(NaturalNews) Capturing undercover footage of extreme animal abuse at factory farms is soon to be illegal in Iowa, thanks to the passage of a new bill that squelches First Amendment protections for agricultural whistleblowers. In one of the fastest legislative rush-throughs in history, the “American Heartland” state's House and Senate recently passed House File 589, also known as the “ag-gag” bill, which redefines undercover filming and various other whistle-blowing activities as “agricultural production facility fraud” punishable under the law.
Prior to the passage of the bill, which now sits on Republican Governor Terry Branstad's desk for signing, exposing the horrific conditions in many of Iowa's factory farms was a legally-protected free speech right. Once signed into law, however, H.F. 589 will make Iowa the first state in America to actively muzzle individuals from exposing the ugly truth about what takes place at chicken farms, animal processing plants, and even behemoth genetically-modified (GM) crops farms across the state.
Below is EarthAction's monthly current Action Alert on global environment, peace, and justice issues. This one is most important, and timely action is needed.
Despite the international ban on the trade of Elephant Ivory in 1989, it is estimated that every year 38,000 elephants are killed for ivory sales on the black market. Poachers sell raw ivory for around $20 per pound. Most of this ivory eventually makes its way to China, where it is resold at $700 per pound‹or more.
This means that a single tusk from a full-grown bull elephant can fetch upwards of $50,000 on the black market. The poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks requires the death of some of the most beautiful and endangered animals on our planet. Unless action is taken soon, many of the gains made in recent decades to protect the great elephants of Africa may be undone.
In 1989 elephants were initially listed as an Appendix 1 species by CITES (the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna), banning any and all trade of ivory. In 1997 they were downgraded to an Appendix 2 species, allowing the trade of ivory with regulation. Many nations do not have the capacity to strictly monitor the flow of ivory through their borders, nor are measures in place to effectively monitor the global ivory trade. Disguising illegal ivory as a legal product requires only an artificial aging process.
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the american invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi’ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the american invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WWII, overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the american invasion. Nevertheless, enough Sunnis found time to fight the american occupiers of Iraq that the US was never able to occupy Bagdad, much less Iraq, no matter how violent and indiscriminate the US was in the application of force.
The consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women’s rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi’ites. The Shi’ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington’s invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi’ites allied with Iran.
Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria. According to the american secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Washington is even prepared to ally with al-Qaeda in order to overthrow Assad’s government. Now that Washington itself has al-Qaeda connections, will the government in Washington be arrested under the anti-terrorism laws?
Washington’s hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba’ath Party has enjoyed.
The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine US presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%.
But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.
Washington’s allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy–something they do not tolerate at home–to Syria.
For Washington “democracy” is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings “democracy” to a country, it means the country’s destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn’t mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.
Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians. Syria’s Assad is more democratic than Iraq’s Maliki.
For a decade Washington has misrepresented its wars of naked aggression as “bringing democracy and human rights to the Middle East.” While Washington was bringing democracy to the Middle East, Washington was destroying democracy in the US. Washington has resurrected medieval torture dungeons and self-incrimination. Washington has destroyed due process and habeas corpus. At Obama’s request, Congress passed overwhelmingly a law that permits american subjects to be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial or presentation of evidence. Warrantless searches and spying, illegal and unconstitutional at the turn of the 21st century, are now routine.
Obama has even asserted the right, for which there is no law on the books, to murder any american anywhere if the executive branch decides, without presenting any evidence, that the person is a threat to the US government. Any american anywhere can be murdered on the basis of subjective opinion in the executive branch, which increasingly is the only branch of the US government. The other two “co-equal” branches have shriveled away under the “war on terror.”
Why is Washington so determined to bring democracy to the Middle East (with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates), Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, and China, but is hostile to constitutional rights in america?
The rights that americans gained from successful revolution against King George III in the 18th century have all been taken away by Bush/Obama in the 21st century. One might think that this would be a news story, but it isn’t.
Don’t expect the Ministry of Truth to say anything about it.
Some very strong and strange signals coming out of sources that have a track-record of being accurate.
1) Banks have created an economic doomsday scenario. Greece is going to default on 20 March, and will eventually get to renounce 80% if not more of the debt that its government very unwisely took on (never mind Goldman Sachs high crimes, governments are supposed to have a modicum of intelligence and integrity).
2) This is going to lead to two consequences, not one:
First, the banks have huge amounts of “insurance” obligations, an entire underworld of banking in which these obligations to cover one another's bad debts are not counted as liabilities — when these all come due, banks crash and no amount of government bail-outs with printed or digital counterfeit money is going to save them.
Second, the combination of riots and economic collapse among hundreds of millions of previously “rich” Europeans with the collapse of the banks is going to present some governments with “internal control” issues. In the USA, the plan under Bush-Cheney was the Civilian Inmate Labor Facilities (CILF), incarcerating the unemployed on agriculturally-productive land. That plan has now been abandoned as unscaleable and unenforceable — the number of pissed off citizens with guns may have something to do with the realization.
And now for the scary part: how do you handle a population of what Henry Kissinger likes to call “useless eaters” who are also armed? Enter the Forced Population Reduction Program (FPRP). Originally to be implemented with neutron weapons (allegedly killing people without destroying infrastructure), the new new thing is VX gas that is heavier than air and make an entire city die with even less environmental damage. How the deaths are “sold” is no doubt being worked on. Testing this in South Africa or the Congo first (they are a party to the program), then simulating a “black plague meets SARS” transfer to Detroit or a couple of southern states, can be anticipated.
Below are a few links. On the edge, no question about it.
Last item is a scholarly paper (it just came out) which argues for making “permissible” the killing of babies after birth. Abstract: Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call “after-birth abortion” (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.
Sad as the comment might be, this makes sense. Every state should do doing similar planning. The next major collapse is scheduled for 2013-2014. The next step up would be regional (nine nations) planning boards for agriculture, energy, food, and water. This summer may be the last calm period for some time.
CHEYENNE — State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.
House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
The task force would look at the feasibility of
Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has said he doesn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But with the national debt exceeding $15 trillion and protest movements growing around the country, Miller said Wyoming — which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances — needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the U.S.
Several House members spoke in favor of the legislation, saying there was no harm in preparing for the worst.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today what would come up here and say that this country is in good shape, that the world is stable and in good shape — because that is clearly not the case,” state Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, said. “To put your head in the sand and think that nothing bad’s going to happen, and that we have no obligation to the citizens of the state of Wyoming to at least have the discussion, is not healthy.”
Wyoming’s Department of Homeland Security already has a statewide crisis management plan, but it doesn’t cover what the state should do in the event of an extreme nationwide political or economic collapse. In recent years, lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation to create a state currency, all unsuccessfully.
The task force would include state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general and the Wyoming National Guard’s adjutant general, among others.
The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.
University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King said the potential for a complete unraveling of the U.S. government and economy is “astronomically remote” in the foreseeable future.
But King noted that the federal government set up a Continuity of Government Commission in 2002, of which former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson, R-Wyo., was co-chairman. However, King said he didn’t know of any states that had established a similar board.
It's perfectly safe. Really. Like Agent Orange was safe. Like the Gulf War anthrax vaccinations. And on and on and on. WHEN can the public rely on governments to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? We Dolphins ALWAYS tell the truth. Life works better that way. Below unvalidated, but it feels scary right.
(San Francisco) Widely known Physicist Dr Paolo Scampa, the publisher of the EU AIPRI Blog and an eminent chemical physicist, announced today his latest calculations of deadly radioactivity in Tokyo itself. Both the nuclear regulatory and media responses have been missing in action.
Mochizuki, Publisher of the highly respected Fukushima Diary
However, the outrageous statement of a Japanese politician pretty well sums up the level of understanding of the parasitic political class “Smile, and the radiation won’t hurt you.”
The Tokyo suburbs are about 100 miles or 160 km South of the six destroyed, deteriorating and badly leaking nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Station for Nuclear Reactors.
Dr Scampa stated:
“An absorbed dose of 2,94 microSievert/hour at 1 meter of soil means an average deposit of 9,065E5 Bq/m2 of Cs137 -0,661 MeV-. This amount for 1 meter is in fact situated between a maximum deposit of 5,439E6 Bq/m2 for low energy gamma rays from radioactive elements such as U238 (0,0495 MeV) and a minimum deposit of 2,176E5 Bq/m2 of very energetic gamma rays from radioactive elements such as Co60 (2,55 MeV). This dose corresponds to 25 times the maximum permissible “artificial” hour dose (0,114 microSievert/h-1) and 5 times the maximum permissible total – natural and artificial – hour dose (0,571 microSievert/h-1). [1]” Dr. Scampa. [End Quote]
This is a tragedy of huge proportions. There are 30 Plus Million People in Greater Tokyo. It is brought home personally to each person who sees the work of Fukushima Diary by Mochizuki.
There's an animal virus that's spreading in the UK. They may never know where it came from or why it's suddenly a threat. But I wonder if it has to do with genetic engineering, either with livestock or food products.
It's possible that such genetic engineering introduces a weakness in the animal or plant that makes it vulnerable to a common virus or bacteria or other pest that it was never vulnerable to before. The potential for epidemics scares me.
A new animal disease which causes birth defects and miscarriages in livestock has now been found on 74 farms in England.
The Schmallenberg virus first emerged in the Netherlands and Germany last year, causing mild to moderate symptoms in adult cattle, including reduced milk yield and diarrhoea, and late abortions and birth deformities in newborn sheep, goats and cattle.
It is thought the virus is spread by midges, and has crossed the Channel from the Continent. Adult animals that contract the virus usually recover, but the young born with birth defects have to be destroyed.
Phi Beta Iota: In our view bio-chemical “experiments” are proliferating and out of control. The cucumber attack is suspected by some to have been a bio-war experiment. The mounting evidence that we create many of our own problems, and that viruses may often be constructed in ways that are against the public interest (e.g. built-in sterilization as a form of eugenics), is troubling.
