July 22,2011
by Joel Greenberg
Source: Washington Post
AMMAN, Jordan — At the weekly anti-government demonstration after Friday prayers here in Jordan’s capital, Malik Gheith held up a poster showing a caricature of a fearsome-looking policeman wielding a club, captioned, “Your dignity ends here.”
The message, a week after police beat peaceful protesters and journalists at a similar march in downtown Amman, was clear. “There can’t be any political reform with repression,” Gheith said. “The security forces have to stop their brutality.”
Friday’s march ended without incident, as unarmed police officers flanked the protesters, preventing any contact with a small group of pro-government demonstrators nearby. Riot police, responsible for last week’s beatings, were nowhere to be seen, and newspaper headlines highlighted King Abdullah II’s condemnation of their assaults on reporters.
After six months of weekly demonstrations inspired by the Arab Spring, Jordan’s ferment is still a managed crisis, festering but not at a tipping point, with protesters unable to generate momentum to force swift change.
The opposition is divided between youth groups and leftists on one hand and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other. The Brotherhood is perceived by its potential allies as angling for a greater piece of the government pie, rather than seeking fundamental change.
Movement toward political change has been slow, with the king promising broader public participation, such as governments based on the parliamentary majority rather than royal appointment. But little has been done to carry out those pledges, aside from a recent cabinet reshuffle widely viewed as cosmetic.
In a speech last month, the king said it would take as long as three years for mature political parties to emerge.
“After what we saw in Tunis, Egypt and Yemen, we’re surprised that in six months we haven’t been able to achieve anything,” said Islam Samhan, a member of a pro-reform coalition who was at Friday’s demonstration. “The king has not responded to the demands of the people.”
Yet that frustration has not produced calls for the overthrow of the monarchy, widely seen as the only glue that can hold together a potentially volatile mix of Palestinians and East Bank Jordanians, fractious Bedouin tribes and other groups.
Friday’s protest focused on accusations of government corruption and the sale of state assets, including industries and real estate, to private companies and businessmen. Along with the familiar calls for the ouster of Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit, there was a new refrain directed at the king. “Abdullah, son of Hussein,” it went, “where is the land, where?”
And in a twist on the traditional cry of support for the monarch, the crowd shouted, “Long live the Jordanian people!”
Khalid Kalaldeh, a leader of a leftist party, said that the work of a national dialogue committee he had served on had stalled after its recommendations for changes in the election law and laws governing political parties were held up by the government, pending constitutional amendments.
“The impression is that the government is only playing for time,” Kalaldeh said.
Abdullah has tried to defuse discontent by visiting neglected areas of the kingdom and pledging government funds and development programs, as well as ordering direct assistance to poor families. But protesters have said they want more than royal gifts; they want a change in a government culture seen as rife with cronyism and nepotism.
“Down with the government! Enough hereditary appointments. Enough marginalization,” shouted a group of demonstrators Friday. The group was from an Amman neighborhood populated by people from Tafileh, a restive town in the south.
Amer Sabaileh, a political scientist at the University of Jordan, called the king’s paternalistic style an anachronism. “These types of visits belong to another era, when the Ottoman ruler would bring gifts to the people,” he said. “That is over. People are judging concrete issues, and there need to be more transparent channels of connecting directly to the people and taking them seriously.”
Government officials argue that Abdullah has committed himself to reform and has not used his security forces to brutally put down the pro-democracy demonstrations, as has happened in some other Arab countries. “This is an evolution, and what is important is that it is change without chaos. Not a single shot has been fired,” said Nasser Judeh, the foreign minister. “The tone is being set from above. Reform is led by the king.”
But the continuing protests in Amman and elsewhere in the kingdom, especially in tribal areas in the south, show that many Jordanians remain unconvinced. And while the demonstrations have not crossed the line of calling for the king’s ouster, some participants caution that they could escalate if reform efforts remain stalled.
“We cannot control the street,” said Su’ud al-Ajarma, one of a group of 36 tribal figures who published an open call for reform in February. “It can erupt at any moment.”
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Will The King of Jordan Replace The Jordanian Dinar?
written by: Sheila Quinn
Today I will focus on Jordan, The Global Oligarchy and Jordan's relationship with The Global Oligarchy. Do I really think that the king of Jordan currently has plans for replacing the Jordanian Dinar? I don't think so. What I do know is that the king of Jordan is a pawn of The Global Oligarchy and that The Global Oligarchy has plans to have a global currency as part of having a global government,thereby enslaving all of humanity.
The king of Jordan is obviously a pawn of the Global Oligarchy as well as a liar. If you had asked me what I thought of The King of Jordan a year ago my answer would of been very different. My perception of the king of Jordan, until The "Arab Spring", was very gentle and kind. I thought of him as my brother in Allah who was very naive about the world around him and very ignorant of The Islamic Faith. I thought he was a misguided Muslim brother who had the heart of a God fearing man. Now I see him as one who is promoting the interests of The Global Oligarchy in Jordan. Some Jordanians think that they are an independent country. But such thinking is a product of brain washing. Jordan is very much a colony, it is a colony of the global oligarchy.
When Jordan was established it was a constitutional monarchy. Yet, over the years the constitution has been changed from a constitutional monarchy to an absolute monarchy which has some of the trappings of a democracy. It is a monarchy that is under foreign control. For ten years the king of Jordan has been king. He has given much lip service to transparency, human rights, democracy and accountability. For more than ten years the king of Jordan has spoken up against corruption, yet after all this time the people have gone to the streets demanding the end to corruption. Why, after more than ten years is there still corruption? Is the king of Jordan evil and corrupt himself, or is he totally incompetent? For more than ten years he has promised political reform, yet there has been very little political reform. Why? Some individuals within his inner circle say that those of the Jordanian tribes dislike reform. This is a lie! A group of individuals that represent most of the native Jordanians (those who are members of Jordanian tribes) are in support of everything that the opposition wants. This group wants: constitutional changes that would bring it back to a constitutional monarchy; fair and just elections that would include all Jordanians, and reforms that would bring accountability and the end of corruption in government. So, as you can see both the political opposition as well as the tribes of Jordan are in agreement. Any talk that they are not in agreement is an out right lie! Why doesn't the king of Jordan agree to the demands of the opposition? Because, the global oligarchy doesn't want to lose control of the government of Jordan... that is why. Because the king of Jordan is a pawn of the oligarchy and he is doing what they want... not what is best for Jordan and the people of Jordan.
There is talk that Jordan is different from other Arab countries because its leader is a wise man. This is wrong! The turmoil that came to other Arab countries has not YET come to Jordan because the perception of the Jordanian people is that their leader is responsive to them. But the more the king of Jordan delays real reforms, the more the people of Jordan will come to realize that their perception of their leader is wrong and that he is not responsive- and will not be responsive. The more they realize this the more they will start demanding a change in regime. Even now, in the Friday protests the people are chanting "Long live Jordan"- instead of "Long live the king". This and other things that the people are chanting in the Friday protests indicate that they are starting to get fed up with delays, and that there will come a time when they will not accept any more delays. There will come a time when they will start demanding a regime change. (Allah knows best)
Today I will focus on Jordan, The Global Oligarchy and Jordan's relationship with The Global Oligarchy. Do I really think that the king of Jordan currently has plans for replacing the Jordanian Dinar? I don't think so. What I do know is that the king of Jordan is a pawn of The Global Oligarchy and that The Global Oligarchy has plans to have a global currency as part of having a global government,thereby enslaving all of humanity.
The king of Jordan is obviously a pawn of the Global Oligarchy as well as a liar. If you had asked me what I thought of The King of Jordan a year ago my answer would of been very different. My perception of the king of Jordan, until The "Arab Spring", was very gentle and kind. I thought of him as my brother in Allah who was very naive about the world around him and very ignorant of The Islamic Faith. I thought he was a misguided Muslim brother who had the heart of a God fearing man. Now I see him as one who is promoting the interests of The Global Oligarchy in Jordan. Some Jordanians think that they are an independent country. But such thinking is a product of brain washing. Jordan is very much a colony, it is a colony of the global oligarchy.
When Jordan was established it was a constitutional monarchy. Yet, over the years the constitution has been changed from a constitutional monarchy to an absolute monarchy which has some of the trappings of a democracy. It is a monarchy that is under foreign control. For ten years the king of Jordan has been king. He has given much lip service to transparency, human rights, democracy and accountability. For more than ten years the king of Jordan has spoken up against corruption, yet after all this time the people have gone to the streets demanding the end to corruption. Why, after more than ten years is there still corruption? Is the king of Jordan evil and corrupt himself, or is he totally incompetent? For more than ten years he has promised political reform, yet there has been very little political reform. Why? Some individuals within his inner circle say that those of the Jordanian tribes dislike reform. This is a lie! A group of individuals that represent most of the native Jordanians (those who are members of Jordanian tribes) are in support of everything that the opposition wants. This group wants: constitutional changes that would bring it back to a constitutional monarchy; fair and just elections that would include all Jordanians, and reforms that would bring accountability and the end of corruption in government. So, as you can see both the political opposition as well as the tribes of Jordan are in agreement. Any talk that they are not in agreement is an out right lie! Why doesn't the king of Jordan agree to the demands of the opposition? Because, the global oligarchy doesn't want to lose control of the government of Jordan... that is why. Because the king of Jordan is a pawn of the oligarchy and he is doing what they want... not what is best for Jordan and the people of Jordan.
There is talk that Jordan is different from other Arab countries because its leader is a wise man. This is wrong! The turmoil that came to other Arab countries has not YET come to Jordan because the perception of the Jordanian people is that their leader is responsive to them. But the more the king of Jordan delays real reforms, the more the people of Jordan will come to realize that their perception of their leader is wrong and that he is not responsive- and will not be responsive. The more they realize this the more they will start demanding a change in regime. Even now, in the Friday protests the people are chanting "Long live Jordan"- instead of "Long live the king". This and other things that the people are chanting in the Friday protests indicate that they are starting to get fed up with delays, and that there will come a time when they will not accept any more delays. There will come a time when they will start demanding a regime change. (Allah knows best)
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Activist: Bahraini women dies during protest
Jul 16, 2011
Source: Yahoo News
By AP
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — A Bahraini rights activist says a woman has died during clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said Saturday that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police during a demonstration Friday near her home in Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry.
Her death brings to 33 the number of those who have died since February when Bahrain's Shiite majority started protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Bahrain's Interior Ministry denied al-Jumaa's death was linked to a police operation and said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late Friday that the woman died of natural causes.
Source: Yahoo News
By AP
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — A Bahraini rights activist says a woman has died during clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said Saturday that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police during a demonstration Friday near her home in Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry.
Her death brings to 33 the number of those who have died since February when Bahrain's Shiite majority started protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Bahrain's Interior Ministry denied al-Jumaa's death was linked to a police operation and said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late Friday that the woman died of natural causes.
Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup
February 21, 2011
Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
A plant pathologist experienced in protecting against biological warfare recently warned the USDA of a new, self-replicating, micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous abortions in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn.
Dr. Don M. Huber, who coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens committee of the American Phytopathological Society, as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System, warned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that this pathogen threatens the US food and feed supply and can lead to the collapse of the US corn and soy export markets. Likewise, deregulation of GE alfalfa “could be a calamity,” he noted in his letter (reproduced in full below).
On January 27, Vilsack gave blanket approval to all genetically modified alfalfa. Following orders from President Obama, he also removed buffer zone requirements. This is seen as a deliberate move to contaminate natural crops and destroy the organic meat and dairy industry which relies on GM-free alfalfa. Such genetic contamination will give the biotech industry complete control over the nation’s fourth largest crop. It will also ease the transition to using GE-alfalfa as a biofuel.
“My letter to Secretary Vilsack was a request to allocate necessary resources to understand potential nutrient-disease interactions before making (in my opinion) an essentially irreversible decision on deregulation of RR alfalfa,” Huber told Food Freedom in an email.
But, he cautions:
Although the organism has been associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, associations are not always evidence of cause in all cases and do not indicate what the predisposing conditions might be. These need to be established through thorough investigation which requires a commitment of resources.
“I hope that the Secretary will make such a commitment because many growers/producers are experiencing severe increases in disease of both crops and animals that are threatening their economic viability.”
On Feb. 16, Paul Tukey of SafeLawn telephoned Dr. Huber who told him, “I believe we’ve reached the tipping point toward a potential disaster with the safety of our food supply. The abuse, or call it over use if you will, of Roundup, is having profoundly bad consequences in the soil. We’ve seen that for years. The appearance of this new pathogen may be a signal that we’ve gone too far.”
Tukey also conveyed that while Huber admits that much further study is needed to definitively confirm the link between Round-Up and the pathogen, “In the meantime, he said, it’s grossly irresponsible of the government to allow Roundup Ready alfalfa, which would bring the widespread spraying of Roundup to millions of more acres and introduce far more Roundup into the food supply.”
Huber, who has been studying plant pathogens for over 50 years and glyphosate for over 20 years, has noticed an increase in pathogens associated with the herbicide. In an interview with the Organic and Non-GMO Report last May, he discussed his team’s conclusions that glyphosate can, “significantly increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant defense to pathogens and diseases, and immobilize soil and plant nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use.”
This is because “glyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence of pathogens.” [Image] In the last 15-18 years, the number of plant pathogens has increased, he told the Non-GMO Report. “There are more than 40 diseases reported with use of glyphosate, and that number keeps growing as people recognize the association (between glyphosate and disease).”
In his undated letter to the USDA, Huber highlighted “the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations.” He reported that spontaneous abortions occurred in nearly half the cattle where high concentrations of the pathogen were found in their feed. Huber notes that the wheat “likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.”
Other Research Supports Huber’s Warning
Last year, Argentine scientists found that Roundup causes birth defects in frogs and chickens. Publishing their paper, “Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling,” in Chemical Research in Toxicology, Alejandra Paganelli, et al. also produced a large set of reports for the public at GMWatch:
In Argentina and Paraguay, doctors and residents living in GM soy producing areas have reported serious health effects from glyphosate spraying, including high rates of birth defects as well as infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, and cancers. Scientific studies collected in the new report confirm links between exposure to glyphosate and premature births, miscarriages, cancer, and damage to DNA and reproductive organ cells.
One of the researchers, Andrés Carrasco, told GM Watch, “The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy.”
When trying to present these findings to the public in August of last year, Dr. Carrasco and the audience were attacked by 100 thugs who beat them and their cars with clubs, leaving one person paralyzed, Amnesty International reported. Local police and a wealthy GM rice grower were implicated in that attack.
In a 2009 study, researchers linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize, based on Monsanto’s trial data. As we reported last year, Gilles-Eric Séralini, et al., concluded that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal that novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.
In a 2005 paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, Sophie Richard, et al. compared the toxicity of Roundup with that of just glyphosate, its active ingredient. They found Roundup to be more toxic, owing to its adjuvants. They also found that endocrine disruption increased over time so that one-tenth the amount prescribed for agriculture caused cell deformation. Citing other research, they also reported that Roundup adjuvants bond with DNA.
Such negative findings probably explain why Monsanto and other biotech firms so vociferously block independent research.
Tom Laskawy at Grist estimated that in 2008, nearly 200 million pounds of glyphosate were poured onto US soils. But, he notes that “exact figures are a closely guarded secret thanks to the USDA’s refusal to update its pesticide use database after 2007.” This figure more than doubles what the EPA estimates was used in 2000.
Below is Dr. Huber’s full letter, graciously provided to me by Paul Tukey:
Dear Secretary Vilsack:
A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!
This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.
We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.
For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.
A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:
Unique Physical Properties
This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.
Pathogen Location and Concentration
It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.
Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease
The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income—sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).
Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure
Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.
The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.
For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlage experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlage, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.
Recommendations
In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Round Ready crops,[sic] and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.
It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.
I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.
Sincerely,
COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)
Rady Ananda holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture. Her work has appeared in several online and print publications. Using years of editorial experience and web publishing, Rady now promotes the ideas and work of a select group of quality writers and artists at Food Freedom and COTO Report.
Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
A plant pathologist experienced in protecting against biological warfare recently warned the USDA of a new, self-replicating, micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous abortions in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn.
Dr. Don M. Huber, who coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens committee of the American Phytopathological Society, as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System, warned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that this pathogen threatens the US food and feed supply and can lead to the collapse of the US corn and soy export markets. Likewise, deregulation of GE alfalfa “could be a calamity,” he noted in his letter (reproduced in full below).
On January 27, Vilsack gave blanket approval to all genetically modified alfalfa. Following orders from President Obama, he also removed buffer zone requirements. This is seen as a deliberate move to contaminate natural crops and destroy the organic meat and dairy industry which relies on GM-free alfalfa. Such genetic contamination will give the biotech industry complete control over the nation’s fourth largest crop. It will also ease the transition to using GE-alfalfa as a biofuel.
“My letter to Secretary Vilsack was a request to allocate necessary resources to understand potential nutrient-disease interactions before making (in my opinion) an essentially irreversible decision on deregulation of RR alfalfa,” Huber told Food Freedom in an email.
But, he cautions:
Although the organism has been associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, associations are not always evidence of cause in all cases and do not indicate what the predisposing conditions might be. These need to be established through thorough investigation which requires a commitment of resources.
“I hope that the Secretary will make such a commitment because many growers/producers are experiencing severe increases in disease of both crops and animals that are threatening their economic viability.”
On Feb. 16, Paul Tukey of SafeLawn telephoned Dr. Huber who told him, “I believe we’ve reached the tipping point toward a potential disaster with the safety of our food supply. The abuse, or call it over use if you will, of Roundup, is having profoundly bad consequences in the soil. We’ve seen that for years. The appearance of this new pathogen may be a signal that we’ve gone too far.”
Tukey also conveyed that while Huber admits that much further study is needed to definitively confirm the link between Round-Up and the pathogen, “In the meantime, he said, it’s grossly irresponsible of the government to allow Roundup Ready alfalfa, which would bring the widespread spraying of Roundup to millions of more acres and introduce far more Roundup into the food supply.”
Huber, who has been studying plant pathogens for over 50 years and glyphosate for over 20 years, has noticed an increase in pathogens associated with the herbicide. In an interview with the Organic and Non-GMO Report last May, he discussed his team’s conclusions that glyphosate can, “significantly increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant defense to pathogens and diseases, and immobilize soil and plant nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use.”
This is because “glyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence of pathogens.” [Image] In the last 15-18 years, the number of plant pathogens has increased, he told the Non-GMO Report. “There are more than 40 diseases reported with use of glyphosate, and that number keeps growing as people recognize the association (between glyphosate and disease).”
In his undated letter to the USDA, Huber highlighted “the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations.” He reported that spontaneous abortions occurred in nearly half the cattle where high concentrations of the pathogen were found in their feed. Huber notes that the wheat “likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.”
Other Research Supports Huber’s Warning
Last year, Argentine scientists found that Roundup causes birth defects in frogs and chickens. Publishing their paper, “Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling,” in Chemical Research in Toxicology, Alejandra Paganelli, et al. also produced a large set of reports for the public at GMWatch:
In Argentina and Paraguay, doctors and residents living in GM soy producing areas have reported serious health effects from glyphosate spraying, including high rates of birth defects as well as infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, and cancers. Scientific studies collected in the new report confirm links between exposure to glyphosate and premature births, miscarriages, cancer, and damage to DNA and reproductive organ cells.
One of the researchers, Andrés Carrasco, told GM Watch, “The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy.”
When trying to present these findings to the public in August of last year, Dr. Carrasco and the audience were attacked by 100 thugs who beat them and their cars with clubs, leaving one person paralyzed, Amnesty International reported. Local police and a wealthy GM rice grower were implicated in that attack.
In a 2009 study, researchers linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize, based on Monsanto’s trial data. As we reported last year, Gilles-Eric Séralini, et al., concluded that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal that novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.
In a 2005 paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, Sophie Richard, et al. compared the toxicity of Roundup with that of just glyphosate, its active ingredient. They found Roundup to be more toxic, owing to its adjuvants. They also found that endocrine disruption increased over time so that one-tenth the amount prescribed for agriculture caused cell deformation. Citing other research, they also reported that Roundup adjuvants bond with DNA.
Such negative findings probably explain why Monsanto and other biotech firms so vociferously block independent research.
Tom Laskawy at Grist estimated that in 2008, nearly 200 million pounds of glyphosate were poured onto US soils. But, he notes that “exact figures are a closely guarded secret thanks to the USDA’s refusal to update its pesticide use database after 2007.” This figure more than doubles what the EPA estimates was used in 2000.
Below is Dr. Huber’s full letter, graciously provided to me by Paul Tukey:
Dear Secretary Vilsack:
A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!
This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.
We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.
For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.
A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:
Unique Physical Properties
This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.
Pathogen Location and Concentration
It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.
Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease
The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income—sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).
Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure
Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.
The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.
For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlage experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlage, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.
Recommendations
In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Round Ready crops,[sic] and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.
It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.
I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.
Sincerely,
COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)
Rady Ananda holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture. Her work has appeared in several online and print publications. Using years of editorial experience and web publishing, Rady now promotes the ideas and work of a select group of quality writers and artists at Food Freedom and COTO Report.
The Patriot Act: When Truth Becomes Treason
May 24, 2011
Susan Lindauer
former CIA Asset covering Iraq & Libya
The Intel Hub
Most Americans believe they understand the dangers of the Patriot Act, which Congress has vowed to extend 4 more years in a vote later this week. Trust me when I say, Americans are not nearly frightened enough.
Ever wonder why the truth about 9/11 never got exposed? Why Americans don’t have a clue about leadership fraud surrounding the War on Terror?
Why Americans don’t know if the 9/11 investigation was really successful? Why the Iraqi Peace Option draws a blank? Somebody has known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden— or his grave—for the past 10 years. But nobody’s talking to the people.
In significant part, that’s because of the Patriot Act— a law that equates free speech with sedition. It’s got a big agenda, with 7,000 pages of Machiavellian code designed to interrupt individual questioning of government policy.
In this brave new world, free speech under the Bill of Rights effectively has been declared a threat to government controls for maintaining stability. And the Patriot Act has become the premiere weapon to attack whistle blowers and dissidents who challenge the comfort of political leaders hiding inconvenient truths from the public.
It’s all the rage on Capitol Hill, as leaders strive to score TV ratings, while demogauging their “outstanding leadership performance” on everything from national security to environmental policy.
Truth has Become Treason
But wait—Congress assures us the Patriot Act only targets foreigners, who come to our shores seeking to destroy our way of life through violent, criminal acts. Good, law abiding Americans have nothing to fear. The Patriot Act restricts its powers of “roving wiretaps” and warrantless searches to international communications among “bad guys.” Congress has sworn, with hand on heart, it’s only purpose is breaking down terrorist cells and hunting out “lone wolf” mad men.
Join The Intel Hub News Alerts Mailing List
That’s what they told you, right? And you believed them? You trust the government. Well, that was your first mistake. With regards to the Patriot Act, it’s a fatal one. Would the government lie to you? You betcha! And they have.
The Patriot Act reaches far beyond terrorism prevention. In my home state of Maryland, State Police invoked the Patriot Act to run surveillance on the Chesapeake Climate Action Network dedicated to wind power, recycling and protection of the Chesapeake Bay. They infiltrated the DC Anti War Network, suggesting the group might be a front for “white supremacists,” and Amnesty International, claiming to investigate “civil rights abuses.” Opponents of the death penalty also got targeted (in case they got violent).
Bottom line: truth tellers who give Americans too much insight on any number of issues are vulnerable to a vast arsenal of judicial weapons typically associated with China or Mynamar. In the Patriot Act, the government has created a powerful tool to hunt out free thinking on the left or right. It doesn’t discriminate. Anyone who opposes government policy is at risk.
How do I know all this? Because I was the second non-Arab American ever indicted on the Patriot Act. My arrest defied all expectations about the law. I was no terrorist plotting to explode the Washington Monument. Quite the opposite, I had worked in anti-terrorism for almost a decade, covering Iraq and Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Malaysia at the United Nations.
At the instruction of my CIA handler, I had delivered advance warnings about the 9/11 attack to the private staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism in August, 2001. FBI wire taps prove that I carried details of a comprehensive peace framework with Iraq up and down the hallowed corridors of Capitol Hill for months before the invasion, arguing that War was totally unnecessary.
I delivered those papers to Democrats and Republicans alike; to my own second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; and to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler. Gratis of the Patriot Act, we had the manila envelope and my hand written notes to Secretary Powell, dated a week before his infamous speech at the United Nations.
My papers argued that no WMDs would be found inside Iraq, and that the peace framework could achieve all U.S. objectives without firing a shot.
In short, I was an Asset who loudly opposed War with Iraq, and made every effort to correct the mistakes in assumptions on Capitol Hill.
Then I did the unthinkable. I phoned the offices of Senator Trent Lott and Senator John McCain, requesting to testify before a brand new, blue ribbon Commission investigating Pre-War Intelligence. Proud and confident of my efforts, I had no idea Congress was planning to blame “bad intelligence” for the unpopular War.
Over night I became Public Enemy Number One on Capitol Hill.
Thirty days later I awoke to hear FBI agents pounding on my door. My nightmare on the Patriot Act lasted 5 years— Four years after my arrest, the Court granted me one morning of evidentiary testimony by two supremely credible witnesses. Parke Godfrey verified my 9/11 warnings under oath. Otherwise, I never got my day in Court.
The Patriot Act’s Arsenal to Stop Free Speech
If you care about America and the traditions of freedom, whether you’re progressive or conservative, you should be angry about this law.
First come the warrantless searches and FBI tracking surveillance. My work in anti-terrorism gave me no protection. I got my first warrantless search after meeting an undercover FBI agent to discuss my support for free elections in Iraq and my opposition to torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees. (Sorry guys, body wires don’t lie.)
If truth tellers don’t get the message to shut their mouths, the Justice Department ratchets up the pressure. Defendants face secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony. Throughout five years of indictment, my attorneys and I never got to read a single FBI interview or grand jury statement. Under the Patriot Act, the whistleblower/defendant has no right to know who has accused him or her of what criminal activities, or the dates of the alleged offenses, or what laws got broken.
Of course, I was able to piece together my activities. I knew that “sometime in October, 2001″ an Iraqi diplomat gave me the English translation of a book on depleted uranium, which showed how cancer rates and birth defects had spiked in Iraqi children.
And I was quite certain that on October 14, 1999, an Iraqi diplomat asked me how to channel major financial contributions to the Presidential Campaign of George Bush and Dick Cheney. The Justice Department got the date from me, since I reported my conversation immediately to my Defense Intelligence handler, Paul Hoven.
It’s unlikely the grand jury knew that, since the Justice Department has the prerogative to keep a grand jury in the dark. In this brave new world, a grand jury can be compelled to consider indictments carrying 10 years or more in prison, without the right to review evidence, or otherwise determine whether an individual’s actions rise to the level of criminal activity at all.
That’s just the beginning. Once Congress scores an indictment against a political opponent, the Justice Department can force Defense attorneys to undergo protracted security clearances, while the whistle blower cum defendant waits in prison— usually in solitary confinement or the SHU. After the security clearance, prosecutors have an ironclad right to bar attorneys from communicating communications from the prosecution to the defendant, on threat of disbarment, stiff fines or prison sentence.
Scared yet? Once you get to trial, the situation gets much worse. The Patriot Act declares that a prosecutor has no obligation to show evidence of criminal activity to a jury at all. And the Defense can be denied the right to argue a rebuttal to those secret charges, because it requires speculation that might mislead the jury—or might expose issues that the government considers, well, secret.
After all that a Judge can instruct a jury that the prosecution regards the secret evidence as sufficient to merit conviction on the secret charges. The Jury can be barred from considering the lack of evidence in weighing whether to convict.
Think I’m exaggerating? You would be wrong. That’s what happened to me. All of it—with one major glitch. All of this presumes the whistle blower’s lucky enough to get a trial. I was denied mine, though I fought vigorously for my rights. Instead, citing the Patriot Act, I got thrown in prison on a Texas military base without so much as a hearing—and threatened with indefinite detention and forcible drugging, to boot.
Americans are not nearly afraid enough.
Neither is Congress. As of this week, members of Congress should be very afraid. Anyone who votes to extend the Patriot Act should expect to pack their bags in 2012. They will be targeted for defeat. Above all, the words “freedom” and “Constitution” will never appear in their campaigns without suffering extreme public scorn—never, ever again.
Susan Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq, which reveals details of her CIA team’s 9/11 warnings and a comprehensive peace option with Iraq.
Susan Lindauer
former CIA Asset covering Iraq & Libya
The Intel Hub
Most Americans believe they understand the dangers of the Patriot Act, which Congress has vowed to extend 4 more years in a vote later this week. Trust me when I say, Americans are not nearly frightened enough.
Ever wonder why the truth about 9/11 never got exposed? Why Americans don’t have a clue about leadership fraud surrounding the War on Terror?
Why Americans don’t know if the 9/11 investigation was really successful? Why the Iraqi Peace Option draws a blank? Somebody has known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden— or his grave—for the past 10 years. But nobody’s talking to the people.
In significant part, that’s because of the Patriot Act— a law that equates free speech with sedition. It’s got a big agenda, with 7,000 pages of Machiavellian code designed to interrupt individual questioning of government policy.
In this brave new world, free speech under the Bill of Rights effectively has been declared a threat to government controls for maintaining stability. And the Patriot Act has become the premiere weapon to attack whistle blowers and dissidents who challenge the comfort of political leaders hiding inconvenient truths from the public.
It’s all the rage on Capitol Hill, as leaders strive to score TV ratings, while demogauging their “outstanding leadership performance” on everything from national security to environmental policy.
Truth has Become Treason
But wait—Congress assures us the Patriot Act only targets foreigners, who come to our shores seeking to destroy our way of life through violent, criminal acts. Good, law abiding Americans have nothing to fear. The Patriot Act restricts its powers of “roving wiretaps” and warrantless searches to international communications among “bad guys.” Congress has sworn, with hand on heart, it’s only purpose is breaking down terrorist cells and hunting out “lone wolf” mad men.
Join The Intel Hub News Alerts Mailing List
That’s what they told you, right? And you believed them? You trust the government. Well, that was your first mistake. With regards to the Patriot Act, it’s a fatal one. Would the government lie to you? You betcha! And they have.
The Patriot Act reaches far beyond terrorism prevention. In my home state of Maryland, State Police invoked the Patriot Act to run surveillance on the Chesapeake Climate Action Network dedicated to wind power, recycling and protection of the Chesapeake Bay. They infiltrated the DC Anti War Network, suggesting the group might be a front for “white supremacists,” and Amnesty International, claiming to investigate “civil rights abuses.” Opponents of the death penalty also got targeted (in case they got violent).
Bottom line: truth tellers who give Americans too much insight on any number of issues are vulnerable to a vast arsenal of judicial weapons typically associated with China or Mynamar. In the Patriot Act, the government has created a powerful tool to hunt out free thinking on the left or right. It doesn’t discriminate. Anyone who opposes government policy is at risk.
How do I know all this? Because I was the second non-Arab American ever indicted on the Patriot Act. My arrest defied all expectations about the law. I was no terrorist plotting to explode the Washington Monument. Quite the opposite, I had worked in anti-terrorism for almost a decade, covering Iraq and Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Malaysia at the United Nations.
At the instruction of my CIA handler, I had delivered advance warnings about the 9/11 attack to the private staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism in August, 2001. FBI wire taps prove that I carried details of a comprehensive peace framework with Iraq up and down the hallowed corridors of Capitol Hill for months before the invasion, arguing that War was totally unnecessary.
I delivered those papers to Democrats and Republicans alike; to my own second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; and to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler. Gratis of the Patriot Act, we had the manila envelope and my hand written notes to Secretary Powell, dated a week before his infamous speech at the United Nations.
My papers argued that no WMDs would be found inside Iraq, and that the peace framework could achieve all U.S. objectives without firing a shot.
In short, I was an Asset who loudly opposed War with Iraq, and made every effort to correct the mistakes in assumptions on Capitol Hill.
Then I did the unthinkable. I phoned the offices of Senator Trent Lott and Senator John McCain, requesting to testify before a brand new, blue ribbon Commission investigating Pre-War Intelligence. Proud and confident of my efforts, I had no idea Congress was planning to blame “bad intelligence” for the unpopular War.
Over night I became Public Enemy Number One on Capitol Hill.
Thirty days later I awoke to hear FBI agents pounding on my door. My nightmare on the Patriot Act lasted 5 years— Four years after my arrest, the Court granted me one morning of evidentiary testimony by two supremely credible witnesses. Parke Godfrey verified my 9/11 warnings under oath. Otherwise, I never got my day in Court.
The Patriot Act’s Arsenal to Stop Free Speech
If you care about America and the traditions of freedom, whether you’re progressive or conservative, you should be angry about this law.
First come the warrantless searches and FBI tracking surveillance. My work in anti-terrorism gave me no protection. I got my first warrantless search after meeting an undercover FBI agent to discuss my support for free elections in Iraq and my opposition to torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees. (Sorry guys, body wires don’t lie.)
If truth tellers don’t get the message to shut their mouths, the Justice Department ratchets up the pressure. Defendants face secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony. Throughout five years of indictment, my attorneys and I never got to read a single FBI interview or grand jury statement. Under the Patriot Act, the whistleblower/defendant has no right to know who has accused him or her of what criminal activities, or the dates of the alleged offenses, or what laws got broken.
Of course, I was able to piece together my activities. I knew that “sometime in October, 2001″ an Iraqi diplomat gave me the English translation of a book on depleted uranium, which showed how cancer rates and birth defects had spiked in Iraqi children.
And I was quite certain that on October 14, 1999, an Iraqi diplomat asked me how to channel major financial contributions to the Presidential Campaign of George Bush and Dick Cheney. The Justice Department got the date from me, since I reported my conversation immediately to my Defense Intelligence handler, Paul Hoven.
It’s unlikely the grand jury knew that, since the Justice Department has the prerogative to keep a grand jury in the dark. In this brave new world, a grand jury can be compelled to consider indictments carrying 10 years or more in prison, without the right to review evidence, or otherwise determine whether an individual’s actions rise to the level of criminal activity at all.
That’s just the beginning. Once Congress scores an indictment against a political opponent, the Justice Department can force Defense attorneys to undergo protracted security clearances, while the whistle blower cum defendant waits in prison— usually in solitary confinement or the SHU. After the security clearance, prosecutors have an ironclad right to bar attorneys from communicating communications from the prosecution to the defendant, on threat of disbarment, stiff fines or prison sentence.
Scared yet? Once you get to trial, the situation gets much worse. The Patriot Act declares that a prosecutor has no obligation to show evidence of criminal activity to a jury at all. And the Defense can be denied the right to argue a rebuttal to those secret charges, because it requires speculation that might mislead the jury—or might expose issues that the government considers, well, secret.
After all that a Judge can instruct a jury that the prosecution regards the secret evidence as sufficient to merit conviction on the secret charges. The Jury can be barred from considering the lack of evidence in weighing whether to convict.
Think I’m exaggerating? You would be wrong. That’s what happened to me. All of it—with one major glitch. All of this presumes the whistle blower’s lucky enough to get a trial. I was denied mine, though I fought vigorously for my rights. Instead, citing the Patriot Act, I got thrown in prison on a Texas military base without so much as a hearing—and threatened with indefinite detention and forcible drugging, to boot.
Americans are not nearly afraid enough.
Neither is Congress. As of this week, members of Congress should be very afraid. Anyone who votes to extend the Patriot Act should expect to pack their bags in 2012. They will be targeted for defeat. Above all, the words “freedom” and “Constitution” will never appear in their campaigns without suffering extreme public scorn—never, ever again.
Susan Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq, which reveals details of her CIA team’s 9/11 warnings and a comprehensive peace option with Iraq.
Monsanto's Leading Soldier in the War on Raw Milk
June 24, 2011
Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
In recent months there have been many articles dealing with the intensification of the war on milk launched by the FDA. (See here and here. Also here.) I myself, have written articles explaining the dangers of corporate control of the dairy industry and the specific health concerns related to the use of antibiotics and rBGH in the production of milk.
In my book, Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom, I detail these health problems as well as the events surrounding the FDA’s compliance with Monsanto’s wishes regarding the use of rBGH in dairy products. Of course, governmental compliance with corporate wishes is not surprising considering the fact that the ranks of the FDA are filled with former Monsanto employees and affiliates and that there exists a virtual revolving door between the agency and the corporation. Nevertheless, if one wishes to get an idea of the role Monsanto plays in the decisions regarding our food supply, Marie Monique-Robin’s documentary The World According to Monsanto is an excellent place to start. So is Jeffrey Smith’s book Seeds of Deception. The information is readily available to anyone who wishes to engage themselves in even basic cursory research.
Many of these resources will shed light on how we have come so far down the road of corporate control of the food supply and how small farmers and raw milk producers went from being the majority suppliers of dairy products to a persecuted minority who now face the threat of armed SWAT teams and FDA raids. We have come a long way in a short period of time and the speed by which corporate food fascism marches forward is increasing with every day.
It is true that people live and die, but organizations and their agendas continue on. It is also true that many who have walked through the revolving door between multinational corporations like Monsanto and the FDA are no longer with us, at least in the national spotlight. However, there are a few names that continue to appear in the headlines many years after the first attempts at forcing unhealthy and toxic milk products on the public were made.
Indeed, if the new FDA policy on dairy production can be considered a war on milk, then Michael R. Taylor can be considered a veteran. And a highly decorated one at that.
Michael Taylor actually began his career as a lawyer with the FDA in 1976. In 1981, he accepted a position in the law firm King and Spalding where one of his clients was Monsanto. It was discovered that, while he worked for King & Spalding, he drafted a memo regarding the Constitutionality of the state’s ability to create laws regulating the labeling of rBGH. The memo that Taylor had written was part of a much larger discussion by Monsanto and its attorneys as to whether or not the corporation could successfully sue those states and companies who labeled or allowed their products to be labeled as “rBGH-Free.” Taylor’s representation, along with the rest of his law firm, was indispensable to Monsanto and soon the corporation began suing dairies that labeled their products as free from genetically modified hormones.
In 1991, Taylor left King & Spalding (or should I say Monsanto) and returned to the FDA where he would “serve” as Deputy Commissioner of Policy. In this position Taylor oversaw and helped draft the FDA’s guidelines regarding the labeling of rBGH. Not surprisingly, Taylor’s office saw no difference between milk produced with rBGH and milk produced without it, and therefore concluded that there was no reason to include the use of rBGH on the label. As a result of the ensuing controversy, dairies all over the country began marketing the milk they produced without rBGH as “rBGH – Free,” and other similar statements. Thus, in 1994, Taylor drafted FDA guidelines that prevented dairies from labeling their milk as “rBGH – Free” without being accompanied by lengthy statements claiming that the FDA does not see any difference between the rBGH-produced milk and the rBGH-free milk.
Taylor is also known for his significant contributions to the literal support given to the multinational conglomerates that were pushing for approval of genetically modified organisms and other forms of biotechnology. Specifically, he was and still is an advocate for the Orwellian named “Green Revolution” in Africa. For those who are unaware, the Rockefeller Foundation funded Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America with devastating results, particularly in India. The Rockefeller Foundation has now teamed up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in an effort to unleash the same agricultural destruction in Africa.
Taylor is openly in favor of launching a Green Revolution in Africa. Indeed, he is quoted as saying, “I’m still frustrated over the fact that the Green Revolution we introduced into India in the 60’s, we haven’t yet introduced into Africa in 2009.”
In his paper, “American Patent Policy, Biotechnology, and African Agriculture: The Case for Policy Change, written in 2003, Taylor states, “The Green Revolution largely bypassed sub-Saharan Africa. African farmers often face difficult growing conditions, and better access to the basic Green Revolution tools of fertilizer, pesticides, improved seeds, and irrigation certainly can play an important role in improving their productivity.”
When Taylor says, “improved seeds,” he means “genetically modified seeds.” When he says “pesticides” and “fertilizer” he means products manufactured by large agribusiness corporations. Agribusiness corporations like Monsanto. Taylor fails to mention that Monsanto stands to make astronomical profits from the introduction of GM seeds in Africa as the corporation owns an estimated 90 percent of the global GM seed market.
Nevertheless, after his mission was accomplished at the FDA, Taylor left the agency once again. He returned to Monsanto, this time directly, where he became the Vice President of Public Policy from 1998 to 2000. In 2010, Michael Taylor returned to the FDA for a third time when he was appointed by Barack Obama to the position of Deputy Commissioner for Foods.
Taylor has proven his worth to Monsanto yet again by his relentless attack against small, local, raw milk producers for erroneous “health concerns,” “contaminations,” or “public hazards. Indeed, it appears he has arrived at just the right time for Monsanto and other major food corporations as the FDA is currently embroiled in writing the regulations that will be used to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) passed last year.
Anyone remember S.510? It was the bill that had natural health and organic food supporters up in arms several months back. It was the same bill that was touted by the government and the mainstream media as an improvement in food safety. And it was yet another bill that, if criticized, resulted in charges of “conspiracy theories” and paranoia directed at its detractors. Yet, one year on, we are now witnessing SWAT teams descend upon Amish farms for the crime of selling their milk to an individual (working for the federal government of course) who then carried that milk across state lines. Indeed, events are playing out much as the “conspiracy theorists” predicted.
Yet while one might consider SWAT teaming Amish people over raw milk to be a bit of bad press, Michael Taylor and the FDA see just the opposite. As reported by Carolyn Lockhead of the San Francisco Gate, Taylor considers his war on all that is natural and healthy to be a “public health duty” and a “statutory directive.”
As Lochead writes:
On July 3, the agency will issue its new rule to detain any food it believes is unsafe, or, more critically, “mislabeled.” . . . . .
Before the new law, the FDA could only impound food when it had credible evidence the food was contaminated or posed a public health hazard. The detention powers are part of what Taylor described as a new agency focus on preventing food poisoning outbreaks rather than responding to them after the fact. Taylor described the new law as giving the agency “farm to table” control over food safety.
Taylor outlined an aggressive approach, saying he would seek a “high rate of compliance” with new food safety rules, touted the agency’s “whole new inspection and compliance tool kit,” including access to farm records, mandatory recall authority, and enforcement actions that can be accomplished administratively, “without having to go to court.” He said the agency can now also revoke a farm’s mandatory registration (also a new requirement under the law), meaning the FDA can put any farm it finds in violation of any food safety rule out of business.
Because farmers have no recourse through access to federal courts as a result of S.510 (another “conspiracy theory” proven to be fact), the FDA is now allowed to act with total impunity. The fact that humans have a basic God-given right to eat the food of their choice does not apply here. Neither does the fact that humans have been eating small farm food and drinking raw milk for virtually all of recorded history.
In fact, not only is the American tradition of self-sustainability wrecked under this law, but so is the Constitutional right granted to every American for a redress of grievances and access to the court system. However, since corporations have been granted the status of individuals in the United States, it is likely that they (but not small farmers) might find some legal loophole in the future to avoid the fascist dictates of the FDA. That is, if they ever have to in the first place.
But don’t worry about the loopholes. With Michael Taylor in charge of food safety, the odds of that happening are few and far between.
Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
In recent months there have been many articles dealing with the intensification of the war on milk launched by the FDA. (See here and here. Also here.) I myself, have written articles explaining the dangers of corporate control of the dairy industry and the specific health concerns related to the use of antibiotics and rBGH in the production of milk.
In my book, Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom, I detail these health problems as well as the events surrounding the FDA’s compliance with Monsanto’s wishes regarding the use of rBGH in dairy products. Of course, governmental compliance with corporate wishes is not surprising considering the fact that the ranks of the FDA are filled with former Monsanto employees and affiliates and that there exists a virtual revolving door between the agency and the corporation. Nevertheless, if one wishes to get an idea of the role Monsanto plays in the decisions regarding our food supply, Marie Monique-Robin’s documentary The World According to Monsanto is an excellent place to start. So is Jeffrey Smith’s book Seeds of Deception. The information is readily available to anyone who wishes to engage themselves in even basic cursory research.
Many of these resources will shed light on how we have come so far down the road of corporate control of the food supply and how small farmers and raw milk producers went from being the majority suppliers of dairy products to a persecuted minority who now face the threat of armed SWAT teams and FDA raids. We have come a long way in a short period of time and the speed by which corporate food fascism marches forward is increasing with every day.
It is true that people live and die, but organizations and their agendas continue on. It is also true that many who have walked through the revolving door between multinational corporations like Monsanto and the FDA are no longer with us, at least in the national spotlight. However, there are a few names that continue to appear in the headlines many years after the first attempts at forcing unhealthy and toxic milk products on the public were made.
Indeed, if the new FDA policy on dairy production can be considered a war on milk, then Michael R. Taylor can be considered a veteran. And a highly decorated one at that.
Michael Taylor actually began his career as a lawyer with the FDA in 1976. In 1981, he accepted a position in the law firm King and Spalding where one of his clients was Monsanto. It was discovered that, while he worked for King & Spalding, he drafted a memo regarding the Constitutionality of the state’s ability to create laws regulating the labeling of rBGH. The memo that Taylor had written was part of a much larger discussion by Monsanto and its attorneys as to whether or not the corporation could successfully sue those states and companies who labeled or allowed their products to be labeled as “rBGH-Free.” Taylor’s representation, along with the rest of his law firm, was indispensable to Monsanto and soon the corporation began suing dairies that labeled their products as free from genetically modified hormones.
In 1991, Taylor left King & Spalding (or should I say Monsanto) and returned to the FDA where he would “serve” as Deputy Commissioner of Policy. In this position Taylor oversaw and helped draft the FDA’s guidelines regarding the labeling of rBGH. Not surprisingly, Taylor’s office saw no difference between milk produced with rBGH and milk produced without it, and therefore concluded that there was no reason to include the use of rBGH on the label. As a result of the ensuing controversy, dairies all over the country began marketing the milk they produced without rBGH as “rBGH – Free,” and other similar statements. Thus, in 1994, Taylor drafted FDA guidelines that prevented dairies from labeling their milk as “rBGH – Free” without being accompanied by lengthy statements claiming that the FDA does not see any difference between the rBGH-produced milk and the rBGH-free milk.
Taylor is also known for his significant contributions to the literal support given to the multinational conglomerates that were pushing for approval of genetically modified organisms and other forms of biotechnology. Specifically, he was and still is an advocate for the Orwellian named “Green Revolution” in Africa. For those who are unaware, the Rockefeller Foundation funded Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America with devastating results, particularly in India. The Rockefeller Foundation has now teamed up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in an effort to unleash the same agricultural destruction in Africa.
Taylor is openly in favor of launching a Green Revolution in Africa. Indeed, he is quoted as saying, “I’m still frustrated over the fact that the Green Revolution we introduced into India in the 60’s, we haven’t yet introduced into Africa in 2009.”
In his paper, “American Patent Policy, Biotechnology, and African Agriculture: The Case for Policy Change, written in 2003, Taylor states, “The Green Revolution largely bypassed sub-Saharan Africa. African farmers often face difficult growing conditions, and better access to the basic Green Revolution tools of fertilizer, pesticides, improved seeds, and irrigation certainly can play an important role in improving their productivity.”
When Taylor says, “improved seeds,” he means “genetically modified seeds.” When he says “pesticides” and “fertilizer” he means products manufactured by large agribusiness corporations. Agribusiness corporations like Monsanto. Taylor fails to mention that Monsanto stands to make astronomical profits from the introduction of GM seeds in Africa as the corporation owns an estimated 90 percent of the global GM seed market.
Nevertheless, after his mission was accomplished at the FDA, Taylor left the agency once again. He returned to Monsanto, this time directly, where he became the Vice President of Public Policy from 1998 to 2000. In 2010, Michael Taylor returned to the FDA for a third time when he was appointed by Barack Obama to the position of Deputy Commissioner for Foods.
Taylor has proven his worth to Monsanto yet again by his relentless attack against small, local, raw milk producers for erroneous “health concerns,” “contaminations,” or “public hazards. Indeed, it appears he has arrived at just the right time for Monsanto and other major food corporations as the FDA is currently embroiled in writing the regulations that will be used to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) passed last year.
Anyone remember S.510? It was the bill that had natural health and organic food supporters up in arms several months back. It was the same bill that was touted by the government and the mainstream media as an improvement in food safety. And it was yet another bill that, if criticized, resulted in charges of “conspiracy theories” and paranoia directed at its detractors. Yet, one year on, we are now witnessing SWAT teams descend upon Amish farms for the crime of selling their milk to an individual (working for the federal government of course) who then carried that milk across state lines. Indeed, events are playing out much as the “conspiracy theorists” predicted.
Yet while one might consider SWAT teaming Amish people over raw milk to be a bit of bad press, Michael Taylor and the FDA see just the opposite. As reported by Carolyn Lockhead of the San Francisco Gate, Taylor considers his war on all that is natural and healthy to be a “public health duty” and a “statutory directive.”
As Lochead writes:
On July 3, the agency will issue its new rule to detain any food it believes is unsafe, or, more critically, “mislabeled.” . . . . .
Before the new law, the FDA could only impound food when it had credible evidence the food was contaminated or posed a public health hazard. The detention powers are part of what Taylor described as a new agency focus on preventing food poisoning outbreaks rather than responding to them after the fact. Taylor described the new law as giving the agency “farm to table” control over food safety.
Taylor outlined an aggressive approach, saying he would seek a “high rate of compliance” with new food safety rules, touted the agency’s “whole new inspection and compliance tool kit,” including access to farm records, mandatory recall authority, and enforcement actions that can be accomplished administratively, “without having to go to court.” He said the agency can now also revoke a farm’s mandatory registration (also a new requirement under the law), meaning the FDA can put any farm it finds in violation of any food safety rule out of business.
Because farmers have no recourse through access to federal courts as a result of S.510 (another “conspiracy theory” proven to be fact), the FDA is now allowed to act with total impunity. The fact that humans have a basic God-given right to eat the food of their choice does not apply here. Neither does the fact that humans have been eating small farm food and drinking raw milk for virtually all of recorded history.
In fact, not only is the American tradition of self-sustainability wrecked under this law, but so is the Constitutional right granted to every American for a redress of grievances and access to the court system. However, since corporations have been granted the status of individuals in the United States, it is likely that they (but not small farmers) might find some legal loophole in the future to avoid the fascist dictates of the FDA. That is, if they ever have to in the first place.
But don’t worry about the loopholes. With Michael Taylor in charge of food safety, the odds of that happening are few and far between.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing
August 24th, 2010
Source: The Economic Collapse
Sometimes there are things that are so shocking that you just do not want to report them unless they can be completely and totally documented. Over the past few years, there have been many rumors about a coming global currency, but at times it has been difficult to pin down evidence that plans for such a currency are actually in the works. Not anymore. A paper entitled "Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability" by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the "Bancor" and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the "Bancor" be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.
So where in the world did the name "Bancor" come from? Well, it turns out that "Bancor" is the name of a hypothetical world currency unit once suggested by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a world famous British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations.
The Wikipedia entry for "Bancor" puts it this way....
The bancor was a World Currency Unit of clearing that was proposed by John Maynard Keynes, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system, but has not been implemented.
The IMF report referenced above proposed naming the coming world currency unit the "Bancor" in honor of Keynes.
So what about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)? Over the past couple of years, SDRs have been touted as the coming global currency. Well, the report does envision making SDRs "the principal reserve asset" as we move towards a global currency unit....
"As a complement to a multi-polar system, or even—more ambitiously—its logical end point, a greater role could be considered for the SDR."
However, the report also acknowledges that SDRs do have some serious limitations. Since the value of SDRs are closely tied to national currencies, anything affecting those currencies will affect SDRs as well.
Right now, SDRs are made up of a basket of currencies. The following is a breakdown of the components of an SDR....
*U.S. Dollar (44 percent)
*Euro (34 percent)
*Yen (11 percent)
*Pound (11 percent)
The IMF report recognizes that moving to SDRs is only a partial move away from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and urges the adoption of a currency unit that would be truly international. The truth is that SDRs are clumsy and cumbersome. For now, SDRs must still be reconverted back into a national currency before they can be used, and that really limits their usefulness according to the report....
"A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions. And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries."
So what is the answer?
Well, the IMF report believes that the adoption of a true global currency administered by a global central bank is the answer.
The authors of the report believe that it would be ideal if the "Bancor" would immediately be used as currency by many nations throughout the world, but they also acknowledge that a more "realistic" approach would be for the "Bancor" to circulate alongside national currencies at first....
"One option is for bancor to be adopted by fiat as a common currency (like the euro was), an approach that would result immediately in widespread use and eliminate exchange rate volatility among adopters (comparable, for instance, to Cooper 1984, 2006 and the Economist, 1988). A somewhat less ambitious (and more realistic) option would be for bancor to circulate alongside national currencies, though it would need to be adopted by fiat by at least some (not necessarily systemic) countries in order for an exchange market to develop."
So who would print and administer the "Bancor"?
Well, a global central bank of course. It would be something like the Federal Reserve, only completely outside the control of any particular national government....
"A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing."
In fact, at one point the IMF report specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve....
"The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity."
So is that what we really need?
A world currency administered by an international central bank modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Not at all.
As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since it was created and the U.S. government has accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world under this system.
So now we want to impose such a system on the entire globe?
The truth is that a global currency (whether it be called the "Bancor" or given a different name entirely) would be a major blow to national sovereignty and would represent a major move towards global government.
Considering how disastrous the Federal Reserve system and other central banking systems around the world have been, why would anyone suggest that we go to a global central banking system modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Let us hope that the "Bancor" never sees the light of day.
However, the truth is that there are some very powerful interests that are absolutely determined to create a global currency and a global central bank for the global economy that we now live in.
It would be a major mistake to think that it can't happen.
Source: The Economic Collapse
Sometimes there are things that are so shocking that you just do not want to report them unless they can be completely and totally documented. Over the past few years, there have been many rumors about a coming global currency, but at times it has been difficult to pin down evidence that plans for such a currency are actually in the works. Not anymore. A paper entitled "Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability" by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the "Bancor" and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the "Bancor" be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.
So where in the world did the name "Bancor" come from? Well, it turns out that "Bancor" is the name of a hypothetical world currency unit once suggested by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a world famous British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations.
The Wikipedia entry for "Bancor" puts it this way....
The bancor was a World Currency Unit of clearing that was proposed by John Maynard Keynes, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system, but has not been implemented.
The IMF report referenced above proposed naming the coming world currency unit the "Bancor" in honor of Keynes.
So what about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)? Over the past couple of years, SDRs have been touted as the coming global currency. Well, the report does envision making SDRs "the principal reserve asset" as we move towards a global currency unit....
"As a complement to a multi-polar system, or even—more ambitiously—its logical end point, a greater role could be considered for the SDR."
However, the report also acknowledges that SDRs do have some serious limitations. Since the value of SDRs are closely tied to national currencies, anything affecting those currencies will affect SDRs as well.
Right now, SDRs are made up of a basket of currencies. The following is a breakdown of the components of an SDR....
*U.S. Dollar (44 percent)
*Euro (34 percent)
*Yen (11 percent)
*Pound (11 percent)
The IMF report recognizes that moving to SDRs is only a partial move away from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and urges the adoption of a currency unit that would be truly international. The truth is that SDRs are clumsy and cumbersome. For now, SDRs must still be reconverted back into a national currency before they can be used, and that really limits their usefulness according to the report....
"A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions. And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries."
So what is the answer?
Well, the IMF report believes that the adoption of a true global currency administered by a global central bank is the answer.
The authors of the report believe that it would be ideal if the "Bancor" would immediately be used as currency by many nations throughout the world, but they also acknowledge that a more "realistic" approach would be for the "Bancor" to circulate alongside national currencies at first....
"One option is for bancor to be adopted by fiat as a common currency (like the euro was), an approach that would result immediately in widespread use and eliminate exchange rate volatility among adopters (comparable, for instance, to Cooper 1984, 2006 and the Economist, 1988). A somewhat less ambitious (and more realistic) option would be for bancor to circulate alongside national currencies, though it would need to be adopted by fiat by at least some (not necessarily systemic) countries in order for an exchange market to develop."
So who would print and administer the "Bancor"?
Well, a global central bank of course. It would be something like the Federal Reserve, only completely outside the control of any particular national government....
"A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing."
In fact, at one point the IMF report specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve....
"The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity."
So is that what we really need?
A world currency administered by an international central bank modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Not at all.
As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since it was created and the U.S. government has accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world under this system.
So now we want to impose such a system on the entire globe?
The truth is that a global currency (whether it be called the "Bancor" or given a different name entirely) would be a major blow to national sovereignty and would represent a major move towards global government.
Considering how disastrous the Federal Reserve system and other central banking systems around the world have been, why would anyone suggest that we go to a global central banking system modeled after the Federal Reserve?
Let us hope that the "Bancor" never sees the light of day.
However, the truth is that there are some very powerful interests that are absolutely determined to create a global currency and a global central bank for the global economy that we now live in.
It would be a major mistake to think that it can't happen.
The Euro Crisis: How Much Worse Can It Get?
July 14,2011
Source: Yahoo News
With the euro staggering from one crisis to the next, the 17 euro-zone nations are facing some tough questions, but the most pressing one this week seemed to be about scheduling: is it serious enough to warrant an emergency summit meeting? Plans for a Friday gathering in Brussels were hastily rolled out on Tuesday, but when German Chancellor Angela Merkel nixed them the next day, they were just as sharply postponed. If the euro zone's leaders can't even agree when to meet, what hope is there for the euro itself?
With every passing day bringing ever-worse news, the leaders will doubtless be wondering how bad it can get. You could say that crisis management is the euro zone's current default mode - if the word "default" was not such a loaded term when it comes to the debts of certain embattled members of Europe's single currency. (Read how the Greek economic crisis is threatening the euro.)
Just two weeks ago, Greece narrowly passed an austerity law aimed at securing key funding and buying precious time for the embattled euro zone, which is still struggling to put together a second Greek bailout package. Yet the respite lasted only a brief moment before the euro once again tumbled into a downward spiral that shows no sign of recovering.
On Wednesday, credit-ratings agency Moody's downgraded Irish government debt to junk status, following similar downgrades for Portugal last week and Greece last year. Thanks to the growth-choking austerity demands of their bailouts, none of the three countries are expected to see a quick turnaround in their fortunes. According to analysis by Citigroup banking group, Greece's ratio of gross debt to output will have risen to 180% by 2014, while Ireland's will grow to 145% and Portugal's 135%. (See photos of the protests in Athens.)
And as much as it dominates the debate, leaving the euro zone is not an easy option. Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank, says that Athens might ultimately require more than €400 billion ($565 billion) in official support - almost 200% of its GDP today. But if Greece were forced to abandon the euro after a messy default, its nominal GDP would likely be halved. "In that case, the Greek government's debt to its euro-zone partners would be equivalent to 400% of its GDP, very little of which would be repaid," he says. On July 11, euro zone finance ministers all but conceded that Greece is likely to default as they tried to agree a scheme to encourage private and public sector bond-holders to swap existing Greek bonds for new, longer-maturing bonds, thereby giving the country more time to pay them back.
But the Greek default they are hoping to head off is just part of the crisis that is threatening to contaminate other euro-zone members. Borrowing costs have soared for Italy and Spain - respectively the third and fourth largest economies in the euro zone - despite hasty pledges from their finance ministers to take further debt-cutting measures. (See the Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Money.)
Italy and Spain insist that they are secure, but their economies are increasingly seen by markets as the next in a line of dominos: yields on both of their 10-year bonds are now hovering around 6%, meaning the interest rates on their debts are twice as high as those on Germany's. They are nearing the unaffordable levels that could trigger talk of default. Despite this, Spain's Finance Minister Elena Salgado insisted on Monday that Italy and Spain have "strong economies" and that there is no logic to them being affected by market instability.
The case of Italy is particularly worrisome for the euro zone: the country is a founding member of the European Union, a member of the G-8 and, by most accounts, the world's eighth biggest economy. Italian officials point to their large, diversified economy and their high savings rate as reasons to dismiss the market jitters. But not only does the country have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 120%, economic growth is anemic: In the first quarter of this year it was just 0.1%, well below the euro zone average of 0.8%. That helps explain why the odds are shortening on Italy being the next European economy to receive a bailout - literally: Irish bookmaker Paddy Power says Italy is now odds-on to be bailed out by the end of this year, along with Spain. (See five destructive myths about the economic recovery.)
The concerns are echoed by heavyweight financial institutions like the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is also critical of vacillation by Europe's politicians. "We expect the crisis to continue deteriorating and threaten the entire euro area as European policy makers still misunderstand market dynamics," RBS said in a July 13 briefing note. The bank is urging leaders to almost triple the €750 billion ($1.06 trillion) euro-zone bailout fund to some €2 trillion ($2.8 trillion). "A euro-wide policy response is required to address powerful contagion channels which are threatening the stability of the whole region," it says.
Such a response could mean the euro zone shifting towards fiscal unity. The bailout fund, set up in May 2010, is run under unanimity rules but is paralyzed by political interference, according to Paul De Grauwe, professor of international economics at Leuven University in Belgium. "Each euro-zone member has a veto on the fund," De Grauwe says. "Can you imagine individual IMF members having veto power on its decisions? To act decisively, the euro zone needs to accept some transfer of sovereignty, like the IMF."
But De Grauwe has doubts about whether the euro zone is ready for that step. "Our leaders have not been able to cope with this crisis," he says. Until now, Europe's leaders have navigated a tricky passage through a succession escalating crises. If they fail to take decisive action, they risk bringing the euro to its breaking point, De Grauwe warn: "This is a dangerous moment. One should be afraid for survival of the euro zone."
Source: Yahoo News
With the euro staggering from one crisis to the next, the 17 euro-zone nations are facing some tough questions, but the most pressing one this week seemed to be about scheduling: is it serious enough to warrant an emergency summit meeting? Plans for a Friday gathering in Brussels were hastily rolled out on Tuesday, but when German Chancellor Angela Merkel nixed them the next day, they were just as sharply postponed. If the euro zone's leaders can't even agree when to meet, what hope is there for the euro itself?
With every passing day bringing ever-worse news, the leaders will doubtless be wondering how bad it can get. You could say that crisis management is the euro zone's current default mode - if the word "default" was not such a loaded term when it comes to the debts of certain embattled members of Europe's single currency. (Read how the Greek economic crisis is threatening the euro.)
Just two weeks ago, Greece narrowly passed an austerity law aimed at securing key funding and buying precious time for the embattled euro zone, which is still struggling to put together a second Greek bailout package. Yet the respite lasted only a brief moment before the euro once again tumbled into a downward spiral that shows no sign of recovering.
On Wednesday, credit-ratings agency Moody's downgraded Irish government debt to junk status, following similar downgrades for Portugal last week and Greece last year. Thanks to the growth-choking austerity demands of their bailouts, none of the three countries are expected to see a quick turnaround in their fortunes. According to analysis by Citigroup banking group, Greece's ratio of gross debt to output will have risen to 180% by 2014, while Ireland's will grow to 145% and Portugal's 135%. (See photos of the protests in Athens.)
And as much as it dominates the debate, leaving the euro zone is not an easy option. Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank, says that Athens might ultimately require more than €400 billion ($565 billion) in official support - almost 200% of its GDP today. But if Greece were forced to abandon the euro after a messy default, its nominal GDP would likely be halved. "In that case, the Greek government's debt to its euro-zone partners would be equivalent to 400% of its GDP, very little of which would be repaid," he says. On July 11, euro zone finance ministers all but conceded that Greece is likely to default as they tried to agree a scheme to encourage private and public sector bond-holders to swap existing Greek bonds for new, longer-maturing bonds, thereby giving the country more time to pay them back.
But the Greek default they are hoping to head off is just part of the crisis that is threatening to contaminate other euro-zone members. Borrowing costs have soared for Italy and Spain - respectively the third and fourth largest economies in the euro zone - despite hasty pledges from their finance ministers to take further debt-cutting measures. (See the Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Money.)
Italy and Spain insist that they are secure, but their economies are increasingly seen by markets as the next in a line of dominos: yields on both of their 10-year bonds are now hovering around 6%, meaning the interest rates on their debts are twice as high as those on Germany's. They are nearing the unaffordable levels that could trigger talk of default. Despite this, Spain's Finance Minister Elena Salgado insisted on Monday that Italy and Spain have "strong economies" and that there is no logic to them being affected by market instability.
The case of Italy is particularly worrisome for the euro zone: the country is a founding member of the European Union, a member of the G-8 and, by most accounts, the world's eighth biggest economy. Italian officials point to their large, diversified economy and their high savings rate as reasons to dismiss the market jitters. But not only does the country have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 120%, economic growth is anemic: In the first quarter of this year it was just 0.1%, well below the euro zone average of 0.8%. That helps explain why the odds are shortening on Italy being the next European economy to receive a bailout - literally: Irish bookmaker Paddy Power says Italy is now odds-on to be bailed out by the end of this year, along with Spain. (See five destructive myths about the economic recovery.)
The concerns are echoed by heavyweight financial institutions like the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is also critical of vacillation by Europe's politicians. "We expect the crisis to continue deteriorating and threaten the entire euro area as European policy makers still misunderstand market dynamics," RBS said in a July 13 briefing note. The bank is urging leaders to almost triple the €750 billion ($1.06 trillion) euro-zone bailout fund to some €2 trillion ($2.8 trillion). "A euro-wide policy response is required to address powerful contagion channels which are threatening the stability of the whole region," it says.
Such a response could mean the euro zone shifting towards fiscal unity. The bailout fund, set up in May 2010, is run under unanimity rules but is paralyzed by political interference, according to Paul De Grauwe, professor of international economics at Leuven University in Belgium. "Each euro-zone member has a veto on the fund," De Grauwe says. "Can you imagine individual IMF members having veto power on its decisions? To act decisively, the euro zone needs to accept some transfer of sovereignty, like the IMF."
But De Grauwe has doubts about whether the euro zone is ready for that step. "Our leaders have not been able to cope with this crisis," he says. Until now, Europe's leaders have navigated a tricky passage through a succession escalating crises. If they fail to take decisive action, they risk bringing the euro to its breaking point, De Grauwe warn: "This is a dangerous moment. One should be afraid for survival of the euro zone."
Friday, July 15, 2011
It's ever more obvious, Greece must leave the euro
16 July 2011
By Jeremy Warner, Assistant Editor
Source: The Telegraph
I've hardly been alone, but that's no excuse. For more than a year now, I've been regularly predicting the euro crisis's final denouement, yet still it hasn't arrived.
So I've been forced to reach a different conclusion; perhaps it never will. Instead, the eurozone has entered a seeming state of permanent crisis. In desperation, European policymakers have adopted a very British characteristic – the hope that they can somehow just muddle through.
But though no one can know the exact timing of the endgame – that's ultimately for the politicians to decide, so no time soon might be a reasonable bet – it's now fairly clear what that endgame must be.
What's presently being played out among the GIPS (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) is final proof that you cannot have a monetary union of such size among sovereign nations without compensating fiscal union. That simple underlying truth leaves the euro facing a choice between two equally unappetising outcomes.
Either the richer countries carry on bailing out the poorer ones more or less indefinitely, rather in the manner that Germany subsidises its formerly communist East, or membership of the euro has to be reconstituted on a smaller and more sustainable basis. There's really nothing in between. The longer European policymakers remain in denial about this choice, the worse the situation will become.
So it's with a sense of weary familiarity we approach the latest impasse. The European Central Bank is implacably opposed to debt restructuring, but the eurozone's solvent Northern states have reached the limit of their appetite for further bail-outs. This leaves Greece in an impossible position; it can neither reduce its debt burden through restructuring, nor will anyone lend it more money.
By Jeremy Warner, Assistant Editor
Source: The Telegraph
I've hardly been alone, but that's no excuse. For more than a year now, I've been regularly predicting the euro crisis's final denouement, yet still it hasn't arrived.
So I've been forced to reach a different conclusion; perhaps it never will. Instead, the eurozone has entered a seeming state of permanent crisis. In desperation, European policymakers have adopted a very British characteristic – the hope that they can somehow just muddle through.
But though no one can know the exact timing of the endgame – that's ultimately for the politicians to decide, so no time soon might be a reasonable bet – it's now fairly clear what that endgame must be.
What's presently being played out among the GIPS (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) is final proof that you cannot have a monetary union of such size among sovereign nations without compensating fiscal union. That simple underlying truth leaves the euro facing a choice between two equally unappetising outcomes.
Either the richer countries carry on bailing out the poorer ones more or less indefinitely, rather in the manner that Germany subsidises its formerly communist East, or membership of the euro has to be reconstituted on a smaller and more sustainable basis. There's really nothing in between. The longer European policymakers remain in denial about this choice, the worse the situation will become.
So it's with a sense of weary familiarity we approach the latest impasse. The European Central Bank is implacably opposed to debt restructuring, but the eurozone's solvent Northern states have reached the limit of their appetite for further bail-outs. This leaves Greece in an impossible position; it can neither reduce its debt burden through restructuring, nor will anyone lend it more money.
UK banks abandon eurozone over Greek default fears
15 July 2011
By Harry Wilson
Source; The Telegraph
Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.
Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.
Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
In its interim management statement, published in April, Barclays reported a wholesale exposure to Spain of £6.4bn, compared with £7.2bn last June, while its exposure to Italy has fallen by more than £100m.
One source said it was “inevitable” that British banks would look to minimise their potential losses in the event the eurozone crisis were to get worse. “Everyone wants to ensure that they are not badly affected by the crisis,” said one bank executive.
Moves by stronger banks to cut back their lending to weaker banks is reminiscent of the build-up to the financial crisis in 2008, when the refusal of banks to lend to one another led to a
seizing-up of the markets that eventually led to the collapse of several major banks and taxpayer bail-outs of many more.
While the funding position of UK banks is far stronger now than it was back in 2008, the banking systems of several other major European countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, are showing increasing signs of weakness.
Analysts at UBS have warned that eurozone banks are “particularly exposed” having not done enough since the crisis to cut their reliance on the wholesale funding markets and remain acutely sensitive to the withdrawal of liquidity from the inter-bank market.
Simon Adamson, a banks analyst at CreditSights, said it was clear many eurozone banks had been having trouble funding themselves for several months.
“Clearly there are some banks that are finding it difficult to access markets. I think this is a long term sign of the way the markets are going,” he said.
Spanish banks have become the main focus of market concerns with the latest European Central Bank (ECB) figures showing that Spanish banks have been forced to increase their use of ECB lending facilities and borrowed a total of €58bn (£51bn) in May, up from €44bn in April.
“We have been amazed at the ability of Spanish banks to find ways to fund themselves, but it is clear they are running out of options,” said one senior analyst at a major investment bank.
By Harry Wilson
Source; The Telegraph
Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.
Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.
Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
In its interim management statement, published in April, Barclays reported a wholesale exposure to Spain of £6.4bn, compared with £7.2bn last June, while its exposure to Italy has fallen by more than £100m.
One source said it was “inevitable” that British banks would look to minimise their potential losses in the event the eurozone crisis were to get worse. “Everyone wants to ensure that they are not badly affected by the crisis,” said one bank executive.
Moves by stronger banks to cut back their lending to weaker banks is reminiscent of the build-up to the financial crisis in 2008, when the refusal of banks to lend to one another led to a
seizing-up of the markets that eventually led to the collapse of several major banks and taxpayer bail-outs of many more.
While the funding position of UK banks is far stronger now than it was back in 2008, the banking systems of several other major European countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, are showing increasing signs of weakness.
Analysts at UBS have warned that eurozone banks are “particularly exposed” having not done enough since the crisis to cut their reliance on the wholesale funding markets and remain acutely sensitive to the withdrawal of liquidity from the inter-bank market.
Simon Adamson, a banks analyst at CreditSights, said it was clear many eurozone banks had been having trouble funding themselves for several months.
“Clearly there are some banks that are finding it difficult to access markets. I think this is a long term sign of the way the markets are going,” he said.
Spanish banks have become the main focus of market concerns with the latest European Central Bank (ECB) figures showing that Spanish banks have been forced to increase their use of ECB lending facilities and borrowed a total of €58bn (£51bn) in May, up from €44bn in April.
“We have been amazed at the ability of Spanish banks to find ways to fund themselves, but it is clear they are running out of options,” said one senior analyst at a major investment bank.
Greece Mulls Plans to Exit Eurozone, Start New Currency
May 7, 2011
Christian Reiermann
Spiegel Online
Source: Activist Post
The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government's actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area's finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.
Greece's economic problems are massive, with protests against the government being held almost daily. Now Prime Minister George Papandreou apparently feels he has no other option: SPIEGEL ONLINE has obtained information from German government sources knowledgeable of the situation in Athens indicating that Papandreou's government is considering abandoning the euro and reintroducing its own currency.
Alarmed by Athens' intentions, the European Commission has called a crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night. The meeting is taking place at Château de Senningen, a site used by the Luxembourg government for official meetings. In addition to Greece's possible exit from the currency union, a speedy restructuring of the country's debt also features on the agenda. One year after the Greek crisis broke out, the development represents a potentially existential turning point for the European monetary union -- regardless which variant is ultimately decided upon for dealing with Greece's massive troubles.
Given the tense situation, the meeting in Luxembourg has been declared highly confidential, with only the euro-zone finance ministers and senior staff members permitted to attend. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Jörg Asmussen, an influential state secretary in the Finance Ministry, are attending on Germany's behalf.
'Considerable Devaluation'
Sources told SPIEGEL ONLINE that Schäuble intends to seek to prevent Greece from leaving the euro zone if at all possible. He will take with him to the meeting in Luxembourg an internal paper prepared by the experts at his ministry warning of the possible dire consequences if Athens were to drop the euro.
"It would lead to a considerable devaluation of the new (Greek) domestic currency against the euro," the paper states. According to German Finance Ministry estimates, the currency could lose as much as 50 percent of its value, leading to a drastic increase in Greek national debt. Schäuble's staff have calculated that Greece's national deficit would rise to 200 percent of gross domestic product after such a devaluation. "A debt restructuring would be inevitable," his experts warn in the paper. In other words: Greece would go bankrupt.
It remains unclear whether it would even be legally possible for Greece to depart from the euro zone. Legal experts believe it would also be necessary for the country to split from the European Union entirely in order to abandon the common currency. At the same time, it is questionable whether other members of the currency union would actually refuse to accept a unilateral exit from the euro zone by the government in Athens.
What is certain, according to the assessment of the German Finance Ministry, is that the measure would have a disastrous impact on the European economy.
"The currency conversion would lead to capital flight," they write. And Greece might see itself as forced to implement controls on the transfer of capital to stop the flight of funds out of the country. "This could not be reconciled with the fundamental freedoms instilled in the European internal market," the paper states. In addition, the country would also be cut off from capital markets for years to come.
In addition, the withdrawal of a country from the common currency union would "seriously damage faith in the functioning of the euro zone," the document continues. International investors would be forced to consider the possibility that further euro-zone members could withdraw in the future. "That would lead to contagion in the euro zone," the paper continues.
Banks at Risk
Moreover, should Athens turn its back on the common currency zone, it would have serious implications for the already wobbly banking sector, particularly in Greece itself. The change in currency "would consume the entire capital base of the banking system and the country's banks would be abruptly insolvent." Banks outside of Greece would suffer as well. "Credit institutions in Germany and elsewhere would be confronted with considerable losses on their outstanding debts," the paper reads.
The European Central Bank (ECB) would also feel the effects. The Frankfurt-based institution would be forced to "write down a significant portion of its claims as irrecoverable." In addition to its exposure to the banks, the ECB also owns large amounts of Greek state bonds, which it has purchased in recent months. Officials at the Finance Ministry estimate the total to be worth at least €40 billion ($58 billion) "Given its 27 percent share of ECB capital, Germany would bear the majority of the losses," the paper reads.
In short, a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone and an ensuing national default would be expensive for euro-zone countries and their taxpayers. Together with the International Monetary Fund, the EU member states have already pledged €110 billion ($159.5 billion) in aid to Athens -- half of which has already been paid out.
"Should the country become insolvent," the paper reads, "euro-zone countries would have to renounce a portion of their claims."
Christian Reiermann
Spiegel Online
Source: Activist Post
The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government's actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area's finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.
Greece's economic problems are massive, with protests against the government being held almost daily. Now Prime Minister George Papandreou apparently feels he has no other option: SPIEGEL ONLINE has obtained information from German government sources knowledgeable of the situation in Athens indicating that Papandreou's government is considering abandoning the euro and reintroducing its own currency.
Alarmed by Athens' intentions, the European Commission has called a crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night. The meeting is taking place at Château de Senningen, a site used by the Luxembourg government for official meetings. In addition to Greece's possible exit from the currency union, a speedy restructuring of the country's debt also features on the agenda. One year after the Greek crisis broke out, the development represents a potentially existential turning point for the European monetary union -- regardless which variant is ultimately decided upon for dealing with Greece's massive troubles.
Given the tense situation, the meeting in Luxembourg has been declared highly confidential, with only the euro-zone finance ministers and senior staff members permitted to attend. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Jörg Asmussen, an influential state secretary in the Finance Ministry, are attending on Germany's behalf.
'Considerable Devaluation'
Sources told SPIEGEL ONLINE that Schäuble intends to seek to prevent Greece from leaving the euro zone if at all possible. He will take with him to the meeting in Luxembourg an internal paper prepared by the experts at his ministry warning of the possible dire consequences if Athens were to drop the euro.
"It would lead to a considerable devaluation of the new (Greek) domestic currency against the euro," the paper states. According to German Finance Ministry estimates, the currency could lose as much as 50 percent of its value, leading to a drastic increase in Greek national debt. Schäuble's staff have calculated that Greece's national deficit would rise to 200 percent of gross domestic product after such a devaluation. "A debt restructuring would be inevitable," his experts warn in the paper. In other words: Greece would go bankrupt.
It remains unclear whether it would even be legally possible for Greece to depart from the euro zone. Legal experts believe it would also be necessary for the country to split from the European Union entirely in order to abandon the common currency. At the same time, it is questionable whether other members of the currency union would actually refuse to accept a unilateral exit from the euro zone by the government in Athens.
What is certain, according to the assessment of the German Finance Ministry, is that the measure would have a disastrous impact on the European economy.
"The currency conversion would lead to capital flight," they write. And Greece might see itself as forced to implement controls on the transfer of capital to stop the flight of funds out of the country. "This could not be reconciled with the fundamental freedoms instilled in the European internal market," the paper states. In addition, the country would also be cut off from capital markets for years to come.
In addition, the withdrawal of a country from the common currency union would "seriously damage faith in the functioning of the euro zone," the document continues. International investors would be forced to consider the possibility that further euro-zone members could withdraw in the future. "That would lead to contagion in the euro zone," the paper continues.
Banks at Risk
Moreover, should Athens turn its back on the common currency zone, it would have serious implications for the already wobbly banking sector, particularly in Greece itself. The change in currency "would consume the entire capital base of the banking system and the country's banks would be abruptly insolvent." Banks outside of Greece would suffer as well. "Credit institutions in Germany and elsewhere would be confronted with considerable losses on their outstanding debts," the paper reads.
The European Central Bank (ECB) would also feel the effects. The Frankfurt-based institution would be forced to "write down a significant portion of its claims as irrecoverable." In addition to its exposure to the banks, the ECB also owns large amounts of Greek state bonds, which it has purchased in recent months. Officials at the Finance Ministry estimate the total to be worth at least €40 billion ($58 billion) "Given its 27 percent share of ECB capital, Germany would bear the majority of the losses," the paper reads.
In short, a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone and an ensuing national default would be expensive for euro-zone countries and their taxpayers. Together with the International Monetary Fund, the EU member states have already pledged €110 billion ($159.5 billion) in aid to Athens -- half of which has already been paid out.
"Should the country become insolvent," the paper reads, "euro-zone countries would have to renounce a portion of their claims."
ACTIVIST VICTORY: Oak Park Drops Charges Against Julie Bass and Her Vegetable Garden
July 14, 2011
Source: Activist Post
Editor's Note: The real victory here is that would-be tyrants buckled under the pressure of true activism. Great job to everyone who used the tools of the system against the system -- Facebook, petitions, blogs, and tens of thousands of phone calls -- to stand up to this ridiculous injustice. And a hat tip to those in the alternative media who spread this story. So, for the cynics who say that any effort is a waste of time against a power so pervasive, let this be just one more example as to what is possible when people decide to actually take action and DO SOMETHING.
Alexis Wiley, WJBK Fox 2 News
myFOXdetroit.com - No possible jail time for Julie Bass after planting a front yard vegetable garden. The City of Oak Park has dropped the misdemeanor charges against her.
Bass was facing a possible 93-days in jail for planting and not removing her front yard vegetable garden after she received a ticket for a misdemeanor violation. ( see Alexis Wiley original video report)
Bass's story has become an internet sensation with thousands of people across the country chiming in support for what many perceive as a violation of personal freedom.
A petition drive, Facebook page and blog worked in tandem to gain notoriety and perhaps force the city to change its mind about the ticket.
Bass's case was headed to court before today's announcement that the charges were dropped.
Bass does have another issue to settle with the city. Oak Park is pursuing charges that her dogs are not licensed. Bass says she registered them with the city just days after receiving the ticket and has since presented documentation to the prosecutor.
Source: Activist Post
Editor's Note: The real victory here is that would-be tyrants buckled under the pressure of true activism. Great job to everyone who used the tools of the system against the system -- Facebook, petitions, blogs, and tens of thousands of phone calls -- to stand up to this ridiculous injustice. And a hat tip to those in the alternative media who spread this story. So, for the cynics who say that any effort is a waste of time against a power so pervasive, let this be just one more example as to what is possible when people decide to actually take action and DO SOMETHING.
Alexis Wiley, WJBK Fox 2 News
myFOXdetroit.com - No possible jail time for Julie Bass after planting a front yard vegetable garden. The City of Oak Park has dropped the misdemeanor charges against her.
Bass was facing a possible 93-days in jail for planting and not removing her front yard vegetable garden after she received a ticket for a misdemeanor violation. ( see Alexis Wiley original video report)
Bass's story has become an internet sensation with thousands of people across the country chiming in support for what many perceive as a violation of personal freedom.
A petition drive, Facebook page and blog worked in tandem to gain notoriety and perhaps force the city to change its mind about the ticket.
Bass's case was headed to court before today's announcement that the charges were dropped.
Bass does have another issue to settle with the city. Oak Park is pursuing charges that her dogs are not licensed. Bass says she registered them with the city just days after receiving the ticket and has since presented documentation to the prosecutor.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Best Foods that Fill You Up and Boost Your Metabolism and Shed Pounds
July 13 2011
By Ori Hofmekler
What you're about to read here may change the way you think about food. Yes, once you see the facts, you'll realize that most of the products on the grocery shelves don't fit your biology. Most of today's dietary products are not designed to keep your body young.
The genes that regulate your biological age are highly sensitive to your diet, as they're triggered or inhibited by what you eat, how much you eat, and how often. The point is: You need to know how your diet affects your biological age. You need to know what food keeps you young and what food is making you old.
How Your Diet Affects Your Biological Age
It has been largely agreed that one of the most detrimental causes of aging is excessive calorie intake. Scientists speculate that humans have an overly strong drive to eat when food is readily available. And since people are surrounded today with calorie dense food, they tend to consume excess calories, which then cause them to gain weight, lose health, and age prematurely.
Given this, many believe that calorie restriction is the most effective strategy to get in shape and counteract aging. But the calorie restriction theory is only partly true. It can't always predict whether you'll gain weight or lose weight, neither can it predict whether you'll get in shape or get out of shape. You can be on a low calorie diet and fail to lose weight, and you can be on a high calorie diet and yet manage to slim down.
Emerging evidence indicates that there is another powerful factor behind the scene – one that overrules and dictates your energy expenditure, metabolic rate, body fat percentage, physical shape and eventually your biological age. That factor is the system that controls your hunger and satiety signals. And as you'll soon see, it has nothing to do with your calorie intake, but rather with what you eat and how often.
How Your Hunger-Satiety System Affects Your Physical Shape
Your hunger-satiety system consists of multiple neuro-peptides that act to initiate or terminate your feeding. These are your hunger-satiety hormones. Their signals are integrated by centers in your brain to modulate how you consume, spend or store energy. The balance between these signals dictates whether your body is in a fat-burning or a fat-storing mode.
In order to maintain a healthy body weight, your hunger and satiety signals must continually adjust your food intake to your energy expenditure. Any imbalance between these two will affect your fat stores and physical shape. Obesity, for instance, is a result of a disrupted energy balance in which a surplus of accumulated food energy is stored as body fat.
Again, your physical shape seems to depend on the ratio between your hunger and satiety hormones and so is your biological age. Both hormones regulate your eating behavior and metabolic rate, albeit with opposite effects on your body.
Hunger Hormones vs. Satiety Hormones
Your hunger and satiety hormones are constantly clashing with each other like two armies at war. And the consequences of that hormonal clash are manifested in your body. Hunger hormones tend to slow your metabolism and increase your body fat whereas satiety hormones tend to boost your metabolism and decrease your body fat.
Simply put, if your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll be prone to suffer from a sluggish metabolism and excess body fat. And if your satiety hormones take over, they will counteract the effects of your hunger hormones to allow you greater energy and a leaner healthier body.
But note that your hunger hormones are not inherently bad; when balanced, they play important roles in your metabolic system. Under healthy conditions they may even help you burn fat. The hunger peptide ghrelin, for instance, is a most potent trigger of your growth hormone – it binds to growth hormone secreagogue receptors (GHS-Rs) and increases its release by six fold. Indeed, fasting and hunger boost your growth hormones and potentiate its actions to burn fat and repair tissues more efficiently than drugs – naturally and safely without side effects.
Your hunger hormones are part of your survival apparatus. They relate to your satiety hormones like yin to yang. They keep you alert and give you the drive to search for food along with the desire to achieve. And they balance the actions of your satiety hormones which tend to calm you down.
But if you let your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll experience chronic hunger, diminished energy, metabolic decline, decreased libido and increased tendency to gain weight.
You need to know how to manipulate both types of hormones to work for you. And you certainly need to keep your hunger hormones under control. But how can you do that if you don't even know what causes your hunger hormones to get out of control?
What Causes Your Hunger Hormones Get Out of Control?
Normally your hunger hormones are highly responsive to feeding – their levels increase during fasting and reduce upon food ingestion. Your most notable hunger hormones are ghrelin, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related protein (AgRP).
During fasting, your hunger hormone ghrelin peaks, boosting your growth hormone to initiate fat burning. Meanwhile, your remaining hunger hormones are continually balanced by your satiety hormones (adiponectin and glucagon-like peptide). This keeps your hunger under control and potentiates your sensitivity to satiety signals.
Then, when you resume eating, your hunger hormones decline – allowing your satiety hormones to kick in and act to boost your metabolism.
That's how your hunger-satiety system works under healthy conditions. It allows you to burn fat when you don't eat and it acts to boost your metabolism when you eat. Hence, a win-win situation.
But your hunger-satiety system can only function well as long as your diet is adequate. If your diet is high glycemic and your feeding episodes are too frequent, your hunger-satiety system will be utterly disrupted.
Frequent consumption of high glycemic meals impairs your key satiety hormones insulin and leptin, leaving your hunger hormones unopposed and dominant. When insulin is impaired (such as in cases of insulin resistance), ghrelin levels remain elevated even after meal consumption – a condition that leads to chronic hunger (mostly for carbs), excess food intake and undesirable weight gain.
This issue has been widely overlooked, perhaps because people normally like to consume baked goods and candies on a daily basis and even more so during celebrations. But the evidence leaves no doubt: frequent consumption of high glycemic foods jeopardize your satiety apparatus and put your body under the tyranny of your hunger hormones.
To prevent that you need to avoid high glycemic foods and resist cravings for sweets. You need to know how to boost your satiety hormones and let them take control over your metabolism.
How to Boost Your Satiety Hormones
Your satiety hormones include insulin, leptin, adiponectin, cholesystokinin (CCK), glucagon-like peptide (GLP), PPY and melanocortin. When potentiated to counteract your hunger hormones, they help increase your energy expenditure, stimulate your thyroid, enhance your sex hormones, lower your stress hormones and increase your capacity to burn fat.
The three main factors that boost your satiety hormones are:
– Food restriction
– Exercise
– Weight loss
Food restriction, exercise and weight loss increase the sensitivity and effectiveness of your insulin and leptin while potentiating the actions of your other satiety hormones. This means that with proper diet, exercise and restoration of a healthy body weight, you can increase the efficiency of your satiety hormones to allow you be at your peak physical potential. But how do you put this in practice? How do you put your satiety hormones in charge?
There are three ways to achieve that:
1. Eat satiety foods
2. Avoid hunger foods
3. Train your body to endure hunger
Eat Satiating Foods
The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that's if the whey is whole and non-denatured.
Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body's metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.
Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.
Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.
That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it's the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.
And note that your muscle isn't programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup.
All that said, you can't fully benefit from your satiety food if you don't know what food to avoid.
Avoid Hunger Foods
Stay away from high glycemic foods including all refined carbohydrates, sugars, fructose products, baked goods, candies and sugary beverages. Fructose in particular has shown to cause leptin resistance, lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Studies reveal that the muscle rejects fructose as an energy substrate and the liver has a limited capacity to utilize it; excess fructose is converted into triglycerides and body fat.
But nothing is more damaging to your satiety than the combination of high sugar and high fat. This dietary combo packs on empty calories, causes insulin and leptin resistance and shatters your satiety along with your whole metabolic system. In fact, it has been found that the high sugar-high fat combo causes insulin and leptin resistance even prior to any change in body composition.
This means that all food products made with a high content of sugar and fat are poisonous to your satiety system. These include cookies, cakes, ice creams and chocolates, all of which set you up for serious metabolic setbacks associated with insulin and leptin resistance which may include excess estrogen, excess cortisol, low testosterone, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia and increased belly fat.
The good news is that both insulin and leptin resistance can be reversed by food restriction and weight loss. Hence, your insulin and leptin are restored by austerity and shattered by indulgence.
It has been suggested that insulin and leptin play important roles in times of scarcity but have a lesser role in times of plenty. To keep your insulin and leptin intact you must not indulge yourself with high glycemic treats, not even in moderation. Otherwise, your body will get the wrong signal and you'll pay the consequences with your weight, energy and state of health.
Now that you know how to choose your satiety foods, let's take a look at the other methods that boost your satiety hormones.
Train Your Body to Endure Hunger
Hunger should be treated like physical exercise. Both are perceived by your body as survival signals to adapt and improve. When your body is repeatedly challenged with acute (temporary) hunger, such as due to periodic fasting, it adjusts itself by decreasing the number of hunger receptors in your brain and thus making you increasingly resilient to hunger. This in turn increases the efficiency of your satiety hormones, and potentiates them to take control of your metabolism.
But only real hunger can benefit you that way. Real hunger is what you experience while fasting or undereating, not the kind of craving you feel on a fully belly after finishing a meal.
There are different ways to train your body to endure hunger. You can try to gradually increase the gap between your meals or alternatively put your body in an undereating state for most of the day. And you can also try exercising while fasting. Let's see how all this translates into practice.
Undereating
You can put your body in an undereating state by minimizing your food intake during the day to small, low glycemic, fast assimilating protein meals such as quality whey (every 3-5 hours), which could be served with (or substituted with) small servings of fruits and vegetables. Have your main meal at night.
Undereating has some notable advantages over complete fasting. It challenges your body similar to fasting – yielding a negative energy balance which increases your adaptability to hunger while promoting fat burning and tissue recycling. However unlike fasting, it allows you to nourish your body with protein and antioxidants, and you won't feel the desire to eat as intensely as when you completely avoid food.
But whether you fast or undereat, do not chronically restrict your calories. Your hunger must be acute, not chronic. Treat yourself with sufficient food in your main evening meal to compensate for the energy and nutrients you spend during the day.
Exercising While Fasting
Probably the most intense way to improve your hunger durability is by exercising while fasting. This presents a double challenge to your body and it yields a stronger signal to adapt than fasting or exercise alone. Though exercise while fasting may initially affect your maximum performance, it will nevertheless come with an additional bonus.
A study published in the Journal of Physchology/November 2010 indicated that exercising while fasting increases the body's metabolic adaptation efficiency to utilize energy, burn fat and deposit protein in the muscle – substantially more than when exercising after a meal. The researchers reported that the increased capacity to deposit protein in the muscle as observed in people who were exercising while fasting and then eating a post-exercise meal, is a result of increased insulin sensitivity and activation of the muscle mTOR (the mechanism that increases muscle protein synthesis).
Your body is inherently programmed to benefit from acute hunger (via periodic fasting or undereating) and even more so when exercising while fasting. This probably has to do with an early adaptation mechanism to hunger and hardship which evolved to support human survival during primordial times of food scarcity and intense hardship. Apparently, this primal evolutionary trait is still pertinent today and it potentially affects your physical shape.
Projections
Understanding the biological system that regulates hunger and satiety along with energy balance is essential for preventing excessive weight gain, metabolic decline and premature aging. More studies are needed to elucidate the relationship between human nutrition and aging. As the mechanisms of feeding and energy homeostasis are studied and clarified, treatments based on natural manipulations of hunger and satiety could be just as effective as hormonal therapy in adjusting hormonal disorders and deficiencies.
Manipulations of hunger and satiety through special nutritional strategies may be useful in restoring thyroid hormone activity, balancing estrogen, and attenuating or preventing growth hormone and testosterone decline. These strategies may help affect the enormous morbidity associated with obesity, diabetes and related diseases.
In today's world, you need to know what are your best options for keeping your body biologically young. In this case, nature doesn't leave you with many choices – controlling your hunger is not an option, it's a necessity.
About the Author
Ori Hofmekler, author of The Warrior Diet, The Anti-Estrogenic Diet, Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, and the upcoming book Unlock Your Muscle Gene is an expert on how to improve your health with foods.
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By Ori Hofmekler
What you're about to read here may change the way you think about food. Yes, once you see the facts, you'll realize that most of the products on the grocery shelves don't fit your biology. Most of today's dietary products are not designed to keep your body young.
The genes that regulate your biological age are highly sensitive to your diet, as they're triggered or inhibited by what you eat, how much you eat, and how often. The point is: You need to know how your diet affects your biological age. You need to know what food keeps you young and what food is making you old.
How Your Diet Affects Your Biological Age
It has been largely agreed that one of the most detrimental causes of aging is excessive calorie intake. Scientists speculate that humans have an overly strong drive to eat when food is readily available. And since people are surrounded today with calorie dense food, they tend to consume excess calories, which then cause them to gain weight, lose health, and age prematurely.
Given this, many believe that calorie restriction is the most effective strategy to get in shape and counteract aging. But the calorie restriction theory is only partly true. It can't always predict whether you'll gain weight or lose weight, neither can it predict whether you'll get in shape or get out of shape. You can be on a low calorie diet and fail to lose weight, and you can be on a high calorie diet and yet manage to slim down.
Emerging evidence indicates that there is another powerful factor behind the scene – one that overrules and dictates your energy expenditure, metabolic rate, body fat percentage, physical shape and eventually your biological age. That factor is the system that controls your hunger and satiety signals. And as you'll soon see, it has nothing to do with your calorie intake, but rather with what you eat and how often.
How Your Hunger-Satiety System Affects Your Physical Shape
Your hunger-satiety system consists of multiple neuro-peptides that act to initiate or terminate your feeding. These are your hunger-satiety hormones. Their signals are integrated by centers in your brain to modulate how you consume, spend or store energy. The balance between these signals dictates whether your body is in a fat-burning or a fat-storing mode.
In order to maintain a healthy body weight, your hunger and satiety signals must continually adjust your food intake to your energy expenditure. Any imbalance between these two will affect your fat stores and physical shape. Obesity, for instance, is a result of a disrupted energy balance in which a surplus of accumulated food energy is stored as body fat.
Again, your physical shape seems to depend on the ratio between your hunger and satiety hormones and so is your biological age. Both hormones regulate your eating behavior and metabolic rate, albeit with opposite effects on your body.
Hunger Hormones vs. Satiety Hormones
Your hunger and satiety hormones are constantly clashing with each other like two armies at war. And the consequences of that hormonal clash are manifested in your body. Hunger hormones tend to slow your metabolism and increase your body fat whereas satiety hormones tend to boost your metabolism and decrease your body fat.
Simply put, if your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll be prone to suffer from a sluggish metabolism and excess body fat. And if your satiety hormones take over, they will counteract the effects of your hunger hormones to allow you greater energy and a leaner healthier body.
But note that your hunger hormones are not inherently bad; when balanced, they play important roles in your metabolic system. Under healthy conditions they may even help you burn fat. The hunger peptide ghrelin, for instance, is a most potent trigger of your growth hormone – it binds to growth hormone secreagogue receptors (GHS-Rs) and increases its release by six fold. Indeed, fasting and hunger boost your growth hormones and potentiate its actions to burn fat and repair tissues more efficiently than drugs – naturally and safely without side effects.
Your hunger hormones are part of your survival apparatus. They relate to your satiety hormones like yin to yang. They keep you alert and give you the drive to search for food along with the desire to achieve. And they balance the actions of your satiety hormones which tend to calm you down.
But if you let your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll experience chronic hunger, diminished energy, metabolic decline, decreased libido and increased tendency to gain weight.
You need to know how to manipulate both types of hormones to work for you. And you certainly need to keep your hunger hormones under control. But how can you do that if you don't even know what causes your hunger hormones to get out of control?
What Causes Your Hunger Hormones Get Out of Control?
Normally your hunger hormones are highly responsive to feeding – their levels increase during fasting and reduce upon food ingestion. Your most notable hunger hormones are ghrelin, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related protein (AgRP).
During fasting, your hunger hormone ghrelin peaks, boosting your growth hormone to initiate fat burning. Meanwhile, your remaining hunger hormones are continually balanced by your satiety hormones (adiponectin and glucagon-like peptide). This keeps your hunger under control and potentiates your sensitivity to satiety signals.
Then, when you resume eating, your hunger hormones decline – allowing your satiety hormones to kick in and act to boost your metabolism.
That's how your hunger-satiety system works under healthy conditions. It allows you to burn fat when you don't eat and it acts to boost your metabolism when you eat. Hence, a win-win situation.
But your hunger-satiety system can only function well as long as your diet is adequate. If your diet is high glycemic and your feeding episodes are too frequent, your hunger-satiety system will be utterly disrupted.
Frequent consumption of high glycemic meals impairs your key satiety hormones insulin and leptin, leaving your hunger hormones unopposed and dominant. When insulin is impaired (such as in cases of insulin resistance), ghrelin levels remain elevated even after meal consumption – a condition that leads to chronic hunger (mostly for carbs), excess food intake and undesirable weight gain.
This issue has been widely overlooked, perhaps because people normally like to consume baked goods and candies on a daily basis and even more so during celebrations. But the evidence leaves no doubt: frequent consumption of high glycemic foods jeopardize your satiety apparatus and put your body under the tyranny of your hunger hormones.
To prevent that you need to avoid high glycemic foods and resist cravings for sweets. You need to know how to boost your satiety hormones and let them take control over your metabolism.
How to Boost Your Satiety Hormones
Your satiety hormones include insulin, leptin, adiponectin, cholesystokinin (CCK), glucagon-like peptide (GLP), PPY and melanocortin. When potentiated to counteract your hunger hormones, they help increase your energy expenditure, stimulate your thyroid, enhance your sex hormones, lower your stress hormones and increase your capacity to burn fat.
The three main factors that boost your satiety hormones are:
– Food restriction
– Exercise
– Weight loss
Food restriction, exercise and weight loss increase the sensitivity and effectiveness of your insulin and leptin while potentiating the actions of your other satiety hormones. This means that with proper diet, exercise and restoration of a healthy body weight, you can increase the efficiency of your satiety hormones to allow you be at your peak physical potential. But how do you put this in practice? How do you put your satiety hormones in charge?
There are three ways to achieve that:
1. Eat satiety foods
2. Avoid hunger foods
3. Train your body to endure hunger
Eat Satiating Foods
The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that's if the whey is whole and non-denatured.
Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body's metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.
Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.
Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.
That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it's the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.
And note that your muscle isn't programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup.
All that said, you can't fully benefit from your satiety food if you don't know what food to avoid.
Avoid Hunger Foods
Stay away from high glycemic foods including all refined carbohydrates, sugars, fructose products, baked goods, candies and sugary beverages. Fructose in particular has shown to cause leptin resistance, lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Studies reveal that the muscle rejects fructose as an energy substrate and the liver has a limited capacity to utilize it; excess fructose is converted into triglycerides and body fat.
But nothing is more damaging to your satiety than the combination of high sugar and high fat. This dietary combo packs on empty calories, causes insulin and leptin resistance and shatters your satiety along with your whole metabolic system. In fact, it has been found that the high sugar-high fat combo causes insulin and leptin resistance even prior to any change in body composition.
This means that all food products made with a high content of sugar and fat are poisonous to your satiety system. These include cookies, cakes, ice creams and chocolates, all of which set you up for serious metabolic setbacks associated with insulin and leptin resistance which may include excess estrogen, excess cortisol, low testosterone, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia and increased belly fat.
The good news is that both insulin and leptin resistance can be reversed by food restriction and weight loss. Hence, your insulin and leptin are restored by austerity and shattered by indulgence.
It has been suggested that insulin and leptin play important roles in times of scarcity but have a lesser role in times of plenty. To keep your insulin and leptin intact you must not indulge yourself with high glycemic treats, not even in moderation. Otherwise, your body will get the wrong signal and you'll pay the consequences with your weight, energy and state of health.
Now that you know how to choose your satiety foods, let's take a look at the other methods that boost your satiety hormones.
Train Your Body to Endure Hunger
Hunger should be treated like physical exercise. Both are perceived by your body as survival signals to adapt and improve. When your body is repeatedly challenged with acute (temporary) hunger, such as due to periodic fasting, it adjusts itself by decreasing the number of hunger receptors in your brain and thus making you increasingly resilient to hunger. This in turn increases the efficiency of your satiety hormones, and potentiates them to take control of your metabolism.
But only real hunger can benefit you that way. Real hunger is what you experience while fasting or undereating, not the kind of craving you feel on a fully belly after finishing a meal.
There are different ways to train your body to endure hunger. You can try to gradually increase the gap between your meals or alternatively put your body in an undereating state for most of the day. And you can also try exercising while fasting. Let's see how all this translates into practice.
Undereating
You can put your body in an undereating state by minimizing your food intake during the day to small, low glycemic, fast assimilating protein meals such as quality whey (every 3-5 hours), which could be served with (or substituted with) small servings of fruits and vegetables. Have your main meal at night.
Undereating has some notable advantages over complete fasting. It challenges your body similar to fasting – yielding a negative energy balance which increases your adaptability to hunger while promoting fat burning and tissue recycling. However unlike fasting, it allows you to nourish your body with protein and antioxidants, and you won't feel the desire to eat as intensely as when you completely avoid food.
But whether you fast or undereat, do not chronically restrict your calories. Your hunger must be acute, not chronic. Treat yourself with sufficient food in your main evening meal to compensate for the energy and nutrients you spend during the day.
Exercising While Fasting
Probably the most intense way to improve your hunger durability is by exercising while fasting. This presents a double challenge to your body and it yields a stronger signal to adapt than fasting or exercise alone. Though exercise while fasting may initially affect your maximum performance, it will nevertheless come with an additional bonus.
A study published in the Journal of Physchology/November 2010 indicated that exercising while fasting increases the body's metabolic adaptation efficiency to utilize energy, burn fat and deposit protein in the muscle – substantially more than when exercising after a meal. The researchers reported that the increased capacity to deposit protein in the muscle as observed in people who were exercising while fasting and then eating a post-exercise meal, is a result of increased insulin sensitivity and activation of the muscle mTOR (the mechanism that increases muscle protein synthesis).
Your body is inherently programmed to benefit from acute hunger (via periodic fasting or undereating) and even more so when exercising while fasting. This probably has to do with an early adaptation mechanism to hunger and hardship which evolved to support human survival during primordial times of food scarcity and intense hardship. Apparently, this primal evolutionary trait is still pertinent today and it potentially affects your physical shape.
Projections
Understanding the biological system that regulates hunger and satiety along with energy balance is essential for preventing excessive weight gain, metabolic decline and premature aging. More studies are needed to elucidate the relationship between human nutrition and aging. As the mechanisms of feeding and energy homeostasis are studied and clarified, treatments based on natural manipulations of hunger and satiety could be just as effective as hormonal therapy in adjusting hormonal disorders and deficiencies.
Manipulations of hunger and satiety through special nutritional strategies may be useful in restoring thyroid hormone activity, balancing estrogen, and attenuating or preventing growth hormone and testosterone decline. These strategies may help affect the enormous morbidity associated with obesity, diabetes and related diseases.
In today's world, you need to know what are your best options for keeping your body biologically young. In this case, nature doesn't leave you with many choices – controlling your hunger is not an option, it's a necessity.
About the Author
Ori Hofmekler, author of The Warrior Diet, The Anti-Estrogenic Diet, Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, and the upcoming book Unlock Your Muscle Gene is an expert on how to improve your health with foods.
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