BRADLEY MANNING, JULIAN ASSANGE, OBAMA AND THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In the case of the United States government in 2013 and criminality and human rights abuses, it is difficult to know where to begin. It all started a very long time ago, long before Obama became president of that benighted country.

One of the abuses perpetrated by a previous president was the establishment of a concentration camp on the island of Cuba - a country with which the United States governments have for many decades treated with appalling human rights abuses. The concentration camp is called Guantanamo and the abuse and torture of its inmates makes for some very grim reading.

So far we have just started at the tip of the iceberg, but this is about what is going on at the present time and is a gory illustration of humans' inhumanity to humans, including its own citizens.

This story is about Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Wikileaks and related matters and shows how far the US government has strayed from any semblance of democracy.

We are very fortunate indeed that citizens of the United States, knowing about the abuses of their government, have put together organisations to assist those of their fellow citizens who have fallen foul of the current regime. Two of these organisations - the

Bradley Manning Support Network

and

Firedoglake

- are doing their utmost to endeavour to ensure that Bradley Manning receives as fair a trial - criminal as that trial is anyway - as is possible under the circumstances.

A book by CHASE MADAR has just been published (VERSO 2013): THE PASSION OF BRADLEY MANNING - THE STORY BEHIND THE WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER and it has been reviewed in Australia by Jeff Sparrow, the review appearing in several local newspapers.

Here is the review:

Prisoner of conscience

May 11, 2013

Reviewed by Jeff Sparrow

Bradley Manning's disenchantment with the war stemmed from politics. Photo: AFP

POLITICS

THE PASSION OF BRADLEY MANNING: THE STORY BEHIND THE WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER

By Chase Madar
Verso, $21.99

''Bradley Manning deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.'' The opening from Chase Madar's book leaves us in no doubt as to the author's view on his subject: whistleblower Bradley Manning, the man said to have supplied to WikiLeaks half a million classified documents.

For Madar, the line's more than a rhetorical flourish. The US awarded the Presidential Medal, the nation's highest civilian honour, to most of the principal players behind the Iraq war, including Tony Blair and John Howard. In other words, those who misled the public into a disastrous invasion were decorated - but Manning faces life in jail for revealing the truth about what the conflict entailed.

In part, The Passion of Bradley Manning can be read as a biography. Manning, a talented but troubled computer geek, enlisted in the army (perhaps because of an unhappy relationship with his father) and, despite struggling as a recruit, somehow ended up an intelligence analyst in Iraq. In that capacity, he investigated 15 men detained by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ''anti-Iraqi literature''. But the material that brought them into Iraq's notorious jails (where torture was rampant) proved, upon further inspection, merely an expose of Iraqi government corruption entitled Where Did the Money Go?

Yet when Manning reported what was happening in the Iraqi jails to his superiors, he was told to ''shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding more detainees''.

Though he was bullied for slight stature and his homosexuality, Manning's disenchantment with the war stemmed from politics, not personality or psychology. He had access to evidence of atrocities, such as the footage later released as ''Collateral Murder'' - a clip of a helicopter gunship killing civilians. As he asked during an online chat with a hacker called Adrian Lamo: ''[If you] saw incredible things, awful things … things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC … what would you do?'' Lamo supplied his answer by turning Manning into the authorities.

Alongside its biographical plot, The Passion of Bradley Manning tells another story, one of the history of secrecy's spread.

For the American founders, democracy necessarily meant that the people knew what their government did. Former US president James Madison put it like this: ''A popular government, without popular information, is but a prelude to a tragedy or a farce, or perhaps both.'' Today, however, secrecy seems an end in itself - so much so that documents pertaining to Madison's own administration (he left office in 1817) still remain under wraps.

The officials responsible for US information security classified nearly 77 million documents in 2010 and 92 million in 2011, while President Barack Obama, who campaigned as an ally of whistleblowers, has actually prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act of 1917 than all his predecessors combined.

Naturally, with the security state so massive, leaks happen all the time - some 3 million Americans have access to classified documents.

But the reaction to any such breach depends largely upon who's responsible for it. For instance, material classified as top secret - a higher rating than anything Manning allegedly released - regularly finds its way into books by insider journalists of the Bob Woodward variety. Newspaper stories in The New York Times and elsewhere regularly quote ''unnamed officials'' on sensitive military matters.

Such leaks are often sanctioned at the highest levels. William Daley, President Obama's chief of staff between 2011 and 2012, has discussed how he and his predecessors gave secret material to the press when that information made the administration look good. ''I'm all for leaking when it's organised,'' he said.

Forty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg released details about the US war in Vietnam in the so-called ''Pentagon Papers'', all of it more highly classified than anything WikiLeaks has published. Yet Ellsberg is a free man while Manning is quite likely to stay in prison for the rest of his life. What's the difference?

Madar suggests Manning's case reflects a changing political climate in the US. The Pentagon Papers came out at the high-water mark of liberalism. Today, tolerance for dissent against the state is much lower.

American officials have acknowledged on several occasions that WikiLeaks has not cost a single American life. Yet since his arrest, Manning's been held in solitary confinement under extraordinarily degrading conditions (he's kept nude at night and, because he's classified as a danger to himself, he must respond every five minutes to the guards' inquiry: ''Are you OK?'')

On the one hand, Madar says, this cruelty reflects a degradation of judicial norms during the war on terror, a period in which assassinations and coercive interrogations have been normalised. More worryingly, it also mirrors deeper problems within the conventional US justice system, where the massive penal apparatus regularly keeps prisoners in appalling conditions for years on end.

In The Passion of Bradley Manning, one human-rights lawyer discusses how prisoners in Guantanamo Bay detention camp might be well advised to accept 10 years in the communal wing of that facility rather than three years in solitary at an American supermax prison, while another describes the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan as worse run than Gitmo.

For Madar, that's why Manning is so important. His disclosures matter because Americans remain ignorant about what's done in their name, whether in the bowels of high-security prisons or on the streets of Baghdad.

''I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy,'' Manning said during his web chat with Lamo. His fate depends on how many others feel likewise.

■ Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland. His most recent book, Money Shot: A Journey into Porn and Censorship, is published by Scribe.

The next item in the sorry saga of the persecution of Bradley Manning by his own government and that great "Bastion" of democratic support Barak Obama is this Must See" video from Nation of Change:

Worse than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now! / Video Interview
Published: Saturday 18 May 2013 (from Nation of Change)

Some analysts are drawing comparisons between the Obama administration’s actions in the probe and those of the Nixon administration when it attempted to block The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to that paper by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

The Justice Department’s disclosure that it had secretly subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press has prompted a wave of comparisons between President Obama and Richard Nixon.

Four decades ago, the Nixon administration attempted to block The New York Times from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to the newspaper by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Two days after the Times first published excerpts of what became known as the "Pentagon Papers," the Nixon government asked for and received a Supreme Court injunction against the newspaper, arguing that publication of the documents posed a "grave and immediate danger to the security of the United States." We speak to James Goodale, the general counsel at The New York Times during the Pentagon Papers crackdown. Goodale is a leading legal expert on the First Amendment and has just published a new book, "Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles."

Goodale said he wrote the book in part because of the work of Julian Assange of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, and how he is likely being targeted by the U.S. government in an ongoing grand jury probe. "My book is meant to be a clarion call to the journalist community: Wake up! There’s danger out there," Goodale says. "You may not like Assange, but wake up! The First Amendment is really going to be damaged. If Obama goes forward and succeeds, he will have succeeded where Nixon failed."

TRANSCRIPT

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the growing concern over the Justice Department’s secret effort to spy on Associated Press reporters as part of an investigation into a leak about a failed terrorist attack. Some analysts are drawing comparisons between the Obama administration’s actions in the probe and those of the Nixon administration when it attempted to block The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to that paper by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Two days after the Times first published excerpts of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon government asked for and received a Supreme Court injunction against the newspaper, arguing that publication of the documents posed a, quote, "grave and immediate danger to the security of the United States." The link was raised Tuesday by a reporter during a briefing with White House spokesperson Jay Carney.

REPORTER: President Obama is being compared to President Nixon on this. How does he feel about that?

PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: Again, I don’t have a reaction from President Obama. I can tell you that the people who make those kind of comparisons need to check their history, because, you know, what we have here with one issue in Benghazi is so clearly, as we’re learning more and more, a political sideshow, a deliberate effort to politicize a tragedy. The president feels very strongly about that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Tuesday. Well, on Wednesday, the question was raised again of whether the Obama administration’s probe of the emails of Associated Press reporters and editors recalls Nixon’s targeting of the press. This time the question was posed directly to President Obama.

REPORTER: I’d like to ask you about the Justice Department.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Mm-hmm.

REPORTER: Do you believe that the seizure of phone records from Associated Press journalists this week—or before, that was announced recently this week—was an overreach? And do you still have full confidence in your attorney general? Should we interpret yesterday’s renewed interest by the White House in a media shield law as a response to that? And, more broadly, how do you feel about comparisons by some of your critics of this week’s scandals to those that happened under the Nixon administration?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, yeah, I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons. And you can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions. My concern is making sure that if there’s a problem in the government, that we fix it. That’s my responsibility. And that’s what we’re going to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we turn to a guest who has a rather informed opinion on whether President Obama has been worse than President Nixon in their targeting of the press for published leaked information.

Joining us here in New York is James Goodale. He is the counsel—was the counsel for The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, a leading legal expert on the First Amendment, has just published a new book, Fighting for the Press: Why the Pentagon Papers Case Still Matters.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

JAMES GOODALE: Thank you very much for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: You say that President Obama is worse than President Nixon.

JAMES GOODALE: Well, more precisely, I say that if in fact he goes ahead and prosecutes Julian Assange, he will pass Nixon. He’s close to Nixon now. The AP example is a good example of something that Obama has done but Nixon never did. So I have him presently in second place, behind Nixon and ahead of Bush II. And he’s moving up fast. And if he goes ahead against Assange, he’ll at least be even, and we’ll have to see how that prosecution, if it takes place, comes out, because maybe he’ll pass him.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the Pentagon Papers. We have a clip from a documentary that was made about Daniel Ellsberg. The documentary is called Daniel Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America. Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers directly contributed to the end of the Nixon presidency. His story is chronicled in the 2009 documentary. This is a clip.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It was the evening of October 1st, 1969, when I first smuggled several hundred pages of top-secret documents out of my safe at the RANDCorporation. The study contained 47 volumes, 7,000 pages. My plan was to Xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the Vietnam War to the American people.

NEWSCASTER: The FBI was trying to find out who gave The New York Times a copy of a Pentagon secret study.

MIKE GRAVEL: Pow!, like a thunderclap, you get The New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers, and the country is panicking.

HENRY KISSINGER: This is an attack on the whole integrity of government. If whole file cabinets can be stolen and then made available to the press, you can’t have orderly government anymore.

WALTER CRONKITE: A name has now come out as the possible source of the TimesPentagon documents. It is that of Daniel Ellsberg, a top policy analyst for the Defense and State Departments.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I think it is time in this country to quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspaper.

PATRICIA ELLSBERG: In the first year of marriage, we’re talking about him going to prison for the rest of his life.

REPORTER: Dr. Ellsberg, do you have any concern about the possibility of going to prison for this?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?

EGIL "BUD" KROGH JR.: We felt so strongly that we were dealing with a national security crisis. Henry Kissinger said that Dr. Daniel Ellsberg was "the most dangerous man in America" and he had to be stopped.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is another clip of Daniel Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America, where he focuses on how the Nixon White House responded to Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers. It begins with John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon.

JOHN DEAN: I think that there is probably some good justification for the strong feelings Nixon had. He would make a decision in the National Security Council and the next day read it on the front page of The New York Times or some other newspaper. This makes it virtually impossible to govern.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Just because some guy is going to be a martyr, we can’t be in a position of allowing the fellow to get away with this kind of wholesale thievery, or otherwise it’s going to happen all over the government. I just say that we’ve got to keep our eye on the main ball. The main ball is Ellsberg. We’ve got to get this son of a [bleep].

JOHN DEAN: The leak of the Pentagon Papers changed the Nixon White House. It really is what some of us have called the beginning of the dark period. I mean, it was rough and tumble before, but it got down and dirty. So it’s really a defining event for the Nixon presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: That was John Dean and, before that, Richard Nixon. James Goodale, how The New York Times came into this story and the decisions it had to make at the time, when Nixon tried to stop New York Times from publishing?

JAMES GOODALE: How did The New York Times come into it? Well, because he brought The New York Times into it. What the Pentagon Papers case is about is censorship. And lawyers call it "prior restraint." And after publishing for three days, all of a sudden we were in court. And several days later, really, we were in the Supreme Court. So the Times came into it, because I believed and those at the Times believed that this was an outrage and that the First Amendment protected us and that the government had no ability to come in and tell us not what we shouldn’t print—sorry for the double negative—or what we should print. And we put our troops together and beat him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in your book, it’s a really gripping account of the inside story of what happened, but you actually start with what happened a year earlier with Earl Caldwell and the Nixon administration coming after Earl Caldwell at The New York Times, as well, to seek information from him.

JAMES GOODALE: You know, I’m so glad you asked me that, because the subtitle of the book is "Other Battles." And the other battles are the reporter’s—what we call "reporter’s privilege" battles. That is to say, the ability of the reporter to keep sources from being disclosed. And, hey, where are we today, where AP—it’s the very same thing as Earl Caldwell, who was a black reporter who tried to keep his information secret from Nixon. And it started right there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Earl had been writing articles about the Black Panther Party that the—

JAMES GOODALE: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —Nixon administration wanted his notes on, right, as well?

JAMES GOODALE: He was virtually the only black reporter at The New York Times at that time. He gained access, I would think perhaps because he was into the Black Panther headquarters, and he gained their trust. So it was very important for the public to have someone who would explain the Black Panthers to the public. And his position was that if he had to say what he saw and tell what he knew, his credibility would be ruined.

Now, what’s interesting about this case, and also its parallel to the Pentagon Papers case, is, when it went to the Supreme Court, where he—I say he won, but other people say he lost—sort of a tie—but he had to be taken back to court. Guess what? Nixon forgot about him. So why did Nixon bring it in the first place? You know why: because it was a political case and wasn’t a real case. And I would suggest the Pentagon Papers case is not a real case; it’s a political case.

When I—I’ve got one message, basic message, in the Pentagon Papers part of the book, which is: When you look back at the so-called secrets, which the audience heard about in the clips, it’s all a bunch of malarkey. There are no secrets. The case with the Pentagon Papers was a bunch of—bunch of hot air. So, therefore, when we hear today the attorney general saying, "This is the worst secret I have ever seen disclosed," you know, beware, because, invariably, these secrets turn out to be non-secrets. They are the ability of the government to protect themselves and their own information and their own political power.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, one of the things that you raise also in the comparisons to today with the Julian Assange case and Bradley Manning is the government not only went after Ellsberg, but it went after the reporter to whom Ellsberg leaked the information, just as now the government is trying to go not only after Manning, the leaker, but after Assange, the receiver of the leaks.

JAMES GOODALE: After the Pentagon Papers ended, which was a case about censorship, Mitchell, who was Nixon’s attorney general, got very excited about prosecuting The New York Times. People have forgotten about that. So he convened a grand jury in Boston, because there was some evidence that the Pentagon Papers had been circulated in the antiwar community before they were published by The New York Times. And the theory was that the New York Times reporter conspired with those antiwar protesters, and he was going to indict them for conspiracy.

So, now, fast-forward. What is Obama doing? He’s convened a grand jury. We haven’t heard about it; I think it’s still there. I think it may have even indicted Assange in secrecy. But what’s the charge? Conspiracy. Well, we don’t expect our listeners to be lawyers and jump up and down when they hear the word "conspiracy." I just want to tell you in the audience, it’s very easy to prove conspiracy, very hard to prove espionage under the Espionage Act. So what Obama is doing is doing an end run and trying to get an easy case against Assange, after he’s convicted Manning. It’s easy to convict Manning, OK? So that easy conviction then becomes the basis for the agreement for Assange.

So, my book is meant to be a clarion call to the journalist community: Wake up! There’s danger out there. You may not like Assange, but wake up! The First Amendment is really going to be damaged, if Obama goes forward. And as I said at the beginning of the show, if he does and succeeds, he will have succeeded where Nixon failed.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s play a clip from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when he was onDemocracy Now! last November. He warns about the consequences of the Espionage Act being reinterpreted.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Now, the new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the Pentagon is trying to hammer in to the legal system, and which the Department of Justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States, and not only the United States, because the Pentagon is trying to apply this extraterritorially.

Why would it be the end of national security journalism? Because the interpretation is that if any document that the U.S. government claims to be classified is given to a journalist, who then makes any part of it public, that journalist has committed espionage, and the person who gave them the material has committed the crime, communicating with the enemy.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange was speaking to us from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he is holed up. He got political asylum in Ecuador, but the British government won’t allow him to come out of the embassy to make his way to Ecuador. They say they will arrest him and extradite him to Sweden. He is concerned about then being extradited to the United States, where, as you say, you think that there is a sealed indictment against him. We know there’s a secret grand jury against him.

JAMES GOODALE: Better than 50 percent. I don’t know, because it’s secret, yeah. But that’s why he’s holed up. His lawyers are convinced, one step out, he’s into Sweden, and he’s right through Sweden over here.

And he’s quite right about talking about the threat to journalism with respect to the way Obama is going about prosecuting him.

What lawyers like to say is that if in fact the prosecution goes forward, as Julian Assange has said, it criminalizes news gathering, because I talk to you and ask you to give me a secret, or anything, but in fact that anything may be classified; we’re all both going to go off to the hoosegow. And, you know, Obama has classified, I think, seven million—in one year, classified seven million documents. Everything is classified. So that would give the government the ability to control all its information on the theory that it’s classified. And if anybody asks for it and gets it, they’re complicit, and they’re going to go to jail. So that criminalizes the process, and it means that the dissemination of information, which is inevitable, out of the classified sources of that information will be stopped.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the—

JAMES GOODALE: It’s very dangerous. That’s why I’m—I get excited when I talk about it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the irony of the Obama administration, after the news of their surveillance of the AP comes out, then going to Chuck Schumer and saying, "We need a stronger shield law"?

JAMES GOODALE: I mean, that—I have this whole history in my book. And I just thought that was quite ridiculous, because the bill that Obama asked Schumer to put into the House has an exception for national security. In other words, if you’re a reporter and you’re talking about national security, the law doesn’t apply. But what is the whole controversy about today with respect to AP? It’s about a national security exception to the privilege that you would think reporters would otherwise have. So, Obama puts it out, thinking the public doesn’t know what I know, and I’m really going to be good to reporters, but it doesn’t protect them at all in the AP situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill Keller, the former executive editor of The New York Times, who partnered with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on several major releases, has since written critical columns about Assange. One of his columns ended with the line, quote, "The most palpable legacy of the WikiLeaks campaign for transparency is that the U.S. government is more secretive than ever." You were the general counsel for The New York Times.

JAMES GOODALE: Well, you know, we’ve gone the full secret—we’ve gone the full circle. When the Pentagon Papers came out, all the journalists and publishers said it’s a new era. The government isn’t going to be able to keep the secrets anymore—which they aren’t secrets, anyway, in my humble opinion. They’re not going to be able to hold back the information. We’ve had this great victory.

But now we are X years later, and we’ve got Obama, who indicted six journalists. I said that’s terrible, in my book. But look what we’re talking about in the AP situation. He’s trying to find a source who he can indict who will be the seventh. The secrecy has increased during the Obama administration. We have gone nowhere in terms of that.

But we do have a very good precedent that Obama can’t stop the press before printing. That was good. But let’s face it. In the digital age, no one cares about that anymore. In the digital age, the action is what the government will do after publication, after Assange has published. What are the rules there? So, this is a new chapter in the history of the Pentagon Papers.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, James Goodale, very much for being with us.

JAMES GOODALE: You’re entirely welcome.

AMY GOODMAN: Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. James C. Goodale is the former general counsel of The New York Times, when President Nixon tried to stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

This is Democracy Now!,

The War and Peace Report.

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ABOUT AMY GOODMAN

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

THE USA AND IRAQ - SOME OF THE TRUTH EMERGING AT LAST - THANKS TO WIKILEAKS!

This video is about an hour long but it is so fascinating and mind-boggling that the time passes before you are aware of it and at the end you feel the need to know more!

This was placed on two sites at least which I receive on a daily basis and I acknowledge Nation of Change and Antony Loewenstein whose posting provide endless truths which are missing from the main stream media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which is on a level these days with Murdoch's gutter press.

MEDIA PROBLEMS INTERNATIONAL!

After having posted an item a few days ago in this blog about the media in Australia and how pathetic they have been in recent years in fulfilling their mandate by informing people about world events, along comes an item in Nation of Change on 3 JANUARY 2013 explaining much more graphically than I was able to do, about what is left of the media.

Here is the article:

A Newsworthy Investment

Let us address the declining fortunes of today’s mainstream mass media. (Yes, I can hear your pained screams of “Nooooo…we don’t want to!” However, we really must, because it’s not about them, but us — about our ability to be at least quasi-informed about who’s-doing-what-to-whom-and-why, in order for us to be a self-governing people. So buckle up, here we go.)

The honchos of America’s newspaper establishment are quick to blame the Internet for their loss of readers, not noticing that their own product has fallen victim to conventional wisdomitis. This affliction leaves them printing little more than the contrived “wisdom” of the corporate powers. It’s not a big selling point with readers.

Ironically, this narrow perspective not only saps their sense of what’s “news,” but also their business sense. For example, with readership declining, the accepted industry response by owners and publishers is to fire beat reporters, shrink the news hole, reduce reporting to rewrites of wire service articles, and run hokey PR campaigns hyping the shriveled product as “Real News.”

But here’s some real news they might want to consider: the new owners of theOrange County Register are blazing a contrarian path toward reviving their paper’s prosperity. Editor Ken Brusic notes that offering less to subscribers and charging more not only is a ripoff and an insult to readers, but a sure path to failure. “So,” he says, “we’re now offering more,” expanding the Register’s newsroom, its coverage, and the paper’s size.

Gosh — hire real watchdog reporters, dig out real news, and make the paper relevant to local readers — what a novel notion for a news business! Of course, the conventional wisdomites are sneering at this unorthodox approach. “It’s not what most people are doing,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. Exactly — and that’s why it’s so promising.

ABOUT JIM HIGHTOWER

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

30 MAY 2012

From NationofChange:

First Super Weeds, Now Super Insects -- Thanks to Monsanto

By Dr. Mercola

Organic Consumers Association / News Report

Published: Wednesday 30 May 2012

“Not only are we seeing rapid emergence of super-weeds resistant to glyphosate, courtesy of Roundup Ready crops, we now also have evidence of emerging Bt-resistant insects.”

A new generation of insect larvae is eating the roots of genetically engineered corn intended to be resistant to such pests. The failure of Monsanto's genetically modified Bt corn could be the most serious threat ever to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.

And the economic impact could be huge. Billions of dollars are at stake, as Bt corn accounts for 65 percent of all corn grown in the US.

The strain of corn, engineered to kill the larvae of beetles, such as the corn rootworm, contains a gene copied from an insect-killing bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

But even though a scientific advisory panel warned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the threat of insects developing resistance was high, Monsanto argued that the steps necessary to prevent such an occurrence -- which would have entailed less of the corn being planted -- were an unnecessary precaution, and the EPA naively agreed.

According to a recent NPR report:

"The scientists who called for caution now are saying 'I told you so,' because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging...[A] committee of experts at the EPA is now recommending that biotech companies put into action, for the first time, a 'remedial action plan' aimed at stopping the spread of such resistant insects ...

The EPA's experts also are suggesting that the agency reconsider its approval of a new kind of rootworm-killing corn, which Monsanto calls SmartStax. This new version of Bt corn includes two different Bt genes that are supposed to kill the rootworm in different ways. This should help prevent resistance from emerging, and the EPA is allowing farmers to plant it on up to 95 percent of their corn acres. But if one of those genes is already compromised… such a high percentage of Bt corn could rapidly produce insects that are resistant to the second one, too."

There can be little doubt that genetically engineered crops are the most dangerous aspect of modern agriculture. Not only are we seeing rapid emergence of super-weeds resistant to glyphosate, courtesy of Roundup Ready crops, we now also have evidence of emerging Bt-resistant insects. Add to that the emergence of a brand new organism capable of producing disease and infertility in both plants and animals, and a wide variety of evidence showing harm to human health, and the only reasonable expectation one can glean is that humanity as a whole is being seriously threatened by this foolhardy technology.

Bt Corn—a Most Dangerous Failure

Monsanto's genetically modified "Bt corn" has been equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), which produces the Bt-toxin. It's a pesticide that breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them.

This pesticide-producing corn entered the food supply in the late 1990's, and over the past decade, the horror stories have started piling up. And the problem with Bt crops go far beyond the creation of Bt-resistant insects.

Monsanto and the EPA swore that the genetically engineered corn would only harm insects. The Bt-toxin produced inside the plant would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system and would not have any impact at all on consumers, they claimed. Alas, they've been proven wrong on that account as well, because not only is Bt corn producing resistant "super-pests," researchers have also found that the Bt-toxin can indeed wreak havoc on human health.

Bt-Toxin Now Found in Many People's Blood!

Last year, doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found Bt-toxin in the blood of:

• 93 percent of pregnant women tested

• 80 percent of umbilical blood in their babies, and

• 67 percent of non-pregnant women

The study authors speculate that the Bt toxin was likely consumed in the normal diet of the Canadian middle class—which makes sense when you consider that genetically engineered corn is present in the vast majority of all processed foods and drinks in the form of high fructose corn syrup. They also suggest that the toxin may have come from eating meat from animals fed Bt corn, which most livestock raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO, or so-called "factory farms") are.

These shocking results raise the frightening possibility that eating Bt corn might actually turn your intestinal flora into a sort of "living pesticide factory"… essentially manufacturing Bt-toxin from within your digestive system on a continuing basis.

If this hypothesis is correct, is it then also possible that the Bt-toxin might damage the integrity of your digestive tract in the same way it damages insects? Remember, the toxin actually ruptures the stomach of insects, causing them to die. The biotech industry has insisted that the Bt-toxin doesn't bind or interact with the intestinal walls of mammals (which would include humans). But again, there are peer-reviewed published research showing that Bt-toxin does bind with mouse small intestines and with intestinal tissue from rhesus monkeys.

Bt-Toxin Linked to Allergies, Auto-Immune Disease, and More

If Bt genes are indeed capable of colonizing the bacteria living in the human digestive tract, scientists believe it could reasonably result in:

• Gastrointestinal problems

• Autoimmune diseases

• Food allergies

• Childhood learning disorders

And lo and behold, all of these health problems are indeed on the rise… The discovery of Bt-toxin in human blood is not proof positive of this link, but it certainly raises a warning flag. And there's plenty of other evidence showing that the Bt-toxin produced in GM corn and cotton plants is toxic to humans and mammals and triggers immune system responses. For example, in government-sponsored research in Italy, mice fed Monsanto's Bt corn showed a wide range of immune responses, such as:

• Elevated IgE and IgG antibodies, which are typically associated with allergies and infections

• An increase in cytokines, which are associated with allergic and inflammatory responses. The specific cytokines (interleukins) that were found to be elevated are also higher in humans who suffer from a wide range of disorders, from arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, to MS and cancer

• Elevated T cells (gamma delta), which are increased in people with asthma, and in children with food allergies, juvenile arthritis, and connective tissue diseases.

Rats fed another of Monsanto's Bt corn varieties called MON 863, also experienced an activation of their immune systems, showing higher numbers of basophils, lymphocytes, and white blood cells. These can indicate possible allergies, infections, toxins, and various disease states including cancer. There were also signs of liver- and kidney toxicity.

Topical versus Internal Toxins

Farmers have used Bt-toxin from soil bacteria as a natural pesticide for years, and biotech companies have therefore claimed that Bt-toxin has a "history of safe use in agriculture." But there's a huge difference between spraying it on plants, where it biodegrades in sunlight and can be carefully washed off, and genetically altering the plant to produce it internally.

Bt crops have the Bt-toxin gene built-in, so the toxin cannot be washed off. You simply cannot avoid consuming it. Furthermore, the plant-produced version of the poison is thousands of times more concentrated than the spray.

There are also peer-reviewed studies showing that natural Bt-toxin from soil bacteria is not a safe pesticide either:

• When natural Bt-toxin was fed to mice, they had tissue damage, immune responses as powerful as cholera toxin , and even started reacting to other foods that were formerly harmless.

• Farm workers exposed to Bt also showed immune responses .

• The EPA's Bt Plant-Pesticides Risk and Benefits Assessment, created by their expert Scientific Advisory Panel, states that "Bt proteins could act as antigenic and allergenic sources."


Do You Know what You're Eating?

Did you know that two years ago, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on all physicians to prescribe diets without genetically modified (GM) foods to all patients?

They sure did, although few doctors seem to have gotten the memo. They also called for a moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), long-term independent studies, and labeling, stating:

"Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. …There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation…"

I couldn't agree more. Avoiding genetically engineered foods should be at the top of everyone's list—at least if you want a decent shot at optimal health.

The simplest way to avoid genetically engineered (GE) foods is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By definition, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use GE ingredients, and must be produced without artificial pesticides or fertilizers. Animals must also be reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GE corn feed.

You can also avoid genetically modified (GM) ingredients in processed foods, if you know what to look for. There are currently eight genetically modified food crops on the market:

Soy

Sugar from sugar beets

Corn

Hawaiian papaya

Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)

Some varieties of zucchini

Canola (canola oil)

Crookneck squash

This means you should avoid products with corn, soy, canola, and any of their derivatives listed as an ingredient, unless it's labeled USDA 100% Organic. As of late last year, this also includes sweet corn, as Monsanto introduced a brand new genetically engineered sweet corn called Seminis®, which contains not just one but TWO types of Bt-toxin, PLUS the Roundup Ready gene for weed control! So besides containing the insecticide, their toxic Roundup herbicide will also accumulate in the kernels.

For a helpful, straightforward guide to shopping Non-GMO, see the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, created by the Institute for Responsible Technology.

Why We MUST Insist on Mandatory Labeling of GM Foods

Mandatory labeling may be the only way to stop the proliferation of GM foods in the U.S. because while GM seeds are banned in several European countries, in the U.S., certain states are actually passing legislation that protects the use of GM seeds and allows for unabated expansion! At present, no less than 14 states have passed such legislation.

Michigan's Senate Bill 777i, if passed, would make that 15. The Michigan bill would prevent anti-GMO laws, and would remove "any authority local governments may have to adopt and enforce ordinances that prohibit or regulate the labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, use, or planting of agricultural, vegetable, flower or forest tree seeds."

While legislation like this sounds like crazy nonsense to normal people, such bills are essentially bought and paid for through the millions of dollars Monsanto and other biotech companies spend lobbying the US government each year. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Monsanto spent $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government -- a drop from a year earlier, when they spent $2.5 million during the same quarter.

Their efforts of persuasion are also made infinitely easier by the fact that an ever growing list of former Monsanto employees are now in positions of power within the federal government.

Proof Positive that GMO Labeling WILL Change the Food Industry

Many don't fully appreciate the strategy of seeking to have genetically engineered foods labeled in California. The belief is that large companies would refuse to have dual labeling; one for California and another for the rest of the country. It would be very expensive and a logistical nightmare. So rather than have two labels, they would simply not carry the product, especially if the new label would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones. This is why we are so committed to this initiative as victory here will likely eliminate genetically engineered foods from the US.

Powerful confirmation of this belief occurred in early 2012 when both Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc. chose to alter one of their soda ingredients as a result of California's labeling requirements for carcinogens ii:

"Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their sodas as a result of a California law that mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens bear a cancer warning label. The companies said the changes will be expanded nationally to streamline their manufacturing processes. They've already been made for drinks sold in California."

This is a PERFECT example of the national impact a California GMO labeling mandate can, and no doubt WILL, have. While California is the only state requiring the label to state that the product contains the offending ingredient, these companies are switching their formula for the entire US market, rather than have two different labels. According to USA Today:

"A representative for Coca-Cola, Diana Garza Ciarlante, said the company directed its caramel suppliers to modify their manufacturing processes to reduce the levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, which can be formed during the cooking process and as a result may be found in trace amounts in many foods. "While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning," Garza-Giarlante said in an email."

Educational Sources

To learn more about GM foods, I highly recommend the following films and lectures:

• Hidden Dangers in Kid's Meals

• Your Milk on Drugs - Just Say No!

• Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods
Important Action Item: Support California's Ballot Initiative to Label GMO's!

In 2007, then-Presidential candidate Obama promised to "immediately" require GM labeling if elected. So far, nothing of the sort has transpired.

Fortunately, 24 U.S. states have (as part of their state governance) something called the Initiative Process, where residents can bring to ballot any law they want enacted, as long as it has sufficient support. California has been busy organizing just such a ballot initiative to get mandatory labeling for genetically engineered foods sold in their state. The proposed law will be on the 2012 ballot.

Since California is the 8th largest economy in the world, a win for the California Initiative would be a huge step forward, and would affect ingredients and labeling nation-wide. A coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, food companies, and individuals has submitted the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act to the State Attorney General. Now, they need 800,000 signatures to get the Act on this year's ballot.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can. Be assured that what happens in California will affect the remainder of the U.S. states, so please support this important state initiative, even if you do not live there!

• Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort

• Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the California Ballot. It may be the only chance we have to label genetically engineered foods.

• Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.


ABOUT DR. MERCOLA

Dr. Mercola has made significant milestones in his mission to bring people practical solutions to their health problems. A New York Times Best Selling Author, Dr. Mercola was also voted the 2009 Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post, and has been featured in TIME magazine, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, Today Show, CBS’s Washington Unplugged with Sharyl Attkisson, and other major media resources.

NATIONOFCHANGE VIDEO ABOUT MONSANTO

This was received from Nation Of Change who are trying to raise money to pay for a billboard exposing more of Monsanto's excesses to the world.

Here is the video