BEATRICE EDWARDS, - Truthout
Stephan: The distinction that was recently made about Chinese hacking was that NSA did it for geopolitical reasons, strictly governmental, while China was also doing it in an unholy alliance of corporations and the government. This distinction is fraudulent. This is an excellent report pulling aside the wizard's curtain. You will see why I have been saying for years that one should assume all the quotidian details of one's life are fully recorded.
Truthout is serializing Beatrice Edwards’ book, The Rise of the American Corporate Security State. To read more excerpts from this book, click here.
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Daniel Ellsberg writes of The American Corporate Security State: “Edwards is an extraordinary writer who brilliantly captures the essence of what whistleblowers such as Snowden have sacrificed their careers and jeopardized their personal liberties to convey.” Get the book by contributing to Truthout here.
The Government-Corporate Complex: What It Knows about You
Chapter 1: The Rise of the American Corporate Security State
Reason to be afraid #1:
Average citizens are subject to ever-expanding surveillance and data collection by the government-corporate complex.
Halfway across the ornate sitting room, Julian Assange stands with his back to the door, drinking a bottle of beer. It is early on a summer evening, June 22, 2013, and the Embassy of Ecuador in London is hosting a small party to acknowledge the one-year anniversary of his arrival in need of asylum. While Assange stands chatting calmly about the future of his anti-secrecy enterprise, Wikileaks, few people in the room know that he is worried. Sarah Harrison, his principal researcher and confidant, is only hours away from slipping out of Hong Kong with Edward Snowden, who, at that moment, is […]
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Stephan: This is a view of our economy that I don't think I have previously seen quantified. It is astonishing.
The greatest wealth transfer in history is underway, according to a new report.
A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects that $59 trillion is expected to be passed down to heirs, charities and taxes between 2007 and 2061.
The study said heirs will receive $36 trillion over that period, while federal estate taxes will receive $5.6 trillion.
Total gifts to charity during the period of the study are expected to be more than $27 trillion, which includes sums from final estates (with no surviving spouse) as well as total lifetime giving.
The study assumes economic growth rates of 2 percent and the extension of current tax provisions. If the economy grows at 3 percent a year, charitable giving could reach $40 trillion, according to the study.
“The estimates of wealth and philanthropy we highlight in the report are conservative and probably represent the floor rather than the ceiling of what is in store for philanthropic giving,” said Paul Schervish, director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. “The most important finding in the study is the continued abundant and growing financial capacity for philanthropy.”
The estimate marks a big increase from Schervish’s previous projection and is likely to spark new debate. […]
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THOMAS BØHN and MAREK CUHRA, Professor of Gene Ecology, The Arctic University of Norway and PhD Candidate - Independent Science News
Stephan: This report provides additional information about the poisons leaking into our lives, this time through our failing industrial food system. I just can't over emphasize why either home grown or locally sourced organic produce and organic seafood and fowl should be your choice
Click through to see the graphs and charts.
Food and feed quality are crucial to human and animal health. Quality can be defined as sufficiency of appropriate minerals, vitamins and fats, etc. but it also includes the absence of toxins, whether man-made or from other sources. Surprisingly, almost no data exist in the scientific literature on herbicide residues in herbicide tolerant genetically modified (GM) plants, even after nearly 20 years on the market.
In research recently published by our laboratory (Bøhn et al. 2014) we collected soybean samples grown under three typical agricultural conditions: organic, GM, and conventional (but non-GM). The GM soybeans were resistant to the herbicide Roundup, whose active ingredient is glyphosate.
We tested these samples for nutrients and other compounds as well as relevant pesticides, including glyphosate and its principal breakdown product, Aminomethylphosponic acid (AMPA). All of the individual samples of GM-soy contained residues of both glyphosate and AMPA, on average 9.0 mg/kg. This amount is greater than is typical for many vitamins. In contrast, no sample from the conventional or the organic soybeans showed residues of these chemicals (Fig. 1).
Crop spraying, South Africa, Thomas Bøhn
Crop spraying, South Africa, Thomas Bøhn
This demonstrates that Roundup Ready GM-soybeans sprayed during the growing season take up and accumulate glyphosate […]
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Stephan: Here is a report on the current GMO situation. It has a bias against GMO but seems reasonable to me. There are many links so click through. Also a video.
Two years ago, a free report was published by the following genetic engineers and one researcher (respectively): Dr. John Fagan, Dr. Michael Antoniou and Claire Robinson. GMO Myths and Truths delved deep into the available research about the bigger picture of genetic modification.
It showed why consumer concern over the health and environmental effects of consuming GMOs were not the result of ignorant activist-stoked wrath. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that it was never correct to say the entire society of science backed this rogue corporate creation. Furthermore, it annihilates the myth that genetic modification is the only way to feed the world.
Fast forward to present day and you can have a free, fully loaded new addition that features important updates like getting the real scoop on the French GMO-fed rat study led by Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini. Think: pictures all over the internet of tumor-bloated lab rats. The PDF book features summaries of many studies that were recently conducted on the results of GMO proliferation.
Dr. Fagan commented:
The GMO debate is far from being over, as some GMO proponents claim. Instead the evidence of risk and actual harm from GM foods and crops to health and the environment has grown in the […]
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Stephan: War has become a profit center for an entire industry that receives almost no attention from corporate media, unless some blatant crisis draws attention. But during the era of the Neocons we privatized war, so only the actual killing is left to the military. All the things, food, sanitation, fuel, construction that can be made profit centers have been hived off to contractors. It goes on almost unremarked, and the industry has become a powerful lobbying force. No wonder we are experiencing war without end.
On Tuesday, following his surprise Memorial Day visit to Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul, President Obama announced that the United States plans to keep at least 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2016, further delaying the end of what he calls ‘America’s longest war.”
But in his remarks at the White House, the president didn’t say that the nearly 10,000 U.S. troops he’s asking to remain in an ‘advisory role” will be augmented by a huge army of private contractors. As they have in Iraq, contractors will vastly outnumber the U.S. uniformed forces training Afghan troops as well as the special operations forces providing counterterrorism operations against what the president called ‘the remnants of al-Qaida.”
The role of contractors in the Afghanistan war is spelled out in a document obtained by Salon from SAIC, one of the nation’s largest military and intelligence contractors. The document, an unclassified PowerPoint presentation, shows exactly how contractors have been used in that war since 2009, when Obama endorsed a surge of 33,000 troops and a counterinsurgency strategy in the war against the Taliban. Those policies increased the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 troops.
One of the PowerPoint slides defines the four ‘mission areas” […]
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