Archive
US Immigration Officials Treat Innocent Cruise Ship Passengers Like Terrorists in Seven-Hour Guantanamo Bay-style Security Check
Wednesday, 08 June 2011 07:24
‘Employees of American taxpayers (government officials) have once again been exposed for abusing their perceived authority by harassing and terrorizing innocent people in the name of security. At a recent stop in Los Angeles, Calif., a cruise ship carrying roughly 2,000 elderly British travelers was held for over seven hours while immigration officials needlessly summoned them to what some claimed could be likened to Guantanamo Bay-style terrorist treatment.
The several-month-long world cruise had already stopped in the US on numerous occasions prior to its recent stint, and on all prior stops, each passenger had been officially cleared as being safe and terrorist-free. But things changed in LA when disgruntled workers, who were allegedly irritated by passenger inquiries and complaints about excess security, decided to needlessly prolong and intensify the security checks even further, and subject passengers to harsh and inhumane treatment in the process.’
$75,000 Investigation Exonerates Police As They Kill Again and Kari Abbey Faces Murder Charges
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 08:52
‘In a move unsurprising to many, a five-month investigation into brutality and corruption of the Modesto Police Department has exonerated local law enforcement of any wrong doing. The investigation was launched to look into charges of police brutality that steamed from a series of leaked emails by both former and anonymous police officers claiming that the beating of suspects was common and that higher-up police, including Chief Harden, knew about the violations.
The “findings” of the investigation come at a time when former Stanislaus County Sheriff’s detective Kari Abbey is charged with “second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter along with conspiracy, embezzlement, cultivating marijuana, receiving stolen property and child endangerment, according to a criminal complaint.” More sinister, is the charge that Kari and her Haywood police boyfriend evicted people from their rentals for Abbey’s landlord parents. Several Modesto police officers also face ongoing charges ranging from drunk driving, spousal abuse, and taking drugs from evidence.’
Noah’s Ark ‘Could Arrive in London for Olympics’
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 08:12
‘Johan Huibers, an eccentric Dutch Christian, has spent around £1 million building the “Ark” after dreaming about a great flood sweeping Holland. He saw the dream as a signal to spread God’s message.
The vessel is 450ft long and 75ft wide and will be stuffed with pairs of model animals, while an aviary with free-flying live birds will take up most of the enormous deck house.’
Israeli Stealth Ships in Raids on Iran
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 07:59
‘Cargo vessels owned by Israel’s richest man, who died on Friday, had been used to ferry elite Israeli forces for operations inside Iran, according to defence sources.
The death in Tel Aviv of Sammy Ofer, 89, came just days after the United States accused his company of breaching sanctions by selling an oil tanker to Iran. It has mystified Israelis why a company with close links to the government was allegedly breaching sanctions.
Military experts suggested the cargo ships had carried Black Hawk helicopters, hidden in modified containers, for use by commando teams in reconnaissance missions against Iran’s secret nuclear sites. Israel is conducting a massive intelligence operation to monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.’
FDA Sends US Marshals to Seize Elderberry Juice Concentrate, Deems it ‘Unapproved Drug’
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 07:46
‘Wyldewood Cellars, a Kansas-based producer and distributor of elderberry juice, is the latest raid target of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which recently sent US marshals to the company’s winery in Mulvane to confiscate the “unapproved drug.” According to the rogue agency, Wyldewood had violated provisions in the US Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) that restrict health claims for food items, warranting the sudden invasion.’
Read more: FDA Sends US Marshals to Seize Elderberry Juice Concentrate, Deems it ‘Unapproved Drug’
Prominent Swiss Politician Calls For Arrest of Kissinger at Bilderberg
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 07:43
‘A prominent member of Switzerland’s largest political party has called upon federal authorities to arrest Henry Kissinger as a war criminal if he attends the 2011 Bilderberg conference of global power brokers which is set to begin on Thursday at the Hotel Suvretta House in St. Moritz.’
Read more: Prominent Swiss Politician Calls For Arrest of Kissinger at Bilderberg
Food Wars: How European Health Authorities are Using the E.coli Scare to Wage Economic Warfare Against Vegetable Farmers
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 07:35
‘Even as hospitals in Germany are now filling up with people sickened by a super-powerful drug-resistant “superbug” strain of e.coli that looks like it was bioengineered, European health authorities are leaping at the opportunity to spread fear about organic foods while ignoring the obvious true cause of the contamination in the first place — the widespread abuse of antibiotics in animal farming operations.
The e.coli blame game has become a circus of musical chairs. First, they blamed the Spaniards as a form of retaliation for Spain’s resistance to accepting GMOs. This act drove Spanish farmers into bankruptcy through a savage campaign of rumor-mongering. After ravaging the Spanish vegetable farmers, they began to randomly instill widespread fear about a variety of vegetables: First it was cucumbers, then lettuce and then finally tomatoes. And now, the blame has come full circle and is now being cast upon organic sprout growers in Germany!’
Canada Set to Become Globalist Bully
Sunday, 05 June 2011 10:55
‘If ever we needed more proof that our political leaders serve the Rothschilds, and our democracy is a charade, this is it.
Despite the fact that the majority of Canadians want less “defense” spending, Canada is embarked on a military-spending spree “unlike anything experienced since the Second World War. In just 10 years, our annual defense spending has more than doubled — from $10 billion in 2000 to $21.8 billion today — and is just getting into its stride.”
Canadians are being asked to cough up $30 billion for F-35 fighter jets that won’t be ready until 2016 and another $40 billion to replace navy ships over two decades.’
Organic farmers expand lawsuit against Monsanto
An ambitious lawsuit against the agricultural firm Monsanto got a little bigger this week, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs hopes that this is only the beginning.
The case was initially filed in March by the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat), a non-profit legal services organization based at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, on behalf of 60 organic farmers and associated organizations. The farmers want assurance from Monsanto that they will not be sued for patent infringement if their farms become contaminated with the company’s genetically modified crops.
On 1 June, PubPat announced that the list of plaintiffs had grown to 83, and that the original complaint had been amended to include a recent exchange with Monsanto’s lawyers. In a letter written on behalf of Monsanto, Seth Waxman, former solicitor general under Bill Clinton and a partner at the law firm WilmerHale in Washington, DC, said Monsanto has no intention of suing the farmers for patent infringement. “Monsanto policy never has been, nor will be, to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of its patented seed or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means,” he wrote, echoing a statement Monsanto has also made on its website.
But rather than placating PubPat, executive director Daniel Ravicher says he saw a veiled threat in the statement’s ambiguity. Farmers whose crops contain more than a “trace” — whatever that means — of contamination are still vulnerable to action by Monsanto, he argues. Instead, Ravicher wants a legally binding declaration that Monsanto will not sue his clients for patent infringement.
Monsanto could not be reached for comment, but has stated on its website that it views the PubPat lawsuit as a publicity stunt. Ravicher, meanwhile, says he hopes that the lawsuit will have ramifications for future legal cases against the company.
During the ‘discovery’ phase of the lawsuit, when both sides exchange evidence, Ravicher aims to compel Monsanto to hand over confidential data and email exchanges pertaining to in-house research involving its genetically modified crops. Ravicher’s team will parse through the data they collect, likely this fall or winter, looking for any new information about the environmental impact of genetically modified crops.
And if the farmers win this lawsuit, Ravicher says it will free them to pursue future cases against the company without the threat of retribution. If a farmer were to sue Monsanto now for promulgating genetically modified crops that contaminate organic farms, for example, the suit would be tantamount to admitting that the farms are growing, however unwillingly, unlicensed Monsanto crops. Under the current system, Ravicher says such an admission would leave the farmers vulnerable to accusations of patent infringement.
Changing that system depends on whether PubPat’s case succeeds. PubPat will try to convince the judge
that Monsanto’s patent claims on its genetically modified crops are invalid because the crops do not provide a ‘beneficial societal use’. One could imagine Monsanto countering that at least a few of the 15 million farmers who have planted its transgenic crops likely believed the crops to be beneficial.
But the organic farmers could also win their case if they can convince the court that the patents are unenforceable because a farmer cannot stop the wind and insects from carrying seed and pollen from neighbouring fields containing, for example, transgenic canola plants (pictured above).
It may also be wise not to dismiss PubPat too readily these days. In 2009, the organization joined the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to launch a lawsuit over gene patents that also seemed unlikely to succeed. But a New York district judge ruled in their favour on some counts, and the now famous lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, currently under appeal, sent ripples through the biotechnology industry.
Red Alert! China Dumps 97% of Its U.S. Treasury Holdings
Terence P. Jeffrey of CNSNews.com reports today, June 3, 2011:
China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.
Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt.
Mainland Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bills are reported in column 9 of
the Treasury report linked here.
Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S.
Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt
continued to increase.
Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March….
As of March 2011, overall Chinese holdings of U.S. debt had decreased to 1.1449 trillion.
Most of the U.S. national debt is made up of publicly marketable securities sold by the Treasury Department and I.O.U.s called “intragovernmental” bonds that the Treasury has given to so-called government trust funds—such as the Social Security trust funds—when it has spent the trust funds’ money on other government expenses.
The publicly marketable segment of the national debt includes Treasury bills, which (as defined by the Treasury) mature in terms of one-year or less; Treasury notes, which mature in terms of 2 to 10 years; Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), which mature in terms of 5, 10 and 30 years; and Treasury bonds, which mature in terms of 30 years.
At the end of August 2008, before the financial bailout and the stimulus, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt was 4.88 trillion. Of that, $2.56 trillion was in the intermediate-term Treasury notes, $1.22 trillion was in short-term Treasury bills, $582.8 billion was in long-term Treasury bonds, and $521.3 billion was in TIPS.
At the end of March 2011, by which time the Chinese had dropped their Treasury bill holdings 97 percent from their peak, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt had almost doubled from August 2008, hitting $9.11 trillion. Of that $9.11 trillion, $5.8 trillion was in intermediate-term Treasury notes, $1.7 trillion was in short-term Treasury bills; $931.5 billion was in long-term Treasury bonds, and $640.7 billion was in TIPS.
Before the end of March 2012, the Treasury must redeem all of the $1.7 trillion in Treasury bills that were extant as of March 2011 and find new or old buyers who will continue to invest in U.S. debt. But, for now, the Chinese at least do not appear to be bullish customers of short-term U.S. debt.
Treasury bills carry lower interest rates than longer-term Treasury notes and bonds, but the longer term notes and bonds are exposed to a greater risk of losing their value to inflation. To the degree that the $1.7 trillion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills extant as of March must be converted into longer-term U.S. Treasury securities, the U.S. government will be forced to pay a higher annual interest rate on the national debt.
As of the close of business on Thursday, the total U.S. debt was $14.34 trillion, according to the Daily Treasury Statement. Of that, approximately $9.74 trillion was debt held by the public and approximately $4.61 trillion was “intragovernmental” debt.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/687/908/Red_Alert_China_Dumps_97_of_Its_U.S._Treasury_Hold ings.html
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