How One Indigenous Woman Took On a Multinational Mining Corporation... And Won

Common Dreams | Dec 19, 2014 | Sarah Lazare

Acuña de Chaupe at her property in front
of the Blue Lagoon (Photo: Jorge Chávez Ortiz)

Indigenous Peruvian farmworker Maxima Acuña de Chaupe withstood violent eviction attempts, beatings, and a legal battle to protect her land from being turned into an open-pit gold mine

For over three years, indigenous Peruvian farmworker Maxima Acuña de Chaupe has refused to allow a U.S.-based multinational corporation to turn her land into an open-pit gold mine, withstanding multiple violent eviction attempts by corporate and state agents.

On Wednesday, Acuña de Chaupe finally saw victory when a Peruvian appeals court struck down a lawsuit levied by the Yanacocha mine—which is 51 percent owned by Colorado's Newmont Mining Corporation—that had sought to expel and imprison the family for "invading" their own land.

The ruling is an important win in a case that has become a rallying point for local resistance to multinational plunder.

In 1994, Acuña de Chaupe and her family built their home in Tragadero Grande in the region of Cajamarca next to the Blue Lagoon of Celendin. This lake was sought after for the building of the open-pit Conga gold mining project—an extension of the one at Yanacocha.

This mine is widely opposed by peasant, worker, and indigenous peoples in the region, who have protested its resource extraction, exploitation, displacement, and environmental harm with with mass marches and general strikes.

When Yanacocha sought to buy Acuña de Chaupe's land in 2011, she refused, in a bid to protect the environment and her family's home.

"I may be poor. I may be illiterate, but I know that our mountain lakes are our real treasure," Acuña de Chaupe told New Internationalist Magazine two years ago. "From them, I can get fresh and clean water for my children, for my husband and for my animals!"

"Yet, are we expected to sacrifice our water and our land so that the Yanacocha people can take gold back to their country? Are we supposed to sit quietly and just let them poison our land and water?" Acuña de Chaupe continued.

What ensued, according to Acuña de Chaupe, was a corporate intimidation campaign, orchestrated by the mining company with the aid of private security and the Peruvian state.

Acuña de Chaupe says she and her family have faced at least three violent eviction attempts by the company, aided by Peruvian police and soldiers. One beating left Acuña de Chaupe and her daughter unconscious and landed her son in the hospital.

The plight of Acuña de Chaupe and her family sparked outrage and support from regional and international organizations, including the Women's Movement of Peru and World March of Women. At the recent People's Summit in Lima, Peru, climate justice advocates held a large rally in solidarity with Acuña de Chaupe.

Here is a video of Acuña de Chaupe telling her story:


La Jalqueñita - english from Alexander Luna on Vimeo.
When Acuña de Chaupe refused to give in, Yanacocha sued her and her family on charges they were illegally occupying their own land. In August, a judge sentenced four members of her family to "to two years and eight months of suspended imprisonment for not vacating the land," Telesur reports. "The judge also ordered the family to pay close to US$2,000 in penalties."

Wednesday's ruling, however, tosses out all of these sentences.

"I want to thank the judges of the court of justice of Cajamarca for being impartial and applying justice and for not permitting that we the farmworkers suffer at the hands of Yanacocha," Acuña de Chaupe declared following her acquittal. "I pray to God to take care of them. During the four years this process has lasted, many authorities tortured me, defamed me, and persecuted me. But here we have good authorities."

Mega Corporations Buy out Invention that would put OIL and GAS OUT OF BUSINESS

We Are Change | Sep 24, 2014

In this video Luke Rudkowski travels to Barcelona Spain to meet Miguel Celades who was the offical representatives for the MDI Air Car. The technology and car were shelved after government pressure and a corporation buying out the company.

War on Multiple Fronts and No Talk of Peace - Gerald Celente Offers His Take

NextNewsNetwork | Sep 18, 2014

The world is in a very crucial point in history right now. It seems like everywhere you look, countries are on the verge of splitting apart, going to war or at the very least, economic collapse. Russia and Ukraine. Syria and Iraq. Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Even the United Kingdom could cut ties with Scotland. Public distrust here in America is at an all-time high. The future is always uncertain, but right now, it’s extremely volatile.

Every once in a while, we like to reach out to Gerald Celente and ask him to make a few bold predictions on topics all over the place. From foreign policy, the economy, even the weather, Gerald is a well-known Trends Forecaster. There’s nothing he likes more than a bold prediction. He’s not afraid of controversy either, we always know he’ll say what’s on his mind. He’s provocative. He really gets the people going.

The REAL Reason Britain is Freaking Out About Scottish Independence

Washington's Blog | Sep 17, 2014

© OilofScotland.org

Oil 

David Cameron and the British media have been freaking out about the potential Scottish independence.

They’ve blathered on about “history”, “common defense” and other red herrings.

But it’s really all about oil …

Specifically, if Scotland becomes independent, it gets to keep 90% of the revenues from its huge oil reserves.

The New York Times reports:

Scottish nationalists have long argued that being governed from London has deprived their country of its fair share of the wealth from Britain’s oil and natural gas fields, which mostly lie in North Sea waters off their shores.

“It’s Scotland’s oil” was the rallying cry in the 1970s that helped raise the profile of the Scottish Nationalist Party, which now leads the country and is pushing for a vote to secede in the referendum on Thursday. Alex Salmond, the politician leading the separatist movement, has pointed to North Sea energy as the treasure that would help finance an independent Scotland — ensuring that the country could continue the generous public spending, including free university tuition, that he is promising voters.

Al Jazeera notes:

Massive oil reserves in the North Sea are at the heart of the Scottish independence debate. Many are questioning whether the reserves are just for Scotland or if the rest of the United Kingodm should continue to benefit from their profits.

NBC writes:

The ‘Yes’ campaign … says Scots should have total control of their own affairs and that revenue from Scotland’s offshore oil fields would sustain the country’s economy

In addition, as Max Keiser explained:

(1) The UK can now borrow cheaply using the giant Scottish oil reserves as collateral
(2) If Scotland leaves, the collateral (oil reserves) is no longer available
(3) So the cost of borrowing money for Britain skyrockets

Scotland’s North Sea oil reserves are slowing running out, and so oil won’t be such a valuable resource forever.

But for now, it is still invaluable (especially as collateral for British borrowing) … and the key to Britain’s panic over potential Scottish independence.

Director of Bangladesh research institute gets "furious" when asked about Bt brinjal health effects

image

GM Watch | Sep 8, 2014

Says reporters should set up their own labs to do toxicity testing!

Faced with angry farmers demanding compensation for the failed Bt brinjal crop in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) claimed the crop was safe.

However, when asked whether BARI had conducted any research to find out whether Bt brinjal would harm human health, the BARI director general "became furious and asked reporters to set up their laboratories to carry out the research as Bangladesh had no laboratories to conduct such research" (item 1 below)!

Interestingly, some toxicological research was done on Bt brinjal by Mahyco, Monsanto's Indian subsidiary. Dr Lou Gallagher, a New Zealand-based epidemiologist and risk assessment expert, analyzed the raw data of Mahyco’s 14- and 90-day rat feeding studies from the Bt brinjal dossier.

Dr Gallagher noted that rats eating Bt brinjal experienced:

* Organ and system damage: ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40% higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes

* Toxic effects to the liver.

Dr Gallagher continued: “Major health problems among test animals were ignored in these reports… Release of Bt brinjal for human consumption cannot be recommended given the current evidence of toxicity to rats in just 90 days and the studies' serious departures from normal scientific standards.”

Dr Gallagher concluded, “The safety claims made for these plants are not supported by existing data. On the contrary, there are alarming signs that the consumption of food derived from these plants could result in adverse health effects.”

Meanwhile British pro-GM campaigner Mark Lynas, who defended Bt brinjal in the face of local reports that it had failed (http://www.marklynas.org/2014/05/bt-brinjal-in-bangladesh-the-true-story/), has not written anything on the topic on his blog for several months.

1. BARI claims Bt brinjal has no adverse effects: No research conducted
2. Affected farmers demand compensation from govt
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1. BARI claims Bt brinjal has no adverse effects: No research conducted

Staff Correspondent
New Age (Bangladesh), 8 Sept 2014
http://newagebd.net/46932/bari-claims-bt-brinjal-has-no-adverse-effects/#sthash.Tj2sSDPt.8pt9u9wA.dpbs

Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute claimed on Sunday that genetically modified BT brinjal has no detrimental effects on human health, bio-diversity and environment though it said it carried out no research on the controversial food crop.

BT brinjal, or bacillus thuringiensis brinjal, is a transgenic brinjal by injecting the soil bacterium bacillus thuringinsis into the genome of various brinjal cultivars.

Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly used as a pesticide was discovered by Japanese biologist Shigetane Ishiwata in 1901.

In the backdrop of huge opposition to commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal,  BARI called a news conference at  Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council at Farmgate for what it said, ‘dispelling misgivings bout Bt brinjal.’

The news conference turned noisy with  BARI officials getting involved in heated debates with affected Bt brinjal farmers and reporters over the controversial food crop.

BARI director general Rafiqul Islam Mandal said Bt brinjal farming was introduced in Bangladesh to save the crop from the deadly fruit and shoot borer paste attacks.

He said that the objective had been achieved.

He said farmers would be able to collect Bt brinjal seeds from their own farms as it was not a hybrid crop.

He said that there would be no need for the farmers to depend on select seed companies for Bt brinjal seeds.

Nor they have to pay royalties to anyone, he said.

He also said that there would be no adverse effects on the environment and farmers’ health as the Bt brinjal cultivation requires limited pesticides.

He said that farmers would get desired outputs.

Several Gazipur farmers, who were given the controversial Bt brinjal saplings for cropping disagreed with the BARI director general and said they would not cultivate the genetically modified crop again as it totally ruined them.

But some of the farmers from Mymensingh and Pabna who also grew Bt brinjal, with saplings they had received from BARI, said they had a good harvest.

Haidul Islam and several other farmers from Saitalia village in Sripur upazila, Gazipur, said their Bt brinjal plants died in 10 to 15 days after they had planted the saplings.

BARI director general said that the saplings died as they could not plant the Bt brinjal saplings in time.

Several farmers said that Bt brinjal tastes  bitter.

Asked whether BARI conducted any research to find out whether Bt brinjal would harm human health, the BARI director general became furious and asked reporters to set up their laboratories to carry out the research as Bangladesh had no laboratories to conduct such research.

Did Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association and Unnayan Bikalper Nitinirdharoni Gobeshona conduct any such research, he shot back.

How then they oppose Bt brinjal cultivation, he demanded to know. ‘We shall carry out the research next year only after we get an accredited laboratory,’ he said.

Environmentalists have been asking the authorities not to introduce Bt brinjal cultivation after its cropping ‘failed’ in many areas.

The government introduced Bt brinjal cultivation in Bangladesh in the backdrop of controversy surrounding the genetically modified crop in India.

India where Bt brinjal seeds were developed imposed a moratorium on its cultivation in 2010.

Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech found itself in the centre of controversies for developing BT brinjal seeds in India.

Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech, is a 50:50 joint venture between US based Monsanto Holdings P Ltd, a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation and Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company.

Bangladesh is the first country to encourage its farmers to grow Bt brinjal.

Countries that are parties to the Convention on Biodiversity and have  ratified the Cartagena Protocol are committed to the safe handling of living modified organisms and genetically modified organisms, said scientists.

The Cartagena Protocol provides a broad framework of biodiversity especially focusing on trans-boundary movement of genetically modified organisms and also covers seeds that are intended for food, feed or used in food processing.
---

2. Affected farmers demand compensation from govt

Financial Express (Bangladesh), 8 Sept 2014
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2014/09/08/54956

* BARI press meet on Bt Brinjal

Many of the farmers, who cultivated the controversial Bt Brinjal at a press conference Sunday demanded compensation from the government as they incurred massive losses.

The peasants claimed that they suffered unbearable losses by cultivating Bt Brinjal as all the plants died with the beginning of fruiting period although the government officials said it could be a profitable crop.

The demand came at 'the press conference on Bt Brinjal' organised by BARI (Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute) held at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) in the city.

BARI officials said the press meet aimed at removing the misunderstanding on Bt Brinjal among the people following a press conference organised by eight environmental, business and consumers' right organisations on August 31 where seven farmers demanded compensation for their loss by cultivating Bt Brinjal.

BARI director general Rafiqul Islam Mondal and director (research) Dr Khaled Sultan, among others, spoke on the occasion.

Senior scientific officer of BARI Md Kamruzzaman presented a paper on Bt Brinjal and its development in Bangladesh.

However, sixteen Bt Brinjal farmers out of twenty were present on the BARI press conference.

Eleven farmers revealed that all the plants of their fields died within two to three months after plantation.

Two farmers, Md Afzal and Md Amzad Hossain from Pirganj in Rangpur and Iswardy in Pabna respectively, said they got good crops without using pesticide.

Conversations w/Great Minds P1/2 - Dr. Richard Wolff - America’s Taboo Subject...

The Big Picture RT | Aug 25, 2014

Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work, joins Thom Hartmann for Conversations w/Great Minds.

World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme 'complicit' in genocidal land grabs

Torched Senger home. Photo: Justin Kenrick.

The Ecologist | Aug 20, 2014 | Nafeez Ahmed

Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 500 million acres of land in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean was acquired or negotiated under deals brokered on behalf of foreign governments or transnational corporations.

Many such deals are geared toward growing crops or biofuels for export to richer, developed countries - with the consequence that small-holder farmers are displaced from their land and lose their livelihood while local communities go hungry.

The concentration of ownership of the world's farmland in the hands of powerful investors and corporations is rapidly accelerating, driven by resource scarcity and, thus, rising prices. According to a new report by the US land rights organisation Grain:

"The powerful demands of food and energy industries are shifting farmland and water away from direct local food production to the production of commodities for industrial processing."

And now, the carbon market is joining the race

Less known factors, however, include 'conservation' and 'carbon offsetting'.

In west Kenya, as the UK NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) reported, over a thousand homes had been torched by the government's Kenya Forest Service (KFS) to forcibly evict the 15,000 strong Sengwer indigenous people from their ancestral homes in the Embobut forest and the Cherangany Hills.

Since 2007, successive Kenyan governments have threatened Sengwer communities in the Embobut forest with eviction. A deadline for residents to leave the forest expired in early January, prompting the most recent spate of violence.

The pretext for the eviction is that the indigenous Sengwer - labelled wrongly as "squatters" - are responsible for the accelerating degradation of the forest.

Elsewhere in Kenya's Mount Elgon forest, however, the KFS' track record reveals a more complicated story. In 2010, the indigenous Ogiek were issued a deadline to relocate in the name of forest conservation and reforestation.

In February this year, Survival International reported that, like the Sengwer, the Ogiek continued to be violently evicted from their homes in violation of court orders, with reports of government officials and their supporters seizing their land.

Easy on the powerful, hard on the weak

While deforestation is undoubtedly linked to the activities of poor communities, the Kenyan government's approach illustrates favouritism toward parochial vested interests. In addition to the indigenous communities, the forests are also inhabited by many thousands of tea-planters, loggers, and squatters.

According to an internal report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2000, reviewing the Kenyan government's internationally-funded conservation programme, "the forests of Mt Elgon are not being sustainably managed."

The report highlighted "unsustainable harvesting of both indigenous and plantation forest on Mt Elgon", routine flouting of "regulations and procedures for sound management", "the rate of forest plantation harvesting" far exceeding "the rate of replanting", lack of supervision of controls on "forest harvesting operations authorised by the Forest Department", and consequently "extensive loss of forest resources."

The IUCN review also alluded to the role of the Kenyan government's relationship with RaiPly Ltd, a Kenyan company involved in manufacture of wood products:

"It is not known why or how RaiPly presumably received a license to harvest indigenous species, thus circumventing the ban on harvesting in indigenous forests."

The answer - persecute indigenous communities

Official Kenyan parliamentary records from May 1999 show that Kenyan political representatives have been concerned about these issues for some time.

One question put to Kenya's then assistant minister for natural resources, Peter Lengees, by a Kenyan MP pointed out that "trees are being cut in Mt. Elgon forest" threatening the region's rivers "from both sides". Local government officials, the MP accused, "have shared up the area between these two rivers" which are now "drying up".

Lengees denied any knowledge of this, prompting a further question from late politician George Kapten, who said that "lorries from Raiply" had been ferrying high-value teak timber from Mount Elgon forest.

"And I wish to add that the highest authority in this country has shares in RaiPly", he added. Lengees repeated his denial but admitted that RaiPly was "licensed to cut trees from some forests in Kenya."

Currently, RaiPly is among several major companies that are exempt from a partial government ban on logging. Effectively, the government is permitting powerful logging companies to accelerate deforestation to buoy the Kenyan economy while systematically persecuting indigenous communities whose environmental impact is comparatively negligible.

Behind it all, the World Bank

The devastating plight of Kenya's indigenous peoples is symptomatic of the flawed approach to conservation on the part of international agencies.

The World Bank's Natural Resource Management Programme (NRMP) with the Kenyan government, launched in 2007, has involved funding for projects in the Cherangany Hills under the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme, including "financing REDD+ readiness activities" some of which began in May 2013.

Under the REDD scheme companies in the developed world purchase carbon credits to invest in reducing emissions from forested lands. Those credits turn up on the companies' balance sheets as carbon reductions.

In practice, however, REDD schemes largely allow those companies to accelerate pollution while purchasing land and resources in the developing world at bargain prices.

A FPP background brief on the role of the World Bank claims that the implementation of NRMP - overseen by the very same KFS forces conducting a scorched earth campaign in Cherangany - violates the Bank's own operational safeguard policies

Burning homes and food stores

A formal Sengwer complaint to the Bank lodged in January last year alleged that human rights abuses by Kenyan forces were "a direct result" of the World Bank-funded programme. According to the FPP brief,
"One example of the harm caused by the project was that it changed the border of the Cherangany forest reserves such that Sengwer families, without any consultation or notice, found themselves on the inside of the forest reserve and therefore automatically subject to eviction by the KFS, evictions effectively funded by the World Bank. These evictions were customarily executed by burning homes and food stores in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013."

In a statement in February, the World Bank disavowed any link between its programme and the forced evictions, but also offered to the Kenyan government:

" ... to share best practices in resettlement in line with its safeguard policies. These seek to improve or restore the living standards of people affected by involuntary resettlement."

A letter to the Bank in March by No REDD in Africa network (Nran) - a group of African civil society organisations - signed by over 60 international NGOs accused the Bank with the above words of

" ... both admitting its complicity in the forced relocation of the Sengwer People as well as offering to collude with the Kenyan government to cover-up cultural genocide."

As "carbon credit financier and broker", the World Bank is "aiding and abetting the forced relocation of an entire Indigenous People through its Natural Resource Management Plan (NRMP) which includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), in the Cherangany Hills", said the letter.

World Bank paves the way for massive 'carbon  grabs'

The Sengwer's complaint is currently under investigation by the World Bank Inspection Panel. Although the report is now complete, a Bank spokesperson, Phil Hay, said that it would not be reviewed by the Board until August or September.

"The World Bank is not associated with the evictions and has not supported or financed resettlement in forest areas under the now closed Natural Resource Management Project (NMRP)", said Hay.

"Nonetheless we are not bystanders either. We have been concerned about how the evictions have been handled and have been in frequent touch with the Kenyan government."

Notably, the Bank's professed concern here is with "how the evictions have been handled", not with evictions being carried out in the first place.

A damning new report from the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) based in Washington DC thus warns that the UN and World Bank approach to REDD is paving the way for large-scale "carbon grabs" by foreign governments and investors, putting at risk the land rights, livelihoods and lives of indigenous communities.

The report surveyed 23 low and middle income countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, covering 66% of the developing world's forests, concluding that REDD had not established laws or mechanisms by which indigenous peoples and local communities could profit from the carbon in the forests they inhabited.

"Their rights to their forests may be few and far between, but their rights to the carbon in the forests are non-existent", said Arvind Khare, RRI executive director.

A genocide in the making

At the United Nations climate negotiations in Warsaw in November 2013, delegates reached an agreement that would allow REDD to move forward which, however, excluded questions around who should control and benefit from the new carbon value found in standing forests.

Instead, the World Bank Carbon Fund's approach to defining carbon rights has been widely criticised by civil society groups for creating conflict between new property rights to carbon, and existing statutory and customarily held rights of local communities.

The lack of clear safeguards and measures opens up an unprecedented opportunity for corporate and government land grabbing.

Tony La Viña, Dean of the Ateneo School of Government and chair of the intergovernmental REDD negotiations at the climate conferences in Copenhagen and Durban, said:

"The carbon markets, when up and running, need to support the forest stewardship of the people who live there, and not provide national governments with yet another tool to dispossess their citizens from the natural resources they have cared for and depended on for generations."

According to the No REDD in Africa network, it is precisely because indigenous people and their rights are not factored into REDD principles that their implementation could lead to outright genocide.

Chris Lang, a British forestry expert who runs the REDD Monitor blog, agrees that under REDD schemes involving forested or agricultural land,

"the rights to the use of that land could be taken away from indigenous peoples who depend on their forests for their livelihoods. Destroying livelihoods on this scale could conform to the parts (a), (b), and (c) of the [UN Convention] definition of genocide."

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Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is an international security journalist and academic. He is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, and the forthcoming science fiction thriller, ZERO POINT - set in a near future following a Fourth Iraq War.

Follow Ahmed on Facebook and Twitter.

This article was originally published on Guardian Environment, and is reproduced by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network. It was inspired by a blogpost by British film-maker Dean Puckett who is travelling to Kenya this month (August 2014) to investigate the plight of the Sengwer.

30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed

Economic Collapse Blog | Aug 20, 2014 | Michael Snyder

The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace.  Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.  But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate.  Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously.  Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.  Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs.  We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing.  The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?

And in this economy, you don't even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class.  Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly.  Bloomberg calls this "the no-raises recovery"...

Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.

Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.

There are so many families out there that are struggling right now.  So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don't even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.  Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class.  And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years.  Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.

The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed...

1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall.  But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall.

2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.

3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point.

4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table.

5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase "inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families".

6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is "in collections".

7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.

8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families.  For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound.

9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.

10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.

11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low.

12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years.

14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit.

15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.

17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.

18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages.

20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better.

21.  In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.

22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.

23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.

24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.

27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless.

29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.

30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.

The US Housing Market's Darkening Data

WitthayaP/Shutterstock

Peak Prosperity | Jun 3, 2014 | Brian Pretti

When looking at residential real estate, we often tend to focus almost solely on recent price movements in assessing the health of the housing market at any point in time. But as both homeowners and income-earners in the larger economy, of which the housing market is an important component, to really understand what's going on, we need clarity into the larger cycle driving those price movements.

The more we look at today's data, the more it looks like that we are in a new type of pricing cycle -- one that homeowners and housing investors have no prior experience with.

And the more we learn about the fundamentals underlying the current cycle, the harder it becomes to justify today's home prices on any sustained level. Meaning a downward reversion in home values is very probable in the coming years.

Read more..

Portland Is First U.S. City to Divest Funds from Walmart

Photo Credit: Molly Rusk/Shutterstock.com

Alternet.org | May 19, 2014 | Laura Garcia, Molly Rusk

The initiative also prohibits the city from purchasing Walmart bonds in the future.

On Thursday, May 15, the city of Portland, Oregon got rid of $9 million, or 25 percent of its investments in Walmart. This marks the beginning of a divestment program that will purge Portland's investment portfolio of $36 million in Walmart bonds by 2016, according to  a press release. The divestment plan is part of the city's responsible investment initiative, introduced by City Commissioner Steve Novick, and adopted in October 2013. The initiative also prohibits the city from purchasing Walmart bonds in the future.

Portland is not only discontinuing its investments in Walmart, but has set up a committee to advise it on making socially responsible investments in the future. The committee will address issues like abusive labor practices, corruption, and health concerns, among other things.

During a press conference on May 15, Commissioner Novick encouraged other cities to adopt similar initiatives.

"From what I can tell, no other U.S. city has looked at socially responsible investing in quite the same way as Portland. I’m hopeful other cities and states take note and adopt similar investment principles to hold companies accountable and align our investment policies with our values."

Meanwhile, the company's net income fell 5 percent, and shares fell 2 percent, in the first quarter of 2014, failing to meet Wall Street's expectations for the third time in five quarters.

Walmart blamed its poor performance on bad weather.

Laura Garcia is an education outreach Intern at YES! and a graduate of the program in Political Science and International Relations at Saint Louis University.

Molly Rusk is an intern at YES! Magazine.

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May Day strides along the planet

VOA | May 1, 2014

May 1 is a holiday known for its pagan roots also commonly called Labour day. According to the source, three thousand years ago in Italy, the goddess Maya was renowned. View more..

© Reuters
Traditional May Day labour march in Marseilles

Agenda 21: Food Is The New Gold. Land Is The New Oil.

Underground Medic | Apr 21, 2014 | Liz Bennett

Over the last decade world grain reserves have fallen by at least a third and that decline looks set to continue. For the last half of the 20th century overproduction was the order of the day. Huge grain surpluses, butter mountains and milk lakes dominated the news.

During this period the United States had a farm programme where land lay idle to prevent even more surpluses, this provided a cushion against shortages, the land could be planted up if the surpluses fell to levels considered to be too low. In the UK land was left fallow and green manured to enrich it for the following season. The crops were rotated and the harvests were generally very good. In addition there was the carryover: The amount of grain left in the massive storage silos at the time the next crop is harvested. Other western nations had similar systems.

1965 is a good year to show how the system cushioned against disaster. In 1965 the Monsoon in India failed. The United states shipped a full fifth of its grain harvest to India which averted a potential famine. due to the amount of surplus in store the incident had a minimal effect on grain prices on the world markets.

There were occasional spikes during the period of 1950-2000, but the effects on world prices were a short lived thing. The weather was usually to blame and after a bit of a ‘blip’ everything settled down when the amount of idled land and the amount of food commodities in store were announced.

In 1950 the world had a population of 2.5 billion souls. By 1986 world demand for grain was rising rapidly due to an ever increasing population and the prices were starting to rise. In an effort to keep a surplus and to reduce or at least to stabilise the prices, the land idling programmes were reduced in both the United States and the UK, with other countries following suit until by 1990 most agricultural land that could be farmed was farmed.

It was in the 80′s that someone, somewhere decided that biofuel was the way of the future. The global warming con artists that had infiltrated every layer of governments decided that biofuel was the answer, that clean, green fuels would stop global warming in its tracks…well, according to what they say now that wasn’t very effective, the Earth is apparently still warming. These ‘experts’ didn’t look at the global picture.

They never considered that the ever growing global population would require more and more food and that more and more arable land across the world would be given over to the growing of biofuel crops.

When realization finally dawned that food production could not keep pace something had to be done, a wide ranging plan was formulated to sell sustainability, global warming, which was now starting to be referred to as climate change, to the masses. Agenda 21 was born.

Agenda 21 basically puts the environment above the inhabitants of this planet. In order to preserve the habitat of insects and small animals nobody has ever heard of, certain regions cannot be farmed in case a moth finds itself out of a home. The scope of Agenda 21 is massive, and it affects every facet of our lives. Even those of us who refuse to comply with  the policies of the United Nations are affected by the rules and regulations of the plan.

It affects our choices on a daily basis. It affects the transport we use, the homes we live in, the kind of heating we use, the clothes we wear and the food we eat.

When Maurice Strong, then Secretary-General of the United Nations Earth summit introduced Agenda 21 20 years ago He said:

 “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class — involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning and suburban housing — are not sustainable,”

At this point the war on carbon dioxide started. Interestingly carbon dioxide is what humans breathe out. Every breath we take in, is followed by a breath out, from birth to death respiration adds to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Can we assume therefore that this is what is meant by anthropogenic global warming?

Does the man-made global warming they refer to constantly actually include breathing as a cause of pollution alongside factory output?

The United Nations, pushing its quest for a One World government fully endorse the ethos of flora and fauna over people. In fact, if they can reduce the amount of people along the way they will be exceedingly happy about it. What better way to do that than to have ‘naturally occurring famines’ that cannot be pinned on the governments of the world or on the United Nations.

Now although we are used to seeing famines in Africa I think that the trend is about to change. The peoples of Africa have a much smaller carbon footprint than we do here in The West, and for that reason a famine in the West would reduce the emissions that come from our busy, carbon-fuelled lifestyles far more readily than wiping out the entire African sub-continent.

We are also less malleable than those who have to rely on foreign aid for even their basic foodstuffs. We are more likely to cause trouble, to fight, riot and revolt if our kids are not fed. our governments know this, and in the United States they stockpile ammunition so that when the time comes they can deal with the situation.

Here in the UK there is anecdotal evidence form serving and ex-police officers,that the government does the same, but they are far less public about it. Trauma and major incident teams across the UK that used to train for multiple car pile ups and train crashes now train for civil unrest and riots as well as the more usual stuff. They practice for dirty bombs and biohazard threats, things the government says we are facing from enemies unknown.

The pieces of the puzzle are little by little falling into place. Agenda 21 is advancing rapidly.

• We are being corralled into smaller and smaller homes that have smaller and smaller gardens.
• Legislation and ordinances prevent many from saving God-given rainwater on their own property.
• Ornamental flowers and lawns are to be planted instead of food we can eat in some US states.
• Health giving raw foods are increasingly difficult to come by, especially for those in towns and cities.
• We are discouraged from growing our own food from tried and tested heirloom seeds which are increasingly regulated.
• Global food security is worsening with each passing year and nothing is done to address the problem.
• Regardless of the government figures decent jobs are becoming harder to find and as a result we are rapidly moving towards the time where we will not be able to afford to feed our families.
• Our just in time food supply chain relies on increasingly decrepit infrastructure that will fail sooner rather than later.
• Carbon caps are seeing massive amounts of power stations closing down which even according to energy industry experts is liable to lead to blackouts.

Food really is set to become the new gold and land the new oil because without them we are done for. We have to turn back to the old ways of producing enough to look after our families. Our children need to be taught how to grow produce, how to fix things, build things and generally become more self sufficient. 

Those that do well will not be those people with fancy degrees from Ivy league universities. Those that do well will be those that can make things that are needed, those who can grow food, those turn their hand to many things. I feel confident in my view that an Honours degree in media studies is not going to be worth a damn.

Regardless of the space you have, and the conditions you have, I urge you to look into what you can grow for yourself. Think laterally, think vertically, whatever you have can be utilized in one way or another. Every single mouthful you grow you are one mouthful nearer self-sufficiency and one mouthful further away from famine...famine that is being systematically induced by the global elite and their failure to act in any way, shape or form to prevent it.

Take Care

Liz

Sources:

DEFRA
The New York Times
The Daily Telegraph
National Geographic
Project BioEnergy
Inter Press Service
The New American

Nevada rancher, armed militias win standoff with Feds, govt returns cattle

Reuters

RT | Apr 13, 2014

The tense stand-off between hundreds of protesters and police has ended in the Nevada desert, forcing the authorities to cancel the round-up of 300 animals and to return the cattle to their owner.

The standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and the US Bureau of Land Management has lasted over a week, after hundreds of armed agents with the United States Bureau of Land Management and the FBI turned up in the Clark County to execute the court-ordered confiscation of nearly 1,000 cattle. The US government says the animals have trespassed on federal property.

This provoked a fierce backlash from anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists, who gathered near 67-year-old Cliven Bundy’s farmhouse to support him in the standoff against the government.

At the height of the protests, there were about 1,000 protesters outside the rancher’s home. Among them were militia members from California, Idaho and other US states, camouflaged, with rifles and side arms.

"If we don't show up everywhere, there is no reason to show up anywhere," one of the camouflaged men said, holding an AR-15 rifle. "I'm ready to pull the trigger if fired upon," Scott said.

In an interview before the bureau's announcement, Bundy stated that he was impressed by the level of support he had received. Local cowboys even attempted to retrieve some of his cattle, after the government’s agents wrangled one-third of his cattle Monday.

"I'm excited that we are really fighting for our freedom. We've been losing it for a long time," Bundy said.

The government declared they had decided to free the cattle.

"Based on information about conditions on the ground and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public," the bureau's director, Neil Kornze, said in a statement.

The crowd and the rancher’s family met the news with applause and relief.

"This is what I prayed for," Margaret Houston, one of Bundy's sisters, told Reuters on Saturday. "We are so proud of the American people for being here with us and standing with us."

One of the rancher’s sons, Ammon Bundy, supported his aunt, saying: “We won the battle.”

The dispute between Bundy and federal authorities actually began in 1993 when he stopped paying monthly fees of about $1.35 per cow-calf pair to graze public lands. Plus, the government argues that Bundy has ignored cancelation of his grazing leases and defied federal court orders to remove his cattle.

The authorities said that Bundy still owes taxpayers more than $1 million, and that the government would work to resolve the matter administratively, through the court system.

Several US senators and the state of Nevada this week criticized what has been called the result of an “overreaching” agency acting overzealously, especially after a no-fly zone was enacted for a 3-square-mile area around Bundy's ranch.

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Supporters gather to defend Bundy ranch in Nevada from feds

Screenshot from youtube video by user GMN Telemedia

RT | Apr 11, 2014 |

An intense showdown in the state of Nevada between a family of ranchers and federal agents continues to escalate after a longstanding land dispute two decades in the making came to a head earlier this month.

As RT reported earlier this week, hundreds of armed agents with the United States Bureau of Land Management and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have descended on the Clark County, Nevada ranch of 67-year-old Cliven Bundy to execute the court-ordered confiscation of nearly 1,000 cattle, according to his family, which the US government says have trespassed on federal property.

The Washington Free Beacon newspaper reported on Monday this week that 234 of the 908 cattle had been wrangled up by government agents and their contractors, and news of the dispute has since further propelled the story into the national spotlight.

Now it’s been reported that local cowboys have retrieved some of the confiscated cattle, and supporters of the Bundy ranch from around the region have flocked to Nevada to stand by their side.

Since the Beacon first reported on the standoff earlier the week, tensions have only worsened in Clark County. Video emerged online on Wednesday of the rancher’s son, Ammon Bundy, bloodied after being shocked by an electric Taser used by authorities, and Desert News reported that, according to Cliven Bundy, his own sister was knocked to the ground by officials moments before cameras began to roll.

One witness, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, told reporters that “Serious bloodshed was narrowly avoided” as a pregnant woman was also roughed up during the ordeal.

"We never did have any hand-to-hand combat this morning or up to his time," Mr. Bundy told the newspaper on Thursday afternoon. "But there's like 200 armed military people on my ranch. That's pretty bad to have that much armed force against American people."

Signs sit at the entrance of a ranch protesting against the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM)
decision to temporarily close access to thousands of acres of BLM land to round up
illegal cattle that are grazing, south of Mesquite, Nevada, April 7, 2014. (Reuters / George Frey)

Countering those personnel are supporters of the Bundy ranch who say the family must be protected from a tyrannical government.

“We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.”

Payne and other supporters drove from as far away as 12 hours outside of Clark County to come stand by the ranchers’ side, the paper reported, and have received the blessing of well-organized militias from within the region. Payne, a member of the West Mountain Rangers, is also the coordinator of what he described to the paper as being a national association composed of state militias.


Several US senators and the state of Nevada this week also criticized what has been called the result of an “overreaching” agency acting overzealously, but federal officials say the rancher’s cattle are simply not allowed to roam on the disputed land, which the government insists is federal property. According to the BLM, Bundy owes around $1 million in fees that he’s incurred since 1993 when he lost his grazing permit for the chunk of land that had been in his family since the 1870s.

"I would pay my grazing fees to the proper government, which I would say is Clark County, Nevada," he added to the Deseret News on Thursday.

"I don't believe I owe one penny to the United States government," Bundy said. "I don't have a contract with the United States government."

That same day, Bundy’s son Ammon told reporter David Knight that a group of around 20 cowboys had entered the disputed land and quickly retrieved roughly 30 cattle before the federal official could respond.

“We gathered about 30 head,” he said. “We did have a small confrontation with them, but they didn’t have the forces to do a whole lot. They couldn’t mobilize fast enough and we were able to gather those cattle and get them to the ranch.”

Amy Leuders, the director of the BLM's Nevada office, told reporters on Thursday that authorities have been moving in only as a “last resort” resulting from 20 years of Bundy’s noncompliance with regards to paying grazing fees.

According to Leuders, cattle caught trespassing on the federal land will be sold at auction.

BLM fracking racket exposed! Armed siege and cattle theft from Bundy ranch really about fracking leases

© Courtesy Natural News

Natural News | Apr 10, 2014 | Mike Adams

The Bureau of Land Management says its 200-man armed siege of the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada is all about protecting an "endangered tortoise." But a Natural News investigation has found that BLM is actually in the business of raking in millions of dollars by leasing Nevada lands to energy companies that engage in fracking operations.

This document from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology(1) shows significant exploratory drilling being conducted in precisely the same area where the Bundy family has been running cattle since the 1870's. The "Gold Butte" area is indicated on the lower right corner of the document (see below), and it clearly shows numerous exploratory drilling operations have been conducted there.

What's also clear is that oil has been found in nearby areas and possibly even within the Gold Butte area itself.

It is, of course, customary for the U.S. government to bring armed soldiers to an oil dispute. (Operation "Iraqi Freedom" for starters...) Heavily armed snipers, helicopters and militarized soldiers have never been invoked over tortoises. (Anyone who thinks this siege is about reptiles is kidding themselves.)

Here's the map showing the oil exploration conducted on the land where Bundy runs his cattle (all the red crosshairs are oil and gas exploration drilling operations):

BLM collects $1.27 million in shale fracking leases 

The Bureau of Land Management has just cashed in with $1.27 million in oil and gas leases in Nevada. This was just reported two weeks ago in ShaleReporter.com, which states:

U.S. Bureau of Land Management geologist Lorenzo Trimble tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the Elko County oil and gas leases sold Tuesday for $1.27 million to six different companies. The auction took place in Reno. The leases are near where Houston-based Noble Energy Inc. wants to drill for oil and natural gas on 40,000 acres of public and private land near the town of Wells. The Review-Journal reports the project would be the first in Nevada to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract oil and gas from shale deposits.

The way this works, of course, is that BLM runs land theft operations by claiming they are "managing" the land and thereby kicking everyone else off it. They then invoke a reptile, an owl, a bird, a snake or some other animal which they claim to be "saving," even while they are stealing and destroying hundreds of cattle belonging to a private rancher trying to make an honest living in a nation where productive Americans are increasingly branded "enemies of the state."

Once control of the land is established via court order or by bringing armed men with automatic weapons, BLM then turns around and leases the land to fracking companies who proceed to exploit the land using hydraulic fracturing techniques that inject toxic chemicals into groundwater supplies (and have been linked to earthquakes). The money collected by the BLM is then used to increase BLM salaries and bonuses.

In essence, the BLM is a criminal mafia racket, and Cliven Bundy just happened to be in the way of their next target, the Gold Butte area of Nevada. That is why they brought hundreds of heavily armed men to a "save the tortoise" operation.

"Endangered tortoises" is merely the government cover story for confiscating land to turn it over to fracking companies for millions of dollars in energy leases. In truth, the BLM was rapidly euthanizing these very same reptiles en masse last year.(2)

As part of its police state intimidation to control the land, BLM unleashed attack dogs on a pregnant woman.

See the brutality invoked by the BLM against peaceful protesters in this video of a near-riot just outside the Bundy ranch:

Does anyone really believe this is still about a tortoise?

Sources for this story include:

(1) http://www.naturalnews.com/files/Petroleum-D...
(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/25/des...

More details from a man on location:

Chemical plant to wipe small Louisiana town off the map

Natural News | Mar 29, 2014 | L.J. Devon

For over a decade, residents of the small town of Mossville, Louisiana, have been reporting numerous cases of premature death, disease and cancer. A new plot by a large chemical plant looks to finish them off, paying 80 percent or more of the residents to leave the town, which could nearly wipe Mossville off the map.

© Natural News

Residents of the community have long suspected the causes behind the community's deteriorating health situation, pointing to the 14 chemical plants that surround their town.

"I got cancer. My dad had cancer. In fact, he died of cancer. It's a lot of people in this area who died of cancer," says Herman Singleton Jr., 51, who has lost two uncles and an aunt to cancer.

Fellow resident Debra Ramirez said her sister died of a rare inflammatory disease called sarcoidosis.

They aren't the only ones.

14 chemical plants destroying the health of nearby Mossville, Louisiana, residents 

The town consists of about 375 homes, occupied primarily by about 500 African American residents.

According to the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, these 14 chemical plants release thousands of pounds of carcinogens, such as benzene and vinyl chloride, near Mossville each year, filling the air and soil with inflammatory toxins that can accumulate in the tissues of people.

One resident, Dorothy Felix, belongs to a local environmental group that has asked the government to intervene for health reasons, but shuttering the plants and initiating cleanup efforts is a hard concept to bear. The very serious and humbling reality of the situation is hard to confess.

At one point, residents appealed to an international court, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A 2002 documentary, Blue Vinyl, highlights the town's dilemma, showing the toxic consequences of the chemical manufacturing plants. Even evidence can't persuade official action. According to a 1998 study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the blood of 28 Mossville residents was tested and contained dioxin levels three times higher than the national average. Follow-up blood tests in 2001 showed similar results, reaffirming how dangerous these plants are based on their proximity, as the byproducts penetrate residents' cells and accumulate. The town has basically been a horrid science experiment, as many have died off or come down seriously ill in the past decade.

New chemical plant to wipe small Louisiana town off the map 

While the Mossville residents look for help, a newer, larger chemical plant is making preparations to take over the town. The new 21-billion-dollar project, initiated by a South African chemical giant named Sasol, is set to overtake the region, which could ultimately wipe Mossville off the map.

Supported by $2 billion in state incentives, the chemical plant is set to buy out 80 percent of those still living in the region. The chemical plant, which is expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere, is estimated to bring in $46.2 billion in economic benefits in the first year, providing new jobs and opportunities.

But many residents of the Mossville community are at odds with the takeover, even though their homes are set to be bought off at 160 percent of appraised value. They are especially angry to see their town be seized at the hands of a chemical plant.

New plant estimated to pump out an astonishing 10 million cubic tons of greenhouse gases yearly 

While many business leaders and politicians welcome the plant due to its economic potential, the income potential doesn't justify the environmental and health damages that will surely be hammered out into the people in coming years. An analysis conducted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in February 2014 stated that the chemical plant "will result in significant net emissions increases," which will include greenhouse gases, promethium, sulfur oxide, nitric oxide and carbon monoxide.

The analysis estimates that the new plant alone will add more than 10 million cubic tons of greenhouse gases per year to the atmosphere. An Exxon-Mobil refinery only puts out a little over half that amount. So the negative impact to the air quality of the entire region may be compromised to extents unimaginable.

But that probably won't stop the project from going forward, as SASOL has cleared requirements set by the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. Now the facility waits to be erected on three square miles near Mossville, as residents prepare to be forced out in a massive buyoff.

"That's the thing that hurts," says Dorothy Felix, a seventh-generation Mossville resident and community activist. "I'm going to leave all of this behind, a place that I love so much, a place that I grew up, a place that I saw go from rags to riches. Now it's about to go to nothing but the plants."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.motherjones.com

http://www.cnn.com

http://science.naturalnews.com