http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyunderground/message/3894
*THIS MORNING'S ETERNAL WAR NEWS * ** *David Dayan tells us this morning that Iran is trying to agree to limiting its nuclear enrichment capabilities <http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/06/13/iran-warms-to-negotiations-as-senate-tries-to-shut-them-down/>, but our government is doing what it can to make sure there are no agreements concerning the alleged nuclear weapons program. Peace would get in the way of making a fortune for our ruling Forces of Greed <http://luvnews.info/FOG.htm> from an attack, and Netanyahu wants war. The Nuclear Mafia <http://luvnews.info/Mafia.htm> doesn't spend millions of dollars on campaign bribes for peace agreements, and neither does Big Oil-- two votes that actually count in the Land of the Free. Glenn Greenwald has an amazing chart <http://www.salon.com/2012/06/13/u_s_drones_deeply_unpopular_around_the_world/singleton/> to show how effective is the mass media propaganda in the USA, with Americans supporting drone bombing 62-28%, even as most of the world has opposite poll results. Americans are not allowed to see in their mass media the mangled bodies of the children blown to bits, getting mainly spin from official sources, and it appears to be working effectively to maintain support for eternal war. Congressman Kucinich and 25 other Members of Congress have sent a letter to the White House <http://tribune.com.pk/story/393165/letter-demands-obama-explain-legal-justification-for-drone-strikes/> asking the president to provide legal justification for the drone strikes. Most of the Congress did not sign on, apparently content with lawlessness. * ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *THIS MORNING'S SCAMS OF THE 1% * ** *Zach Carter has a piece <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/obama-trade-document-leak_n_1592593.html> titled "Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises," beginning "A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises." * *As the Republicans and Democrats continue to sell us out for the campaign bribes from their capitalist masters, such as the "free trade" scam above, our mass media spin reality to keep the masses confused. Dave Lindorff headlines his piece <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/13-3> about it "AP Scare Report: A 'Brutal' Socialist Future Facing France." Unlike the nice capitalists who run the planet, a socialist, you see, would be brutal. Imagine what the National Security State <http://luvnews.info/NatSec.htm> would do to a socialist like Jesus if he lived in our time-- a hellfire missile you think? * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ** ** ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **We had to go to British news to find the following piece about a proposal in California to require labeling of Frankenfoods in that state, following. Our corrupt government protects Big Agribusiness from being responsible enough to let us know we are guinea pigs eating genetically modified organisms. Our bodies react to GMOs in unusual ways, because in billions of years of evolution on Earth, nothing like this has ever been consumed by any creature before, such as "Roundup Ready" gene splicing. Our bodies appear to understand the genetic code, and digestion is guided by enzymes in the natural food and other things we don't clearly understand. It is thought by some that man-made chemicals we consume, such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals, are often mistaken for hormones or other things and processed incorrectly by the body, which begins to malfunction from this. GMOs may function similarly, so that our body sees it not as food, but perhaps as estrogen, telling the body it has plenty so it shuts down estrogen production, the first in a string of malfunctions that eventually lead to problems. We simply have no idea what Big Agribusiness is doing, but more frighteningly, neither do they. By their past actions we are pretty sure they would kill us all for a nickel in profit. They've all but made food inspection by our government rare as hen's teeth because there's a lot of nasty things in our food they don't want known, and would rather sell us poisoned food than have it thrown out at a loss in profit. Some of the GMO plants we eat are themselves soaked in herbicides, able to withstand them from their genetic altering. The herbicides are poison to our bodies, carcinogens in very low quantities (man made dioxins in many herbicides are carcinogens in parts per trillion, one of the more toxic substances on the planet). The natural plants we've eaten for millions of years have been through ice ages, droughts, floods, locust infections and other agricultural disasters, so we know we can count on them to survive. But with more people alive today than have lived in all of history, we don't think our food crops should be radically altered so that we have no idea if they will be there for the next disaster or not, or if they will make us sick at the very least. All that this law is about is the right to know what we are eating. In a country describing itself as "The Land of the Free," one would think that wouldn't be too much to ask. Speaking for myself, I try to eat natural food without the herbicides, artificial coloring, added fats, miticides, preservatives, added sweeteners, pharmaceuticals, insecticides, artificial flavoring, added salt, fungicides, added hormones and yes, GMOs, but here, in the Land of the Free, of course, unlike Europe, I must guess, since I have no protection from my government --Jack Balkwill <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/13/california-gm-referendum-change-america-food>** **How California's GM food referendum may change what America eats** <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/13/california-gm-referendum-change-america-food> **** **by Richard Schiffman** **** ** Last month, nearly 1m signatures were delivered to county registrars throughout California calling for a referendum on the labeling of genetically engineered foods. If the measure, "The Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act", which will be on the ballot in November, passes, California will become the first state in the nation to require that GM foods be labeled as such on the package. This is not the first time that the issue has come up in California. Several labeling laws have been drafted there, but none has made it out of legislative committee. Lawmakers in states like Vermont and Connecticut have also proposed labeling legislation, which has gone nowhere in the face of stiff industry opposition. And the US Congress has likewise seen sporadic, unsuccessful attempts to mandate GM food labeling since 1999. What makes the referendum in California different is that, for the first time, voters and not politicians will be the ones to decide. And this has the food industry worried. Understandably so, since only one in four Americans is convinced that GMOs are "basically safe", according to a survey conducted by the Mellman Group, and a big majority wants food containing GMOs to be labeled. This is one of the few issues in America today that enjoys broad bipartisan support: 89% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats want genetically altered foods to be labeled, as they already are in 40 nations in Europe, in Brazil, and even in China. In 2007, then candidate Obama latched onto this popular issue saying that he would push for labeling -- a promise the president has yet to keep. In Europe, only 5% of food sold contains GMOs, a figure that continues to shrink. In the US, by contrast, an estimated 70% of the products on supermarket shelves include at least traces of genetically engineered crops -- mostly, corn and soy byproducts and canola oil, which are ingredients in many of America's processed foods. Given their unpopularity with consumers, labeling "Frankenfoods" would undoubtedly hurt sales, possibly even forcing supermarkets to take them off their shelves. In one survey, just over half of those polled said they would not buy food that they knew to be genetically modified. This makes the financial stakes for November's referendum vote huge. California is not just America's leading agricultural state, but the most populous state in the nation. If companies are made to change their labels in California, they may well do so all over the country, rather than maintain a costly two-tier packaging and distribution system. Several hurdles will have to be overcome, however, before this happens. The ballot initiative will face fierce opposition from the food and biotech industries, which are expected to spend an estimated $60-100m on an advertising blitz to convince Californians that labeling is unnecessary, will hurt farmers, increase their food prices, and even contribute to world hunger. One lobbyist the corporations have hired to make this case is Tom Hiltachk, the head of the Coalition Against the Costly Food Labeling Proposition (CACFLP), whose members include the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dow and Syngenta, as well as several big food processors and supermarket chains. Hiltachk is no stranger to the shadowy world of industry front groups, according to Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association. The food activist reported on Alternet that: "With a little help from his friends at Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, he helped organize the Californians for Smokers' Rights group to fight anti-smoking initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s." Also working to defeat the labeling initiative, according to Baden-Mayer, is the California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), which likewise receives big bucks from the tobacco industry and assorted other corporations. The consumer watchdog group Public Citizen says that CALA aims "to incite public scorn for the civil justice system, juries and judges, and to pave the way for enactment of laws immunizing corporations from liability for actions that harm consumers." Whether lobbying groups like these will be able to convince famously independent Californians to reject the labeling initiative in November remains to be seen. But even if the referendum passes, the food industry can be expected to challenge in court the state's right to mandate its own labeling requirements -- a function usually reserved for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), at the federal level. The FDA's position on GMOs is that they are safe and essentially equivalent nutritionally to conventionally grown food varieties. But critics counter that the FDA has no way of knowing if this is true, since crucial testing of GM foods has never been required by the agency, and indeed, has not yet been conducted. Writes Dr Suzanne Wuerthele, a toxicologist with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): "We are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences." The concern is that genetic modification alters the proteins in foods in ways that researchers do not yet fully understand. Substances that have never existed before in nature are entering our food supply untested. While researchers have not yet found a "smoking gun", which would prove that GM foods as a class are dangerous, there are troubling signs that they may be a factor in the recent epidemic of food allergies. Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, for example, soy allergies escalated by 50%. Rosa Rashall, a nutritionist in Garberville, California, who took part in the petition campaign to get the labeling initiative on the ballot, told the Redwood Times: "We are all worried for a variety of reasons, from health effects to skyrocketing food sensitivities that have started to come about in the last 20 years. There has been an incredible 400% increase in food sensitivities that coincides pretty well with the unlabeled introduction of GMO food into the marketplace." Critics also argue that agriculture's increasing dependence on GMOs has coincided with a steep rise in toxic agrochemical use over the last decade. A variety of GM corn sold by Monsanto was developed specifically to withstand punishing doses of the company's bestselling herbicide, Roundup. Food scientists remain divided on the larger food safety issue. Some say that there is no cause for alarm, while others cite the allergy problem and also animal studies, like one published by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, which showed high levels of kidney and liver failures (the two organs of detoxification) in rats that were fed Monsanto GM corn. Monsanto's biotech corn is designed to produce a pesticide in its cellular structure that wards off insect pests. Nobody knows what effect this toxin will have on the people who eat the flesh of livestock that are fed it. The bottom line is that we can't be sure what the physiological effects of consuming GM foods are until rigorous human trials are conducted -- which is not likely to happen anytime soon. Californians aren't waiting until all of the scientific results are in. And what they decide at the polling station in November may change what the rest of us eat. ** **http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/13/california-gm-referendum-change-america-food** **** ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *If you wish to be removed from this list, please let us know* ** *To join the Liberty Underground news service email libertyuv@hotmail.comwith "join" for a subject* ** *You may also join our talk group athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/ <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/>if you would like to participate* ** *email: libert...@hotmail.com* ** *Tell your friends about /LUV News/ because some people just don't get it* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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