Iran and according to British scientists may already be as far as Pakistan.
Pakistan and India account for 20 percent of the annual world wheat production. It is possible as the fungus spreads that large movements could take place almost overnight if certain wind conditions prevail at the right time. In 2007 a three-day wind event recorded by Mexico’s CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), had strong wind currents moving from Yemen, where Ug99 is present, across Pakistan and India, going all the way to China. CIMMYT estimates that from two-thirds to three-quarters of the wheat now planted in India and Pakistan are highly susceptible to this new strain of stem rust. One billion people who live in this region and they are highly dependent on wheat for their food supply
These are all areas where the agricultural infrastructure to contain such problems is either extremely weak or non-existent. It threatens to spread into other wheat producing regions of Asia and eventually the entire world if not checked.
FAO World Grain Forecast
The 2007 World Agriculture Forecast of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, projects an alarming trend in world food supply even in the absence of any devastation from Ug99. The report states, “countries in the non-OECD region are expected to continue to experience a much stronger increase in consumption of agricultural products than countries in the OECD area. This trend is driven by population and, above all, income growth – underpinned by rural migration to higher income urban areas...OECD countries as a group are projected to lose production and export shares in many commodities..Growth in the use of agricultural commodities as feedstock to a rapidly increasing biofuel industry is one of the main drivers in the outlook and one of the reasons for international commodity prices to attain a significantly higher plateau over the outlook period than has been reported in the previous reports.”
The FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for food supply globally and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods from cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. The use of cereals, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly increasing bio-fuel industry, is one of the main drivers, most especially the large volumes of maize in the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil for ethanol and bio-diesel production. This is already causing dramatically higher crop prices, higher feed costs and sharply higher prices for livestock products.
Ironically, the current bio-ethanol industry is being driven by US government subsidies and a scientifically false argument in the EU and USA that bio-ethanol is less harmful to the environment than petroleum fuels and can reduce CO2 emissions. The arguments have been demonstrated in every respect to be false. The huge expansion of global acreage now planted to produce bio-fuels is creating ecological problems and demanding use of far heavier pesticide spraying while use of bio-fuels in autos releases even deadlier emissions than imagined. The political effect, however, has been a catastrophic shift down in world grain stocks at the same time the EU and USA have enacted policies which drastically cut traditional emergency grain reserves. In short, it is a scenario pre-programmed for catastrophe, one which has been clear to policymakers in the EU and USA for several years. That can only suggest that such a dramatic crisis in global food supply is intentional.
A plan to spread GMO?
One of the consequences of the spread of Ug99 is a campaign by Monsanto Corporation and other major producers of genetically manipulated plant seeds to promote wholesale introduction of GMO wheat varieties said to be resistant to the Ug99 fungus. Biologists at Monsanto and at the various GMO laboratories around the world are working to patent such strains.
Norman Borlaug, the former Rockefeller Foundation head of the Green Revolution is active in funding the research to develop a fungus resistant variety against Ug99 working with his former center in Mexico, the CIMMYT and ICARDA in Kenya, where the pathogen is now endemic. So far, about 90% of the 12,000 lines tested are susceptible to Ug99. That includes all the major wheat cultivars of the Middle East and west Asia. At least 80% of the 200 varieties sent from the United States can't cope with infection. The situation is even more dire for Egypt, Iran, and other countries in immediate peril.
Even if a new resistant variety was ready to be released today it would take two or three years' seed increase in order to have just enough wheat seed for 20 percent of the acres planted to wheat in the world.
Work is also being done by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the same agency which co-developed Monsanto’s Terminator seed technology. In my book, Seeds of Destruction I document the insidious role of Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting the misnamed Green Revolution as well as patents on food seeds to ultimately control food supplies as a potential political lever. The spreading alarm over the Ug99 fungus is being used by Monsanto and other GMO agribusiness companies to demand that the current ban on GMO wheat be lifted to allow spread of GMO patented wheat seeds on the argument they are Ug99 stem rust resistant.
Source: Financialsense.com
Other source: Moneynews.com
Stem rust is the worst of three rusts that afflict wheat plants. The fungus grows primarily in the stems, plugging the vascular system so carbohydrates can't get from the leaves to the grain, which shrivels. Ug99 is a race of stem rust that blocks the vascular tissues in cereal grains including wheat, oats and barley. Unlike other rusts that may reduce crop yields, Ug99-infected plants may suffer up to 100 percent loss.
In the 1950s, the last major outbreak destroyed 40% of the spring wheat crop in North America. At that time governments started a major effort to breed resistant wheat plants, led by Norman Borlaug of the Rockefeller Foundation. That was the misnamed Green Revolution. The result today is far fewer varieties of wheat that might resist such a new fungus outbreak.
The first strains of Ug99 were detected in 1999 in Uganda. It spread to Kenya by 2001, to Ethiopia by 2003 and to Yemen when the cyclone Gonu spread its spores in 2007. Now the deadly fungus has been found in Iran and according to British scientists may already be as far as Pakistan.
Pakistan and India account for 20 percent of the annual world wheat production. It is possible as the fungus spreads that large movements could take place almost overnight if certain wind conditions prevail at the right time. In 2007 a three-day wind event recorded by Mexico’s CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), had strong wind currents moving from Yemen, where Ug99 is present, across Pakistan and India, going all the way to China. CIMMYT estimates that from two-thirds to three-quarters of the wheat now planted in India and Pakistan are highly susceptible to this new strain of stem rust. One billion people who live in this region and they are highly dependent on wheat for their food supply
These are all areas where the agricultural infrastructure to contain such problems is either extremely weak or non-existent. It threatens to spread into other wheat producing regions of Asia and eventually the entire world if not checked.
FAO World Grain Forecast
The 2007 World Agriculture Forecast of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, projects an alarming trend in world food supply even in the absence of any devastation from Ug99. The report states, “countries in the non-OECD region are expected to continue to experience a much stronger increase in consumption of agricultural products than countries in the OECD area. This trend is driven by population and, above all, income growth – underpinned by rural migration to higher income urban areas...OECD countries as a group are projected to lose production and export shares in many commodities..Growth in the use of agricultural commodities as feedstock to a rapidly increasing biofuel industry is one of the main drivers in the outlook and one of the reasons for international commodity prices to attain a significantly higher plateau over the outlook period than has been reported in the previous reports.”
The FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for food supply globally and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods from cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. The use of cereals, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly increasing bio-fuel industry, is one of the main drivers, most especially the large volumes of maize in the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil for ethanol and bio-diesel production. This is already causing dramatically higher crop prices, higher feed costs and sharply higher prices for livestock products.
Ironically, the current bio-ethanol industry is being driven by US government subsidies and a scientifically false argument in the EU and USA that bio-ethanol is less harmful to the environment than petroleum fuels and can reduce CO2 emissions. The arguments have been demonstrated in every respect to be false. The huge expansion of global acreage now planted to produce bio-fuels is creating ecological problems and demanding use of far heavier pesticide spraying while use of bio-fuels in autos releases even deadlier emissions than imagined. The political effect, however, has been a catastrophic shift down in world grain stocks at the same time the EU and USA have enacted policies which drastically cut traditional emergency grain reserves. In short, it is a scenario pre-programmed for catastrophe, one which has been clear to policymakers in the EU and USA for several years. That can only suggest that such a dramatic crisis in global food supply is intentional.
A plan to spread GMO?
One of the consequences of the spread of Ug99 is a campaign by Monsanto Corporation and other major producers of genetically manipulated plant seeds to promote wholesale introduction of GMO wheat varieties said to be resistant to the Ug99 fungus. Biologists at Monsanto and at the various GMO laboratories around the world are working to patent such strains.
Norman Borlaug, the former Rockefeller Foundation head of the Green Revolution is active in funding the research to develop a fungus resistant variety against Ug99 working with his former center in Mexico, the CIMMYT and ICARDA in Kenya, where the pathogen is now endemic. So far, about 90% of the 12,000 lines tested are susceptible to Ug99. That includes all the major wheat cultivars of the Middle East and west Asia. At least 80% of the 200 varieties sent from the United States can't cope with infection. The situation is even more dire for Egypt, Iran, and other countries in immediate peril.
Even if a new resistant variety was ready to be released today it would take two or three years' seed increase in order to have just enough wheat seed for 20 percent of the acres planted to wheat in the world.
Work is also being done by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the same agency which co-developed Monsanto’s Terminator seed technology. In my book, Seeds of Destruction I document the insidious role of Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting the misnamed Green Revolution as well as patents on food seeds to ultimately control food supplies as a potential political lever. The spreading alarm over the Ug99 fungus is being used by Monsanto and other GMO agribusiness companies to demand that the current ban on GMO wheat be lifted to allow spread of GMO patented wheat seeds on the argument they are Ug99 stem rust resistant.
Source: Financialsense.com
Other source: Moneynews.com
Friday, 25 April 2008
When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
Over the years I have heard countless accounts of this technology being developed and even used in the gulf war. Bizarre as it may sound, rumours are circulating that this technology will be used for the up and coming fake ET invasion. At humanity's lowest point the technology will then be used to project a vision of the reincarnation of the great religious leaders of this world. All part of a greater plan for control of humanity. I am also aware of someone who worked on this technology in the UK and has since left to live in a remote part of the world, so great his fear that when the time comes the 'elite' will use this technology with devastating effects.
It makes me wonder how these people can sleep at night!
"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.
At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.
But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.
Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."
"They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues.
Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy.
For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.
"Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare.
Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.
To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.
Allah on the Holodeck
Pentagon planners started to discuss digital morphing after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Covert operators kicked around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or showing other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising situation. The nascent plan was for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world.
The tape war never proceeded, killed, participants say, by bureaucratic fights over jurisdiction, skepticism over the technology, and concerns raised by Arab coalition partners.
But the "strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die. What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990?
According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air.
But doing so over the skies of Iraq? To project such a hologram over Baghdad on the order of several hundred feet, they calculated, would take a mirror more than a mile square in space, as well as huge projectors and power sources.
And besides, investigators came back, what does Allah look like?
The Gulf War hologram story might be dismissed were it not the case that washingtonpost.com has learned that a super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project information power from space ... for special operations deception missions."
War is Like a Box of Chocolates
Voice-morphing? Fake video? Holographic projection? They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons. Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands.
Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks. Eliminated are the robotic intonations.
The irony is that after Papcun finished his speech cloning research, there were no takers in the military. Luckily for him, Hollywood is interested: The promise of creating a virtual Clark Gable is mightier than the sword.
Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world. With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future.
"We already know that seeing isn't necessarily believing," says Dan Kuehl, "now I guess hearing isn't either."
Source: Washingtonpost.com
It makes me wonder how these people can sleep at night!
"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.
At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.
But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.
Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."
"They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues.
Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy.
For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.
"Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare.
Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.
To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.
Allah on the Holodeck
Pentagon planners started to discuss digital morphing after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Covert operators kicked around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or showing other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising situation. The nascent plan was for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world.
The tape war never proceeded, killed, participants say, by bureaucratic fights over jurisdiction, skepticism over the technology, and concerns raised by Arab coalition partners.
But the "strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die. What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990?
According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air.
But doing so over the skies of Iraq? To project such a hologram over Baghdad on the order of several hundred feet, they calculated, would take a mirror more than a mile square in space, as well as huge projectors and power sources.
And besides, investigators came back, what does Allah look like?
The Gulf War hologram story might be dismissed were it not the case that washingtonpost.com has learned that a super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project information power from space ... for special operations deception missions."
War is Like a Box of Chocolates
Voice-morphing? Fake video? Holographic projection? They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons. Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands.
Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks. Eliminated are the robotic intonations.
The irony is that after Papcun finished his speech cloning research, there were no takers in the military. Luckily for him, Hollywood is interested: The promise of creating a virtual Clark Gable is mightier than the sword.
Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world. With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future.
"We already know that seeing isn't necessarily believing," says Dan Kuehl, "now I guess hearing isn't either."
Source: Washingtonpost.com
Billion-dollar babies
WHO rules the world? The most familiar answers to this question are so poisoned by paranoia that it is tempting to dismiss the question itself. If the Jews are so powerful, then why have they had such a dreadful time of things? If the men and women of Davos are so mighty, then why do they keep messing everything up?
Yet the fact that so many people give foolish answers to a question does not discredit the question. The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites—business people and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund.
David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these elites constitute nothing less than a new global “superclass”. They have all the clubby characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates.
They attend the same universities (Mr Rothkopf calculates that Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago are now the world's top three superclass producers). They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They belong to the same clubs—the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a particular favourite—and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or—for the crème de la crème—the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California.
Mr Rothkopf makes a fascinating tour of the world of the superclass. He opens the door to the office of the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, on the top floor of Goldman's tower on New York's Broad Street. He visits the factory that customises Gulfstream jets (every year nearly 10% of Gulfstream's clients attend Davos). He calls on the Carlyle Group where financiers and former presidents get together to make each other richer. And he offers a tour of the weird proceedings of the Bohemian Grove meetings, which Richard Nixon described as “the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.”
“Superclass” is such a wide-ranging book that it inevitably also raises quibbles. Mr Rothkopf never quite defines the boundaries of his subject. Is he talking about the super-rich? Or about the super-influential? Do the people he talks about really constitute a “class”? Or are they an agglomeration of competing elites with different agendas? Mr Rothkopf adds to the confusion by chasing all manner of hares, including the rise of internet-enabled jihadists.
Mr Rothkopf, whose CV includes a spell working for Kissinger Associates and a period as the deputy under-secretary of commerce for international trade, is much better informed about America than he is about the rest of the world. He is fascinating on the revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry, for example, but he says next to nothing about the rise of the EU, one of the great building blocks of the trans-national world. His exposition of the wonders of Davos is more breathless than illuminating.
Still, none of this should put off potential readers: “Superclass” is a pioneering study of a subject that has often been the preserve of conspiracy theorists. Mr Rothkopf is anything but a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the world are also the most global people.
He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He worries about surging inequality—the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth—and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power. But he points out that, in a world where most global institutions are lumbering and antiquated, members of the superclass have repeatedly stepped in to put the global system to rights. Let us hope that they have not lost their touch.
He forgot to mention David Rockefeller and Philip Rothschild!
Source: Economist.com
Yet the fact that so many people give foolish answers to a question does not discredit the question. The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites—business people and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund.
David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these elites constitute nothing less than a new global “superclass”. They have all the clubby characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates.
They attend the same universities (Mr Rothkopf calculates that Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago are now the world's top three superclass producers). They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They belong to the same clubs—the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a particular favourite—and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or—for the crème de la crème—the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California.
Mr Rothkopf makes a fascinating tour of the world of the superclass. He opens the door to the office of the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, on the top floor of Goldman's tower on New York's Broad Street. He visits the factory that customises Gulfstream jets (every year nearly 10% of Gulfstream's clients attend Davos). He calls on the Carlyle Group where financiers and former presidents get together to make each other richer. And he offers a tour of the weird proceedings of the Bohemian Grove meetings, which Richard Nixon described as “the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.”
“Superclass” is such a wide-ranging book that it inevitably also raises quibbles. Mr Rothkopf never quite defines the boundaries of his subject. Is he talking about the super-rich? Or about the super-influential? Do the people he talks about really constitute a “class”? Or are they an agglomeration of competing elites with different agendas? Mr Rothkopf adds to the confusion by chasing all manner of hares, including the rise of internet-enabled jihadists.
Mr Rothkopf, whose CV includes a spell working for Kissinger Associates and a period as the deputy under-secretary of commerce for international trade, is much better informed about America than he is about the rest of the world. He is fascinating on the revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry, for example, but he says next to nothing about the rise of the EU, one of the great building blocks of the trans-national world. His exposition of the wonders of Davos is more breathless than illuminating.
Still, none of this should put off potential readers: “Superclass” is a pioneering study of a subject that has often been the preserve of conspiracy theorists. Mr Rothkopf is anything but a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the world are also the most global people.
He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He worries about surging inequality—the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth—and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power. But he points out that, in a world where most global institutions are lumbering and antiquated, members of the superclass have repeatedly stepped in to put the global system to rights. Let us hope that they have not lost their touch.
He forgot to mention David Rockefeller and Philip Rothschild!
Source: Economist.com
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Spooky fireballs and UFO sightings in North Dakota
Further to the previous post The Phoenix lights are back again I have been given a link to the following article.
Last night (October 24, 2007) a fireball crashed near Bismarck. In a similar sighting a little over a year ago, three fireballs fell from the sky (read article here).
Maybe it’s just the spooky Halloween atmosphere, but it seems like there is a lot going on in North Dakota skies–including some bizarre UFO sightings. For fun, I’ve made a mini-directory of some of the most freaky things to come across my screen so far:
Has North Dakota become the new Area 51 state? Scroll down the site to get to read this article.
Strange lights in Dickinson (very interesting).
Aliens near Tappen, North Dakota. This video clip left me with a very creepy feeling.
Unexplained mysteries forum: more on the Tappen encounter and some in Minot, too?
One near Grand Forks, North Dakota in September 2005.
1968 UFO sighting near Minot Air Force base
Alien abduction near Dickinson caught on tape? Hmmm. Would be fun to see the footage.
The 1953 Ellsworth Case near Bismarck.
1948 Fargo sighting.
Strange sighting in Amidon, North Dakota.
I’ve never seen a UFO in North Dakota myself. I don’t know if they’re real or not, and if they are real, I would have to ask if they’re military-based or truly full of aliens.
Either way, it’s a fascinating and entertaining subject. I’m glad to share North Dakota’s place in it.
Source: Bismarckndblog.com
Last night (October 24, 2007) a fireball crashed near Bismarck. In a similar sighting a little over a year ago, three fireballs fell from the sky (read article here).
Maybe it’s just the spooky Halloween atmosphere, but it seems like there is a lot going on in North Dakota skies–including some bizarre UFO sightings. For fun, I’ve made a mini-directory of some of the most freaky things to come across my screen so far:
Has North Dakota become the new Area 51 state? Scroll down the site to get to read this article.
Strange lights in Dickinson (very interesting).
Aliens near Tappen, North Dakota. This video clip left me with a very creepy feeling.
Unexplained mysteries forum: more on the Tappen encounter and some in Minot, too?
One near Grand Forks, North Dakota in September 2005.
1968 UFO sighting near Minot Air Force base
Alien abduction near Dickinson caught on tape? Hmmm. Would be fun to see the footage.
The 1953 Ellsworth Case near Bismarck.
1948 Fargo sighting.
Strange sighting in Amidon, North Dakota.
I’ve never seen a UFO in North Dakota myself. I don’t know if they’re real or not, and if they are real, I would have to ask if they’re military-based or truly full of aliens.
Either way, it’s a fascinating and entertaining subject. I’m glad to share North Dakota’s place in it.
Source: Bismarckndblog.com
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
The Phoenix lights are back again
Several people reported seeing four lights forming various formations above the Valley Monday night.Tony Toporek was talking with his neighbours in north Phoenix when the lights appeared at about 8 p.m.
He grabbed his video camera and started taping.
Witnesses reported that the lights formed a vertical line, then formed a diamond-shape, followed by a u-shape.
The lights reportedly moved from side to side and upward before disappearing one by one.
Toporek said the last light vanished and then briefly reappeared before disappearing again.
ABC15 contacted several agencies Monday night, including the FAA, Sky Harbor, Luke Air Force Base, and the Phoenix Police Department. No one could explain what the lights are.
Source: ABC15.com
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