When you owe someone $340, it is YOUR problem - When you owe someone $340 BILLION, it is THEIR problem -

When you owe someone $340, it is YOUR problem - When you owe someone $340 BILLION, it is THEIR problem - 

As of today, Greeks everywhere – all 11 million of them, owe the rest of Europe $340 billion. Considering that over half of this debt was forced upon them by Germany and the IMF, and also considering that their economy is -25% less than it was 5 years ago, and not forgetting that Brussels controls all Greek tax rates, pensions and government spending, it’s very clear that the $340 billion is Europe’s problem.

And if this isn’t enough to worry Germany, one should also know that as of January 25, 2015 – there is a new sheriff in town, they are called Syriza and they were elected by the same 11 million Greeks with the mandate to change the terms of the $340 billion debt owed to Europe.

Ever since Greece revealed in 2009 that with help from Goldman Sachs, it had been fudging its wealth, taxes and debt numbers for over 10 years, Europe stepped in and called the shots. The reason for this fond concern for Greece wasn’t due to Germany’s fondness for sun, sand and ouzo, but rather it was due to Germany’s concern that if Greece defaulted on its debt, then German and European banks everywhere would tumble like a fig into the Aegean Sea.

Since then, the entire European charade of countless bailout funds, countless austerity decrees, and countless threats of economic doom have all been structured to keep the European banking system together. In its current state, Greece has debt that will never be repaid. It will literally take several generations to repay the loans forced upon them. And this is assuming the country can miraculously start running budget surpluses and then avoiding the temptation to spend the surpluses.

The situation between the Greeks and Brussels is fluid and is changing by the hour. While we fully expect Greece to leave the Eurozone, we have no idea when it will occur. In fact, we’re pretty sure Brussels, and not Greece, will blink and offer up some kind of debt extension. After all, at this point it is Europe that has everything to lose and not Greece. Europe’s fear is that if Greece leaves the Eurozone, the seal will have been broken and no one knows what the reaction will be in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France. Bank runs are a real possibility, and so too will be the 1000s of protesters in the local squares – clearly not an ideal situation for politicians who want to be re-elected. In short it can get really messy, really quickly. And that’s just the short-term fear. The long-term fear is one where Greece leaves the Eurozone, suffers greatly for a year or two, but then suddenly returns to prosperity.

Either way, the gig is up. The most important point to understand about Europe is that any change that occurs is a result of the people standing up to the current status quo. The situation is extremely interesting. We’ve discussed it inside and out and suddenly financial markets are moving in the direction which we expected to occur. And should the debt crisis in Europe escalate further, we expect the investment world to be turned upside down. Those investments that are considered safe will be risky, and those that are considered risky will be safe.

What goes up can also come down

Whether unknowingly or not, the media and the investment industry has created an information gap wedging the 2008 debt crisis with today’s debt crisis. Chart 4 (next page) shows the difference in debt outstanding from 2008 compared to today. The Public Sector consists of government and tax payers, while the Private Sector is made up of individuals and companies.

Notice the enormous gap that has developed between the two groups over the last 6 years. This is the part that isn’t talked about by the big banks, fund companies and advisors with their clients. The debt crisis was never really resolved. Instead, governments decided to simply transfer the debt problem from the private sector to the public sector.

This is important as it is one of the key reasons for the current crisis.

As a result, capital markets were never allowed to reset. Instead, our governments and central banks have created a financial environment where traditional savers receive little to no interest on their cash deposits, and an economic environment whereby sophisticated investors are slowly withdrawing investment.

This combination is creating deflationary trends around the world, and it is causing the Velocity of Money to plummet. Ironically, this central-bank induced economic combination, is causing central banks and governments to do even more of the same. Insanity at its best.

At some point very soon, this financial-spin-top will lose a few riders and the key one to watch is the government bond sector. Chart 5 illustrates the size and difference between the bubbles in our all too recent past. And as they say in California – the next one will be a big one.

As the bubble in government bonds blows higher and higher, the following investment groups will become considerably risky:

Government bonds
Bank & insurance stocks
Pension funds
Target Date Mutual Funds
Practically every investor in the world has exposure to the bond market, as well as bank and insurance stocks. Some investors have little exposure while others have a lot of their eggs in this seemingly low-risk basket.

Read more - 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-19/someone-has-problem

Signs of the times: California city warns pedestrians not to update Facebook from crosswalk -

Signs of the times: California city warns pedestrians not to update Facebook from crosswalk - 

A northern California city is hoping humor can help get pedestrians and drivers to obey the rules of the road.

"Heads Up! Cross the Street, then Update Facebook,” reads one of the new traffic signs in Hayward, a San Francisco suburb with a population of about 150,000.

“35 – it’s a speed limit, not a suggestion,” warns another.

In January, Hayward Boulevard, a major thoroughfare known for zooming cars, became speckled with such signs in the city's attempt to grab the attention of drivers and pedestrians. The wording of the quirky signs is the brainchild of city spokesman Frank Holland.

"People are excited that we’re being concerned."
- Frank Holland, spokesman for city of Hayward, Calif.
“The same messages always blend into the background,” said Holland. “But if we can juxtapose the medium with an unconventional message, then maybe we can get people to pay attention.”

In a recent survey, speeding was listed as residents’ top concern. While the City Council has been trying to come up with ways to get drivers to slow down, such as speed bumps and roundabouts, those public works are more expensive and time consuming than erecting the signs, which cost $205 a piece, according to Inside the Bay Area.

According to Holland, the response to the signs has been overwhelmingly positive.

“People are excited that we’re being concerned. People used words like this is really "innovative," "creative," "resourceful," and you don’t really hear words like that linked to civil service projects to that’s been great,” Holland said.

Not everybody, however, finds the humorous approach appealing.

“I just thought it was really sarcastic. I didn't think it was really appropriate,” said Natalie Montano, a Hayward resident, told Fox KTVU.

Despite a few negative responses, the signs seem to be getting the intended reaction. Resident Wendy DeVetter told Inside the Bay Area that the signs were cause for pause more than once while driving with her daughter, but wonders how long the signs will have an effect on drivers.

“Once the people who live in the hills see them, they will probably just start ignoring them,” she said.

Read more - 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/17/signs-times-california-city-warns-pedestrians-not-to-update-facebook-from/

Researchers discover Glyphosate Herbicide (Roundup) in honey and soy sauce - in 59% of samples tested -

Researchers discover Glyphosate Herbicide (Roundup) in honey and soy sauce - in 59% of samples tested -  

How ubiquitous is Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide, really? Researchers have discovered that a chemical in the world’s most used herbicide – RoundUp – is tainting the world’s food supply at large. It was recently found that this chemical, known as glyphosate, is present concerning amounts in honey and soy sauce.

For the study, researchers from Abraxis LLC and Boston University purchased sample sizes of various foods to analyze levels of glyphosate. Bought from the Philadelphia, US metropolitan area, the following foods were analyzed:

69 samples of honey
26 samples of pancake and corn syrup
28 samples of soy sauce
11 samples of soy milk
20 samples of tofu
The minimum limit of quantification (LOQ) of the method were determined for honey, pancake syrup, and corn syrup to be 15 ppb; soy sauce, soy milk, and tofu 75 ppb. What this means is that products could have contained minimal levels of glyphosate even though they turned up negative.

While glyphosate residues above the limit weren’t detected in the soy milk, pancake and corn syrup, and tofu, shocking residues were found in the honey. Of the 69 honey samples tested, 41 of them (59%) had glyphosate concentrations above the method LOQ (15 ppb), with a concentration range between 17 and 163 ppb and a mean of 64 ppb.


And it wasn’t just commercial honey that was tainted; 5 of the 11 samples of organic honey contained high levels of glyphosate – with a range of 26 to 93 ppb and a mean of 50 ppb.

Sustainable Pulse Director Henry Rowlands reacted Thursday to the published results;

“This sad news shows just how widespread glyphosate is in our food. With the increase in GM crops being cultivated worldwide it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. If you ask anyone if they feel there should be ‘allowed’ levels of toxic chemicals such as glyphosate in their bodies the answer will of course always be ‘No’. It is a fact that the scientific and regulatory process cannot evidence ‘safe’ levels for these chemicals.”
Sustainable Pulse notes:

“The results showed that honey from countries that permit GM crops contained far more glyphosate than honey from countries which limit or prohibit the cultivation of GM crops, with the levels in the U.S. by far the highest.”

Approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed on crops in the United States alone every single year, with much of it containing glyphosate. Regulators as well as Monsanto claim that this ingredient is excreted from the body, but numerous studies have shown that not only is it causing numerous health problems, but it is showing up in urine samples, blood samples, and even breast milk.

Despite testing for hundreds of pesticides in food commodities, the USDA does not test for glyphosate residues. Why?

Read more - 

http://naturalsociety.com/researchers-discover-glyphosate-herbicide-honey-soy-sauce/

Jamaica world's highest proportion of female bosses: Nearly 60%... -

Jamaica world's highest proportion of female bosses: Nearly 60%... - 

When the young woman was preparing to open a business in Jamaica selling pipes, vaporizers and other smoking paraphernalia, some acquaintances suggested she would have difficulty succeeding in a niche trade dominated by men.

Now, about a year-and-a-half after its launch at a hotel complex in Jamaica's capital, Ravn Rae's smoking supplies store is growing and she's proving doubters wrong in a Caribbean country where women have made such big advances in professions once dominated by men that a new U.N. study says it has the world's highest proportion of female bosses.

"Women are the ones who are the main breadwinners. We push harder to earn," says Rae at her smoke shop, which she hopes to soon expand into a medical marijuana dispensary if lawmakers pass a decriminalization bill and allow a regulated cannabis industry. For now, she manages one saleswoman.

According to data analyzed by the International Labor Organization, nearly 60 percent of managers in Jamaica are women, including those who work for large companies and those, like Rae, who own their own businesses. That's the globe's highest percentage and way ahead of developed countries. Colombia, at 53 percent, and St. Lucia, at 52 percent, are the only other nations in the world where women are more likely than men to be the boss, according to the ILO's global list. The highest ranking first world nation is the United States, with almost 43 percent, and the lowest is Japan, at 11 percent.

Overall, women in the Caribbean and parts of Latin America make up the managerial ranks to a greater extent than in the developed world. Experts say the gain is due in part to improvements in the level of female education, but also because men have failed to keep pace and have in some cases gone backward.

The Caribbean and Latin America have seen such big improvements in the economic and social status of women that gender gaps in education, labor force participation, access to health systems and political engagement "have narrowed, closed and sometimes even reversed direction," according to a World Bank study that analyzed women's economic empowerment in the region. More women are receiving advanced degrees even as a number also juggle household and child-rearing responsibilities.

View galleryIn this Feb. 2, 2015 photo, third grade teacher Allison …
In this Feb. 2, 2015 photo, third grade teacher Allison Clarke leads an all-girls classroom at a co- …
But while government officials and educators celebrate that fact they also have serious worries about stagnating men, who have lower levels of academic achievement and are at increased risk of falling into criminality, trends that undermine the gains by females.

Wayne Campbell, a Jamaican high school teacher who blogs about the problem of male underachievement, believes toxic notions about masculinity permeate entire communities, reinforced by a popular music culture that often celebrates law-breaking. Boys who display school smarts are often ridiculed as effeminate by peers and even adults in areas where academic excellence by males is typically devalued, he says.

"It's almost as if manhood and masculinity have been hijacked by a thug culture far removed from education," he said.

From the southern country of Trinidad & Tobago to the northern archipelago of the Bahamas, Caribbean education ministries have focused attention for years trying to solve the worrying reality of male underachievement and the social problems it leaves in its wake. Grace McLean, Jamaica's chief education officer, says "it is evident that boys' underachievement in the education system is weighing heavily on national socio-economic development."

Regional educators say the scale of academic underachievement by boys, a trend which is mirrored in other parts of the world including the U.S., points to the need for systemic changes in the way that lessons are planned and delivered. Many schools in the Caribbean have experimented with approaches large and small to better engage boys, but results have typically been mixed when they haven't been considered outright failures.

View galleryIn this Feb. 2, 2015 photo, eight-year-old Kayla Lewin …
In this Feb. 2, 2015 photo, eight-year-old Kayla Lewin answers a question in her all-girls classroom …
In 2010, Trinidad and Tobago transformed about a fifth of its co-educational secondary schools into single-sex institutions to address underperformance. But the pilot program was scrapped after officials found students did not improve in single-sex classrooms.

But educators in Jamaica say the research they have conducted has shown that boys in single-sex schools do better than those in co-educational ones. In one co-ed Kingston primary school, the principal is now experimenting with single-sex classrooms and she says the results are promising.

"We're finding that reading levels are improving and the boys are more focused and engaged when they learn by themselves," said principal Candi Lee Crooks-Smith at Allman Town Primary, where exuberant 8-year-old boys in one classroom learned math lessons on a recent morning by taking turns juggling a soccer ball with a male trainee teacher.

Not everyone is convinced regional women are close to pulling ahead of men in Caribbean societies. Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar, an associate professor of sociology at Canada's Ryerson University who researches Caribbean cultures, said the majority of top positions are still dominated by men, even if countries like Jamaica and Trinidad have female heads of state. She says women in the Caribbean still "have to contend with old-boy networks, male privilege, and males dominating in the justice, social, political and religious systems."

But with far more women pursuing higher education compared to men, the gender gap could grow lopsided. For years, there's been a steady 70-30 ratio in favor of women at the University of the West Indies, a public university system serving 18 Caribbean countries and territories.

"Caribbean culture has a laid-back, slow-paced vibe. But generally, Caribbean men are a lot more relaxed than the women," Rae says, checking inventory at her smoke shop.

Read more -

http://news.yahoo.com/caribbean-gender-gap-grows-women-rise-men-stagnate-050421731.html

Two people contract Mumps after receiving mumps vaccine - Doctors scramble to reassure public of MMR vaccine safety -

Two people contract Mumps after receiving mumps vaccine - Doctors scramble to reassure public of MMR vaccine safety - 

Doctors in Washington are scrambling to explain why two MMR vaccine recipients contracted the mumps virus after being vaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s foremost health authority, claims the “Mumps vaccine is the best way to prevent mumps,” but two cases in Washington are forcing doctors to ease up on the vaccine protection rhetoric.

CBS affiliate KIRO reports that two people from two separate counties, King and Snohomish, contracted the mumps post-MMR vaccination, blaming the two-person “outbreak” on mumps cases leaking out of the University of Idaho.

The Snohomish County man had received one vaccine, while the King County woman had “received both recommended doses.”


The mumps virus is a particularly nasty, incurable disease that causes headaches, fever and facial swelling.

The cases clearly illustrate how vaccine protection is questionable, yet physicians continue to defend the safety of MMR jabs.

“No vaccine is perfect,” Harborview Medical Center Dr. John Lynch told KIRO. “It doesn’t protect everyone who gets it.”

For victims of adverse MMR events, however, the vaccine is nowhere near perfect.

The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) admits the MMR vaccine, which contains live measles, mumps and rubella virus strands, “may cause a very mild case of the disease they were designed to prevent.”

Though muddled in legalese, the MMR vaccine insert specifically lists “death” as one of its associated adverse reactions, saying that “Death from various, and in some cases unknown, causes has been reported rarely following vaccination with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines…”

Other MMR vaccine risks and side effects, according to WebMD, include a fever (which affects 1 in 5 children), seizures (which occur in 1 out of 3,000) and encephalitis, or brain inflammation, (which – like some deadly lottery – reportedly affects 1 in a million). To put that number in perspective, the IAC says “hundreds of millions” of MMR doses have been distributed.

A program known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which receives up to 20,000 reports a year, works to document adverse vaccine reactions, up to and including death, acting as an early-warning service to alert CDC and FDA authorities.

Despite the prevalence of documented adverse events, the IAC and CDC continue to claim the MMR “safety record is excellent.”

Vaccine proponents take health authorities’ recommendations as gospel, yet time and time again their wisdom has proven inaccurate.

In January, a study showed how this year’s flu strain was only 23 percent effective against the flu; in other words it would only protect less than 1 in 4 people.

The CDC has also continually failed to properly inform the public of vaccines’ ill effects.

In 2013, the agency tried to bury a page on its site concerning the polio vaccine’s link to cancer (available here and here), going as far as deleting cached versions of the page on Google’s cache system. This disreputable action alone should give vaccine proponents and anyone blindly taking the agency’s health advice cause for concern.

Read more -

http://www.infowars.com/two-people-contract-mumps-after-receiving-mumps-vaccine/

CDC vaccine whistleblower given immunity to testify re:Black babies with an increased risk for autism after MMR vaccine -

CDC vaccine whistleblower given immunity to testify re:Black babies with an increased risk for autism after MMR vaccine - 

Patrick Howley at The Daily Caller reports that William Thompson, CDC whistleblower, has been given immunity from prosecution, by the federal government, to testify before Congress about vaccine fraud at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cautionary note: So far, The Daily Caller is the sole source on this story.

On Aug. 27, 2014, Thompson, a long-time researcher at the CDC, published a statement through his lawyer, Rick Morgan, admitting that he and colleagues at the CDC violated the protocol in a study on the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine’s connection to autism.

The study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics in 2004, exonerated the vaccine. However, the study omitted vital data on a group of black babies who showed an increased risk for autism after receiving the MMR vaccine.

Since releasing his Aug. 27 statement, Thompson has maintained silence and has refused to talk to reporters.

Now, it appears he’s ready to step into the light — if there is a congressional hearing. That’s a big “if.”

Thompson is working with Rep. William Posey (R-Fla.). Posey serves on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Subcommittee on Oversight.

A congressional hearing could be explosive, if members of the committee ask Thompson the right questions, probe deeply and find out exactly how an arrangement was made inside the CDC to cover up the MMR vaccine’s connection to autism.

The study in question had several authors, two of whom — Frank DeStefano and Coleen Boyle — are now high-ranking CDC executives in the area of vaccine safety.

If Thompson convincingly shows they were in on the fix, the whole business would explode and the CDC would be exposed as rank liars and threats to human health before the public.

On the other hand, if this is a one-day hearing, at which the testimony devolves into a boring “he said/she said” proposition, and if the press barely takes notice, the outcome (and the truth) will rest entirely in the hands of alternative media.

No congressional hearing has thus far been scheduled.

Another major CDC figure in this scandal is Julie Gerberding, M.D., who was head of the CDC in 2004. Would she be subpoenaed to testify?

In 2004, Thompson wrote Gerberding a letter in which he warned her that he had sensitive and troubling data about the MMR vaccine’s connection to autism. He was due to present the data shortly at a major vaccine/autism conference.

Apparently, Gerberding didn’t answer the letter, and Thompson’s presentation was canceled.

(After Gerberding left the CDC in 2009, she ascended to the position of president of Merck Vaccines. Merck manufactures the MMR vaccine. Get the picture?)

Interestingly, in December 2014, Merck removed Gerberding from her august position and placed her in a new role, a role that never existed within the company before: executive vice president for “strategic communications, global public policy and population health.”

Did Merck make this move to shield Gerberding, to protect her from a possible scandal tying her to the 2004 MMR-autism fraud at the CDC? If there is a congressional hearing, will Gerberding be conveniently unavailable because she is overseas tending to her new international duties at Merck?

Meanwhile, as these developments play out, there is a political battle taking place regarding mandatory vaccination versus parents’ right to choose whether to vaccinate their children.

Presidential candidates Chris Christie and Rand Paul have made statements supporting, to one degree or another, parents’ right to choose. The “medical experts” have invaded television news to slam these statements as grossly irresponsible.

These are the same experts who always answer the call when some element of the medical cartel is under threat of exposure. Their job is to provide cover, sound authoritative and make medical critics into “dangerous people.”

As I’ve documented over the years, these professional experts are actually sitting on a powder keg that threatens to blow the whole medical system sky-high. What’s the issue that must never be revealed?

It’s medically caused death and human destruction.

Here are a few citations and facts that remain state secrets, as far as major news outlets are concerned. Reading them, think about how much credibility the “medical experts” really have whenever they open their mouths about public health in ANY form.

Citation: BMJ June 7, 2012 (BMJ 2012:344:e3989). Author, Jeanne Lenzer.

Jeanne Lenzer referred to a report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices: “It calculated that in 2011 prescription drugs were associated with two to four million people in the US experiencing ‘serious, disabling, or fatal injuries, including 128,000 deaths.'”

The report called this “one of the most significant perils to humans resulting from human activity.”

And here is the final dagger. The report was compiled by outside researchers who went into the FDA’s own database of “serious adverse [medical-drug] events.”

Therefore, to say the FDA isn’t aware of this finding would be absurd. The FDA knows. The FDA knows, and it isn’t saying anything about it because the FDA certifies as safe and effective all the medical drugs that are routinely maiming and killing Americans.

Previously, I have documented that the FDA knows because the FDA has a page on its own website that admits — without taking blame — 100,000 people are killed every year by medical drugs, and 2 million more people are severely injured by the drugs. (Do an Internet search for “FDA why learn about adverse drug reactions.”)

And for the past five years or so, I have been writing about and citing a published report by the late Barbara Starfield, M.D., that indicated 106,000 people in the U.S. are killed by medical drugs every year. Until her death in 2011, Starfield worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Her report “Is U.S. health really the best in the world?” was published in the Journal of American Medical Association on July 26, 2000.

Do an extrapolation: 106,000 people killed every year in the U.S. by medical drugs equals 1 million deaths per decade.

Starfield didn’t stop there. She also attributed 119,000 deaths per year to mistreatment and medical errors in hospitals, bringing the annual total of U.S. medically caused deaths to 225,000.

Here’s another study: April 15, 1998, Journal of the American Medical Association, “Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients.” It, too, is mind-boggling.

The authors, led by Jason Lazarou, culled 39 previous studies on patients in hospitals. These patients, who received drugs in hospitals or were admitted to hospitals because they were suffering from the drugs doctors had given them, met the following fate:

In a given year, in the US, 106,000 hospitalized patients die as a direct result of the drugs. Beyond that, 2.2 million hospitalized patients experience serious adverse reactions to the drugs.

The authors write: “…Our study on ADRs [Adverse Drug Reactions], which excludes medication errors, had a different objective: to show that there are a large number of ADRs even when the drugs are properly prescribed and and administered.”

Roughly 1.5 million American soldiers have died in all wars in U.S. history.

In any given 10 years of modern medical treatment, there were 2.25 million deaths, according to Starfield.

Consider how much suppression is necessary to keep the medical-death numbers under wraps.

Now think about these “medical experts” who appear on television news programs and assure the public that modern medicine is perfectly safe.

When they blithely state that vaccines only rarely cause problems of any kind and when they state that vaccines have absolutely no connection to neurological damage in children, what is their level of credibility?

It may interest you to know that the U.S. system of reporting severe adverse effects of vaccines is broken. There are no reliable numbers. That’s because the reporting is done by patients or doctors.

Barbara Loe Fisher of the private National Vaccine Information Center has put together a reasonable estimate.

“But how many children have [adverse] vaccine reactions every year? Is it really only one in 110,000 or one in a million who are left permanently disabled after vaccination? Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler observed in 1993 that less than 1 percent of doctors report adverse events following prescription drug use. [See DA Kessler, ‘Introducing MEDWatch,’ JAMA, June 2, 1993: 2765-2768]

“There have been estimates that perhaps less than 5 or 10 percent of doctors report hospitalizations, injuries, deaths, or other serious health problems following vaccination. The 1986 Vaccine Injury Act contained no legal sanctions for not reporting; doctors can refuse to report and suffer no consequences.

“Even so, each year about 12,000 reports are made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System [VAERS]; parents as well as doctors can make those reports. [See RT Chen, B. Hibbs, ‘Vaccine safety,’ Pediatric Annals, July 1998: 445-458]

“However, if that number represents only 10 percent of what is actually occurring, then the actual number may be 120,000 vaccine-adverse events. If doctors report vaccine reactions as infrequently as Dr. Kessler said they report prescription-drug reactions, and the number 12,000 is only 1 percent of the actual total, then the real number may be 1.2 million vaccine-adverse events annually.”

Now you have the background to assess what Thompson may say if there is a congressional hearing on CDC vaccine-autism fraud.

Thompson states that he was part of egregious lying in a published study.

Well, how in the world do you suppose the medically caused death and damage I’ve cited in this article is suppressed and covered up and papered over?

Every single medical drug and vaccine that creates the death and damage has been written about and called safe in at least one study published in a “reputable” medical journal.

Get it?

Rank fraud in published medical studies is everywhere all the time.

Indeed, here is a devastating statement from a doctor who has examined more published medical studies than any expert who shows up on television and spouts off about our perfectly safe medical system.

For two decades, she was the editor of one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine,” stated Marcia Angell, M.D. (“Drug Companies and Doctors: A story of Corruption.” NY Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009).

Hello, Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, David Muir, Wolf Blitzer, Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh and all the so-called medical reporters for mainstream television and print outlets across America. Do you have the courage, brains and will to cover and hammer on the biggest story of your lives: medically caused death and destruction?

Read more - 

http://personalliberty.com/cdc-vaccine-whistleblower-given-immunity-testify/

STUDY: Large condoms to blame for STD spike... - Teens embarrassed to choose correct size... -

STUDY: Large condoms to blame for STD spike... - Teens embarrassed to choose correct size... - 

Thai health officials Thursday said teenagers who are too embarrassed to choose condoms that fit are partly to blame for a recent spike in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among their peers.

In a statement ahead of Valentine's Day -- a time when Thai officials often issue a flurry of warnings about the potential pitfalls of young love -- the kingdom's Ministry of Public Health warned that STIs among 10-19 year olds had increased almost five times in the last ten years.

"It is due to the fact that only 43 percent (of teenagers) use condoms -- and also because they choose condoms that are too big for their actual sizes and they are afraid they will be mocked for being too small," the statement said.

The ministry added it planned to spend 47 million baht ($1.4 million) this year to distribute more than 43 million condoms to people across the country.

Despite its anything-goes image, Thailand has a conservative streak, meaning that young people are told to abstain from intercourse altogether instead of being educated about using protection.

Experts say that lack of awareness has led to soaring rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs.

According to the United Nations, the birthrate among Thai teenagers was 47 per 1,000 girls from 2006 to 2010 -- roughly in line with neighbouring Cambodia, but significantly higher than Malaysia's 14.

Doctors have said the true figure is likely to be higher given many Thai teens will seek an abortion, even though the procedure is illegal under almost all circumstances.

Valentine's Day often leads to bouts of concern over these issues. This year officials have called on teenagers to have a special meal or visit temples instead of having sex.

Some Thai officials have called for condom machines to be placed in schools -- a plan that has been rejected so far by education chiefs.

Read more - 

http://www.france24.com/en/20150212-big-condoms-partly-blame-thai-teen-sti-spike-ministry/

Sex toy injuries rocket after release of Fifty Shades of Grey -

Sex toy injuries rocket after release of Fifty Shades of Grey - 

Sex toy injuries have doubled since 2007, with a large increase in 2012 and 2013, after the release of the Fifty Shades of Grey books.
The figures are estimates from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which has tracked casualty admissions since 1991, the Washington Post reported.

The injuries relating to "massage devices and vibrators" were initially low but began to rise steeply from 2005, when around 1500 people across the US received treatment for sex injuries.
Middle aged men were most likely to get such injuries. Male patients accounted for 58 per cent, with the median age in that group being 44 years old. The median aged for women was younger, at 30 years old.

The oldest man recorded as receiving treatment for sex injuries was 85.
There was a large increase in the number of sex injuries in 2012, when 2,500 people received treatment for sex injuries. The first Fifty Shades of Grey book was released in 2011. There is no evidence the two are linked, but the bondage-themed novels have been read by tens of millions of people.

It was reported last week that sex shop owners on both sides of the Atlantic were stocking up on whips, pleasure balls and spanking paddles before the hotly anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey film hits the big screen this weekend.
US retailer Babeland, which has 20 Fifty Shades-branded items, has been stockpiling blindfolds and vibrators. "We're ready to respond," co-founder Claire Cavanah told AFP. The novels fuelled a 40-per cent sales increase at Babeland's New York branch.
Neal Slateford, owner of British company Lovehoney, which worked with EL James to produce the official Fifty Shades range in 2012, is also expecting a run on demand: "We have experienced spikes in sales after each movie trailer has been released which gives us a good indication of just how influential this movie will be."

Read more - 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11404909/Sex-toy-injuries-rocket-after-release-of-Fifty-Shades-of-Grey.html

Why animals eat psychoactive plants - the story of the drunk elephants and the stoned water buffalo -

Why animals eat psychoactive plants - the story of the drunk elephants and the stoned water buffalo - 

The United Nations says the drug war’s rationale is to build “a drug-free world — we can do it!” U.S. government officials agree, stressing that “there is no such thing as recreational drug use.” So this isn’t a war to stop addiction, like that in my family, or teenage drug use. It is a war to stop drug use among all humans, everywhere. All these prohibited chemicals need to be rounded up and removed from the earth. That is what we are fighting for.

I began to see this goal differently after I learned the story of the drunk elephants, the stoned water buffalo, and the grieving mongoose. They were all taught to me by a remarkable scientist in Los Angeles named Professor Ronald K. Siegel.

***
The tropical storm in Hawaii had reduced the mongoose’s home to a mess of mud, and lying there, amid the dirt and the water, was the mongoose’s mate — dead. Professor Siegel, a silver-haired official adviser to two U.S. presidents and to the World Health Organization, was watching this scene. The mongoose found the corpse, and it made a decision: it wanted to get out of its mind.

Two months before, the professor had planted a powerful hallucinogen called silver morning glory in the pen. The mongooses had all tried it, but they didn’t seem to like it: they stumbled around disoriented for a few hours and had stayed away from it ever since. But not now. Stricken with grief, the mongoose began to chew. Before long, it had tuned in and dropped out.


It turns out this wasn’t a freak occurrence in the animal kingdom. It is routine. As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure. But Siegel had seen cats lunging at catnip — which, he knew, contains chemicals that mimic the pheromones in a male tomcat’s pee —so, he wondered, could his supervisor really be right? Given the number of species in the world, aren’t there others who want to get high, or stoned, or drunk?

This question set him on a path that would take twenty-five years of his life, studying the drug-taking habits of animals from the mongooses of Hawaii to the elephants of South Africa to the grasshoppers of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was such an implausible mission that in one marijuana field in Hawaii, he was taken hostage by the local drug dealers, because when he told them he was there to see what happened when mongooses ate marijuana, they thought it was the worst police cover story they had ever heard.

What Ronald K. Siegel discovered seems strange at first. He explains in his book Intoxication:

After sampling the numbing nectar of certain orchids, bees drop to the ground in a temporary stupor, then weave back for more. Birds gorge themselves on inebriating berries, then fly with reckless abandon. Cats eagerly sniff aromatic “pleasure” plants, then play with imaginary objects. Cows that browse special range weeds will twitch, shake, and stumble back to the plants for more. Elephants purposely get drunk off fermented fruits. Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. The pursuit of intoxication by animals seems as purposeless as it is passionate. Many animals engage these plants, or their manufactured allies, despite the danger of toxic or poisonous effects.

Noah’s Ark, he found, would have looked a lot like London on a Saturday night. “In every country, in almost every class of animal,” Siegel explains, “I found examples of not only the accidental but the intentional use of drugs.” In West Bengal, a group of 150 elephants smashed their way into a warehouse and drank a massive amount of moonshine. They got so drunk they went on a rampage and killed five people, as well as demolishing seven concrete buildings. If you give hash to male mice, they become horny and seek out females — but then they find “they can barely crawl over the females, let alone mount them,” so after a little while they yawn and start licking their own penises.

Excerpted from Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. Available from Amazon.
In Vietnam, the water buffalo have always shunned the local opium plants. They don’t like them. But when the American bombs started to fall all around them during the war, the buffalo left their normal grazing grounds, broke into the opium fields, and began to chew. They would then look a little dizzy and dulled. When they were traumatized, it seems, they wanted — like the mongoose, like us — to escape from their thoughts.

***
I kept returning to the UN pledge to build a drug-free world. There was one fact, above all others, that I kept placing next to it in my mind. It is a fact that seems at first glance both obvious and instinctively wrong. Only 10 percent of drug users have a problem with their substance. Some 90 percent of people who use a drug—the overwhelming majority—are not harmed by it. This figure comes not from a pro-legalization group, but from the United Nations Office on Drug Control, the global coordinator of the drug war. Even William Bennett, the most aggressive drug czar in U.S. history, admits: “Non-addicted users still comprise the vast bulk of our drug-involved population.”

This is hard to dispute, yet hard to absorb. If we think about people we know, it seems about right—only a small minority of my friends who drink become alcoholics, and only a small minority of the people I know who use drugs on a night out have become addicts.

But if you think about how we are trained to think about drugs, this seems instinctively wrong, even dangerous. All we see in the public sphere are the casualties. The unharmed 90 percent use in private, and we rarely hear about it or see it. The damaged 10 percent, by contrast, are the only people we ever see using drugs out on the streets. The result is that the harmed 10 percent make up 100 percent of the official picture. It is as if our only picture of drinkers were a homeless person lying in a gutter necking neat gin. This impression is then reinforced with the full power of the state. For example, in 1995, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a massive scientific study of cocaine and its effects. They discovered that “experimental and occasional use are by far the most common types of use, and compulsive/dysfunctional [use] is far less common.” The U.S. government threatened to cut off funding to the WHO unless they suppressed the report. It has never been published; we know what it says only because it was leaked.

As I write this, I feel uncomfortable. The 10 percent who are harmed are most vivid to me—they are some of the people I love most. And there is another, more complex reason why I feel awkward writing about this. For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make.

The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad — it’s just that drug prohibition is even worse. I have made this argument in debates in the past. Prohibition, I said, doesn’t stop the problem, it simply piles another series of disasters onto the already-existing disaster of drug use. In this argument, we are all antidrug. The only difference is between prohibitionists who believe the tragedy of drug use can be dealt with by more jail cells in California and more military jeeps on the streets of Juárez, and the reformers who believe the tragedy of drug use can be dealt by moving those funds to educate kids and treat addicts.

Read more -

http://boingboing.net/2015/01/20/why-animals-eat-psychoactive-p.html

81 Percent of Dollar store products tested contain chemicals linked to Learning Disabilities, Cancer and Serious Illnesses -

81 Percent of Dollar store products tested contain chemicals linked to Learning Disabilities, Cancer and Serious Illnesses  - 

HealthyStuff, in collaboration with the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, released a report today about toxic chemicals found in Dollar store products. The report — A Day Late and a Dollar Short: Discount Retailers are Falling Behind on Safer Chemicals — includes testing results for 164 dollar store products such as toys, jewelry, school supplies and other household items, that found over 81% (133 of 164) contained at least one hazardous chemical above levels of concern.

The campaign also sent a letter to the CEO’s of the four largest Dollar store chains — including Family Dollar (tentatively acquired by Dollar Tree on January 22), Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and 99 Cents Only urging them to stop the sale of products with hazardous chemicals to communities of color and low-income families, who already live in more polluted areas and “food deserts,” and adopt policies that will protect both customers and their businesses. Combined these discount chains have sales totaling over $36 billion and operate more stores nationally than Walmart.

“People struggling to make ends meet are confined to shopping at the Dollar stores,” said Jose T. Bravo, National Coordinator for the Campaign for Healthier Solutions. “We are already disproportionately affected by pollution and lack of adequate medical care, and now we know we’re filling our homes and our bodies with chemicals released from Dollar store products. This needs to stop. ”

“We’ve tested 1,000′s of products from dozens of retailers over the last ten years, said Jeff Gearhart, HealthyStuff Research Director. “And on average the dollar store products are some of the poorest peforming from a chemical hazard perspective. I am particularly concerned about the comparatively high percentage of products containing hazardous plasticizers. ”


The chemicals of concern found in Dollar store products tested for this report include: phthalates, linked to birth defects, reduced fertility, cancer, learning disabilities, diabetes, and other health issues; polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC or vinyl), which creates hazards throughout its life cycle and has been linked to asthma and lung effects; and toxic metals such as lead, which harms brain development, leading to learning disabilities, lower IQ, and cause other serious health impacts, especially in children.

Other key findings from the report include:

49% of products tested (80 of 164) contained two or more hazardous chemicals above levels of concern;
38% of the products tested (63 of 164) contained the toxic plastic PVC (vinyl);
32% of a subset of vinyl products tested for phthalates (12 of 38) contained levels of phthalates above the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) limit for children’s products.
In addition, 40% of sales at Dollar stores go toward food products (not tested for this report) — much of which is highly processed with low nutritional quality, and whose packaging is another potential source of toxic chemicals including bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic hormone linked to breast and others cancers, reproductive problems, obesity, early puberty and heart disease.

Fortunately, there is a growing movement by mainstream retail and manufacturing brands — including Target and Walmart — to respond to consumer demand for safer products with publicly-available corporate policies that identify, disclose, and replace priority toxic chemicals with safer alternatives. By failing to address toxic chemicals through comprehensive policies, Dollar chains are not only putting their customers at risk, they are exposing their businesses to the fate of companies like Mattel, which lost 18% of its value after recalling toys with lead paint, and Sigg USA, which went bankrupt after failing to disclose toxic BPA in its water bottles.

The Campaign for Healthier Solutions is asking for a comprehensive set of reforms, including that:

Discount Retailers immediately remove children’s products found to contain regulated phthalates and lead from store shelves; and adopt comprehensive corporate chemical management policies to identify, disclose, and remove hazardous chemicals from their supply chains and from all products in their stores, beginning with their house brands.

Local, State, and Federal Governments ensure that discount retailers comply with all relevant laws and regulations; and adopt public policies (such as Maine’s Kid-Safe Products Law and WashingtReon’s Children’s Safe Products Act) that require manufacturers and retailers to disclose hazardous chemicals in products, research alternatives, and remove hazardous chemicals when alternatives are available, effective, and safer.

Families and Communities let Dollar store chains know that they want safer products, and join local and national efforts advocating for nontoxic products.

Complete test results are available at HealthyStuff.org. The full report and more information about the Campaign are available at www.nontoxicdollarstores.org

Read more - 

http://www.ecocenter.org/healthy-stuff/reports/dollar-store-report