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Thursday, July 19, 2012

America’s Worst Drought Since ’56 Threatens World Food Supply


Corn and soybeans in the U.S. Midwest baked in an unrelenting heat wave this week with fears rising of big crop losses that will boost food and fuel prices and cut exports and aid from the world’s top shipper of the key crops.

The condition of the nation’s corn and soybeans as of Sunday deteriorated even more than grain traders had feared, and the U.S. Agriculture Department cuts its weekly corn crop condition rating by the biggest amount in nearly a decade.

After weeks of growing drought some lucky farms have been doused by scattered thunderstorms in the past few days. But weather forecasters warned the heat and dryness would only intensify through the end of July and possibly beyond.

“We’re moving from a crisis to a horror story,” said Purdue University agronomist Tony Vyn. “I see an increasing number of fields that will produce zero grain.”

The drought scorching the U.S. Midwest is the worst since 1956, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report posted on its website on Monday. Drought is affecting 55% of the land mass in the lower 48 states.

The corn crop is in the greatest danger. Plants are trying to pollinate to let ears fill with kernels, a period when adequate moisture is vital for final yields. The United States ships more than half of all world exports of corn, which is made into dozens of products, from starch and ethanol to livestock feed.

The USDA on Monday rated the corn crop – which had once been estimated to total a record 14 billion bushels this year – at only 31% good-to-excellent, down 9 percentage points on last week.

The soybean crop rating was cut to 34% good-to-excellent, down 6 percentage points from the previous week.

Chicago Board of Trade corn for December delivery has soared 54% since mid-June, reaching a contract high of US$7.78 on Monday and approaching its record price near US$8.

Soybeans for November delivery soared to a new contract high of US$15.97 before slipping back a few cents.

Crop watchers were alarmed that corn rated poor-to-very poor jumped to 38%, versus 30% last week and 11% a year ago.

“They’re moving corn from good-and-excellent condition to poor-to-very poor in one week, which skips fair condition. What they’re saying is it’s a lot worse than they thought,” said farmer Larry Winger, who farms along the Illinois-Indiana border 30 miles south of Purdue, commenting on the USDA report.

To make matters worse, Winger said, drought has created ripe conditions for spider mites, which suck the moisture out of soybeans and can slice yields in half. Japanese beetles and other pests were feeding on Midwest corn, which can also develop toxic fungal diseases in drought years, analysts said.

Both grains are exported around the world, raising concerns about global food shortages and inflation. The impact on American grocery and meat case prices may take time to be felt but will likely be seen in inflation in coming months.

DISASTER AREA

Last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack designated more than 1,000 counties across the country as natural disaster areas due to the drought conditions, the largest single designation in the history of the USDA loan aid program.

In Nebraska, where most farmers irrigate their corn, flows in streams and rivers had dropped so much that the state on Monday asked 1,100 of Nebraska’s 48,000 farmers and ranchers to stop pulling water from the waterways and use wells instead.

Iowa and Illinois produce a third of U.S. corn and soybeans. But prospects there have turned down sharply, raising fears losses will be the worst since 1988, the last major drought.

Prospects for the later-developing Midwest soybean crop were better than that for corn, though substantial rains were needed during the next three weeks to salvage Indiana’s crop, Vyn said.

“The window for soybeans is closing,” he said.

Soybeans usually go through their key growth period of flowering and pod-setting in August, a few weeks after corn in the Midwest. Soy is used in scores of products, from paints and feeds to edible oils and increasingly for soy-based diesel fuel.

“We need soaking rains now. We need 2 to 3 inches and that’s not in the forecast,” AgResource Co analyst Dan Basse said.

AccuWeather meteorologist Erik Pindrock said a seemingly immovable ridge of high pressure on Monday kept much of the central Corn Belt in a dome of heat, and he predicted the hot, dry weather would persist through July and possibly into August.

Monday’s heat matched high temperature records for the date in many locations including Flint, Michigan, where it was 97 Fahrenheit (37 Celsius), and in Indianapolis, where it was 98 F, he said.

“We’ve seen Raleigh, North Carolina, tie its all-time record of 105 (F) degrees three times … so this is definitely a country-wide heat wave,” Pindrock said.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Soros Promotes UN Control Over Gun Ownership


Friday, 06 July 2012 15:12

Soros Promotes UN Control Over Gun Ownership

thenewamerican.com
Written by  
Soros Promotes UN Control Over Gun Ownership
George Soros is financing the fight to give the United Nations control of your guns.
Through his Media Matters organization, Soros is dumping pro-UN gun control propaganda into the mainstream media to coincide with the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty being held in New York July 2–27.
In a blog post published on July 3, Timothy Johnson of Media Matters describes the notion that the United Nations would ever try to take away the right of Americans to keep and bear arms “laughable.”
Johnson goes on to promote the passage of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) as a means of “curtailing the illicit arms trade” and thus cracking down on those who use these weapons to deny others their “human rights.”
The blog post assures citizens concerned about the potential eradication of the rights guaranteed in the Second Amendment to the Constitution that they have nothing to fear from the UN’s gun control treaty.
Top officials from the United Nations, the United States, and other high profile supporters have repeatedly and clearly said that the treaty does not aim to restrict anyone's "freedom to own" a gun.  Indeed, the UN General Assembly's resolution on the treaty makes clear that countries will "exclusively" maintain the right within their borders to "regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through national constitutional protections on private ownerships."
Constitutionalists will instantly notice a couple of red flags raised by Media Matters’ word choice.
First, there need be no quotation marks around the phrase freedom to own a gun. Americans should enjoy the unqualified right to bear arms and it is not some antiquated idea or some unicorn-like mythical creature that requires special punctuational treatment. Americans are well aware that an unarmed citizenry is easier to subdue and will rightly resist all efforts to abridge that right.
Second, the citizens of the United States do not need the permission of the United Nations to maintain the “exclusive” right to own a gun. This right, as with all others protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, comes from God, not man, and may be neither given nor taken away by any government.
Undaunted, however, Soros will continue to use his mouthpieces to promote the globalist agenda, including the incremental dismantling of the U.S. Constitution and the sovereignty it protects.
The current draft of the ATT mandates that the governments of member states petition the United Nations for approval of any contract to sell weapons to any nation where there exists a “substantial risk of a serious violation” of human rights.
While the end of reducing the abuse of human rights is laudable, the means to achieve that cannot lawfully include the requirement that the Congress of the United States ask for permission from the UN overlords before it passes a law, including one authorizing the sale of arms to another country. That is a direct assault on American legislative sovereignty, and an indirect attack on the sovereignty of the American people who elect the members of Congress who vote on such measures.
In the text of the ATT, the United Nations specifically calls for the passage of a legally binding instrument that will impose international standards for the ownership, trade, and transfer of weapons.
In another section the ATT includes “controls on a comprehensive list of weaponry, including small arms and light weapons.” Predictably, all these controls are couched comfortably in talk of “human rights” and ending senseless killings by rogue regimes.
In order to avoid being labeled a “human rights abuser,” the United States (along with all member states) is ordered by the UN to comply with the ATT. To compel this compliance, the ATT empowers the UN to force Congress to:
• Enact internationally agreed licensing requirements for Americans
• Confiscate and destroy unauthorized firearms of Americans while allowing the U.S. government to keep theirs
• Ban the trade, sale, and private ownership of semi-automatic guns
• Create and mandate an international registry to organize an encompassing gun confiscation in America
On this point, in 2011, the UN’s General Assembly declared “that disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation are essential.” In other words, if world peace, the protection of human rights, and the disarming of violent regimes could be achieved through the confiscation of personal firearms, then so be it.
Make no mistake, however, Soros and his fellow globalist gun controllers don’t have in mind (at least at first) to march blue-helmeted UN soldiers into the homes of Americans with orders to seize their guns and ammunition. Rather, through the passage of binding international treaties and UN resolutions, they will force the national governments of the world to do the dirty work for them.
Sadly, officials of our own federal government, including President Obama, are pushing Congress to sign off on this treaty.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the Obama administration is working with the UN to lean on Congress to consent to the ATT.
Clinton has pushed the treaty as an "opportunity to promote the same high standards for the entire international community that the United States and other responsible arms exporters already have in place to ensure that weaponry is transferred for legitimate purposes."
There is little doubt that the scope of those “legitimate purposes” will be determined by Soros, Clinton, Obama, and the rest of the globalist gang who have much to fear from an armed and educated citizenry.
For now, the resistance to ratification of such a treaty is strong in the United States. Last July Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and 44 other senators sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary Clinton encouraging them to stop pushing for passage of UN gun control treaties. In the letter, Moran wrote:
Our country’s sovereignty and the Second Amendment rights of American citizens must not be infringed upon by the United Nations. Today, the Senate sends a powerful message to the Obama Administration: an Arms Trade Treaty that does not protect ownership of civilian firearms will fail in the Senate. Our firearm freedoms are not negotiable.
George Soros, through his Media Matters outlet, promises that “U.S. gun owners have nothing to fear” from the ATT or from similar UN agreements to restrict the manufacture, transfer, and possession of firearms. The globalists’ only goal, they maintain, is “the maintenance of international peace and security.”
For those whose fears are assuaged by such gentle words, we offer this competing comment from Benjamin Franklin written in a letter penned in 1755: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Full article:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/11983-soros-promotes-un-control-over-gun-ownership

Food Stamp President Obama Wants You On Food Stamps


Melissa Melton  -  June 30, 2012
If the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare left Americans with any doubts we are officially living in a debt-fueled social welfare state, the Obama Administration recently spent three million dollars to convince us we will all live healthier lives if we sign up for food stamps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been running a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) propaganda campaign for several months now. Primarily aimed at Hispanics, the elderly, and the working poor and unemployed, ads include radio segments claiming that food stamps help beneficiaries “eat right”:
Woman #1: “I wonder how she stays so fit, what’s her secret?”
Woman #2: “Well she told me that food stamp benefits help her eat right, and she stays active too.”
(The full commercials may be heard here.)
Food stamp guidelines only require that items purchased with stamps are designated as “food for home consumption”. It should be noted the USDA does not station enforcement officers at grocery stores to ensure food stamp recipients’ shopping carts are filled with vegetables instead of potato chips.
Reality apparently aside, food stamp use has skyrocketed 100 percent in President Obama’s America, no doubt due in part to his stimulus act which made it easier for adults without jobs or children to receive food stamp aid. Obama also increased the total allotted benefit amount by 15 percent. Meanwhile, American poverty figures are absolutely staggering. A full third of the country’s population are considered working poor. One out of every seven Americans is on food stamps now, the highest number since the program’s inception. In fact, the USDA doled out $75 billion dollars in food stamps throughout fiscal year 2011, more than double the $34.6 billion spent in 2008.
The county is ripe with economic strife. Our national deficit is nearly $16 trillion dollars. While $3 million must seem like a drop in the bucket, federally funded food stamp advertisements raise an obvious and troubling question. At a time when more people than ever before are relying on the government to buy their food, why in the world would the USDA spend millions in an attempt to boost enrollment in an already overburdened program?
According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, food stamps actually stimulate the economy and create jobs:
Nancy Pelosi shared Vilsack’s sentiment at a press conference back in 2010 when she claimed, “It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance.”
Following this logic, if more people are on food stamps than ever, then more people should be employed than ever, right? That must be why we have the highest long-term unemployment rates since the Great Depression.
The USDA’s radio ads are part of a newly released community outreach toolkit which its website explains is meant to “improve existing SNAP outreach to those who are eligible but not participating in the program.” This kit also includes a series of flyers that suggest “fresh ideas” to garner local offices more aid recipients, such as throwing food stamp “parties,” complete with entertainment and food stamp info-themed BINGO games.
Sounds super fun, right? Perhaps one of the game card squares should read “Road to American Serfdom.”
B-I-N-G-O!
http://planet.infowars.com/economics/food-stamp-president-obama-wants-you-on-food-stamps

The March of Tyranny


Agenda 21 Dorms for Empty Nesters


Mayor Bloomberg’s Agenda 21 Dorms for Empty Nesters
Infowars.com
July 9, 2012
photoSoviet era apartments are larger than Bloomberg’s ideal living space.

New York’s anti-Big Gulp mayor Michael Bloomberg has devised a plan to cram cash-poor empty nesters into dorm-sized apartments on Manhattan no larger than 200 square feet, or about 20 by fifteen feet in size.

Sustainable development under the United Nations’ Agenda 21 calls for restricted housing space and the elimination of cars in favor of walking, bicycling (imagine that during a New York winter), and mass transit.

Because population density will grow and living space will shrink as the masses are herded into locked down cities, more and more people – primarily the cash-poor (call them what they will be: a new class of serfs) – will be obliged to live in smaller and smaller spaces.

A bevy of green codes will be instituted under the excuse of saving the earth – and preserving an off-limits Wildlands project (comprising 50% of the country). The new control freak rules will be mercilessly enforced by a globalist Gestapo answerable to a small cadre of international apparatchiks who will be appointed by the global elite and their “public-private partners” (or fascist) transnational corporations.
New York is not alone in the quest to diminish expectations (to match diminished job and career expectations) – San Francisco is working on a plan to “downsize” apartments to a meager 150 square feet, or the size of a large closet.

That’s a little more than twice the size of the average detention cell at Guantanamo. Apartment sizes in the former Soviet Union were spacious by comparison.

Welcome to Maurice Strong’s Brave New World!

Friday, July 06, 2012

Yep, its a mad mad world

The U.S. Department of Agriculture?s food stamp program is proud to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps and free meals ever. Meanwhile, the U.S. Parks Service is asking people to not feed the animals because they claim the animals will become dependent upon the handouts and not learn to take care of themselves. 

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Homeland Security Report Lists ‘Liberty Lovers’ As Terrorists


Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty” deemed domestic threat

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, July 4, 2012

A new study funded by the Department of Homeland Security characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

Entitled Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008 (PDF), the study was produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. The organization was launched with the aid of DHS funding to the tune of $12 million dollars.

While largely omitting Islamic terrorism - the report fails completely to mention the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – the study focuses on Americans who hold beliefs shared by the vast majority of conservatives and libertarians and puts them in the context of radical extremism.

The report takes its definitions from a 2011 study entitled Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism, produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, in which the following characteristics are used to identify terrorists.

- Americans who believe their “way of life” is under attack;

- Americans who are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”;

- People who consider themselves “anti-global” (presumably those who are wary of the loss of American sovereignty);

- Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”;

- Americans who are “reverent of individual liberty”;

- People who “believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”

The report also lists people opposed to abortion and “groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers” as terrorists.

As we have exhaustively documented on numerous occasions, federal authorities and particularly the Department of Homeland Security have been involved in producing a deluge of literature which portrays liberty lovers and small government advocates as terrorists.

The most flagrant example was the infamous 2009 MIAC report, published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and first revealed by Infowars, which framed Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag, as potential terrorists.

The rush to denounce legitimate political beliefs as thought crimes, or even mundane behaviors, by insinuating they are shared by terrorists, has accelerated in recent months.

Under the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism program, the bulk purchase of food is labeled as a potential indication of terrorist activity, as is using cash to pay for a cup of coffee, and showing an interest in web privacy when using the Internet in a public place.

As we have documented on numerous occasions, the federal government routinely characterizes mundane behavior as extremist activity or a potential indicator of terrorist intent. As part of its ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign, the Department of Homeland Security educates the public that generic activities performed by millions of people every day, including using a video camera, talking to police officers, wearing hoodies, driving vans, writing on a piece of paper, and using a cell phone recording application,” are all potential signs of terrorist activity.

The DHS stoked controversy last year when it released a series of videos to promote the See Something, Say Something campaign in which almost all of the terrorists portrayed in the PSAs were white Americans.

Link to Report:
http://start.umd.edu/start/publications/research_briefs/LaFree_Bersani_HotSpotsOfUSTerrorism.pdf

Link to article:
http://www.infowars.com/homeland-security-report-lists-liberty-lovers-as-terrorists/