It’s been a year since an official Congressional study of the FDA said the FDA cannot fulfill its mission because
* FDA’s scientific base has been eroded
* FDA’s scientific organizational structure is weak
* FDA’s conflicts of interest with industry paying scientists for their opinions make objective science impossible
* read more: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?p=1482
The study found, in part, that the FDA is institutionally incapable of protecting the food supply. Nor, we believe, does it want to.
What’s the natural solution? To protect ourselves and our foods (that is, our health) we must divest the FDA of food authority, just like the FDA was divested of authority over controlled dangerous substances a couple decades ago when the DEA was established. And we must do it now. For more see: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?p=1482
You know, of course, FDA is “down regulating” foods, including dietary supplements and natural remedies, while supporting dangerous drugs. How dangerous? Take a look at what the CDC, a unit of the FDA, published on this topic in 2007. Note that the statistics only go as far as 2004. Numerous separate studies show that the rate has increased dramatically since then.
Pharmaceutical Drug Deaths
Food and supplements, which are regulated as food thanks to the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA), passed by unanimous Congressional assent, are the single most significant economic competitor to drugs. If the US Government, including the FDA, could collude in sequestering (read, “hiding”) a government report that showed the dangers of mercury in vaccines (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1534), and then continue to support the bogus notion that vaccines were safe because it is very, very good for the drug industry, what won’t they do for the food AND the drug industries by
* Allowing Big Agribiz and Big Biotech to set their own agendas, rules and practices without any meaningful restraint or oversight
* Down regulating and toxifying food to support the decline in health that keeps the illness care industry, that is, Big Pharma and Big Medica, humming
* Permitting any sort of toxin, pesticide or other chemical (including industrial wastes like fluoride) in the food supply at horrific and highly dangerous levels to make Big Chema, a sister of Big Pharma, happy
* Prohibitting the labeling of gentically modified “foods” because they know that people will not eat them if they know what they are
* Allowing the deliberate radiation of seeds to produce mutations which have unknown consequences and allowing these seeds to be mixed, unlabled with non-mutant seeds (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1573)
* Positioning the agency to prohibit Dietary Supplements from crossing State lines ( http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1449)
What’s more, FDA’s and USDA’s wrong-headed, indeed, lethal policies, which may, according to credible analysts, not only be leading the US to a famine (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1515) in 2009 the likes of which we have never seen, but to an epidemic of the diseases classified by the World Health Organization, as the Preventable Non Communicable Epidemic Diseases of Under Nutrition:
* Cancer
* Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke
* Diabetes
* Obesity
Clean, unadulterated food prevents these diseases from occurring almost all of the time. Food and high potency supplements can correct, treat, mitigate and, as I know from my personal medical experience, cure these lethal scourges.
An agency controlled by, largely funded by, whose scientists are financially beholden to, and whose senior personnel depend on their career advanced upon, an industry cannot regulate that industry. An agency for whom all of those factors are true which has the opportunity to regulate the principle competitor of that industry cannot regulate the competitor well, nor would it desire to do so.
This is the situation for which “Conflict of Interest” was coined!
The solution is clear because the situation is intolerable. Maybe it made sense to combine these functions when the agency was created early in the 20th century because most drugs were derived from foods. It no longer makes sense and the time to end this deadly conflict of OUR interets in now.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26314) to let your Congressional legislators know that you want them to support divesting the FDA of its food regulatory responsibilities. And let your contacts know that this is an important issue for you which you hope will be for them, too, by forwarding this email with a brief cover note urging them to get involved and sign up for the free, secure, Health Freedom eAlerts (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187).
The Article posted below provides a glowing endorsement of another food based horror: irradiating seeds to induce mutations which change the characteristics of plants. The mutated seeds are then integrated (that means not labeled or identified) into the general crop stock and you eat their products.
You also eat the mutant proteins that mutated seeds produce, not knowing if they cause cancer, infertility, auto immune diseases, birth defects, etc., etc., etc. How big is the “etcetera”? Who knows.
Genes code for proteins. Novel genes code for novel proteins. Change one gene and you change not only what that gene does, you change the function of every gene in its vicinity. Genes are not simple, uni-function units. Their presence of absence near another gene affects what it does, too.
To understand this phenomenon, take a thick rubber band and, using a pen, place a 1/8 inch dot on one side of it. Now, holding one end between your left fingers and thumb, start twisting the top of the rubberband and continue twisting it in one direction with the fingers and thumb of the other hand. Keep twisting.
First you get a spiral. They you get a complex twist winding back on itself. Keep twisting and you get a very tightly multiply-twisted double helix upon double helix shape. You will see that the black dot is closely associated with many other parts of the original rubber band.
If the dot is a gene, the rubber band is composed of a huge number of genes and each one of them is influenced by what is present, or absent, in its neighborhood. And your life depends upon what that influence is. Literally.
Scientists often loose track of the concept of “HUBRIS”. Originally a term for a category of crime in ancient Athens, hubris is used in modern English to mean “self-confidence, superciliousness, or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution. Hubris also refers to the actions of those challenging the Gods or their laws resulting in their downfall.
Just because we CAN do something does not mean that we SHOULD do something and if we do that thing, we had better make sure that we understand fully what we are doing before we do it and inflict the results on humans, nature and the future.
What kind of careful, neutral, non commercial science has been carried out to make sure - very sure - that the impact of this technology are beneficial, or at least benign, over large numbers of generations? That is a critical question, wouldn’t you think? I have great fear that the answer is much the same as with GMOs - none and any independent science which questions the technology ruthlessly suppressed.
At the moment, organic, heirloom food is still worth eating. Grow your own. All it takes is a few square feet and some planning. The Natural Solutions Foundation will be inaugurating a new eNewsletter to help you do just that.
Think about food and buy from local farmers from whom you can speak with to determine what seed, what fertilizer and what soil amendments, what seeds and what pest control they use. If the name of any of their products has more than 3 syllables (ask to read the labels), go find another farmer.
Food production is perhaps the defining issue of our times. You, and I, will live and die by it.
Because of its central important to health and health freedom, the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, has created the International Decade of Nutrition, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org, to help us all, farmer and non-farmer alike, take back the production of food from the corporations, national and transnational organizations which are determined, for one reason or another, to force feed us industrial toxins.
And, out of this concern, we are creating the Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org, in Panama. This comprehensive health freedom project, unlike any other health freedom initiative, will include intensive agriculture seminars and hands on practice for non farmers and a Zero Emission, BeyondOrganc, Bio Dynamic(TM) farm and farm school. Some of us will live there full time, some of us will come to participate for a period of time in the training programs as teachers and as students.
Some will come for the healing and natural medical center’s offerings, some will come for the retreats and seminars, some for the opportunity to live for a time in the glorious Panamanian Chiriqui Highlands.
The requirement to take back the production of foods and support a “culture of agriculture” is essential to our continued ability to survive on the planet.
The article below says that we need to support a culture of agriculture. That is the only thing with which I agree in the entire article. Read it and take action to reclaim YOUR food in order to protect your health now.
DEVELOPMENT: New Food Must Go Nuclear
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Dec 2 (IPS) - Better crops on the one hand, and nuclear power on the other might be, you would think, at extreme ends of the technological, and for some, even the moral spectrum. But it could be time to make agriculture more nuclear.
A lot of it is, already. Hundreds of millions of hectares of cultivation around the world is already nuclear assisted. And this technology goes back all of 80 years. Now the world needs this as never before, nuclear and agricultural scientists say.
“Currently there are over 3,000 officially released crop varieties that have involved radiation induced mutations, and over 100 countries routinely make use of this technology, which is one of their favourite strategies for crop improvement,” Chikelu Mba, head of the plant breeding unit at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told IPS in an interview in London. The IAEA is promoting use of nuclear techniques for new crop mutations jointly with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
“These crops, grown all over the world, now form an integral part of our daily diet. They are raw materials in industries, and give countries billions of dollars in additional income for farmers.”
Essentially, the technique treats seeds with x-rays and gamma rays to produce new mutations of crops that are better resistant to difficult conditions and changing climate. Nature would of itself produce new mutations of crops to adapt to changing conditions, but only in time, and a long time at that. But this technique can speed up that change dramatically, here and now.
“Once seeds have been irradiated, the seedlings are integrated into normal crop breeding procedures of the countries,” says Mba. “Compared to any other technology you could think about, this is cheap, cost effective, robust, environmentally friendly, and based on results. It is proven, and it is applicable anywhere in the world.”
But a frightening thought, nevertheless, to think of a meal made possible by something nuclear. And the thought raises the ghost of genetically modified (GM) crops, that this could be another, and far bigger instance of misusing science to fool around with nature.
Mba says the world can rest — and eat — assured.
“There is nothing that can be produced through radiation induced mutation that is not within the spectrum of possibilities of what nature can bring out in that crop, given sufficient space and time. All radiation induced mutation is doing is to facilitate a naturally occurring phenomenon.” And there is no residual radiation left in a plant after the mutation induction, he says.
Dinner can include a newly developed strain of rice using nuclear induced mutation, but the ingredients in the rice preparation will not be nuclear.
This technology can be critical in addressing world hunger and food security, the IAEA says. It leads to plant varieties that are not just high yielding but adapt to harsh climate conditions and are resistant to certain diseases and insect pests. “The IAEA is urging a revival of nuclear crop breeding technologies to help tackle world hunger,” IAEA director general Dr Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement. He has asked for allocation of more resources around the world for use and development of this technology.
The IAEA and the FAO together say that in addition to 850 million people worldwide already going hungry, a million more are being pushed below the one-dollar-a-day poverty level. Increased use of this new technology can improve health and livelihood, they say.
In Japan, the Institute of Radiation Breeding has figured that crops developed with radiation induced mutations have yielded 62 billion dollars in returns, for an investment of 69 million dollars between 1959 and 2001. That amounts to a 900 fold return. In Pakistan, use of the technique quadrupled cotton production in ten years. China and the U.S. are the other countries where the technology is in widespread use.
But the technology has still not been used as widely as it ought to be, scientists say. “In 1928 it was found that x-rays would change the blueprint of plants in a manner in which that which is hidden can become obvious and be used to create new crop varieties,” says Mba. And it was in 1964 that the IAEA and the FAO came together and set up a joint programme for using nuclear techniques in food and agriculture to “mimic nature.” Now, he says, given the recent agricultural shocks, “we can no longer wait for chance discoveries to give us new crop varieties.”
The IAEA, he said, is calling the attention of the world to the looming threat of global climate change and variation. “This year, prices of all basic foodstuff went to their highest level in the past 50 years, and this situation is only going to get worse,” Mba says.
“The countries most at risk are their developing countries, with their fragile ecosystems, with their agriculture that is rudimentary, no effective irrigation, where farmers do not have enough resources to buy fertilisers. So when the environment changes so much, there will not be enough resilience in the crops to withstand these new conditions.”
The IAEA, he said, is “calling for a revival of culture, if you may, of supporting agriculture.” (END/2008)
COMMENT:
An expert I know [not further identified by the author - Dr. Rima] commented as follows when asked; ” What proportion of crops are already in circulation influenced by this
technology?”
An EXTREMELY tiny proportion were generated via “nuclear breeding.” Maybe or
two veggie varieties. “Nuclear breeding” was a fad in the 60’s but it failed
to yield anything very relevant or useful. Almost all breeding is not
dependent on generating additional genetic diversity by use of mutagenesis,
but by making use of the existing genetic diversity within the genepool of a
given species. There is sufficient diversity to address virtually any need,
because the genepool of any given species contains the capacity of the
species to adapt to and deal with essentially every condition, stress,
challenge with which the species and its predecessors have been confronted
since the beginning of time (yes some diversity and capabilities are lost
over time, but there is still a HUGE range of capabilities there). Breeders
develop selection schemes for identifying these pre-existing traits and
thereby make use of nature’s existing capabilities (virtually ALL
POSSIBILITIES!).
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44952
Re-posted by Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
————————————
Tetrahedron, LLC - http://www.tetrahedron.org
Health Science Communications for People Around the World
NEWS RELEASE
Release: No. 18-Thimerosal-6
Date Mailed: Dec. 1, 2008
CDC and Congress Secrets Vaccine Mercury Report:
Experts Expose Lucrative American Genocide
Sandpoint, ID–Congressional investigators and federal health officials have
secreted a report prepared by experts proving vaccine mercury is harming
children far worse than previously known. The “Thimerosal VSD Study: Phase I”
document was secreted in 2000, and subsequent congressional hearings and news
reports neglected it.
The study, conducted by scientists commissioned by the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC), shows statistically significant links between vaccine-injected
mercury and “neurological developmental disorders” including misery,
depression, and suicide. Additional links to autism were strongly suggested by
the data that heavily discourages the use of the drug Thimerosal containing
mercury used for vaccine sterility.
The official documents marked “CONFIDENTIAL . . . DO NOT COPY OR RELEASE” were
obtained by class action attorneys through Freedom of Information petitions
and posted this week on the Internet attached to a filmed commentary by public
health expert, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz. The iMovie is viewable on YouTube.
“This is an obvious vaccination genocide,” Dr. Horowitz said. He called it
“gross criminal negligence and murderous official malfeasance” that the report
was secreted by congressional investigators and public health protectors.
“These traitors have purposefully manipulated and impaired millions of
American children, and the economic burden of caring for their special needs
with be catastrophic.”
The VSD Study data was referenced in 2003 by researchers publishing in the
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; then rebutted by the American
Academy of Pediatrics commissioned to establish vaccination schedules on
behalf of the drug industry. The rebuttal failed to note the VDS data had been
sequestered, then used its lacking availability to argue inadequacy of data
with which to condemn mercury as the cause of skyrocketing rates of autism.
Genocide is defined as the mass killing or enslaving of people for profit,
politics, and/or ideology. All motives are evident in this vaccination
atrocity with powerful drug lobbyists conspiring with corrupt health officials
to profit by injecting children with mercury. This is why most health workers
and school administrators still believe this practice is safe rather than
dangerous and damaging.
Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained humanitarian knighted for his work in vaccine
risk awareness and consumer protection has asked CDC officials on several
occasions to explain the suppression of vaccine science and side-effects
without a response. Last year he released a documentary film, In Lies We
Trust, to cite to the government’s immunization agenda and ongoing televised
propaganda as “genocidal.”
Regarding another vaccine-administered genocide, President-elect Barack
Obama’s long time minister and spiritual counsel, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told
reporters at the National Press Club, “I believe our government is capable
of doing anything.” He recommended Dr. Horowitz’s book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS
& Ebola–Nature, Accident or Intentional?, (Tetrahedron Press;
1-888-508-4787 ) as best proving HIV/AIDS came from chimpanzees that were
used by American biological weapons developers to produce the hepatitis B
vaccines given to New York homosexuals and African villagers in 1972 as
reported by CNN.
“Yes, it is genocide,” said Ingri Cassel, regarding the secreted Thimerosal
study. The director of Vaccination Liberation Organization has researched
and written on the mercury accumulating in children from vaccinations for
nearly 20 years. “The government has always been involved with Big Pharma; so
this suppression of scientific evidence condemning vaccine mercury and the
child abusers in government and industry does not surprise me.”
The officials who knew of this study, yet neglected or suppressed its
reporting should be indicted under federal organized crime (RICO) laws for
“conspiring with the vaccine industry to commit mass murder; condemning
children to suffer serious illnesses managed pharmaceutically capriciously and
terminally for profit,” Dr. Horowitz commented.
Health officials have consistently promoted vaccines as central to their ‘War
on Preventable Diseases,’ luring families with children and elders into
serious depression and drug addictions restricting life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Millions of people now must cope with vaccine
injuries–maladies ranging from eczema and allergies to crippling autoimmune
diseases, psychopathologies, and certain cancers.
Given these revelations about Thimerosal, the mind-set of health officials and
vaccine administrators is reminiscent of last century’s doctors who
recommended cigarettes for health. The secreting of cigarette smoking risks
and physical damages done is much like this suppressed “VSD Study:” neglected
by those licensed-to-kill pushing vaccines instead of tobacco.
-end-
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: For interviews with Dr. Horowitz, please call Jackie
Lindenbach at 1-208-265-8065 . To view “The CDC’s VACCINATION GENOCIDE”
search Google or YouTube.
Quite unintentionally, the Natural Solutions Foundation has created a solution to a most unnatural of problems: the government “redistributing” your retirement wealth into its coffers. IRAs and 401 accounts are a juicy piggy bank with a lot of money tucked away.
The bottom line is that while Congress is looking for ways to get hold of your money, we have, through our International Decade of Nutrition’s Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project (http://www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org) developed an offshore opportunity that will not only protect your money and offer you a nice return on your money, it may also protect your IRA or 401 money from being seized or converted or controlled. We accomplish this while getting it out of depreciating dollars, getting it out of the US and supporting our unique, highly innovative and urgently important initiative to reclaim the production of food from the industrialized food cartel - including the GMO thugs.
Your IRA or 401 funds may or may not be large. In the aggregate, however, they add up to quite a bit of cash, all stashed away where the US cannot get any taxes out of it, or spend it.
Here is what the Government Accounting Office Report GAO-08-590 notes about the amount of money that our cash-strapped government is eying,
Individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, hold more assets than any other type
of retirement vehicle. In 2004, IRAs held about $3.5 trillion in assets
compared to $2.6 trillion in defined contribution (DC) plans, including 401(k)
plans, and $1.9 trillion in defined benefit (DB), or pension plans.
Add them up and we are talking abut $6.1 Trillion, a tidy sum even for the wildly extravagant US.
So, as it is running out of money, while giving trillions away at a prodigious rate to potentates, bankers and other unseemly types, the government has noticed that your money looks mighty good. Of course, the bankers and their pet politicians know that their financial system is, quite literally, bankrupt.
If you read the article below you will see that confidential information from CitiGroup makes it clear that they know the jig is up, and you will know it, too.
So it makes sense that a variety of schemes would be concocted to get government mitts on your money.
There are a couple of plans afoot: one, which was presented to Congress last June, would offer you the “voluntary” opportunity to convert your IRA or 401 fund into a Government Retirement Account (GPA) which would create an annuity at 3% above inflation (i.e., through “investment” in allegedly safe US Treasury Bonds) of your entire fund or face the loss of the tax deferred status of your IRA or 401 money. This plan would, if adopted, never allow you to withdraw your money as you can begin doing at 59 1/2 and must begin doing at 72 1/2. Instead, you would receive a government annuity once you retire at 3% above inflation, until you conveniently die of the famine and pandemics we are being told are just around the corner.
The other plan being discussed is to simply raid your retirement piggy bank and compel anywhere from 50% to 100% of your retirement funds to be “invested” in those supposed safe US Treasury Bonds.
The bankster money makers are getting desperate. Not content with looting the economies of the world through usurious IMF and World Bank policies, creating massive fiat money debt and destroying the ability of fragile economies to become both secure and independent of the globalists’ economic bludgeon, the US is being looted of its wealth as “bailout” and “stimulus program” follows “bailout” and “stimulus program”. While the market reacts to being “rescued” by collapsing further…
The main stream media acts as if all of this pouring oil on the fire makes sense while Congress holds hearings on how to grab another supposedly sacrosanct, protected and safe portion of our wealth - our retirement investments.
It is perfectly legal - now - to invest your IRA or similarly mobile 401 funds in foreign real estate. Both Chase JP Morgan, the custodian of my Self Directed IRA and UBS, its previous custodian told me that it was not legal to take the money offshore. They lied. As long as the investment is not for your personal benefit (for example, to build a house for yourself to live in), you can invest the money as you direct. Your custodian still maintains the responsibility of reporting to the IRS on what is going on with the money and it continues to be protected and tax deferred since you are not using it for your own gratification. For example, if your money were used for the construction of the wellness center, or the community center, or the educational facilities on the farm, it would qualify for this purpose. These activities would generate the return to your participation. If you chose to live in the community, you would make a private donation, not an IRA investment, and would receive a Beneficial Investment Certificate which would allow you to build your house here - which would NOT be funded by the IRA or 401 investment.
If you chose to make a friendly loan (currently paying 4 times the US Prime Rate) that would be repaid as any other loan would, but IRA AND 401 money could not be used for that purpose. In any event, the educational and wellness center, as well as the farm activities would provide the financial support needed to service the loans. In addition to the advanced wellness center, the Foundation has plans for a full range of educational seminars, workshops and experiential programs. And there will be the farm school and farm, including over two acres of greenhouse space.
If you chose to support the IDN Valley of the Moon project with non 401 or IRA money, that, of course, would be welcome as a tax deductible donation which would have no bearing on your IRA or 401 money, reporting or status. The money, once placed in Panama, participate through the Beneficial Interest Certificate structure.
So, for example, if you were to direct IRA or 401 funds to the Natural Solutions Foundation to be placed in our project in Panama, your Custodian would review the documents of our Panamanian Corporation (the Natural Solutions Corporation certificate of incorporation and participation agreement) and approve the investment. You would then direct the money to be sent to our US account set up for this purpose and we would wire it to the Panamanian project where it would be reported to your custodian just like any IRA or 401 investment.
Your money is therefore off shore, out of fiat currency (expect a tremendous devaluation and then rampant hyperinflation, according to our money-industry friends) and out of the grabbing paws of the US Government.
It is protected by a sinking fund so that if in the future you decide to deploy your money elsewhere we will not have to sell property to allow you to deploy your funds as you see fit or withdraw them as required or desired.
We did not start out looking for an offshore investment possibility which would protect your hard-earned retirement (and mine, since I am following this course of action with my own IRA) but, as things have unrolled, we have a potentially great positive benefit to you and to us.
Remember, money provided either through the IRA or the 401 route bear interest and, since invested in real estate, are relatively free of the perturbations of fiat currency. They are still tax deferred. We think this is a remarkable opportunity in a time of great economic uncertainty.
If you would like to discuss these options further, please contact Ralph Fucetola JD at ralph.fucetola@usa.net. Ralph is our attorney and a Trustee of the Natural Solutions Foundation.
We do not know how soon this window of opportunity will shut, but our economic advisers tell us that the word that they are getting is that it is shutting and we only have a few months more at most.
Please do you own due diligence and consider this option seriously. I certainly have and am acting on it even as you read this.
Below is the article on Gold and another about Argentina’s seizure of private pensions… think it can’t happen here?
Citigroup says gold could rise above $2,000 next year as the world financial system unravels.
Gold is poised for a dramatic surge and could blast through $2,000 an ounce by the end of next year as central banks flood the world’s monetary system with liquidity, according to an internal client note from the US bank Citigroup.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
27 Nov 2008
Citigroup says gold could rise above $2,000 next year as world unravels
The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world’s authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.
This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.
“They are throwing the kitchen sink at this,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank’s chief technical strategist.
“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.
“Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don’t think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes,” he said.
“This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised.”
“What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. People react when they have their backs to the wall. We’re already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore,” he said.
Gold traders are playing close attention to reports from Beijing that the China is thinking of boosting its gold reserves from 600 tonnes to nearer 4,000 tonnes to diversify away from paper currencies. “If true, this is a very material change,” he said.
Mr Fitzpatrick said Britain had made a mistake selling off half its gold at the bottom of the market between 1999 to 2002. “People have started to question the value of government debt,” he said.
Citigroup said the blast-off was likely to occur within two years, and possibly as soon as 2009. Gold was trading yesterday at $812 an ounce. It is well off its all-time peak of $1,030 in February but has held up much better than other commodities over the last few months – reverting to is historical role as a safe-haven store of value and a de facto currency.
Gold has tripled in value over the last seven years, vastly outperforming Wall Street and European bourses.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3526645/Citigroup-says-gold-could-rise-above-2000-next-year-as-world-unravels.html
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Note from General Bert: although “paper gold” as reported in the investment media fluctuates between $700 and $900 per ounce, try to find actual gold coins for delivery at that price. Better, check the price of a one ounce Kruggerand on eBay(R) … you may be surprised how high the real price of gold has gotten.
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And about Argentina:
“October 26, 2008 - From Bloomberg: “Argentines Decry State’s `Disastrous’ Record as Pensions Seized.” Excerpt:
Fourteen years ago, Raul Zimmermann opted to contribute to one of Argentina’s new private pension funds because he didn’t trust in the state retirement system. Now he’s outraged by government plans to seize his savings and take responsibility for paying his monthly benefit.
“The history of the pensions managed by the state is disastrous,” said Zimmermann, 69, who started drawing a pension two years ago. “It’s not reasonable that they transfer my account without even asking me if I want to.”
On Oct. 21, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced plans to take over $29 billion of private pension accounts, saying a state-run system would protect retirees from fluctuations in financial markets. Roque Fernandez, an economy minister and central bank president in the 1990s, said the move is a ‘confiscation” of people’s savings. . .’ ”
“October 27, 2008 - Buenos Aires, Argentina (AHN) - With $30 billion pension fund money to be transferred in the hands of the debt-ridden national government, Argentinean lawyers plan to block misuse of the funds.
The lawyers, who represent the 10 pension funds to be nationalized by the administration, are apprehensive amid talks the money may be used to pay the country’s huge debts. Their fears were exacerbated since the administration-controlled Congress is slated to discuss the bill on Oct. 27, according to lawyer Juan Acuna Kunz.
The talks of fund misuse fueled a two-day drop in pension funds’ stock, the largest decline in 18 years.”
The article that follows is profoundly disturbing because it is well reasoned and very hard to refute. I cannot say with certainty that a famine will hit the US in 2009 but, after reading this article, I am hard put to come up with reason why it will not.
The solution is simple: a revisit to the World War II Victory Garden idea. Whether you live in an urban apartment without a terrace or a suburban community with a back yard, or anything in between, you have the ability to use tubs of earth with a grow light, plant a 4 foot square piece of land, create a community garden or otherwise Gerry rig a small vegetable farm which, properly managed, will allow you to to grow enough vegetables for your family, indoors or out, for a family of four.
Larger family, more buckets of soil or square feet of land. Smaller family? Give some food to the disabled, the elderly or the disadvantaged in your town.
This is a potent heads-up and the time is now.
The Natural Solutions Foundation will be publishing a subscription-based Intensive Gardening and Food Production newsletter. If you would like to write a column for this newsletter please contact the Natural Solutions Foundation by sending an email to dr.laibow@gmail.com with “Food” in the subject line.
In the next couple of issues of the Health Freedom eAlerts we will be announcing the new Newsletter and letting you know how you can subscribe to it.
Can this impending food shortage in the breadbasket nation of the United States be an accident, an act of God, a combination of unfortunate events or is this an intentional manipulation of the food system to make sure that the remaining farmers are driven off the land to make room for the total domination of the industrialized food supply and the mega-corporations who profit from it? I do not know the answer. I have my deep suspicions, but no conclusive data right now.
However, the answer does not matter right now. If there is a famine headed our way, we must prepare for it now. Not next week, not when the famine hits, but now. Every one of us needs to think about how s/he can lay in stores of needed supplies which cannot be home produced and how to start the process of home food production while there is lead time left.
Now would be a good time to begin thinking seriously about how to get started growing your own clean, unadulterated, non-GMO food in your own apartment, yard or community. There really is not a lot of time left to get ready if this article is correct.
Reclaiming food production is a central theme of the Natural Solutions Foundation International Decade of Nutrition (IDN), www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org. The IDN project to teach farmers how to grow healthful food for their communities and themselves (that’s you) is taking shape in the Chir
HOLLY NOTE
Weather, as we have warned for the past year has taken a terrible
toll on crops. Floods, hail and tornadoes hammered America’s breadbasket.
Drought is killing California’s huge agriculture belt and hitting crops in the
Southeast this year. Decimated bee populations added to crop decline. Grain
reserves are non-existent. Compounding matters, fuel, seed and equipment have
all risen sharply in recent years.Daily news address rampant concerns over
rice, wheat, corn and soybean shortages. And now food rationing and hoarding
is creeping into reality…Riots and food protests have already hit many
nations: South Africa, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza, Kenya, Nicaragua, Mexico,
Bahrain, the Emirates, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt in addition to Haiti,
Cameroon, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Bolivia, Peru, Thailand,
Somali, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan, Yemen, India, and the Philippines.
After the Mexican tortillas riots last year, corn tortillas prices rose
another 18%.Despite lower fuel prices at the pump, food prices are expected to
rise in 2009.With food shortages threatening to become the biggest crisis of
the 21st century, you can bet food riots are coming to America. In fact, top
trend forecaster, Gerald Celente, warns on coming US food riots.Stock up now -
buy in bulk - and pack for long-term storage grain products, flour, rice,
beans, powdered milk and any other foods you regularly consume. The longer you
delay, prices are only going to escalate, your options will dwindle, along
with selection. Please do this before your options close.When reading news
articles, it is our hope you’ll read beyond the headlines and hear the
unspoken message - a quiet urging to prepare.
November 27, 2008By Neal RauhauserDaily KosLast week I received a very
concerned call from South Dakota farmer and agronomist Bryan Lutter. “Neal,
we’re out of propane!” I figured this was personal distress – he and his
family farm over three square miles of land and I know this has been a tough
year for many people. He promptly corrected my misconception when I tried to
console him. “No, everybody is out, all three grain elevators, we can’t get
fuel for the bins, and we’re coming in real wet this year.”There are equally
dramatic issues due to the bankruptcy of Verasun and the apparent insolvency
of the nation’s largest private crop insurance program. Payments that would
have come in June or July of a normal year are still not dispersed at the end
of November and this has grim implications for next year’s crop.I started
digging into the details and unless I’m badly mistaken people are going to be
starving in 2009 over causes and conditions being set down right now. It’s a
complex, interlocking issue, and I hope I’ve done a good job explaining it
below the fold …(I just submitted my personal story and a vision for the
nation at change.gov - I sure hope someone is listening over there.)The
Dakotas have faced fuel restrictions for at least the last two years. They’re
at the far end of the pipeline network and after complete outages in 2007
everyone orders their diesel well in advance. Vehicle tanks are kept fuller
and the on farm tanks are not allowed to run low. Gasoline supply dynamics
have changed as well; British Petroleum shuttered three hundred stations in
the area, citing the high cost of trucking fuel to the locations from the
pipeline terminals. This year propane is in short supply. Rural homes in that
part of the world are heated with propane and the grain elevator and on farm
drying require it to bring corn moisture down for storage. There is no sense
that homes will go cold this year, at least not due to supply issues; the
grain drying season is a short period of intense usage that will draw to an
end within the next week. Pray to whatever higher power you recognize that the
unheard of figure of 18% of the crop still in the field is brought in before
the snow flies.The Dakotas were very wet this year and the corn is coming in
at 22% moisture. A more usual number would be 18% and for long term storage it
must be dried to 14% to avoid spoilage. That doubling in the moisture
reduction needed, an 8% drop instead of 4%, pretty much doubles the amount of
propane used. Right now the harvest is at a dead stop. What can be dried has
been and what is left can’t even be combined without the fuel to make it ready
for storage; it would all just spoil in the bin if put up wet.I wondered if
this was a spot problem in that particular part of South Dakota, but Bryan
said it was widespread – he’d talked to farmers as far away as St. Louis and
they were reporting similar issues.I made a few calls to try to figure out how
broad the problem was. I ended up talking to Rollin Tiefenthaler at fuel
dealer Al’s Corner in Carroll, Iowa about the issue.The Iowa crop comes
matures earlier and is brought in earlier, so that is done, but he confirms
that propane is being trucked long distances because local terminals have
outages. They did have one farmer’s cooperative run out of propane and they
scrambled to get them enough, but in general it wasn’t a problem. These are
plains cooperatives, operations with thirty employees, dozens of vehicles, and
tens of millions of dollars in inventory and commodities under management, so
one running out of fuel is a problem that would affect a whole county.Diesel
has been a bigger concern for them – instead of the thirty mile drive to the
Magellan pipeline terminal in Milford they’re running as far as Des Moines or
Omaha, each about two hours away, and the added time and cost for running more
trucks is eating them alive.The die has already been cast in the Dakotas,
they’ll either get the crop in or they won’t. If they don’t and it winters in
the field they not only lose 40% of the yield on that ground they lose 20% of
next year’s yield in soy beans. The corn makes an excellent snow fence,
trapping drifts six feet high, and they’re slow to clear in the spring. The
farmers have to wait until it’s dry enough to plant before they can finish
bringing in the corn crop, then they plant their soy, and that delay cuts into
the growing degree days available for the soy beans and thusly we see the
yield drop.A few of you might not be from farm state and thusly won’t know the
normal work flow. The corn crop is still partially in the field, but the soy
beans are already done. Soy matures and dries earlier, so it gets tended
first. There would never been an instance of soy being left to overwinter just
based on crop timing and I don’t think the small, thin stocks with relatively
fragile pods would prove to be terribly durable under snow banks.I wrote
earlier about the famine potential we face due to the underfertilization of
the wheat crop. Wheat that gets enough ammonia is 14% protein, if it is
unfertilized closer to 8%, and that 43% reduction in total plant protein is
going to cause unimaginable suffering in places like Egypt, where half of the
population gets subsidized bread. Global end of season per capita wheat stocks
have been about seventy pounds my entire life, except the last three years
where they’ve dropped to only forty pounds. One mistake in this area and one
of the four horsemen gets loose, certainly dragging his brothers along behind.
That mistake may already have been made in the lack of wheat fertilization
this fall.The fall nitrogen fertilizer application has been 10% of the norm. A
typical year would see 50% put on in the fall and 50% in the spring. During
fertilizer application season the 3,100 mile national ammonia pipeline network
runs flat out and the far points on the network experience low flow both fall
and spring. If they try to jam 90% of the fertilization into a period of time
when the system can only flow a little more than half of the need much of our
cropland will go without in the spring of 2009.Finances as much as weather are
the issue with regards to fertilization this fall. Crop prices have fallen to
half of what they were, ammonia prices have dropped but ammonia suppliers
here, receiving 75% of their supply from overseas, still have product in their
storage tanks purchase at the historical highs last spring and summer.When
farmers plant they record the acreage and they purchase crop insurance - $20
to $40 an acre depending on the crop. If they have a failure they file a
claim, an adjustor contacts them, and they get a check to cover the deficit.
Some of this runs through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and some of it is
through private insurers.My conversations with farmers earlier this week lead
me to believe that the largest private insurer, Des Moines Iowa’s Rain and
Hail Agricultural Insurance may be insolvent. Flooding claims from this spring
were filed and payments would have typically been received by the end of June
or beginning of July. It’s now the end of November and payments are not being
dispersed. Individual farmers are told there was something wrong with their
paperwork, but this is nonsense – some of these guys have been farming
thirty years and they all didn’t forget how to fill out a simple form all at
the same time. Iowa did have its second five hundred year flood in a decade
and a half this spring which certainly has something to do with the situation,
but I suspect Wall Street’s sticky fingers got hold of Rain & Hail’s assets,
just as they’ve done to every pension fund and state run municipal investment
pool.So, we’re already facing what Bryan Lutter calls “the mother of all
fertilizer shortages” next spring and on top of that local banks won’t lend to
farmers.The local bank was quite willing to lend to a farmer on a crop despite
the weather related risks just like they’d lend on a car despite the driving
risks. So long as the asset was insured the risk was deemed manageable. There
were sure to be losses here and there, but they’d be administrative hassles
associated with well known risks. If the auto insurance companies were viewed
as untrustworthy no one would be getting a car without 100% down at the
dealership and the same rule is now in effect for farmers.Farmers without
financing can’t afford nitrogen fertilizer at $1,000 a ton, which translates
to $100 an acre at current application rates. They won’t be paying $300 for a
bag of 80,000 hybrid corn kernels, again a $100 per acre expense. The average
farm size in Iowa is four hundred acres and planting to harvesting would run
about $120,000.This looks incredibly bad. Bryan and I are both puzzled as to
why the mainstream media isn’t covering this. Perhaps the need to sell
Christmas season advertising trumps the need for the public to know about the
troubles that are brewing.This is already 1,600 words and I haven’t even
touched Verasun. Executive summary? The nation’s second largest ethanol maker
took corn from farmers, went bankrupt without paying many of them, and a whole
lot of family farms are going to be foreclosed upon in short order if
something isn’t done.
"want to personally thank Dr. Rima Laibow for her 40 minute educational talk on CODEX. I am all fired up now to vote wherever I am asked to say NO to this violation of my civil and health rights, that no one has the power to tell me what can and cannot be put into my body. I want to see CODEX put into a large toilet and flushed off the face of this nation. NO TO CODEX!!"
