Beyond Golden Rice: The Rockefeller Foundation’s long-term agenda behind Genetically Modified Food
Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars
April 28, 2009
‘A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.’ – Ted Turner to Audubon Magazine, 1996-
In an April 18th 2009 article on the development of GM-Food for the African continent, ‘Strange Fruit: Could genetically modified foods offer a solution to the world’s food crisis? the author mentions that the Rockefeller Foundation has recently set out to fund the process of ‘biofortified rice’ for third world nations, invented by a Swiss scientist named Ingo Potrykus.



On behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, Representative Akinwumi Adesina stated before the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference on September 28 2007 that the continent of Africa was especially chosen as the Foundation’s favourite playing ground.


In 2000 a Swiss scientist named Ingo Potrykus modified rice, adding a bacterial gene and two genes from the daffodil, to add Vitamin A to rice. His plan was to find an easy way of countering the vitamin deficiency which causes blindness in around half a million people, mainly children, every year. Half of them die within 12 months of going blind and others die of diseases such as malaria because the deficiency affects their immune system.. Professor Potrykus called his invention Golden Rice.’
But there’s nothing recent about the Rockefeller Foundation’s involvement in the research and development of genetically enhanced rice, as we learn from a November 14, 2000 publication by the Rockefeller Foundation in which the director of Food Security of the Rockefeller Foundation Gary H. Toenniessen states that in the early 1990’s the Swiss scientist along with a colleague:
‘… approached the Foundation. Dr. Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich was a specialist in plant genetic transformation and his lab was one of the first to genetically engineer rice. (…) These two scientists proposed to genetically engineer `rice with daffodil genes to produce nutritionally significant levels of beta-carotene in the rice endosperm. At a foundation-sponsored workshop, other scientists agreed that this task was difficult but achievable, and the effort was funded.’
Ten years later, it seems, the experiments had proven a great success. In a keynote speech by Rockefeller Foundation’s president Judith Rodin on October 17 2008, the speaker points out that the research concerning genetically engineered rice has been underway for at least 65 years- and all this time received the generous support of the Foundation’s deep pockets. Rodin explains:
‘In the sixty-five years since they began, we’ve funded the work of Golden Rice’s engineers, Dr. Peter Beyer, Dr. Ingo Potrykus, and others for more than fifteen of them. (…) I’m delighted to announce, today, that we will be providing funding to the International Rice Research Institute - which we helped establish almost fifty years ago - to shepherd Golden Rice through national, regulatory approval processes in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. And we hope this is just the beginning.’
On behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, Representative Akinwumi Adesina stated before the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference on September 28 2007 that the continent of Africa was especially chosen as the Foundation’s favourite playing ground. But he laments:
‘Regarding genetic engineering, by and large, African countries do not currently have in place regulatory frameworks that allow their use for food production. Many challenges face the introduction and cultivation of GM crops in Africa, including fear of GE crops.’
Adesina goes on by bringing climate change into the equation, dumping fear upon fear, and hoping perhaps that a new fear will eliminate the former one:
‘Assisting Africa to meet its food needs has other advantages for climate change. (…) Increasing population pressure and reliance on extensive agricultural practises will likely lead to further deforestations and carbon dioxide emissions and contributions to climate change.’
Under the umbrella of ‘climate change’ all serious concern about playing God with the earth’s flora (and Fauna) can be thrown aside without a second thought it seems. Rockefeller Foundation representative Gary H. Toenniessen stated during a conference in his lecture ‘Opportunities for and challenges to Plant Biotechnology Adoption in Developing Countries’:
‘Public acceptance of transgenic crops and genetically modified (GM) food, or rather, lack thereof, is a major constraint to the adoption of plant biotechnology, particularly in Europe. (…) Orchestrated campaigns against GM foods have consequently found a receptive audience amongst urban consumers. The situation in developing countries may well be different’, he adds slyly.
This same opinion is being conveyed in a 2005 ‘strategic review of the organisation (the Rockefeller Foundation), wherein several ‘challenges’ are brought forward that might stand in the way of the next level of globalisation that the Foundation has mapped out for all of us, one of these being ‘resistance to the development and use of genetically modified foods’.
Here comes into play the promotion of ‘global warming’.. By claiming global warming will affect all nations and all peoples, and coupling the supposed climate hazard to the necessity of GM-crops lest the third world starve and die by the lack of it, the different peaces of this diabolical puzzle come together. The spectre of global climate change hangs over the world food situation, they claim, and the anticipated resistance might well be lessened if the people are adequately bamboozled into accepting the Foundation’s genetically modified foods program for fear of a vengeful God raining his wrath onto their heads. If the globalists would lie to lure the people into accepting GM foods, they would certainly not think twice about lying about the motives behind the development of these foods for mass production.
In an October 8 2006 editorial by Dean Kleckner (member emeritus of the World Food Prize Board of Advisors) on AgWeb.Com, he comments on the announced investments by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation’s ambition to spark a ‘Green Revolution’ on the impoverished continent of Africa.. He states that ‘The 21st-century’s Green Revolution must also be a Gene Revolution.’
The Foundation itself is strangely upfront about its long-term objectives, when it bragged in the 2006 ‘The Rockefeller Foundation’s International Program on Rice Biotechnology’:
‘The Rockefeller Foundation has a long, complex, and rich history in promoting agricultural development throughout the developing world. The Foundation began its major field-based program in Mexico in the 1940s, which led to the series of technologies, insights, and processes collectively known as the ‘Green Revolution’. (…) Through a series of strategically placed grants, some of the world’s premier laboratories were invited to participate in the program.’
As we learn from the 1968 Rockefeller Foundation annual report, the term Green Revolution has been around for quite a while. In the report the Foundation’s president J. George Harrah already speaks of the ‘Green Revolution’, built upon ‘miracle rice’ and ‘miracle wheat’.
In a panegyric ten years later, dedicated to the Foundation’s founder John D. Rockefeller III, there is mentioned as one of his merits:
•A d v e r t i s e m e n t
•
‘Mr. Rockefeller was one of the great guiding spirits of The Rockefeller Foundation over a 47-year period, and was the chairman of the Board of Trustees from 1952 to 1971. During this period, the Foundation carried out a major part of its commitment to agricultural development and the conquest of hunger, resulting in the so-called Green Revolution..’
Further on (page 21) in an unlikely frank revelation, the president of the Foundation elaborates on the true countenance of this supposed ‘Green Revolution.’
‘Because of the Green Revolution, per capita protein consumption kept pace with the doubling of populations in the less-developed countries (LDC’s) which occurred between 1950 and 1975. But it was recognised by most, and certainly by the Foundation staff, that we were merely buying time, and that the geometric expansion of population had to be reduced lest the Malthusian prediction became true globally, as contrasted with just regionally, as now applies.’
In another publication- Africa’s Turn: A New Green Revolution for the 21st century- the foundation states that ‘Before all else, the original Green Revolution was a product of philanthropy, in a carefully negotiated partnership with government.(…) After first seeking and receiving an invitation from the Mexican government, the Foundation created the Oficina de Estudios Especiales within the Mexican Department of Agriculture, initially staffed by scientists on the Rockefeller payroll.’
This is no idle bragging or foundational hubris. In an April 2008 editorial in the journal Science, Nina Fedoroff (plant geneticist, currently serving as senior scientific advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) wrote:
‘A new Green Revolution demands a global commitment to creating a modern agricultural infrastructure everywhere.’
The Rockefeller Foundation thoroughly agrees with this statement. In fact, it has for decades directed all its resources to create just such an infrastructure. To illustrate how far back the research and its intended international scope go, it will suffice to quote form a Rockefeller Foundation annual report from 1963:
‘The Foundation conducts international projects for the improvement of the world’s four most important foods- corn, wheat, potatoes, and rice.’
It is interesting to note here that in the very same year (1963) the Codex Alimentarius Commission was forced into being by the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. But then it is important to always keep in mind that these international bodies all spring from the same source and are funded by the same families. In 1984 alone, the Foundation allocated funds of millions of US dollars in appropriations to scientists on molecular genetics (Washington State University) and genetic manipulation of rice (University of Leiden). In the years after, the Foundation has energetically allocated funds every single year to research and development in GM-crops.
And the list of allocated funds literally goes on forever, with grants handed to numerous research facilities across the globe all with the aim of producing, promoting and implementing genetically modified crops in the third, second and first world. The next step in the unfolding of the Foundation’s agenda was the creation of an adequate fear on which their ‘superfood’ might thrive more rapidly. The more people who use the earth’s resources, the more a swift policy is needed to reduce global population.
But originally it was global cooling, not global warming, with which the GM-agenda was to be helped forward. In the 1974 annual report a conference on the topic of climate change was announced called ‘Climate Change, Food Production, and Interstate Conflict’:
‘This interdisciplinary conference, organised jointly by RF (Rockefeller Foundation) officers from Conflict in International Relations, Quality of the Environment, and Conquest of Hunger programs, will bring together climatologists, scientists concerned with food production (…) to examine the future implications of the global cooling trend now under way and its effects on world food production.’
In the 1973 annual report (page 54), long before the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming was injected into society’s bloodstream, one of the funds approved for allocation to ‘international organisations’ to analyze the implications of climate modification for international affairs. The institute for World Order received a grant for the establishment of university-based world order studies.’
By the time it was decided by the globalists that a global warming hype would serve their interests better than a global cooling trend, they accelerated their program in a great hurry. In 1996, the Foundation mentioned in their annual report that:
‘The Rockefeller Foundation created the Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) program to cultivate a network of talented midcareer professionals from diverse disciplines and sectors committed to sustainable development.’
In regards to the many activities of LEAD, the report mentions:
‘Economic advancement and human development are predicated on sufficient supplies of energy. Yet the byproducts of fossil-fuel energy production also pose many of humankind’s greatest threats. Carbon dioxide released form fossil fuels, if allowed to build up in the earth’s atmosphere, has the potential to seal in excess heat that could LEAD to global warming.’
So what is it all about, this elaborate program of ‘magical rice’ and ‘magical wheat’, spanning many decades in slow but strategic progression? And why is ‘global warming’ being mixed in the equation? In the 1968 annual Foundation report the real reason for this determined labour comes to light:
‘Major organisations such as the Population Council and the National and International Planned Parenthood Federations have been supported (red: by the Foundation) in a variety of ways. These and other existing organisations, as well as others that may come into being, represent exceedingly important instrumentalities for the extension of family planning information and contraceptive methods.’
In bone chilling language, the aims and future steps of the Foundation is being outlined (page 54):
‘It will explore potentialities of training programs, seminars, public forums, symposia, and other devices for conveying information about the impact of population growth on economic and social development to government officials from ministries of health, planning commissions, and other appropriate agencies, in the interest of motivating greater action on population policy and population control programs.‘
As we know, the call for more family planning in the name of the environment has been increasingly promoted by the Malthusian minded elite. It is clear that one of the ‘other devices’ the report mentions, has been found and thoroughly exploited: the great myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming was created and covered with the subtle sauce of science to give the whole thing an air of credibility. And the eugenics agenda continues.

Source: infowars.com

Insurgent American’s 32-Point Practical Guide for Action - Solutions
Posted by sakerfa on April 27, 2009

(1) Make food. Even if its a windowsill or roof garden with a couple of tomato plants. Make a yard garden. Grow your own food, just a bit. You can expand on this later. Check out Food Not Lawns for inspiration. Start small, and don’t over stretch yourself. Succeeding early is important.(2) Take “one more step” to oppose militarism. If you are not sporting a button or bumper sticker against the war, then start doing that. if you’re doing that, but not writing — Congress, letters to the editor, op-eds, email lists — then start writing. If you’re doing that, then give money to an antiwar effort. If you’re doing that, then start to attend local meetings. You get the idea. Take just one more step. Stopping this war will have unimaginably good ripple effects and empower all people’s movements everywhere. More ideas and up-to-date info at Bring Them Home Now!
(3) Create a blog. Blogs can be a lot more than vanity sites. They are a form of democratic communication that allow us all to be simultaneous teachers and learners, and they increase the density and survival redundancy of our communications networks. They are communications infrastructure. More blogs, more links, more sharing, more community, better coordination. Basic Blogging for Women is very helpful, for everyone, and we can also open a discussion thread here at the IA forums.
(4) Commit to study. One of the most common — and in our opinion, flawed — complaints we hear among activists and frustrated, impatient political junkies, is that there is too much writing and discussion and not enough action. Here’s what we have to say about that. Nonsense! Human agency is not simply in outwardly messing around with one’s environment. It is being a conscious agent of change. If we are walking around blindfolded, we are taking action; but if we want that action to be efficacious, then we need to see, figuratively speaking. Studying is a critical form of action.. Commit to study something new, and expand your understanding of a topic or issue every chance you get. The criticality of this is the reason we include our Analysis-Synthesis section here at IA. New situations require new actions, which require new forms of understanding.
(5) Surf the Web Anonymously Its a good idea to put a layer of protection between you and the world online. One way to-do this is by creating a free email account and not associating your own name with it. Create a online handle and use that instead of your real name. Another way is by using a Proxy Server to anonymise your web surfing. Torpark is a free Windows application that can help you do this. For more information about surfing the web anonymously check out Tor from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Remember Nothing on the web is completly anonymous. If someone has the resources they can find out anthing they want. We can make it a lot harder for them though.
(6) Learn to fix something new. Divesting of our dependency means becoming better McGivers. We have to learn how stuff works, and how to tinker with it. Our dependency rest in large part on the idea that every tiny task is subdivided our to an expert, who we pay to do it for us.. That means we have to have money, and we know where that goes. Our own experience is that learning to tinker with one thing gives us insights on how to tinker with a lot of things. Learn something new on a schedule. Commit to learn how to fix something new every month, every six months, no matter. Whatever works for you. How to change the rings in a leaky faucet. How to change a tire. How to caulk a bathtub. How to built a live trap for rabbits or a bird house. Anything. The Bob Vila site has all sorts of good advice on this.
(7) Start an email list. This can be a simple one-way list to which you send out things; or it can be a listserv, that functions as a discussion group. FIRST LAW… make your first message one that asks everyone if it’s okay, and says how often you will post. People hate spam. Get their permission, and if they ask to be removed, do so without hesitation of complaint. Use blind courtesy copy (BCC) to put people’s email addresses in, so their addresses aren’t shared with the world. Once established, lists are a very important way to develop corporate media bypasses. Caution: Avoid sharing whole articles on lists… just teasers that suggest what the piece is about, followed with a link. Library Support Staff has a good site on this.
(8) Join a local organizing effort. Working with people from your same geographic area is the absolute most effective and sustainable way to do social change action. Not only does the geographic proximity make meeting more do-able, people build actual friendships that way, and organizations that are bound by real friendship are both durable and cohesive. If you live in a metro area, look in the “community calendar” sections of your free entertainment weekly. One can also use the internet to find groups working nearby. Don’t use the term “progressive” in your search parameters, however. It’s in a lot of corporate names, and the meaning of that term is very loose. Name the issue that keeps you engaged. A good handbook for local organizing is Organizing for Social Change, with lots of basic how-to advice and useful copy-able forms.
(9) Plan your way out of debt. This might seem selfish as a “thing to do,” but people who are deeply in debt are enslaved. They cannot do anything except seek money to keep up with debts. Before we can assist the liberation of others, we first need to liberate ourselves. Beware. There are many debt consolidation schemes and self-serving self-help gurus out there who just want to own your debt. When the economic swan dive happens, it comes as inflation followed by deflation and joblessness. Priority of effort in debt liquidation is to pay off living space. But to get there, the first thing that has to go is credit cards… which are part of a vast criminal enterprise. A very useful guide to getting out of debt — even if it is self-help (some are put off by that) — is Carolyn White’s Debt No More.
(10) Contribute to the nearest Environmental Justice effort. Environmental Justice is a term referring to people-of-color-led fights against the targeting of poor communities as a dumping ground for the toxic effluvia of industrialism. It is the most vital and strategic anti-imperial struggle going on inside the United States. Just as the world system is comprised of an imperial core with exploitable peripheries, some of those peripheral colonies exist inside the US. Because of the structural inequalities of this core-periphery dynamic, people-of-color-led organizations like this will never have access to the same resources as white-led, or predominantly white-membership organizations. If you can’t give them volunteer time and support, send them money. A National Directory of EJ outfits is online.
(11) Conduct a banner drop. A banner drop is a tactic whereby a big cloth banner is made, then publicly opened “dropped” without prior warning, often in violation of some kind of law. If you are kind of attracted to risk, if you are an effective planner, and if you have a small, reliable crew, banner drops are a good way to learn basic, small-unit, tactical planning. If you have a crew that has done it more than once, others will rely on you as the specialists to employ this tactic as part of larger campaigns. Banners can be very simple to very fancy. Just remember that it will not stay up forever. Hostile civilians or cops will take it down by-and-by. Code Pink has actually developed a pretty good primer. Cell phones or walkie-talkies (cheap nowadays) should always be used to post lookouts at all avenues of approach into the drop site. Banners should be constructed (especially if dropping over a freeway overpass) to ensure they can’t fall and cause an accident. At rush hour, in the right place, with a website url for follow-up, this is a very effective (and kind of fun) tactic. A good crew can organize and conduct one every two weeks if they make this their raison d’etre.
(12) Make a cable access program. If local activists haven’t made use of cable access programming (television we can use!), then call the local cable access office and find out how to get on. Usually there is a small membership fee, and a moderately priced program of instruction to ensure you don’t break the stuff in the studio. If you already have cable access activists (or local independent radio), then consider developing programming for it. Ten-minute spots, 15, and for the standard a 28-minute spot. Those with good technical skills for video and audio are strongly encouraged to use those skills to get the voices of local activists and local initiatives some publicity. (You can put the audio and video you make for cable on the web too.)
(13) Get a bicycle and use it. Self explanatory. Check you local Craigslist for used bikes. It saves gas, is non-polluting, encourages others to do the same, and makes you healthy. Invest in a rear-view mirror, padded gloves, a decent helmet, and a big, international orange hunter’s vest to alert zombie drivers of your presence.
(14) Try a 100-mile diet. From the 100-mile diet site: When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate. That’s a total disconnection from where our food is coming from. What would it be like to eat locally for one year? Link to the site. Doing this puts you into touch with your local resources, and is a great educational tool for effective food praxis.
(15) Learn to orienteer. Orienteering can be competitive (as a sport) or recreational (more often simply called land navigation).. It means learning to read topographical maps and using them in conjunction with a compass and protractor to actually navigate, on foot, over land. It is not only an invaluable skill that is quite enjoyable (if you’re the physical type), it is very important as a way-of-knowing, an epistemological framework, for anyone who might one day consider actual underground activity as part of a politics of resistance. Understanding terrain is the very basis of any science of underground/military resistance (for purely theoretical reasons, of course). There s a fine online instruction manual, but the key is to actually do it. If there are course, orienteering clubs, or someone you know who spent a good deal of time in the infantry, then find a way to get out on the ground and navigate using compass and map. As a sport, orienteering is considered a high-endurance activity that combines non-linear brain-power with great physical conditioning.
(16) Visit a Congressperson. This may sound generic; and it is. Many people have never done this, so they have this vague imagination of governance and who performs it…. which intimidates people (as it is probably meant to). Keep track of local organizing efforts on issues (now, the war), and join the next group of people who are going to visit this elected official in her/his office. They do this all the time. Going with them will be a real education, we assure you. You will not only see the actual office (generally unimpressive) and the actual person (often just as unimpressive), you will see how other interact with this rep as well as lose the feeling of being intimidated. Little known fact: Actual visits by groups of five or more people create real concern for elected officials. The American Mathematical Society (?) has a good guide for these visits. Do not use these visits to show how revolutionary you are. Others in your group may not be down for that, it doesn’t serve any purpose except to stroke one’s own ego, and it’s disrespectful of other members of your own group. If you want to be sharp with the Rep, then do so in letters or during pickets at the office (another great tactic, that we’ll fold in here).
(17) Visit a State Representative. Same as above. These folks are people you should know, write to, and visit with some frequency, or they’ll give away your figurative farm. And they can be held to higher levels of accountability because they are dependent on votes from relatively a small geographic area nearby.
(18) Use Social Network websites to organize. Even though many social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, etc. are run by corporations they can still be used for positive communication and affinity group creation. Use free services in ways they are not intended. These sites can help you find others with your passion for change. Though lots of them center around hooking up and sharing embarrassing pictures you’d be amazed at how easy it is to find other serious adult radicals.. Have some sort of contact with like minded people is very important. These sites can also give you another way to share your message. Don’t use just one.
(19) Back up your computer files then encrypt them. If you use a computer you create data. That data can tell others a lot about you. Even the data that sits on your personal computer and is never shared online. If you create important files about your mission protect them by making backup copies. You can burn them to CD-R, copy them to flash drives, put them on file servers, and more. Try to take copes of your data to another location besides your home. If anything were ever to happen, like a fire, you’d still have copies. Be sure you can restore your files and use them as you would the originals. If you have sensitive data you don’t want others to see, encrypt it. There’s lots of free software that will help you do this for the Mac and PC.
(20) Start a worm farm. The key to rebuilding the soil required to feed urban, suburban, and ex-urban populations in the future will be vermiculture. It is absolutely the fastest and cleanest way to rehabilitate soil that can sustainable grow food. By “farm,” we really mean a bin that can fit under your kitchen sink. It does not smell bad, is non-toxic, and it lives on kitchen scraps. Bigger bins are also do-able. If there is to be a future for modern cities after the oil crash, then that future will be predicated on Lumbricidae. Kids love these things, and they are great educational tools. They also can provide a small second income (at the right scale) to get others started, or to sell fishing bait.
(21) Become a paramedic or licensed practical nurse. One founder of this site was a Special Forces medic in the Army. He was authorized, when deployed, to do pretty much everything a doctor might do (including trauma protocols), and his training was — while very intensive — only about a year long. Anyone with a basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology, a basic familiarity with pharmacology, a broad knowledge with available references of the most common ailments, and some advanced first aid techniques can provide the vast majority of medical care required by most people most of the time. Combined with a good preventive medicine program, communities will eventually depend on these people more than a rarified supply of physicians. Learning these skills as a paramedic or practical nurse is making an investment in future communities, as well as providing an essential skill-set for future underground work (theoretically, of course).
(22) Design a single-residence water conservation system. A roof is a huge water collection device that is waiting ot be activated by a few modifications. Leaky things in and around the house cost hundreds of dollars a year. Non-sensored water-use appliances (like washing machines) can waste immense sums of water. Urinating outside saves a five-gallon flush. There are myriad ways to conserve water (and to more efficiently water gardens). Design your own system, and continue to build out on it. Most importantly, talk about what you are doing with others and help them get started.
(23) Host a monthly movie night. There are tons of good, thought-provoking documentary and art films that are available.. There is nothing like a regular potluck get-together (dinner and a movie) to consolidate relationships and stimulate both taste buds and gray matter.. Groups like the Media Education Foundation have plenty of material to get started. Even Netflix can provide plenty of films at very reasonable rental rates.
(24) Organize a community garden. Community gardens grow food and community. Get it? From the American Community Garden Association: “Community gardens exist in many urban areas, providing bits of green space amid the concrete and allowing city dwellers to reap the benefits of their labor. For a small fee, you can rent a plot for the season, and can grow whatever vegetables and annual flowers you’d like. Community gardens usually provide everything you need: garden tools, water, even expert advice! Many gardens also participate in community programs, such as Plant a Row for the Hungry. ”
(25) Join a values-acceptable church, temple, or mosque - and offer to develop a community garden. DO NOT do this if you can not share the faith and core values of the church, temple, or mosque. These are communities! Joining a faith community as an opportunistic or manipulative act of political colonization is unprincipled. On the issue of churches and other faith communities, let us whisper one magic word in your ear… infrastructure. Think about it. The Progressive Faith Con Blog has a very good blog roll to do some background reading.
(26) Develop and implement an energy conservation plan for your home. “To read the latest news on energy-efficient, durable, comfortable, green homes, sign up for a full membership to Home Energy Magazine online.”
(27) Organize or join an effort to “opt out” of military recruitment in local schools. The No Child Left Behind Act has ordered public schools — under threat of losing federal funds — to give students’ contact information to military recruiters. There are many efforts to actively exercise the “opt out” clause on this act. Read more at the Resource Center for Nonviolence.
(28) Organize or join an effort to get public schools to dump junk food and buy/feed local, organic. “Concern about the quality and nutritional value of school foods seems to be at all-time high, and for good reason. Too many American children are obese, undernourished, suffering from diet-related diseases such as diabetes, or hungry. With diets that provide too few critical nutrients and, often, too much fat, salt and sugar, children suffer in their daily lives and in their ability to reach their full potential for health and accomplishment as adults.” Read more.
(29) Organize or join an effort to stop high-stakes testing in schools. Only for the stout-hearted who are ready for a long fight. But the stakes are indeed very high. Read this. Children in public schools are not being given the capacity to think, but to conform. And they are being “sorted” in the process.
(30) Use the closest farmers market. Self explanatory.. Look it up on the web. This supports local growers and keeps monetary resources closer to your community instead of drifting up into the coffers of the multinationals. It is the first step toward developing a community supported agricultural (CSA) system.
(31) Organize a regular intercultural cook-on-site potluck. Intentionally sharing traditional skills for cooking meals and sharing food across cultural lines is a very good community builder. If there is more than one language involved, ensure there is translation available. Music and dance can be served up the same way, as a teaching-learning dialectic, often with the food.
(32) Contribute volunteer time to a local rape and domestic abuse hotline or shelter. Self explanatory. The left has been AWOL on this issue, and no movement worthy of the name can ever again ignore that women, more than half the population, face widespread, violent, and systemic abuse most frequently in their homes and with their “intimates.” The oppression of women is paradigmatic — seen as “conquest” — for the “conquest” of colonies (imperialism) and the “conquest” of nature (ecocide). Gender as a system of social power must be confronted at its roots, and broken. These facilities and services are the front lines.

Source: Isurgent American

This is a poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.


When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.

The Oathkeepers are active and retired military, law enforcement officers who have an organization where they pledge NOT to follow orders.



1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects - such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

This is circulating among our law enforcement all over the nation and our military all over the world.

Source: OathKeepers.org

ACLU: 2/3 of US population lives in "Constitution-free" zone
Nine out of the top ten US cities and two thirds of the country's population lives in a "Constitution-free zone," according to a new campaign by the ACLU.

By Jon Stokes | Last updated October 23, 2008 9:45 PM CT


Longtime Ars readers know that I've had my own problems in the "Constitution-free zone" that exists in US airports, but an aggressive new ACLU campaign highlights a fact of which I was previously unaware: the Constitution-free zone that exists a US borders and airports actually extends 100 air miles inland and encompasses two-thirds of the country's population. The US Border Patrol can set up checkpoints anywhere in this region and question citizens.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution contains a border-related exception to unreasonable search and seizure laws, permitting searches at border checkpoints that wouldn't be permitted elsewhere. But federal statute 8 CFR 287.1 (a)(1-3) defines the border zone for enforcement purposes as encompassing an area within 100 miles of the actual border, with the possibility of extending it further under certain circumstances. This means that the US Border Patrol could conceivably set up random checkpoints asking travelers for a passport in places like Columbus, Ohio; Houston; or anywhere in the state of Florida. And, in fact, it appears that it has been doing exactly this.


The ACLU's map of the border zone


Papers, please

In 2003, the Seattle Times reported on random "spot checks" of cars and luggage that border patrol agents were performing on US citizens who were taking the ferry between Washington State and the San Juan islands. Because most of the passengers on these ferries had not actually crossed an international border, the ACLU advised them at the time not to answer any questions asked of them by federal agents.

In the intervening years, the ACLU has been collecting other reports of such inland "border" checkpoints, and has built its new "Constitution-Free Zone" campaign around them. Unfortunately for the ACLU, few of the folks who have been subject to search at such checkpoints have actually come forward with complaints, but the ones who did speak up have compelling and troubling stories.

Take the story of Vince Peppard from San Diego, who crossed the border to buy tiles at a discount store in Mexico. Upon crossing back into the US, he was subject to the usual check at the border, but on driving further inland he was stopped a second checkpoint, where agents asked to search his car.
Peppard, a member of the ACLU, refused the search, at which point he was questioned repeatedly, and eventually escorted from his car while the agents searched it. Segments of Peppard's account of the incident, which the ACLU has posted in video form on their site, would almost be funny if the issue weren't so serious.
"He starts looking at the passport and the driver's license," says Peppard, "and he goes to my wife, 'Where were you born?' because she has an accent, but she's a US citizen. And so she says, 'I was born in Syria,' and he goes, 'Ah! A Syrian!' like he'd hit the jackpot or something."
Peppard then goes a little overboard in expressing worry that he may be stopped and asked for his passport at Home Depot or in other random locations, but he finishes off the clip with a concern that may not be so far-fetched. Specifically, Peppard worries that, because he has talked to the ACLU and has filed a complaint with the Border Patrol, he may be singled out for further harassment at border checkpoints.
Ultimately, one wonders just how far the Feds will push this internal checkpoint idea in a non-emergency situation; given the likely reaction to citizens being asked to show papers on a mass scale, it seems unlikely that the government will truly install checkpoints north of Columbus and begin screening in large numbers. But vigilance, as the saying goes, is the price of freedom, which is why the ACLU and its allies intend to challenge the practice before we have a chance to find out.

Source: Jon Stokes


“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” — Voltaire. François Marie Arouet (1694-1778)

NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level
Posted by sakerfa on April 22, 2009

FEMA is preparing to take its martial law exercises to the next level this July. According to a factsheet buried on the FEMA website, the agency will host National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) on July 27 through July 31, 2009.


Previous TOPOFF exercises concentrated on natural disasters and bio-attacks.


“NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery,” the factsheet states. It is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise, or TOPOFF, which are exercises conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), “which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises,” according to FEMA.
NLE 09 “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants” in the “aftermath of a notional terrorist event outside of the United States.” So-called “exercise play” will concentrate on “preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks.”
Such a large and coordinated exercise seems inappropriate, considering the fact there has not been a terrorist attack on the United States since September 11, 2001. In 2007, the neocon-connected Jamestown Foundation chalked this lack of threat up to “stepped-up counter-terrorist efforts after 9/11 and possibly the simple luck enjoyed by government authorities.”
As the Washington Post noted in 2005, the government has a poor record when it comes to apprehending and prosecuting terrorists within the United States. “Except for a small number of well-known cases — such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge — few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States.”
In fact, as recently leaked Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and local law enforcement (in particular, the Missouri State Police) documents reveal, the real target is not al-Qaeda or Muslim terrorists, but rather “rightwing extremists” who support the Second Amendment and states’ rights and oppose abortion and open borders. The liberal corporate media has worked tirelessly with the government to demonize activists and supporters of these movements. It has orchestrated a disinformation campaign against the Tea Party movement and has attempted to link the alleged white supremacist cop killer Richard Poplawski to Alex Jones and others erroneously classified as “rightwing extremists.”
The FEMA factsheet states NLE 09 “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants.” In other words, the exercise will concentrate on surveillance and counter-intelligence targeted at “terrorists” (rightwing extremists) who will – according to the NLE scenario – carry out attacks following a vaguely defined international terrorist event. A FEMA bullet point underscores the need for “counter-terror investigation and law enforcement.” Local law enforcement, through relationships previously established by DHS, the FBI and the CIA, will be on the front lines of this surveillance effort.

The FBI in particular has experience in surveilling Americans. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, the FBI kept a list – dubbed the “ADEX” list – of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive. More recently, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007. The list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month, according to the ACLU. The list now totals well over a million entries.
Although not specifically mentioned in the FEMA factsheet, NLE 09 will also include exercises designed to round-up and intern suspected terrorists. Under REX 84 and other operations, FEMA, in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, trained to detain large numbers of American citizens.
During Hurricane Katrina, FEMA performed a “dry-run” of this unconstitutional power in New Orleans, not only rounding up “refugees” and “relocating” them in camps, but also testing its ability to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens. Blackwater USA, a private mercenary outfit, participated in this illegal confiscation.
InfraGard, the FBI organized “public-private partnership” (classical fascism as defined by Mussolini), will participate in NLE 09, as they have in past TOPOFF exercises.
As Matthew Rothschild documented last March, there are more than 23,000 representatives of private industry working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. InfraGard “may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations – some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers – into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” Rothschild explains, citing the ACLU. The FBI has given the private organization the ability to use lethal force against suspected “terrorists.”
FEMA’s National Level Exercise 2009 represents the next phase of preparations to implement martial law in America under the guise of fighting loosely defined terrorists. As the DHS, FBI, and MIAC reports indicate, the government now defines terrorists as “rightwing extremists” and indicates the threat is not from fanatics with beards in caves half way around the world, but from law-abiding Americans who are opposed to government policies.
The FEMA camps corporate media shill Glenn Beck insists do not exist but are documented to in fact exist around the country are not for Muslims, but the real threat to government – increasing numbers of Americans determined to return the nagtion to a constitutionally limited republic.

Source: InfoWars.com

5 ways your TV is slowly killing you
Too much boob tube also makes you weaker, research shows
Recent research reveals the weirder ways television is ruining your life.
View related photos
Matt Rourke / AP file



By Linda Carroll
msnbc.com contributor
updated 5:11 a.m. PT, Fri., March. 5, 2010
You’ve accepted the idea that TV makes you dumber. You know there are lots of more edifying things you could be doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on "Survivor."

And unless you’re working out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out in front of the screen are going to make you fatter — not to mention the impact of all that junk food you’ve been tempted to scarf down during the commercial breaks.

But you’ll be surprised to learn the host of other bad things TV can do to you.

1. TV makes you deader.
TV-viewing is a pretty deadly pastime, research suggests. No matter how much time you spend in the gym, every hour you spend in front of the TV increases your risk of dying from heart disease, according to a recent report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Australian researchers studied 8,800 adult men and women for an average of six years and found that every hour spent in front of the TV translated into an 11 percent increase in the risk of death from any cause, a 9 percent increase in the risk of death from cancer and an 18 percent increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. So, compared to people who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched four or more hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from any cause and an 80 percent higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease. And that was true even among people who didn’t smoke, were thin, ate healthy diets and had low blood pressure and cholesterol.

2. TV makes you drunker.
TV may make you drink more. When it comes to drinking, we’re apparently very susceptible to what we see on TV, according to a report published in Alcohol and Alcoholism. To discover whether what we view actually affects drinking habits, researchers rounded up 80 male university students between the ages of 18 and 29 and plunked them down in a bar-like setting where the students were allowed to watch movies and commercials on TV. The researchers found that men who watched films and commercials in which alcohol was prominently featured immediately reached for a glass of beer or wine and drank an average of 1.5 glasses more than those who watched films and commercials in which alcohol played a less prominent role.

3. TV can make your kid pregnant.
Teens who watched a lot of TV that included sexual content were twice as likely to get pregnant, according to a study published in Pediatrics. Once a year for three years, Rand Corporation researchers surveyed 1,461 youngsters — ages 12 to 17 at the beginning of the study — about TV-viewing habits and sexual behavior. Boys were asked if they had ever gotten a girl pregnant and girls were asked if they had ever been pregnant. To get a handle on how much sexually charged TV kids were watching, the researchers asked teens if and how often they viewed 23 specific programs.


Watching TV leads to heart disease, docs say
Jan. 25: According to the American Heart Association, four hours television per day can increase your chances of dying of cardiovascular disease by 80 percent. WWLP's Jackie Bruno reports.
NBC News Channel


Another study showed that kids who watch two or more hours of TV a day start having sex earlier, according to a report in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Researchers followed 4,808 students for a year. The kids — all ages 15 or younger — had never had sex at the beginning of the study. Among kids with parents who disapproved of teen sex, those who watched two or more hours of TV per day were 72 percent more likely to start having sex by the end of the study. The researchers said they weren’t surprised to find no TV effect among kids with parents who didn’t care about teen sex since those kids were at high risk of early sex anyway.

4. TV weakens your bones.
Hours spent watching TV can set a kid up for later problems with brittle bones, according to a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. Until we hit 25 or so, we accumulate bone in a kind of savings account. The more bone we build when we’re younger, the less likely we are to develop the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis.

To see whether TV watching might impact kids’ bone growth, researchers followed 214 3-year-olds for four years. The children’s height and weight were checked every four months, along with their activity levels. At each checkup, parents were asked about their kids’ TV-viewing habits. The more TV kids watched, the less bone they grew, regardless of how active they were at other times.

5. TV makes you less engaging.
A recent study found that when the TV is on — even if it’s just in the background — parents interact less with their kids. To learn more about TV’s effects, researchers brought 51 infants and toddlers, each accompanied by a parent, to a university child study center, according to the report published Child Development. Parents and kids were observed for half an hour in a playroom without a TV and then for a half hour with the TV tuned to an adult program such as "Jeopardy!" When the TV was on, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children. And when parents did pay attention to their kids, the quality of the interactions was lower: With a program on in the background, parents were less active, attentive and responsive to their youngsters.

Source: msnbc.com