An anti-GMO mosquito activist was in Washington DC to deliver a petition to the EPA when she was found dead, floating in the pool of her hotel. Police are refusing to release details surrounding the case.
The post Anti-GMO Mosquito Activist in DC to Deliver Petition to EPA Found Floating Dead in Hotel Pool appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The state of California is now using "Smog Checkpoints" to determine whether drivers are complying with state laws regulating carbon emissions, which raises serious concerns among privacy advocates.
The post WATCH: Cops Running ‘Smog Checkpoints’, Stopping Motorists to Check Their Emissions appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
An anti-GMO mosquito activist was in Washington DC to deliver a petition to the EPA when she was found dead, floating in the pool of her hotel. Police are refusing to release details surrounding the case.
The post Anti-GMO Mosquito Activist in DC to Deliver Petition to EPA Found Floating Dead in Hotel Pool appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The state of California is now using "Smog Checkpoints" to determine whether drivers are complying with state laws regulating carbon emissions, which raises serious concerns among privacy advocates.
The post WATCH: Cops Running ‘Smog Checkpoints’, Stopping Motorists to Check Their Emissions appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A team of astrophysicists has conducted a years-long study showing that in only a few years, Earth may experience a mini ice age that would drastically change how we live.
Nestlé has stolen billions of gallons of water from drought-stricken California without a valid basis of right, according to the California State Water Board.
A massive new study on bees from 40 US states with data analyzed using machine learning has found the dangerous culprit behind bee population decline.
A FOIA request has revealed that DARPA is funding a "gene extinction" project that could wipe out entire races, just as the military admits to harvesting Russian biosamples.
A former state-sponsored scientist revealed that he was ordered to alter his findings on the links between fracking and earthquakes.
An investigation found that Flint, Michigan ranks nowhere near the top when it comes to lead in the water, thousands of areas are far worse.
When conversationalists offered $150,000 to preserve large portions of Indiana"s Yellowwood State Park, the government sold it to a logging company for less
Only 10 companies control almost every large food and beverage brand in the world.
In 2013, Oxfam International created a “Behind the Brands” report, which focused on 10 of the world’s biggest and most influential food and beverage companies. These mega-corporations are so powerful that their policies can have a major impact on the diets and working conditions of people worldwide.
In an effort to push these companies to make positive changes—and for customers to realize who controls the brands they are buying—Oxfam created a mind-boggling infographic that shows how interconnected consumer brands really are.
Based on the report, these 10 companies, known as the “Big Ten,” are Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods and Mondelez. Each of these companies employs thousands and make billions of dollars in revenue every year, while virtually controlling the world’s food supply.
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The Oxfam scorecard assesses the agricultural sourcing policies of the world’s 10 largest food and beverage companies and exclusively focused on publicly available information that relates to the policies of these companies on their sourcing of agricultural commodities from developing countries.
The selection of these companies was based on those with the largest overall revenues globally, as well as their position in the Forbes 2000 annual ranking, which measures companies on the basis of composite sales, assets, profits and market value.
The agriculture and food production industry employed more than one billion people as of last year, or a third of the global workforce. While the industry is substantial, a relatively small number of companies wield an enormous amount of influence.
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“If you look at the massive global food system, it’s hard to get your head around. Just a handful of companies can dictate food choices, supplier terms and consumer variety,” Chris Jochnick, director of the private sector department at Oxfam America, told 24/7 Wall St.
“In Pakistan, rural communities say Nestlé is bottling and selling valuable groundwater near villages that can’t afford clean water. In 2009, Kraft was accused of purchasing beef from Brazilian suppliers linked to cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest in order to graze cattle. And today, Coca-Cola is facing allegations of child labor in its supply chain in the Philippines,” the Oxfam “Behind the Brand” report notes.
“Sadly, these charges are not anomalies. For more than 100 years, the world’s most powerful food and beverage companies have relied on cheap land and labor to produce inexpensive products and huge profits. But these profits have often come at the cost of the environment and local communities around the world, and have contributed to a food system in crisis.”
These 10 companies are among the largest in the world by a number of measures and essentially operate as an oligopoly. Every one of the “Big 10” had revenues in the tens of billions of dollars in Fiscal Year 2013—with five of these companies having at least $50 billion in assets, while four had more than $6 billion in profits last year.
Many of these companies are household names, as they often spend massive amounts on advertising in an effort to promote their brands. Out of these companies, nine of the ten were among the 100 largest purchasers of media advertising in the world in 2012. Coca-Cola, the world’s sixth largest advertiser, spent more than $3 billion in 2012 on advertising. Unilever’s media expenditure, at $7.4 billion, was the second-highest worldwide.
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Essentially, these companies work to propagandize the public into a sense of familiarity through advertising, in an effort to keep people buying their “food-like” products. Across western society, and specifically in the United States, most of what we buy is what environmental and food advocate Michael Pollan deems “edible, food-like substances.”
“If it has more than five ingredients, it’s probably not food. Or if it has ingredients that your third grader can’t pronounce, it’s probably not food,” Pollan says.
Typically, “food-like” items come from a guy in a white lab coat, rather than from nature, and these products are not good for your body, or your health. It is important to remember that the “Big 10” specialize in edible “food-like” products that come from a lab and you should do your best to steer clear of them.
While “food-like” products may not be extremely harmful when used infrequently, it is important to remember that these products often contain unhealthy trans fats, high levels of sodium, hydrogenated oils and refined sugar, especially high fructose corn syrup. All of these things have been linked to one or more chronic diseases. In addition, many processed foods are much lower in vitamins and minerals but much higher in calories than whole foods.
Please share this enlightening infographic to help others become aware of which companies are selling the vast majority of unhealthy “food-like” substances that are detrimental to the human health!
Image via behindthebrands.org
With roughly 1.5 million Floridians initially without electricity from the damage inflicted on Florida’s energy infrastructure, many in the Sunshine State are now questioning why it’s so difficult for people to utilize solar energy.
The simple answer is that one of the major electrical suppliers in the state – Florida Power and Light (FPL) – has utilized a massive lobbying campaign, directed at state lawmakers, to create legal barriers to disallow people from powering their own homes with solar panels without being subject to power companies.
In fact, current Florida state law makes it illegal.
This is the definition of crony capitalism. Companies lobby government officials, who then vote in favor of the corporate position — often for a quid pro quo in the form of financial support for the officials’ reelection campaign.
Any solar panels erected on a home must be connected to the local electrical power grid.
So, if you want to build an off the grid home – it is illegal to install solar panels on your home.
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Just ask Robert Tarr who, according to WFTV, spent more than $60,000 for a system of 32 solar panels for his roof. But even though his house can generate enough electricity to run indefinitely without being hooked to a power company, legally, he still has to be connected and pay the Leesburg Electric Department for power he doesn’t even need.
“So you can be completely free of the grid?” Channel 9’s Jamie Holmes asked.
“Yes,” Tarr said.
“But they make you attach to the grid,” Holmes asked.
“Yes,” Tarr said. “I have a problem with it, OK? I think if I want to be totally independent of them, I should be allowed to be,” Tarr said.
READ MORE: Court Rules Pointing Your Finger at a Cop is Illegal—Not Protected by 1st Amendment
If Tarr were to stop paying his electric bill, reports WFTV, he said Leesburg would shut off his power. City officials could also revoke his certificate of occupancy for not being hooked up to the system.
So, if this family wanted to defy the power company and remove his solar from the control of the power company, the government could revoke his certificate of occupancy—making it illegal for anyone to live in the home!
Rest assured that any attempt to resist one’s removal from said home would be met with police force and violent escalation.
The extreme crony capitalism at work in Florida is astounding, and nothing less than draconian.
With roof-mounted solar panels becoming an increasingly inexpensive means of producing cheap renewable energy, the fact that the state panders to the old energy dinosaurs to stifle consumer-friendly innovation is nothing less than infuriating.
In fact, Project Drawdown, which is a broad coalition of researchers, scientists, graduate students, PhDs, post-docs, policymakers, business leaders and activists that have assembled to find and present the best available information on climate solutions in order to describe their beneficial financial, social and environmental impact over the next thirty years has found that widespread solar use would save $3.5 trillion dollars and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 24.6 billion tons over the next 30 years if utilized.
Ironically, solar panels would make for a completely self-sustaining method of energy production if the local electrical grid were to fail during a crisis — like a hurricane.
Make no mistake, the old energy oligarchy simply refuses to be cut out of potential profits, which is what happens when you no longer need to rely on them for power needs and possess the ability to power your own home.
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Instead of owning their greedy intentions, companies like FPL, instead, attempt to rationalize their actions through absurd explanations.
“Operating your renewable system without the bi-directional meter can result in an inaccurate meter reading causing your bill to increase,” FPL claims, which essentially means that for proactively approaching your energy needs, it could result in a potential glitch in their system that will charge you more money on your electrical bill.
They also recommend that all homes powered by FPL, that have solar panels, be connected through the same electrical wiring, and “the [renewable] system must shut down when FPL’s grid shuts down in order to prevent dangerous back feed on FPL’s grid. This is required to protect FPL employees who may be working on the grid.”
Ironically, FPL is basically saying that their workers could potentially be electrocuted if they’re doing maintenance on the grid during an inadvertent or scheduled shutdown, while completely ignoring the fact that there would be NO risk to those workers if the home wasn’t legally required to be connected to the grid!
If Florida residents were not forced to have their solar panels connected to the electrical grid, which FPL lobbied state lawmakers to require, there would be absolutely no problem.
Aside from the clear environmental and security benefits of producing your own energy, becoming a leader in the solar industry would be a boon for the economy in the Sunshine State.
Sadly, it’s these crony capitalist policies that leave states like Florida in the dark.
Short-sighted policies like these have definitely not served the people of Florida, to which the 1.5 million Floridians without power can most certainly attest.
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Please share this story to expose how governmental corruption picks the winners and losers and decimates a free market that could much better serve the people!
A world addicted to the consumption of chemical beverages with negative nutritional value — responsible for filling hospital beds across earth — is quickly realizing this habit comes with a price outside of currency and health problems. Water. The residents of San Felipe Ecatepec, an Indigenous town three miles outside of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, in southern Mexico have watched their water wells literally dry up in only a few years — thanks to Coca-Cola.
Juan Urbano, former president of the Communal Territory of San Felipe Ecatepec, says the water is drying up thanks to the people’s thirst for this chemical concoction known as Coca-Cola.
“Many people don’t drink pozol anymore,” Urbano told Truth Out. “They’ve replaced it with Coca-Cola.” Pozol is a drink made from fermented corn dough that was popular among corn farmers and their communities. However, that is all changing.
In between San Felipe and the next town over, there lies a Coca-Cola bottling plant — which, in order to keep up with demand — consumed over 1.08 million gallons of water PER DAY just last year.
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As Truth Out reports:
San Felipe Ecatepec is one of thousands of towns across Mexico where corporate water consumption has taken precedence over local need. Advocates are scrambling to rein in a chain of public health consequences.
Chiapas has the highest renewable water resources per capita in all of Mexico. Yet, the tap water here is rarely safe to drink. And in rural Chiapas, more than one in three people do not have running water. Urbano describes how families in San Felipe frequently get sick from drinking contaminated well water.
“We have been asking the government to install a deep well in the community for 12 years,” says Urbano. “We’ve gone to the municipal, state and federal governments, but they’ve done nothing.”
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In spite of the Mexican Constitution requiring all municipalities to provide clean water to their citizens, most Mexicans do not have safe drinking water. And now, as the case in San Felipe illustrates, they don’t have any water.
The government’s water quality problem coupled with their special privilege granted to corporations to deplete natural wells has caused a surge in Mexicans being forced to buy on average 1,500 liters of bottled water a year, according to Forbes.
As Truth Out notes:
San Felipe isn’t the only community where wells are running dry. Urbano says other communities near the Coca-Cola plant, such as Los Alcanfores, are also suffering water shortages. Community leaders in the town of Teopisca, 20 miles east of San Cristobal, reached out to García when their wells dried up this year.
On the night of September 7, an 8.2 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Chiapas. Over 90 people were killed in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tabasco. While San Cristobal was not one of the hardest-hit cities, three people died in informal neighborhoods in the north of the city. The impacts of the earthquake on water infrastructure are still being assessed.
García says numerous pipes broke, interrupting water access. “Surely the earthquake damaged underground caves in the aquifer, which could impact aquifer recharge in the future,” says García. “But a study to assess that type of damage would be very costly, and we just don’t have the information right now.”
While local communities struggle to secure water, for Coca-Cola, there is no shortage of water. The bottling plant opened in 1994, the same year the Zapatista uprising put Chiapas in the global spotlight. While the Zapatistas organized in the mountains surrounding San Cristobal, FEMSA began pumping water from Huitepec mountain. The National Water Commission (Conagua) renewed the permit in 2005, and FEMSA now operates two wells.
In Mexico, lax government regulation, fueled by the revolving door between government and industry, helped FEMSA become Coca-Cola’s most important bottler worldwide. Vicente Fox was president of Coca-Cola FEMSA Mexico before being elected Mexican president in 2000.
The corporatist government of Mexico is depriving its citizens of water to allow FEMSA, which operates Coca-Cola plants across the country, to turn 56.9 billion gallons of water a year into something that strips brake dust from your rims.
READ MORE: Community Wins Fight for Their Water -- Nestle Drops Plans to Suck Town Dry After Long Battle
So, what’s the solution? Is it to ban Coca-Cola?
No. Obviously, we’ve seen what happens when the government gets involved with “regulating” corporations. This creates a revolving door of “experts and officials” who move back and forth between government and private sectors. All this does is allow the corporations to write themselves legislation that facilitates the “legal” fleecing of the citizens. If you doubt this claim, look at the fact that FEMSA paid for legal permits for access to the 40 aquifers it can use. They did everything by the book — because the book is broken — on purpose.
As Truth Out notes, Civil society organizations published the Report on Violations of Human Right to Drinking Water and Sanitation in Mexico, this year, which called out Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Danone for profiting off Mexico’s water resources without paying fairly. The report states that the water fees the companies pay “are completely ridiculous compared to the profits that these companies make off the water.” They report that FEMSA pays 2,600 pesos ($146 USD) for each of its water permits in Mexico.
If you truly want to stop Coca-Cola, stop drinking it. If you want to stop a company from raping a town’s natural resources, stop funding that company through the purchase of their products. Stop voting at the ballot box for people you know will sell you out — and start voting with your dollar.
Only through exposing their corruption and defunding them will these corporations and their enablers in government ever be put in check. The time for action is now.
Houston, TX — (RT) The US Air Force is spraying 6 million acres in Texas with potentially harmful insecticides, as the state tries to rid itself of swarms of mosquitoes nesting in flooded areas after Hurricane Harvey.
The work began this past weekend with the military using low-flying C-130 cargo planes to douse three counties with Naled, an organophosphate (OP) insecticide, according to Reuters.
“Due to the large amount of standing, polluted water, populations of pest insects that can transmit diseases are increasing significantly,” Captain Jeff Kelly, Air Force spokesman said in a statement. “This poses a health risk to rescue workers and residents of Houston.”
It’s intended that the spraying will prevent mosquito-borne diseases and prevent emergency response slowdowns by workers inundated by biting insects.
Hurricane Harvey, which began as a Category 4 storm, dumped more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain on parts of Texas over the course of four days. The resulting floods affected hundreds of thousands of homes, displacing more than 30,000 people and prompting more than 17,000 rescues.
Naled, a neurotoxin sold under the brand name Dibrom, works by killing an enzyme in insects and leads to overstimulating the nervous system, causing nausea, dizziness and confusion and at high exposure, respiratory paralysis and death.
Naled has been widely used in the US since 1950, but it was prohibited for use by the European Union in 2012 over concerns it might affect human health.
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“The scenarios evaluated in the human health risk assessment as well as in the environmental risk assessment showed a potential and unacceptable risk,” the EU wrote about its decision.
The UN classifies the insecticide as a 6.1 inhalation hazard.
However, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Environmental Protection Agency support the use of the insecticide and say that small amounts don’t expose people enough to pose a health concern. The US Air Force agrees.
“The system disperses droplets small enough to land on a mosquito’s wing, using less than one ounce of naled per acre. That’s less than one shot glass for an area the size of a football field,” an Air Force spokesperson said.
Naled is used elsewhere in the US, with health departments spraying about one million pounds on 16 million acres each year – especially after disasters like hurricanes and flooding – to curb mosquitos. About 70 percent is used for pest control, while around 30 percent is used in agriculture for cotton production in California and Louisiana, on alfalfa in Idaho and Oregon, and on grapes in California.
The military has used its aerial spray missions before, following the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which heavily damaged the Gulf Coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Though the US government considers naled safe, experts have found potentially dangerous side effects.
In 2016, naled spraying caused millions on honeybee deaths in South Carolina. It is now understood that it is better to spray during dawn and dusk, when bees are normally in their hives.
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Pesticide Action Network (PAN) states that long-term impacts of Naled exposure can be serious — particularly for children — as it is a hormone disruptor and a reproductive and developmental toxin.
Many studies have also linked prenatal exposure to OP pesticides to neurological harms, including increased risk of autism and reduced IQ levels, as it may cross the placenta if it is in the bloodstream of a mammal.
In 2016, a study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that when pregnant mothers live within one kilometer of fields where certain pesticides are used, their children are more likely to have lower IQs.
Other species are also affected. A University of Florida zoologist, Tom Emmel, studied areas in Florida where the regular mosquito spraying occurred with Dibrom and another insecticide. He found a “major loss” in insect diversity in sprayed sites with wasps showing “some of the most dramatic drops in species diversity, whereas scale insects increased.”
Naled is also considered moderately toxic to birds and most aquatic life.The mule deer, however, is among those most resistant to its effects.
In the aftermath of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Jose brewing in the Atlantic, many people are looking for answers as to the increasingly volatile weather being witnessed.
And while climate change is one potential cause, there are other lesser known activities that could potentially be playing a role in the manifestation of these weather anomalies.
While weather modification and geo-engineering are still somewhat taboo subjects to the mainstream, often considered to be in the realm of conspiracy theory, there is a significant body of academic research and science that confirms that these technologies not only exist but are being operationalized.
No, the Free Thought Project is not claiming the government, nor anyone else is making hurricanes or actively controlling the weather. We are only presenting this information because it exists and people should be aware that it exists.
In a segment aired on CBS in 2013, respected scientist Dr. Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City College of New York, discussed – with Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell – the science of weather manipulation.
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During the interview Kaku, in discussing the experiments with weather modification notes that “We’re shooting trillion watt lasers into the sky,” referencing the use of lasers to induce changes to naturally occurring weather phenomena.
Later in the conversation, Kaku briefly touches on the history of weather modification that has been carried out for decades by the government – with the CBS hosts quickly interrupting him to note these programs were only “alleged.”
Of course, these hosts must be ignorant of the declassified history of “Operation Popeye,” which was a weather manipulation program enacted during the Vietnam War as a means of creating ongoing monsoon conditions in an effort to impeded the Viet Cong’s mobility in the region.
This is no “conspiracy theory.”
In fact, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences specifically notes that laser beams create plasma channels in air, which in turn, cause ice to form.
READ MORE: Conspiracy Theory No More, Harvard Reveals Big Oil-Approved "Stratospheric Injection" Geoengineering
Professor Jean-Pierre Wolf and Dr. Jerome Kasparian, both biophotonics experts at the University of Geneva, actually organized a conference at the World Meteorological Organization to discuss how powerful laser pulses can be used to generate changes in the atmosphere that influence the weather.
“Under the conditions of a typical storm cloud, in which ice and supercooled water coexist, no direct influence of the plasma channels on ice formation or precipitation processes could be detected.
“Under conditions typical for thin cirrus ice clouds, however, the plasma channels induced a surprisingly strong effect of ice multiplication.
“Within a few minutes, the laser action led to a strong enhancement of the total ice particle number density in the chamber by up to a factor of 100, even though only a 10−9 fraction of the chamber volume was exposed to the plasma channels.
“The newly formed ice particles quickly reduced the water vapour pressure to ice saturation, thereby increasing the cloud optical thickness by up to three orders of magnitude.”
Adding credence to the idea of scientists using geo-engineering technology to manipulate the weather, according to the MIT Technology Review:
A pair of Harvard climate scientists are preparing small-scale atmospheric experiments that could offer insights into the feasibility and risks of deliberately altering the climate to ease global warming.
They would be among the earliest official geoengineering-related experiments conducted outside of a controlled laboratory or computer model, underscoring the growing sense of urgency among scientists to begin seriously studying the possibility as the threat of climate change mounts.
Sometime next year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to launch a high-altitude balloon, tethered to a gondola equipped with propellers and sensors, from a site in Tucson, Arizona. After initial engineering tests, the “StratoCruiser” would spray a fine mist of materials such as sulfur dioxide, alumina, or calcium carbonate into the stratosphere. The sensors would then measure the reflectivity of the particles, the degree to which they disperse or coalesce, and the way they interact with other compounds in the atmosphere.
Another top American climate researcher – Professor Alan Robock from Rutgers – says that the CIA is looking into weather modification as a form of warfare.
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As reported in The Independent:
A senior American climate scientist has spoken of the fear he experienced when US intelligence services apparently asked him about the possibility of weaponising the weather as a major report on geo-engineering is to be published this week.
Professor Alan Robock stated that three years ago, two men claiming to be from the CIA had called him to ask whether experts would be able to tell if hostile forces had begun manipulating the US’s weather, though he suspected the purpose of the call was to find out if American forces could meddle with other countries’ climates instead.
During a debate on the use of geo-engineering to combat climate change, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, California, Prof Robock said: “I got a phone call from two men who said we work as consultants for the CIA and we’d like to know if some other country was controlling our climate, would we know about it?
“I told them, after thinking a little bit, that we probably would because if you put enough material in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight we would be able to detect it and see the equipment that was putting it up there.
“At the same time I thought they were probably also interested in if we could control somebody else’s climate, could they detect it?”
Professor Robock, who has investigated the potential risks and benefits of using stratospheric particles to simulate the climate-changing effects of volcanic eruptions, said he felt “scared” when the approach was made.
“I’d learned of lots of other things the CIA had done that haven’t followed the rules and I thought that wasn’t how I wanted my tax money spent. I think this research has to be in the open and international so there isn’t any question of it being used for hostile purposes.”
Professor Robock’s concerns come as a major report on geo-engineering is to be published this week by the US National Academy of Sciences. Among the report’s list of sponsors is the “US intelligence community”, which includes Nasa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Department of Energy.
The professor alleges that the CIA told a colleague of his that it wanted to fund the report, but claimed that it did not want this fact to be too obvious – he added that the CIA is “a major funder” of the report which “makes me really worried about who is going to be in control”.
He claimed the US government had a proven history of using the weather in a hostile way, citing the action of seeding clouds during the Vietnam War to muddy the Ho Chi Minh foot-trail and attempt to cut it off, as it was used as a supply route but the north Vietnamese.
He claimed the CIA had also seeded clouds over Cuba “to make it rain and ruin the sugar harvest”.
While certain powerful constituencies are well aware of the extremely powerful forces that can be unleased through weather modification technology, these same groups would like to keep the general public unaware of these technologies and programs.
READ MORE: WATCH: Police Turn Away Homeless People at Hurricane Shelters—Because They"re Homeless
Whether these recent weather phenomena may, or may not, have anything to do with weather manipulation technology, make no mistake that weather modification is a real and practiced science – and is no conspiracy theory.
Listen to Dr. Michio Kaku briefly explain the reality of scientific weather manipulation below:
Miami, FL – The National Hurricane Center (NHC) Atlantic Ops, which provides analyses, forecasts, and warnings of tropical cyclones and disturbances over the Atlantic basin, is reporting that Hurricane Irma is now the most powerful hurricane in the Atlantic basin outside of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea in recorded NHC history.
“Preparations should be rushed to completion in the hurricane warning area,” the NHC cautioned.
#Irma is the strongest #hurricane in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea & Gulf of Mexico in NHC records https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFb pic.twitter.com/P8ebbQJR4k
— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) September 5, 2017
“Hurricane Irma is now expected to *exceed* the theoretical maximum intensity for a storm in its environment. Redefining the rules,” according to meteorologist Eric Holthaus.
Wow. Hurricane #Irma is now expected to *exceed* the theoretical maximum intensity for a storm in its environment. Redefining the rules. https://t.co/e4hPjQt159
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) September 5, 2017
The Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, urged the U.S. territories 3.4 million residents to seek shelter prior to the monster storm hitting the island – which is expected as early as Tuesday night.
“This is something without precedent,” Rossello told a news conference, noting that he will ask U.S. President Donald Trump to declare a federal state of emergency even prior to the mega-storm making landfall in an effort allow for the immediate disbursement of U.S. emergency funds.
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Ironically, with Houston, Texas still underwater from Hurricane Harvey – and Irma predicted to directly hit Florida – the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is expected to run out of money by Friday, according to a Senate aide, putting pressure on Congress to provide more funding this week, according to Bloomberg.
According to a report by Bloomberg:
As of 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, which pays for the agency’s disaster response and recovery activity, had just $1.01 billion on hand. And of that, just $541 million was “immediately available” for response and recovery efforts related to Hurricane Harvey, according to a spokeswoman for FEMA who asked not to be identified by name.
The $1.01 billion in the fund Tuesday morning is less than half of the $2.14 billion that was there at 9 a.m. last Thursday morning — a spend rate of $9.3 million every hour, or about $155,000 a minute.
The agency would be out of funds just as Irma, a category 5 hurricane, might start thrashing the coast of Florida.
“If it’s down to $1 billion or less, then I would say there’s a great concern,” said Elizabeth Zimmerman, who, until January, was FEMA’s associate administrator for the office of response and recovery. “Congress needs to take action very quickly.”
The Trump administration has already requested almost $8 billion in additional funding from Congress.
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As of now, FEMA has restricted spending to “immediate needs” — what it defines as “lifesaving, life-sustaining response efforts” — for Harvey and Irma.
Zimmerman said the agency must begin pulling money from other projects, but without an injection of funds, FEMA will likely not have the resources to deal with current and upcoming disasters.
“We’re not even at peak hurricane season,” Zimmerman noted.
Irma comes in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which caused widespread damage on Aug. 25, including flooding and power outages, while taking out nearly a fifth of all U.S. oil refining capacity.
Bloomberg reports that Irma’s current path – a direct impact with Florida – has prompted the state to prepare for the “catastrophic” system.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, while appearing on “Good Morning America” today, cautioned people to be prepared but to only take necessities as they flee from the hurricane.
A number of areas in Florida have seen gas shortages as the #nogas hashtag began appearing on social media sites on Tuesday. Gas stations in Tampa have run out of gas, and long lines have formed in both the Orlando and Miami areas, according to ABC News.
“We don’t see any widespread shortages and we don’t believe that we’re going to have them right now,” Scott told “GMA.” “I’m asking everybody as you get prepared, three days of water per person, three days of food. Take enough but take only what you need, don’t take more.”
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Jose is following behind Irma on a similar path. Jose officially became a tropical storm on Tuesday before noon with winds of 40 mph and is expected to become a Category 2 hurricane by the end of the week. It could skirt the most northeastern Caribbean islands, but so far it is not projected to be a threat to Puerto Rico or the U.S.
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While Floridians made preparations for Hurricane Irma, as of Wednesday morning, the Category 5 storm’s eye was clocking sustained winds of 185 mph and gusts over 200 mph.
Weather models predict the mega-storm will move north of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands by this afternoon, unleashing strong winds and heavy rain but not directly hitting the islands — with Irma predicted to make a “direct impact” on mainland Florida and travel straight up the middle of the state, according to the NHC.
The latest computer models, which project possible routes for the hurricane, show Irma could potentially move further to the east and threaten the Carolinas and the East Coast of the United States.
Irma “is the kind of storm where you get thousands of lives lost,” said Chuck Watson, a Savannah, Georgia-based disaster modeler with Enki Research told Bloomberg. “This is not going to be the big slow-motion flood like Harvey — this is a real, honest-to-God hurricane.”
While too early to determine the exact path of Irma in Florida, damage modeling for a direct hit on Miami reaches into the $200 billion range, according to Watson. For reference, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina topped out at $160 billion.
Only three Category 5 hurricanes have hit the contiguous 48 U.S. states, Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Weather Underground in Boulder, Colorado told Bloomberg. The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that devastated the Florida Keys, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew that cut across Florida in 1992. Andrew was originally classified as a Category 4 storm only to be upgraded years later after further analysis.
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“It is obviously a rare breed,” Henson said. “We are in rare territory.”
As Ron Paul noted during Hurricane Harvey, the United States is only one fiscal hurricane away from economic devastation.
Federal flood insurance was almost $25 billion in the red before Hurricane Harvey. Congress will no doubt appropriate funding to pay all flood insurance claims, thus increasing the national debt. This in turn will cause the Federal Reserve to print more money to monetize that debt, thus hastening the arrival of the fiscal hurricane that will devastate the US economy.
As for who will come to the aid of the Americans hit hardest by the storm, Paul states the obvious.
The outpouring of private giving and volunteer relief efforts we have witnessed over the past week shows that the American people can effectively respond to natural disasters if the government would get out of their way.
An exhaustive new study is sounding the alarm over industrial pesticide use and its effect on human health. Pregnant women in California’s San Joaquin Valley have a significantly greater chance of premature birth or birth abnormalities if they live near agricultural fields with high pesticide use.
“[F]or individuals in the top 5 per cent of exposure, pesticide exposure led to 5 to 9 per cent increases in adverse outcomes.
The magnitude of effects was further enlarged for the top 1 per cent, where these extreme exposures (more than 11,000kg over gestation) led to an 11 per cent increased probability of preterm birth, 20 per cent increased probability of low birth weight, and about a 30g decrease in birth weight.”
The good news is that most do not experience birth problems, but the study tells us that pesticides do have an association with serious health problems. Focusing mitigation efforts on areas with high pesticide use could have a dramatic beneficial impact.
Hailed as a major advancement in scientific understanding, the study compared 500,000 birth records in the San Joaquin Valley between 1997 and 2011 with levels of pesticides used in the area. Researchers note that their study design “has far stronger statistical power to identify effects than previous studies,” and it allows us “to evaluate many details of the nature of pesticide exposure.”
The one “devil” is that they were unable to isolate the roles of specific pesticides, although their analysis can be applied for the type of crops sprayed—such as grapes, which receive about 50 kg per hectare per year of insecticides. Researchers “focused on aggregate chemicals grouped into high and low toxicity pesticides by their EPA Signal Word.”
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This study is critically important because there is a dearth of knowledge on the relationship between pesticides and human health. While we know much more about the effects of air pollution—mainly due to a robust network of monitors–we know less about the chemicals unleashed by the industrial agricultural industry and their companions such as Monsanto and Dow.
Even though chemicals are stamped “safe” by agencies such as the EPA—after relying on the company’s own, often questionable safety data—the lesser-known truth is that pesticide companies hide their toxic legacy behind “trade secrets.”
In a corporatocracy, we would expect nothing less than a regulatory agency to have a backdoor for corporations to rape human and environmental health for profit.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), passed in 1976 and administered by the EPA, is the primary gateway for chemicals to be introduced on the market. The TSCA is supposed to protect Americans from “unreasonable risk to health or to the environment,” but thanks to the trade secrets provision we are denied information on 65 percent of chemicals that have been introduced over the past 27 years.
We cannot access “17,000 of the more than 83,000 chemicals on the master inventory compiled by the EPA” for independent researchers to perform testing. A “confidential business information” label has been applied to 13,596 chemicals produced since 1976, and the rate is increasing. The identity of these chemicals is kept secret from most EPA employees.
Considering that President Trump has appointed Scott Pruitt—with a long track record of using government power to serve the interests of corporate titans—to head the EPA, we can expect the trade secrets provision to be thoroughly abused.
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Make no mistake though, EPA has a long history of serving the corporatocracy. As we reported in August, bombshell documents reveal decades of collusion with chemical companies, including a secret meeting where EPA assured companies such as Dow that their products would continue being sold despite fraudulent safety data.
A large portion of the toxicology studies exposed in the 1970s as invalid or fraudulent were never redone, and they still underlie the U.S. chemical regulatory system.
The chemical and industrial agriculture industry spends millions to get politicians in their pockets and convince the public that pesticides are necessary to feed the world. But that is is a myth driven by a centralized agricultural system that promotes constant chemical inputs, monoculture crops and government patents to exclude competition.
It is possible to move beyond pesticides. To protect the health of those living near agricultural areas, and everyone in general, we must break the crushing grip of centralized industrial, chemically-dependent agriculture.
Crosby, TX — (RT) Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas has confirmed that two explosions have occurred at the site. People have been taken to the hospital, according to emergency workers, cited by local media.
“At approximately 2 a.m. CDT, we were notified by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) of two explosions and black smoke coming from the Arkema Inc. plant in Crosby, Texas,” Arkema wrote in a statement.
The statement goes on to say that although the plant followed hurricane preparation protocol, “unprecedented flooding overwhelmed our primary power and two sources of emergency backup power. As a result, we lost critical refrigeration of the products on site. Some of our organic peroxides products burn if not stored at low temperature.”
“Organic peroxides are extremely flammable and, as agreed with public officials, the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out,” the statement reads.
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Arkema says it is working “closely with federal, state and local authorities to manage the situation.”
However, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez stressed during a press conference that “it wasn’t an explosion, I want to be very clear, it was not an explosion…”
He instead explained the incident as a series of “pops.”
“There were different organic peroxides of different grades that were released and it created a pop in the containers where they were being stored and some gray smoke initially emanated from it and eventually turned into black smoke” after a fire began.
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Gonzalez went on to state that it is “not anything toxic, it is not anything that we feel is a danger to the community at all…”
The “pops” occurred inside one of nine box trucks at the site, according to Bob Royall, an assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office.
“There are nine vans. Of the nine, three had lost refrigeration to keep them cool. the other ones are still under refrigeration,” he said, adding that the chemicals are “in containers in cardboard boxes inside the vans.”
The operator of the plant has confirmed that up to eight more containers could burn and explode, according to AP.
Meanwhile, Royall has said the incident is playing out as expected.
“Right now everything is going according to what we thought was going to happen so far. We are in a defensive posture, the fire department is out there on the scene, there is air monitoring being deployed by a contractor by the company to try to find out and watch and see where the smoke might go…” he said.
A sheriff’s deputy was among those taken to the hospital after inhaling fumes, according to a tweet from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Nine other deputies drove themselves to the hospital as a precaution.
“We had a number of deputies out there that were maintaining the perimeter. As a precaution, they were taken to a nearby hospital for testing…” Gonzalez said.
Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the county fire marshal’s office, said it is unclear whether all residents obeyed the evacuation order for the 1.5 mile radius of the plant, adding that the office has received an unconfirmed report of a woman who may still be in the evacuation zone.
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An Arkema spokesperson stated late Wednesday that a fire at the site was inevitable.
“The fire will happen. It will resemble a gasoline fire. It will be explosive and intense in nature… as the temperature rises, the natural state of these materials will decompose. A white smoke will result, and that will catch fire. So the fire is imminent. The question is when,” spokesperson Janet Smith said.
The plant makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints, and other products.
Organic peroxides are “relatively unstable compounds which can decompose spontaneously and sometimes explosively,”according to Arkema’s Luperox website. They are “generally flammable and burn vigorously.”
When such compounds reach a temperature above the SADT (Self Accelerating Decomposition Temperature) the reaction becomes “uncontrolled and violent.”
Secrecy, collusion, deception, cover-up, concealment. These are some of the words used in a bombshell report to describe how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal regulators sacrificed human and environmental health on the altar of corporate profit.
Through the determined work of watchdogs at the Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy, over 20,000 hidden documents have come to light proving that U.S. regulatory agencies betrayed the public trust to unleash highly toxic chemicals – many of which are still in use today.
“The “Poison Papers” represent a vast trove of rediscovered chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s. Taken as a whole, the papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press. These papers will transform our understanding of the hazards posed by certain chemicals on the market and the fraudulence of some of the regulatory processes relied upon to protect human health and the environment…
Corporate concealment is not a new story. What is novel in the Poison Papers is abundant evidence that EPA and other regulators were, often, knowing participants or even primary instigators of these cover-ups. These regulators failed to inform the public of the hazards of dioxins and other chemicals; of evidence of fraudulent independent testing; even of one instance of widespread human exposure. The papers thus reveal, in the often-incriminating words of the participants themselves, an elaborate universe of deception and deceit surrounding many pesticides and synthetic chemicals.”
Many Americans believe the EPA and agencies like the FDA work in the best interest of the public, giving peace of mind as we breathe the air, drink the water and buy food and consumer products.
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However, while obvious environmental calamities like acid rain and burning rivers were being addressed in the 1970s – only after massive public outcry – a less noticeable assault was taking place. Highly toxic chemical compounds made by Dow, Monsanto, DuPont and other companies were being developed and marketed in ever greater quantities, and federal agencies were rubber-stamping their approval based on fraudulent safety testing.
These included herbicides, pesticides, dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), some of the most toxic and persistent chemicals ever manufactured. A large portion of toxicology tests for these regulated products and chemicals was based on “nonexistent, fraudulent, or invalid” data.
Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT), which conducted up to 40 percent of all toxicology tests on regulated products and chemicals in the U.S., had “serious, invalidating problems” with 90 percent of their studies submitted to regulators. The fraud was exposed in the 1970s, and three IBT officials went to jail.
But EPA still had the problem of countless chemical products being on the market based off the fraudulent data. Recalling them would have had profound impacts on the chemical industry and would have been highly embarrassing for the newly formed EPA.
The Poison Papers reveal that, instead of acting to protect the public and reassess the chemicals, EPA held a secret meeting with chemical companies to assure them that their products would continue being sold.
At the meeting, regulators determined they would bend over backward to validate the faulty studies, including accepting unsigned studies from IBT. David Clegg of Canada’s Health Protection Branch was also at the meeting, and summed up the sentiment.
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“I can’t say that I am very happy about this on scientific grounds, but we are trying to run this as a salvage operation and, if we can come up with something which gives us a reasonable base line for controls which may be applicable to a number of studies, then, when controls are not available, we’ll compare them against those controls.”
The secret meeting between EPA and chemical companies is the most poignant example of a long history of collusion at the expense of human and environmental health. The Poison Papers reveal several other disturbing realities, as outlined in the introductory briefing.
“Secrecy — They disclose EPA meeting minutes of a secret high level dioxins working group that admitted dioxins are extraordinarily poisonous chemicals. The internal minutes contradict the Agency’s longstanding refusal to regulate dioxins or set legal limits.
Collusion — They demonstrate EPA collusion with the pulp and paper industry to “suppress, modify, or delay” the results of the congressionally-mandated National Dioxin Study, which found high levels of dioxins in everyday products, such as baby diapers and coffee filters, as well as pulp and paper mill effluents.
Deception — They provide important new data on the infamous Industrial Bio-Test (IBT) scandal. By the late 1970s, it was known that more than 800 safety studies performed by IBT on 140 chemicals produced by 38 chemical manufacturers were nonexistent, fraudulent, or invalid. The Poison Papers, however, show that EPA and its Canadian counterpart, the Health Protection Branch (HPB), colluded with pesticide manufacturers, to keep invalidly registered products on the market and covered up problems with many IBT tests.
Cover-up — The papers also show that EPA staff had evidence that this IBT scandal involved more independent testing companies and more products than ever officially acknowledged.
Concealment — The papers show that EPA concealed and falsely discredited its own studies finding high levels of dioxin — 2,3,7,8-TCDD — in environmental samples and human breast milk following routine use of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (Agent Orange) by the federal Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
Intent — They show Monsanto chief medical officer George Roush admitted under oath to knowing that Monsanto studies into the health effects of dioxins on workers were written up untruthfully for the scientific literature such as to obscure health effects. These fraudulent studies were heavily relied upon by EPA to avoid regulating dioxin. They also were relied upon to defend manufacturers in lawsuits brought by veterans claiming damages from exposure to Agent Orange.”
The significance of the Poison Papers cannot be understated, as EPA remains one of the primary agencies supposedly keeping us safe from chemical threats. We continue to see evidence that the agency puts corporate interests above the public interest, as evidenced by its report on hydraulic fracturing which downplayed the risks to the U.S. water supply.
