Yea … right … I believe … (not) …

Posted on August 31, 2011 by PAUL MILLER

… IF … only he was NOT a paid speaker at the American Chemical Society conference … bet Mon$anto & Friend$ were thrilled at what he $aid … deliberately left a big part of the puzzle out … why … ?

Unfounded pesticide concerns adversely affect the health of low-income populations

… by Staff Writers… Denver CO (SPX) Aug 31, 2011 … http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Unfounded_pesticide_concerns_adversely_affect_the_health_of_l

ow_income_populations_999.html

The increasingly prevalent notion that expensive organic fruits and vegetables are safer because pesticides - used to protect traditional crops from insects, thus ensuring high crop yields and making them less expensive – are a risk for causing cancer has no good scientific support, an authority on the disease said here Tuesday. Such unfounded fears could have the unanticipated consequence of keeping healthful fruits and vegetables from those with low incomes.

Bruce N. Ames, Ph.D., developer of a widely used test for potential carcinogens that bears his name, spoke at the 242nd National Meeting and Exposition of the … American Chemical Society (ACS)…, being held here this week. With more than 7,500 reports on new advances in science and more than 12,000 scientists and others expected in attendance, it will be one of 2011′s largest scientific gatherings.

Ames described his "triage theory," which explains how the lack of essential vitamins and minerals from fruit and vegetables in the diet of younger people can set the stage for cancer and other diseases later in life. A professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley, Ames also is a senior scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, where he works on healthy aging.

He developed the Ames test, which uses bacteria to test whether substances damage the genetic material DNA and, in doing so, have the potential to cause cancer. He has received the U.S. National Medal of Science among many other awards.

In the presentation, Ames said that animal cancer studies unfairly label many substances, including pesticides and other synthetic chemicals, as dangerous to humans. Ames’ and Lois Swirsky Gold’s research indicates that almost all pesticides in the human diet are substances present naturally in plants to protect them from insects.

"Animal cancer tests, which are done at very high doses of synthetic chemicals such as pesticides – the "maximum tolerated dose" (MTD) – are being misinterpreted to mean that minuscule doses in the diet are relevant to human cancer. 99.99 percent of the pesticides we eat are naturally present in plants to protect them from insects and other predators.

Over half of all chemicals tested, whether natural or synthetic, are carcinogenic in rodent tests," Ames said. He thinks this is due to the high dose itself and is not relevant to low doses.

At very low doses, many of these substances are not of concern to humans, he said. For example, a single cup of coffee contains 15-20 of these natural pesticides and chemicals from roasting that test positive in animal cancer tests, but they are present in very low amounts.

Human pesticide consumption from fresh food is even less of a concern, according to Ames – the amount of pesticide residues that an average person ingests throughout an entire year is even less than the amount of those "harmful" substances in one cup of coffee. In fact, evidence suggests coffee is protective against cancer in humans.

Unfounded fears about the dangers of pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables may stop many consumers from buying these fresh, healthful foods. In response, some stores sell "organic" foods grown without synthetic pesticides, but these foods are much more expensive and out of the reach of low-income populations. As a result, people – especially those who are poor – may consume fewer fruits and vegetables.

But how does a lack of fresh produce lead to cancer and other aging diseases? That’s where Ames’ triage theory comes in.

In wartime, battlefield doctors with limited supplies and time do a triage, making quick decisions about which injured soldiers to treat. In a similar way, the body makes decisions about how to ration vital nutrients while experiencing an immediate moderate deficiency, but this is often at a cost.

"The theory is that, as a result of recurrent shortages of vitamins and minerals during evolution, natural selection developed a metabolic rebalancing response to shortage," he said. "Rebalancing favors vitamin- and mineral-dependent proteins needed for short-term survival and reproduction while starving those proteins only required for long-term health." Ames noted that the theory is strongly supported by recent work (Am J Clin Nutr. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.27930; FASEB J DOI:10.1096/fj.11-180885; J Nucleic Acids DOI:10.4061/2010/725071).

For example, if a person’s diet is low in calcium – a nutrient essential for many ongoing cellular processes – the body takes it from wherever it can find it – usually the bones. The body doesn’t care about the risk of osteoporosis 30 or 40 years in the future (long-term health) when it is faced with an emergency right now (short-term survival). Thus, insidious or hidden damage happens to organs and DNA whenever a person is lacking vitamins or minerals, and this eventually leads to aging-related diseases, such as dementia, osteoporosis, heart trouble and cancer.

And with today’s obesity epidemic, resulting largely from bad diets that lack healthful foods containing vitamins, minerals and fiber, aging-related diseases are likely to be around for some time to come.

… Disclose all the research … how & where it was performed … and who picked up the tap …

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… Not to worry Congre$$ ha$ our back$ …

Posted on August 31, 2011 by PAUL MILLER

… Not to worry Congre$$ ha$ our back$ …

…Windfalls of war: Pentagon’s no-bid contracts triple in 10 years of war…

By Sharon Weinberger … http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/08/29/5989/windfalls-war-pentagons-no-bid-contracts-triple-10-years-war

As U.S. military deaths and injuries from roadside bombs escalated after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon rushed to find solutions.

Competition is normally the cornerstone of better prices and better products, but the urgency of dealing with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, has been cited to justify a number of sole-source contracts to companies promising quick solutions over a decade of war.

One such company was Tucson-basedApplied Energetics , which markets a futuristic weapon that shoots beams of lightning to detonate roadside bombs. The company won over $50 million in military contracts for their lightning weapon, all without full and open competition, even though there was another company marketing similar technology. Despite test failures, the company, in part thanks to congressional support, continued to get funding.

In August, the Marine Corps, which was on the verge of awarding the company yet another sole-source contract for the lightning weapon,cancelled the latest $3 million deal after the commander of the unit in Afghanistan decided it didn’t meet their needs.

In the meantime, a competitor, called Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems , an Indiana-based firm with its own lightning-based counter-bomb technology, says it’s had good results with only a fraction of the federal funding that Applied Energetics has received—$1.5 million. The company is preparing to test its technology at a military range. “We did our own development based on state grants” and federal funds, says Pete Bitar, the head of the company. “I cashed out my 401(k).”

The bomb fighting contract is a small example of a problem that’s been exacerbated by 10 years of war: awarding contracts without competition. While the Pentagon says its overall level of competition has remained steady over the past 10 years, publicly available data shows that Defense Department dollars flowing into non-competitive contracts have almost tripled since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. According to analysis by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News, the data shows that the value of Pentagon contracts awarded without competition topped $140 billion in 2010, up from $50 billion in 2001.

And despite repeated pledges to reform the process, non-competitive contracts are a hard habit to break. According to federal data, the Pentagon’s competed contracts, based on dollar figures, fell to 55 percent in the first two quarters of 2011, a number lower than any point in the last 10 years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

There are a number of legal loopholes that allow the Defense Department, as well as other federal agencies, to avoid competition and to select a single company to provide the desired goods and services. In some cases, there may be only one legitimate supplier of needed goods, or the government can argue that it has “an unusual and compelling urgency,” and that holding a competition would have a detrimental impact on government operations or national security.

But those exceptions have become increasingly abused, according to numerous studies. In fact, an analysis of over a dozen government reports and investigations, and interviews with eight former government officials and experts, found a number of concerns about DOD competition practices — attributable in large part to the past 10 years of war. Those include:

The use of large umbrella contracts to purchase goods and services that could be competed individually, thus resulting in lower price;
Justifying sole source contracts by citing an “urgent and compelling need,” when in fact the urgency stemmed from the agency’s lack of planning for requirements that have been known for years.
Extending large contracts as a “bridge,” rather than re-competing them.
An overall failure to utilize competition in cases that could result in cost savings and better performance.

· These alarming trends have not gone unnoticed. Sole-source and other noncompetitive contracting practices at the Pentagon have been the subject of numerous investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the Defense Department’s Inspector General, and the Commission on Wartime Contracting, among other government watchdogs.

The consequence, according to those investigative agencies and commissions: wasted dollars, lower quality goods and services, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Reports of limited and no-bid contracting, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, captured headlines in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, when companies like Custer Battles, later convicted of fraud , were given sole-source security contracts for security and reconstruction, including one worth $16.5 million to provide security at Baghdad International Airport. Among the accusations eventually levied against the company, which had no prior track record, was that it charged grossly inflated prices, in part by using fictitious companies to “lease” equipment to the government.

In his 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama railed against such contracts, accusing them of wasting taxpayer dollars, and promised to rein in such spending.

In 2009, President Obama followed up those campaign promises with a memo directing a broad overhaul of government contracting, including limits to sole-source and non-competitive contracting. “Excessive reliance by executive agencies on sole-source contracts (or contracts with a limited number of sources) and cost-reimbursement contracts creates a risk that taxpayer funds will be spent on contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, subject to misuse, or otherwise not well designed to serve the needs of the Federal Government or the interests of the American taxpayer,” the president wrote in the 2009 memorandum , citing reports by multiple government agencies. Moving back to full and open competition, the memo continued, could save the government billions of dollars. But in two-and-half years, the Obama administration has made no progress in competing military contracts.

Even the Pentagon’s senior leadership has acknowledged the problem: a 2010 memo by Undersecretary Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s senior procurement official, called for greater competition, along the lines of the earlier Obama memo, and promised the Pentagon would make its contracting process more open to competitive bidding. “Maximize the use of multiple-source, continuously competitive contracts,” a briefing accompanying the memo states.

However, campaign pledges and memos have made little headway in combating the problem. “The lack of competition in the Defense Department is a scandal,” said Charles

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Smile … the FED is $crewing you … again …

Posted on August 31, 2011 by PAUL MILLER

… Catherine Austin Fitts: The Foreclosure-Gate Conspiracy and Ongoing Coverup …

08-30-2011 • solari.com/blog … http://solari.com/blog/bring-your-mortgages-home/

It is critical to note that there is absolutely no reason for the government not to sell current FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage portfolios using an eBay-type auction system of mortgage and real estate market-making. Indeed, the transparency and access of such a system would stimulate the local real estate markets and allow many American homeowners to finally achieve timely and economic workouts on their under-water mortgages – in a way would even save money for taxpayers.

The only reasons I can think of to dump the whole pile of defaulted and under-water home mortgages into the large institutions and banks (as is, apparently, the Administration’s current plan) are to: (1) facilitate the shredding of mortgage files and thereby keep the extent of past rampant mortgage fraud in the mortgage-backed securities market a secret (see MERS/MBS/Foreclosure Goes RICO for examples as alleged in a recent lawsuit and Mortgage Robosigning: Must Watch Deposition regarding “robo-signing” problems); (2) feed more profits to the very large banks and other institutions that were responsible for creating the housing and national and international economic crisis in the first place and that failed to “trickle down” the benefits of the TARP and other rescue packages previously financed at taxpayer expense; (3) prevent local communities from having a hand in dealing with the thousands of empty foreclosed properties abandoned by far-away institutional lenders, further pulling down neighborhood property values; and (4) facilitate central planning of the next round of gentrification in American cities and towns, with the attendant poverty, unemployment and social problems.

Oh, and, of course, leaving the ownership of home mortgages in the hands of existing financial institution owners might allow them to sweep the “MERS problem” under the rug, prevent local counties from recovering millions of dollars of unpaid recording fees and prevent defrauded homeowners and communities from recovering damages they have suffered as a result of lender mortgage fraud. (See A Comment on Catherine’s Interview on the Keiser Report and Citigroup, Ally Sued for Racketeering Over Database; Lawsuit Alleges that MERS Owes California $60-120 Billion in Land-Recording Fees; and Does MERS Make the US a “BBB” Credit? for information about and potential ramifications of the “MERS problem.”) The notion that it is too difficult logistically to do for non-performing mortgages what eBay does every day for thousands of different assets is complete poppycock.

The notion that instituting auctions to large institutional investors is a way to generate better prices is also poppycock.

Please don’t listen to it.

Read Full Story

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But it’s so much fun to point our finger

Posted on August 31, 2011 by PAUL MILLER

… Thanks to more than 40 years of atomic/nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site … America has thousands of walking dead … they just don’t know it …

But it’s so much fun to point our finger

Dead Men Walking – Update on Fukushima

By Barbara H. Peterson … Farm Wars … August 29, 2011 … http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/095636-2011-08-30-dead-men-walking-update-on-fukushima.htm?From=News

VIEW VIDEO HERE … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWU6KoS_2lI&feature=player_embedded

As I sit here thinking about Fukushima, I wonder what the people who caused this calamity to escalate into what, in essence, could very well be the final end game, are thinking. It seems clear that there is no running, and no hiding. Only a delay in the inevitability of an end to life as we know it. The bottom line is, we will have to live with the repercussions of this disaster… forever. We, and our progeny are quite literally, dead men walking.

Try as I may, I cannot think of one thing that is headed our way via corporations banded together by a common bond of greed and lasciviousness, that does not spell death and destruction for life. This includes government corporations, who have simply grown too “big” to be of any use to the people they are supposed to be serving.

So, what do we do now? In my mind, there is only one thing to do. Make peace with yourself, and those around you. This is your, no, our last stand. Make it count. Do it right. Do it with love, not hate. Stand your ground, and face what is coming with courage and love. Help those around you, because one of those people that you help just might be me…. or you, if the cases were reversed.

This is our last chance to stand up for what is right, not what is convenient and comfortable. I want to go out knowing that I did all I could do to help myself and those around me. But most of all, I want to live. Really live. We have no choice over when or how we die, but we do have a choice over how we live. We can work towards death, like the rulers of this world, or work towards life. What do you think is the better choice? I know that I’ve made mine… choice that is. I will work towards life. I will plant a garden just as long as I can, and live until it is time for me to say goodbye to this existence and move on to the next. Yes, I believe that this earthly existence is not all there is. If it was, it would be too depressing to bear. I choose to believe that life exists beyond this veil. I choose to take this time to appreciate the beauty of creation.

So, in this most perilous of times, maybe we can just experience what it means to truly live, even in the wake of impending disaster.

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…Windfalls of war: Pentagon’s no-bid contracts triple in 10 years of war…

By Sharon Weinberger … http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/08/29/5989/windfalls-war-pentagons-no-bid-contracts-triple-10-years-war

The tragedy of the too big to fail banking sector – over $1 trillion in deposits are over the $250,000 FDIC limit. FDIC: $6.5 trillion in insured deposits backed by $3.9 billion

Dead Men Walking – Update on Fukushima

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