Natasha Longo
Prevent Disease

Nature has a funny way of showing us not to disrupt the perfection of organic produce.

Changing the chemical structure of many natural foods, such as exposing them to high heat can promote cancer.

Acrylamide is a chemical that naturally forms in certain foods, particularly plant-based foods that are rich in carbohydrates and low in protein, during processing or cooking at high temperatures.

We’re not only referring to foods like french fries or potato chips, but hundreds of conventional foods that are “ready to eat” in the grocery aisle including cookies, breakfast cereals, popcorn, pizza and even ground coffee.

It’s one of the reasons many raw food enthusiasts go raw in the first place. The move to such dietary lifestyles usually stems from the disease promoting chemicals attached to the processed food industry. Acrylamide is just one of many.

It was first confirmed that acrylamide caused cancer in 2002 by the Swedish National Food Authority, however many have long suspected that heating any foods to high temperatures can pose problems to long-term health. The study tested common foods like Folgers instant coffee, Cheerios, and even french fries. The results were so shocking that it sent a tidal wave of concern throughout the scientific community that engulfed the World Health Organization, consumer activists, food manufacturing plants, cancer specialists and nutritionists. Since then, independent studies in the United States, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and England have confirmed the link between acrylamide consumption and risk of developing cancer.

Acrylamide in not intentionally added to food, but rather forms from naturally occurring components in certain foods when cooked at sufficiently high temperatures. It is formed when frying, baking or grilling carbohydrate-rich foods at temperatures above 120 degrees C.

Health Canada scientists have investigated why some foods have higher levels of acrylamide, for example, baked or fried foods, and have proved that acrylamide is not present in any ingredient of these food items prior to cooking and is not a contaminant inadvertently added at any stage of food preparation. The problem is the end product, not the raw material.

Most acrylamide in food is formed when a natural amino acid called asparagine reacts with certain naturally occurring sugars such as glucose. This only happens when the temperature during cooking is sufficiently high, a temperature which varies depending on the properties of the product and the method of cooking.

The results of Health Canada’s work on how acrylamide is formed in food were announced to the international scientific community and to the food industry, and subsequently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry “Acrylamide in Foods: Occurrence, Sources, and Modelling” in 2003.

Cancer

A study by G. S. Pedersen and colleaguesfrom Maastricht University in the Netherlands analyzed data from 62,573 women aged 55-69 when entering the study in 1986 and found that higher intakes of acrylamide were associated with higher risk of certain types of breast cancer compared to lower intakes.

During the 13-year-follow-up, 2225 cases of breast cancer were identified with hormone receptor status information available in 43 percent of the cases.

“We definitely believe acrylamide is a chemical to be concerned about,” says George Alexeeff, deputy director for scientific affairs at the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the office that oversees implementation of Proposition 65. “Our general presumption is that unless there’s some other evidence, we assume that if something causes cancer in animals, it causes cancer in humans.”

The Environmental Protection Agency considers acrylamide potentially so dangerous that it has fixed the safe level for human consumption at almost zero, with a maximum permissible level in drinking water of 0.12 parts per billion.

By comparison, a 2.4-ounce serving of French fries, a small portion at McDonald’s, contains about 401 parts per billion, a small, vending-machine-sized bag of potato chips 466 parts per billion.

Foods Containing Acrylamide

The top 20 foods by average acrylamide intake are as follows:

Survey Data on Acrylamide in Food

by the U.S. Food And Drug Administration

Collected between 2003, and 2006

Please note: ppb = parts per billion

* THERE HAS BEEN NO ESTABLISHED LONG-TERM SAFETY LIMIT EVER STUDIED ON ACRYLAMIDE

The top two food groups listed above – French fries and potato chips – are two of the most damaging foods to human health. Despite the creation of “healthy” varieties of French fries and potato chips like New York Fries – Fried in 100% Non-Hydrogenated Sunflower Oil and Trader Joe’s Veggie Chips Potato Snacks, it’s important to know that all French fries and potato chips that have been deep-fried in oil are heavily laced with acrylamide and pose a significant threat to one’s health.

How To Reduce Your Exposure

Based on what is currently known, it is impossible to determine recommended maximum exposure levels or to set daily consumption limits for specific foods containing acrylamide. However, research based on the above foods can give you some idea on which food categories to avoid.

Over the past five years, a research project has identified several ways of reducing acrylamide in foods. The project is a collaboration between the National Food Institute and the Department of Systems Biology at the Technical University of Denmark, the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen and five Danish food companies.

In addition to the heating temperature, tests carried out during the project also show that factors such as time of processing, pH, water content, water activity and the content of the amino acid asparagine and sugar in the raw ingredients influence the formation of acrylamide. For example, the longer the cooking time and the lower the water content, the higher the acrylamide content in the heat-processed food.

“By changing and optimising these factors when producing foods, the acrylamide content of many different types of products can be reduced considerably,” says Kit Granby senior scientist at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark.
The addition of rosemary to dough prior to baking a portion of wheat buns at 225 degrees C reduced the acrylamide content by up to 60 per cent. Even rosemary in small quantities — in one per cent of the dough — was enough to reduce the acrylamide content significantly.

Flavonoids are another type of antioxidant found, among other things, in vegetables, chocolate and tea. Tests also showed that the addition of the flavonoids epicatechin and epigallocatechin from green tea considerably reduced the acrylamide content.

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Natasha Longo has a master’s degree in nutrition and is a certified fitness and nutritional counselor. She has consulted on public health policy and procurement in Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland, England and Germany.
Sources:
fda.gov
drbenkim.com
hc-sc.gc.ca

Known Carcinogen in Many Foods

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David Axe
Wired

The second copy of China’s stealth fighter prototype has just flown at a research facility in the city of Chengdu. The first flight of the J-20 Mighty Dragon with the nose number 2002 doubles Beijing’s stealth test fleet at a time when America’s latest jet fighters are hobbled by cost overruns, labor disputes and lethal design flaws.

But it’s far from certain how much, and how fast, the new Chinese jet will alter the military balance.

The challenges for American stealth developers are clear. It has come to light that Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor — the first of the current generation of stealth fighters — is steadily poisoning its pilots owing to a faulty oxygen system. Meanwhile, the F-35 has been delayed by several years and the overall cost to design and build thousands of the new jets has risen by hundreds of billions of dollars. To make matters worse, workers at Lockheed’s F-35 factory have gone on strike, with no end in sight.

At first glance, China appears to be making huge progress where the U.S. falters. The twin-engine Mighty Dragon 2002, painted black like its predecessor, made its first appearance in April in photos snapped by Chinese bloggers (who may or may not be on Beijing’s payroll). The second J-20 spent a month or so performing ground tests before launching on its inaugural test sortie sometime in the past few days. If the initial flight of the first Mighty Dragon (nose number 2001) in December 2010 is any indication, 2002′s debut mission amounted to little more than a lap around the Chengdu airfield to test the aircraft’s basic functions and show off for the aforementioned bloggers.

With two airframes to work with, the Chengdu engineers can now double the roughly five-flights-a-month development program apparently aimed at producing a front-line stealth warplane. Before the first Mighty Dragon ever flew, General He Weirong of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force said the J-20 would enter service between 2017 and 2019. Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates countered, saying it would be 2020 or later before China possessed a combat-ready stealth fighter. It’s unclear who’s right — or even what definition of front-line service either man was using.

Certainly, the Mighty Dragon’s engineers have a lot of work ahead of them. For comparison, the development program for the U.S. military’s latest F-35 Joint Strike Fighter includes more than 10,000 test flights spread over 15 years. If China duplicated the American testing profile, it could take decades for the J-20 to complete development.

But China traditionally does not take the same approach to warplane testing that America does. Instead, China follows the Russian model: some basic tests after which small numbers of new jets with rudimentary combat capabilities are handed over to a regular fighter squadron. After a few years of real-world use, engineers build a second batch with improved capabilities, and so on.

In that way China usually builds its aerial arsenal in small increments in parallel with testing. On the upside, new designs can enter service faster than they do in America. The downside is that the new fighters often fly with undetected flaws. The U.S. initially tried that “concurrent” approach with the Lockheed Martin-built F-35, only to scale back early production after testers discovered design flaws costing billions of dollars to fix. The J-20 could encounter the same problem.

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April McCarthy
Prevent Disease

The shedding of tears due to emotions is unique to us yet we suppress this gift all the time. Every time our eyes are filled with tears and we try to pour your heart out, there is usually someone who makes us hold back. According to scientists lack of inhibition in displaying emotion is a sign of higher levels of self-esteem.

Human cry because different reasons and based on different emotions, due to pain, grief, loss, frustration, fear and even happiness. On the other side, the tears can also provide benefits in maintaining health our health.

“Tears are just one of many miracles that work well so we get it out every day,” said Dr.Gerald R. Bergman, a professor at the Medical University of Ohio and an instructor in the Division of Arts & Sciences Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio.

Apart from emotion and reason that underlie , crying often makes people feel better. Research indicates that 88.8% of people feel better after crying, and only 8.4% felt worse.

Some evidence suggests crying helps regulate the immune system. In a study in 2006, scientists asked 60 patients with eczema and an allergy to latex to watch the Meryl Streep weepie Kramer vs Kramer. Before and after the film the team placed latex on their skin, and measured the reaction.

Compared with those who remained dry-eyed, volunteers who cried had a reduced skin reaction to the latex after the movie. Their skin also had lower levels of inflammatory markers called immunoglobulins, which increase at the site of an allergic reaction.

And a Japanese study of patients with the auto-immune disease rheumatoid arthritis revealed that those who cry easily have less pain and fewer symptoms than those with a stiff upper lip.

Blood tests revealed that immediately after crying, the levels of naturally-occurring immune chemicals that usually aggravate the condition were lower, and that the blubberers had better control of their condition a year later.

Here are just a few benefits of producing tears:

Tears clear your eyes

The most reason why crying helps is that tears is that they enable us to see. Yes, they certainly do. Tears lubricate the eyeballs and eyelids and also prevent dehydration of various mucous membranes.

Tears kill bacteria

Tears work as anti-bacterial and anti-viral agents, fighting off germs we pick up from shopping carts, public sinks, and all the places these germs make their homes and procreate. They contain lysozyme, a fluid, which can kill 90 to 95 per cent of all bacteria in just 5-10 minutes.

Tears elevate mood

It is believed that the act of crying can lower a person’s manganese level, which can otherwise give rise to anxiety, nervousness, irritability, fatigue, aggression, emotional disturbance, and the rest of the feelings that live inside you.

Tears lower stress

Just like exercising, tears to help relieve stress. Tears help remove some of the chemicals built up in the body from stress, like the leucine enkephalin and prolactin. Suppressing tears could increase stress levels, and contributes to diseases aggravated by stress, such as high blood pressure, heart problems, and peptic ulcers.

Tears release feelings

Crying is therapeutic. It lets the anxiety, frustration out, before it’s creates all kind of havoc with your nervous and cardiovascular systems. Time and again you go through conflicts and resentments and sometimes this gathers inside the limbic system of the brain and in certain corners of the heart.

Your feelings are like air. The more you suppress your emotions, the more they are bound to explode some day. Suppressing feelings affects the quality. Crying is all about cleansing your mind and it is considered very healthy and gives you a relaxed feeling. So, let your feelings be felt.

April McCarthy is a community journalist playing an active role reporting and analyzing world events to advance our health and eco-friendly initiatives.

Why Do We Cry?

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Infowars

Who is Barack Obama? The question remains contentious, but a new smoking gun piece of evidence makes certain that so-called “birthers” won’t be going anywhere.

It has now emerged that Barack Obama’s own authorized biography while president of the Harvard Law Review says he was “born in Kenya” and raised in both Indonesia and Hawaii. This is prima facie evidence that the public has been sold on a big lie.

It further only reinforces the mountains of related evidence that has surfaced, not the least of which is Michele Obama’s own public statements about their returning to Barack’s “homeland” in Africa to conduct a public AIDS test stunt. Wow!

Breitbart.com broke the story as part of their “vetting” series that has coincided with the untimely death of Andrew Breitbart himself.

—————————————-

The Vetting – Exclusive – Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii’

by Joel B. Pollak
breitbart

Note from Senior Management:

Andrew Breitbart was never a “Birther,” and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of “Birtherism.” In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.

Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama’s ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.

It is for that reason that we launched “The Vetting,” an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)–not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.

It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below–one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review. 

It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.

The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.

It also promotes Obama’s anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White–which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.

Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):

Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.   He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.

The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink (and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976.

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Martha Rosenberg
Alternet

Pediatric psychopharmacology is a billion-dollar business that sustains Pharma and Pharma investors on Wall Street.

The following is an excerpt from Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health (Prometheus Books, 2012). Click here to order a copy of the book.

In his book Psychiatryland, psychiatrist Phillip Sinaikin recounts reading a scientific article in which it was debated whether a three-year-old girl who ran out into traffic had oppositional-defiant disorder or bipolar disorder, the latter marked by “grandiose delusions” that she was special and cars could not harm her.¹

How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become the aggressive “pediatric psychopharmacology” that finds ADHD, pediatric conduct disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias, social phobia, anxiety, sleep disorders, borderline disorders, assorted “spectrum” disorders, irritability, aggression, pervasive development disorders, personality disorders, and even schizophrenia under every rock?

And how did this branch of psychiatry come to find the answer to the “psychopathologies” in the name of the discipline itself: pediatric psychopharmacology? Just good marketing. Pharma is wooing the pediatric patient because that’s where the money is. Just like country and western songs about finding love where you can when there is no love to be found at home. Pharma has stopped finding “love” in the form of the new blockbuster drugs that catapulted it through the 1990s and 2000s. According to the Wall Street Journal, new drugs made Pharma only $4.3 billion in 2010 compared with $11.8 billion in 2005—a two-thirds drop.²

Doctors have a “growing fear of prescribing new drugs with unknown side effects,”explains the Journal, and the government is cracking down on illegal marketing. But also, private and government insurers are less willing to “cough up money” for an expensive new drug—particularly when a cheap and reliable generic is available.⁴

It’s gotten so bad, AstraZeneca, whose controversial Seroquel^® still makes $5.3 billion a year though it is no longer new, now conducts “payer excellence academies” to teach sales reps to sell insurers and state healthcare systems on its latest drugs.⁵No wonder Pharma is finding “love” by prescribing drugs to the nation’s youngest (and oldest) patients, who are often behavior problems to their caregivers, who make few of their own drug decisions, and who are often on government health plans.

“Children are known to be compliant patients and that makes them a highly desirable market for drugs,” says former Pharma rep Gwen Olsen, author of Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher.⁶ “Children are forced by school personnel to take their drugs, they are forced by their parents to take their drugs, and they are forced by their doctors to take their drugs. So, children are the ideal patient-type because they represent refilled prescription compliance and ‘longevity.’ In other words, they will be lifelong patients and repeat customers for Pharma.”

Just as it used to be said in obstetric circles, “Once a cesarean, always a cesarean,” it’s also true that “once a pediatric psychiatric patient, always a pediatric psychiatric patient.” Few, indeed, are kids who start out diagnosed and treated for ADHD, bipolar disorder, and other “psychopathologies” who end up on no drugs, psychologically fine, and ready to run for class president.

Even if they outgrow their original diagnoses—a big “if” with a mental health history that follows them—the side effects from years of psychoactive drugs and their physical health on mental, social, and emotional development take their toll. Even children on allergy and asthma drugs, which are promoted for kids as young as age one, are now known to develop psychiatric side effects according to emerging research.⁷

Kids who start out with psychiatric diagnoses are not only lifers—they are expensive lifers usually shuttled into government programs that will pay for psychiatric drug “cocktails” that can approach $2,000 a month. What private insurer would pay $323 for an atypical antipsychotic like Zyprexa^®, Geodon^®, or Risperdal^®, when a “typical” antipsychotic costs only about $40?⁸

Not all medical professionals agree with the slapdash cocktails. Panelists at the 2010 American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting assailed Pharma for such “seat of the pants” drug combinations and called the industry nothing but a “marketing organization.”⁹In a symposium about comparative drug effectiveness, a Canadian doctor castigated the FDA’s Jing Zhang, who had served as a panelist at the symposium, for his agency’s approval of drugs for “competitive reasons” rather than for patient health or effectiveness.¹⁰Research presented at the 2010 APA meeting also questioned the psychiatric cocktails.

When twenty-four patients on combinations of Seroquel, Zyprexa, and other antipsychotics were reduced to only one drug, there was no worsening of symptoms or increased hospitalizations (except in one case), and patients’ waist circumferences and triglycerides improved (a large waist circumference and high levels of triglycerides [fat] in the blood heighten one’s risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases).¹¹The drug cocktails were not working and were making patients worse by creating new medical problems.

But pediatric psychopharmacology is a billion-dollar business that sustains Pharma, Pharma investors on Wall Street, doctors, researchers, medical centers, clinical research organizations, medical journals, Pharma’s PR and ghostwriting firms, pharmacy benefits managers, and the FDA itself—which judges its value on how many drugs it approves. The only losers are kids given a probable life sentence of expensive and dangerous drugs, the families of these children, and the taxpayers and insured persons who pay for the drugs.

The father of pediatric psychopharmacology, Harvard child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, is often called Joseph “Risperdal” Biederman, because he is credited with ballooning the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children by as much as fortyfold.¹²In 2008, Biederman, a prolific author who has written five hundred scientific articles and seventy book chapters, was investigated by Congress for allegedly accepting Pharma money he didn’t disclose, and he agreed to suspend his industry-related activities.

¹³After a three-year investigation, Harvard “threw the book” at Biederman and two other professors: they were required to “refrain from all paid industry-sponsored outside activities for one year and comply with a two-year monitoring period afterward, during which they must obtain approval from the Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital before engaging in any paid activities.” What a deterrent. They also face a “delay of consideration for promotion or advancement.”¹⁴

When it comes to grandiosity, Biederman seems a lot like the three-year- old who ran out in traffic. He not only served as the head of the Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of Pediatric Psychopathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, whose stated goal was to “move forward the commercial goals of J. & J.”—the facility was his idea! 15 According to court-obtained documents, Biederman approached J. & J. with the money-making scheme.¹⁶Biederman also promised the drug maker that upcoming studies of its popular child antipsychotic Risperdal would “support the safety and effectiveness of risperidone [Risperdal] in this age group.”¹⁷

The Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of Pediatric Psychopathology netted a cool $700,000 in one year of operation, according to published reports, but a spokesman for Harvard Medical School said Harvard isn’t involved with Johnson & Johnson Center, even though the hospital where it operates, Massachusetts General, is a Harvard teaching hospital. “Harvard Medical School does not ‘own’ any of its teaching hospitals,” he told Bloomberg News. “While we are affiliated with them through academic appointments, all teaching hospitals are individually governed.”¹⁸

Many people are aware of such Pharma/academia arrangements, since the 1980 Bayh-Dole law allowed universities to operate as patent and profit mills for industries “commercializing and transferring” technology. But fewer realize how much taxpayer money is part of the play-to-pay. The government gave Biederman and a colleague $287 million in 2005—on top of their Pharma sinecures—to be administered by Massachusetts General Hospital. (No wonder Harvard keeps Biederman on.) Biederman also received $14,000 from Eli Lilly the same year he got a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study Lilly’s ADHD drug, Strattera^®.

Why does the government fund researchers already funded by Pharma? Not only do these researchers not need our tax dollars; working for Pharma is an overt conflict of interest that contaminates scientific results.

Another master at playing both the Pharma and government sides of the street is psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, former head of psychiatry at Emory University and also investigated by Congress for unreported Pharma money.

Nemeroff’s NIH grant was terminated after the probe, something that is rarely done with a government grant.¹⁹

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, when Nemeroff was later under consideration to be the head of psychiatry at the University of Miami, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (part of the NIH), Thomas Insel, MD, assured the medical school dean that if Nemeroff were hired, NIH money would follow, his prior problems notwithstanding. What’s a little congressional investigation?

The reason for the largesse, according to the Chronicle, was that Nemeroff had gotten Insel a job at Emory when Insel lost his NIH position in 1994. Nor does the cronyism and revolving door stop there. Nemeroff serves on two NIH peer-review advisory panels that decide who else receives grant money, says the Chronicle, and Insel is personally involved with revising the National Institute of Mental Health’s “conflict of interest” rules.²⁰

Insel is also known for advancing Pharma’s “SSRI deficiency/suicide hypothesis,” in which a decrease in antidepressant sales was—according to Pharma—resulting in suicides because people weren’t getting their drugs. “[The National Institute of Mental Health is] “looking at whether the decrease in SSRI [antidepressant] utilization might be associated with an increase in suicidality rather than a drop in suicide, and my expectation is that we may see an increase,” Insel told Psychiatric News, lamenting “the focus on risk and a neglect of benefit.”²¹

Antipsychotics for Everyone

When the atypical antipsychotics Zyprexa, Geodon, Risperdal, Abilify^®, and Seroquel, for use in stabilizing schizophrenia, came into being in the 1990s, they were like the credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations of the pharmaceutical world. No one knew exactly how they worked, how long they would work, or what the final effects of their wide use would be (as with many withdrawn drugs, FDA gives approval on the basis of information from short-term trials). But they could make a lot of quick money easily compared with old-fashioned products; they had government’s backing, and everyone was doing it!

Drug reps especially swarmed state agencies with many mentally disabled patients, including children. For example, Texas’s Medicaid program spent $557,256 for two months of pediatric Geodon prescriptions in 2005, according to court documents, and Geodon was not even approved for children at the time.²²Eighty-five percent of the state’s Risperdal prescriptions were paid by the state government, court documents also show.²³And Florida’s Medicaid program spent $935,584 for one year of Geodon.

²⁴One hundred and eighteen prescriptions for Geodon were written in one day, according to the Tacoma News Tribune, at Western State mental hospital in Washington State. Asked why Pfizer reps made almost two hundred visits to the facility in four years, Pfizer spokesman Bryant Haskins told the Tribune, “That’s where our customers are.”²⁵

Mental institution psychiatrists were not the only ones targeted. United States Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrists said in a survey that they were contacted an average of fourteen times per year by Pharma reps and were invited to attend company-continuing medical education seminars.²⁶And court documents unsealed in South Carolina in 2009 show that Eli Lilly sales reps even used golf bets to push their atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa; one doctor agreed to start new patients on Zyprexa “for each time a sales representative parred.”²⁷

But as state outlays for atypical antipsychotics grew twelvefold between 2000 and 2007, some states and whistle-blowers began bringing Pharma to court. In 2007, Bristol-Myers Squibb settled a federal suit for $515 million, brought by whistle-blowers in Massachusetts and Florida, which charged that the company marketed the antipsychotic Abilify for unapproved uses in children and the elderly, bilking taxpayers in the process.

²⁸ And the next year, Alaska won a precedent-setting $15 million settlement from Eli Lilly in a suit to recoup medical costs generated by Medicaid patients who developed diabetes while taking Zyprexa. Atypical antipsychotics are known to cause weight gain and glycemic changes that can lead to diabetes.²⁹Soon Idaho, Washington, Montana, Connecticut, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Texas took Pharma to court for the “prescribathon,” which hit the poor, the mentally ill, children, and the elderly the hardest.³⁰

Of course, as with credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations (or the cases of Bernie Madoff or BP’s Deepwater Horizon or Enron), there were voices of dissent about the atypical revolution if people chose to listen. A National Institute of Mental Health study of children ages eight to nineteen with psychotic symptoms found Risperdal and Zyprexa were no more effective than the older antipsychotic Moban, but it caused such obesity that a safety panel ordered the children off the drugs.³¹ In just eight weeks, children gained an average of thirteen pounds on Zyprexa, nine pounds on Risperdal, and less than one pound on Moban.

“Kids at school were making fun of me,” said study participant Brandon Constantineau, who put on thirty-five pounds on Risperdal.³²

Other studies, like one on Risperdal in the British medical journal Lancet and one on Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Risperdal in Alzheimer’s patients reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that atypicals work no better than placebos.³³One study in the British Medical Journal found that Seroquel not only did not relieve agitation in Alzheimer’s patients, but that it “was [also] associated with significantly greater cognitive decline” than placebos.³⁴As with Risperdal, the drug made patients worse.

“The problem with these drugs [is] that we know that they are being used extensively off-label in nursing homes to sedate elderly patients with dementia and other types of disorders,” testified FDA drug reviewer David Graham, MD, during a congressional hearing.

³⁵Graham is credited with exposing the dangers of Vioxx and other risky drugs approved by the FDA. “But the fact is, is that it increases mortality perhaps by 100 percent. It doubles mortality,” said Graham. “So I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation on this, and you have probably got 15,000 elderly people in nursing homes dying each year from the off-label use of antipsychotic medications. . . . With every pill that gets dispensed in a nursing home, the drug company is laughing all the way to the bank.”³⁶

Just like Wall Street and banking lobbyist and cronies “advised” the government on how to write the credit default and derivative rules under which they would be regulated, Pharma helps states regulate—and buy—its brand- name drugs. An Eli Lilly–backed company named Comprehensive Neuroscience has “helped” twenty-four states to use Zyprexa “properly,” reports the New York Times.³⁷“Doctors who veer from guidelines on dosage strengths and combinations of medications for Medicaid patients are sent ‘Dear Doctor’ letters pointing out that their prescribing patterns fall outside the norm,” it reports. Doctors are also notified if patients “are renewing prescriptions,” lest they have “setbacks in their condition.” One such program sends registered nurses to the homes of patients who are on expensive brand drugs to ensure “compliance”; that is, to make sure patients have not stopped taking the drugs.

Some states say they have saved money under Pharma’s guidance, but Wisconsin found that once it “placed restrictions on Zyprexa and three other antipsychotic drugs” and scrapped the Lilly-funded program, it lowered its antipsychotic bill by $4 million. ³⁸

And then there’s the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, a “decision tree” developed by Pharma and Johnson & Johnson’s Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1995 to “help” the state buy its drugs. The algorithm rules required doctors to treat patients—surprise!—with the newest, most expensive drugs first, which ballooned Risperdal sales as well as other atypical antipsychotics.³⁹

But in 2008, the Texas attorney general’s office charged Risperdal maker Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic drug unit, with fraud.⁴⁰Janssen defrauded the state of millions, said a civil suit, “with [its] sophisticated and fraudulent marketing scheme,” to “secure a spot for the drug, Risperdal, on the state’s Medicaid preferred drug list and on controversial medical protocols that determine which drugs are given to adults and children in state custody.” In addition to lavishing trips, perks, and kickbacks on Texas’s mental health officials to win drug sales, and disguising marketing as scientific research, the attorney general’s office charged that Janssen “paid third-party contractors and nonprofit groups to promote Risperdal . . . to give state mental health officials and lawmakers the perception that the drug had widespread support.”⁴¹

Such faux grassroots support from phony front groups has been cited in other lawsuits against Pharma. Whistle-blowers charge that Pfizer funded the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to serve as a “Trojan horse” to sell Geodon in a complaint that led to forty-three states receiving givebacks and the largest criminal fine ever imposed in US history—$2.3 billion in 2009. ⁴²

The National Alliance on Mental Illness calls itself a “nonprofit, grassroots, self-help, support and advocacy organization of consumers, families, and friends of people with severe mental illnesses,”⁴³but it has been investigated by Congress for undisclosed Pharma money and is considered by some to be a front organization. The Geodon complaint even cites jailed physician Richard Borison, who also worked with Seroquel and Neurontin, in the corruption.⁴⁴

Of course, to lock in taxpayer funding of psychoactive drugs, especially for children, it takes more than “helping” state officials at the point of purchase (and sending zealous drug reps to state facilities where the “patients are”). Pharma also finances continuing medical education (CME) courses that reward credits doctors need to retain their state licenses. A CME course called Individualizing ADHD Pharmacotherapy with Disruptive Behavioral Disorders taught by the Johnson & Johnson–funded Robert L. Findling, MD, refers to Risperdal thirteen times.

⁴⁵Another CME course that promoted Seroquel was “taught” by AstraZeneca staff and Dr. Nemeroff but was scrapped after the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education found it “lacked sufficient information about possible adverse effects of treatment with atypical antipsychotic drugs; and failed to emphasize sufficiently the efficacy of alternative treatments.”⁴⁶ The course was called Atypical Antipsychotics in Major Depressive Disorder: When Current Treatments Are Not Enough.

Pharma doctors also spread confidence about the drugs by publishing in medical journals like a Johnson & Johnson–subsidized article that upheld the “long-term safety and effectiveness of risperidone [Risperdal] for severe disruptive behaviors in children” in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Despite thirty-one recorded child deaths, the drug was found to be safe, according to the article, on the basis of a one-year study.⁴⁷

Click here for a copy of Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health.

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Gwen Hinze
Electronic Frontier Foundation

U.S. Law Professors Cast Further Doubt on ACTA’s Constitutionality – State Department Confirms No ACTA Pre-Review

Fifty leading U.S. legal scholars cast fresh doubt on the constitutionality of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in an open letter to the Senate Finance Committee today. (Press Release).

At issue is whether the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) had authority to enter into the controversial IP enforcement agreement on behalf of the United States when the Deputy U.S. Trade Ambassador signed ACTA in October 2011.

The law professors say no, and call on the Senators to “exercise your constitutional responsibility to ensure that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is submitted to the Senate for approval as an Article II treaty, or to the Congress as an ex-post Congressional-Executive Agreement.”

We, too, have wondered about the USTR’s authority to enter into this agreement. That’s why we made a request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to the State Department in February for key documents that set out the State Department’s analysis of the constitutional basis for ACTA – the “Circular 175” memorandum, and the accompanying Memorandum of Law.

As the State Department’s website states, the Circular 175 procedure is the way that the State Department “seeks to confirm that the making of treaties and other international agreements by the United States is carried out within constitutional and other legal limitations, with due consideration of the agreement’s foreign policy implications, and with appropriate involvement by the State Department.”  Circular 175 memoranda must be accompanied by a Memorandum of Law prepared by the Office of the Legal Advisor in the State Department, which generally includes a discussion of the appropriate legal analysis underlying implementation of the treaty at issue.

The State Department is required to prepare these documents for all treaties and other international instruments that bind the United States as a matter of international law under 22 CFR Part 181.  No agencies can conclude an international agreement in the name of the United States without first consulting with the State Department, and the determination of whether an agreement is an international agreement for this purpose must be made by the Office of the Legal Advisor to the State Department.

We have now received the State Department’s response. It’s short:  the State Department has not created a Circular 175 memorandum and accompanying Memorandum of Law for ACTA

“Based on the subject matter of your request, we consulted with subject matter experts in the Office of the Legal Advisor. These officials advised us that no Circular 175 Memorandum or Memorandum of Law were ever issued for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The officials also told us that USTR has lead within the U.S. Government for this issue.”

This suggests that ACTA was not submitted to the normal State Department review process to determine its constitutionality before it was signed by the Deputy Trade Ambassador.

Since the State Department’s Legal Office must decide whether a proposed instrument is an “international agreement” for this process, it’s possible that the State Department was consulted but decided that ACTA was not an “international agreement”.  If so, where is the Memorandum explaining why ACTA should not be considered an “international agreement” despite all appearances to the contrary?

Given that, the FOIA response appears to confirm what we’ve long suspected – that USTR was acting on a folly when it negotiated and signed ACTA, in the absence of Trade Promotion Authority which had expired on July 1, 2007, and without consulting the US government agency that is entrusted with ensuring that international agreements abide by appropriate constitutional process.

It is important to understand that the way that ACTA was negotiated and subsequently signed by the USTR raises fundamental questions about the separation of powers set out in the U.S. Constitution. ACTA deals with powers over subject matter – intellectual property and foreign trade –that the Constitution’s Article I gives exclusively to Congress. Specifically, there are three ways that the U.S. can bind itself to international agreements dealing with Article 1 subject matter. First, an agreement can be ratified under the Treaty Clause, which requires a vote by two-thirds of the Senate.

Second, Congress can pass a law that authorizes the negotiation of an international agreement (ex ante authorization). Third, Congress can approve an agreement that has been negotiated by the Executive Branch after the fact, or “ex post”, by passing the agreement, subject to amendment, through both houses of Congress and having the President sign it into law. These agreements are known as ex-post Congressional-Executive Agreements.

As we’ve reported before, during the ACTA negotiations, the USTR consistently maintained that it was a Sole Executive Agreement dealing with matters delegated to the President and, on that basis, did not need Congressional review and approval. Then, in a surprising about-face, the Executive changed its explanation of the constitutional basis for ACTA.

In a letter responding to a request from the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s Trade Subcommittee, Senator Wyden, the Legal Advisor to the State Department, Howard Koh, implied that Congress had authorized the Executive to negotiate ACTA in response to the 2008 Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act).  On March 7, the U.S. Trade Ambassador followed that line, and testified in a Senate hearing that ACTA was negotiated with the authorization of Congress, quoting directly from Koh’s letter.

As we noted at the time, it seemed implausible that Congressional authorization was granted in legislation that was enacted the year after ACTA negotiations were announced, on October 23, 2007.

In addition, as the legal scholars’ letter notes, the provision cited in the State Department Legal Advisor’s letter – section 8113(a)(6) of the PRO-IP Act  – does not actually direct the USTR to negotiate an international agreement, let alone one with ACTA’s far-reaching characteristics. ACTA requires creation of an unelected ACTA Committee that has the final say on ACTA implementation in U.S. law, ousting any role for Congress. If Congress had intended to grant ex ante authorization to the USTR to negotiate an international agreement that would limit Congress’ role and impede its ability to legislate, it seems more likely that it would have chosen to do so expressly.

The legal scholars conclude that:

“..the Administration currently lacks a means to constitutionally enter ACTA without ex post Congressional approval. The present issue reaches far beyond the topical matters covered by ACTA, into the fundamental Constitutional issue of separation of powers. If Congress allows the executive to claim that ACTA was authorized by language that clearly does not authorize the agreement, it will be ceding unprecedented power to the executive.”

We agree.

The legal scholars also call on the members of the Senate Finance Committee to act, noting that:

“Remedying this state of affairs is uniquely within Congress’s province. Congress, and specifically the Senate as the Constitutionally recognized chamber with responsibilities for the approval of treaties, should secure from the administration a public pledge to send ACTA to the Senate as a treaty, or to the Congress as an ex-post Congressional-executive Agreement. Absent a pledge to this effect, we encourage the Committee to hold hearings and to pass legislation that would prevent the United States from binding itself to ACTA without express Congressional consent.”

Now it’s up to the members of the Senate Finance Committee to rectify this unconstitutional power grab by an unaccountable Executive Branch agency, and protect the fundamental separation of powers embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, the process of ratifying ACTA has noticeably slowed down in the rest of the world.  As Sean Flynn from American University’s Program on Information Justice and the Public Interest notes, the fresh doubt about ACTA’s constitutionality under U.S. law is “one component of the larger context casting increasing doubt that ACTA can ever go into force.”

In recent months we’ve witnessed growing concerns about ACTA’s impact that have led to delays in the signing and ratification of ACTA in the EU, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. Let’s hope that the members of the Senate Finance Committee heed the law professors’ call to action and ensure that the U.S. undertakes the same rigorous public process that is underway in other countries.

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by journeymanpictures

Beneath the lush green hills of Guatemala lie one hundred thousand corpses, the victims of a genocide funded by the US Government.

Around a newly discovered mass grave crowd the weeping relatives of Guatemala’s lost generation of Mayan Indians. 20 years ago these Mayan men, women and children were condemned as communist guerrillas and massacred. Until now these killings have been blamed on insurgents and vigilantes.

But the army-issue bullets being extracted from these skulls by US forensic archaeologists tell a different story. The 400 newly discovered massacre sites are the handiwork of the Guatemalan Army, but they did not act alone — the CIA told them how to do it.

Fearful of Red-spread right on America’s doorstep the Reagan administration armed and trained Guatemala’s army to stamp-out the communist threat. Veterans of the Reagan administration make no apology for their political agenda. “It seemed clear to us that if you had a Nicaragua in Guatemala, what you’ve got is… a Soviet style government with secret police agents on the border of Mexico”, explains Eliot Abrahms, the then Assistant Secretary of State. Anything was justified to contain the threat, including as is now revealed, turning a blind eye to genocide.

Recently released CIA manuals issued to the army explain how to murder people, they even explain how to enter a room with ten people sitting round a table and murder them one by one. These instructions were used against not only guerrillas but countless Indian civilians with Washington’s full knowledge. “The well-documented belief that all Ixil Indians are pro-guerrilla has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike,” details one wire from Guatemala to Washington.

After analysing the documents released by the CIA on Clinton’s orders Kate Doyle is clear that the US are responsible for the horrors perpetrated by Guatemala’s army. “The United States created the killing machine that went on to murder and torture hundreds of thousands of people.” At a time when Pinochet, Chile’s notorious dictator, faces the courts for atrocities, Guatemala is still living with theirs.

Over the years 45,000 Guatemalans, guerrillas but also students and professors, priests and social workers – have simply disappeared. Last March, President Clinton apologized for America’s support for repressive regimes. But for the relatives of the victims who are presented every day with the gruesome consequences of their country’s past, a mere acknowledgement of responsibility is not enough.
ABC Australia

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TodaysZaman

Syria remains the top destination for Iranian arms shipments in violation of a U.N. Security Council ban on weapons exports by the Islamic Republic, according to a confidential report on Iran sanctions-busting seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

Iran, like Russia, is one of Syria’s few allies as it presses ahead with a 14-month old assault on opposition forces determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

News of the panel’s report came as Tehran and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency try narrow their differences on how to tackle concerns over Iran’s atomic program, and as Iran prepares for talks with the five permanent council members and Germany in Iraq next week.

The new report, submitted by a panel of sanctions-monitoring experts to the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee, said the panel investigated three large illegal shipments of Iranian weapons over the past year.

“Iran has continued to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments,” it stated. “Two of these cases involved (Syria), as were the majority of cases inspected by the Panel during its previous mandate, underscoring that Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.”

The third shipment involved rockets that Britain said last year were headed for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“The Panel recommends the designation (blacklisting) of two entities related to these interdictions,” it said. “The report also takes note of information concerning arms shipments by Iran to other destinations.”

The kinds of arms that Iran was attempting to send to Syria before the shipments were seized by Turkish authorities included assault rifles, machine guns, explosives, detonators, 60mm and 120mm mortal shells and other items, the panel said.

The most recent incident described in the report was an arms shipment discovered in a truck that Turkey seized on its border with Syria in February. Turkey announced last year that it was imposing an arms embargo on Syria.

Diplomats told Reuters that the panel’s draft report may be changed by the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee before it is submitted to the council itself for consideration.

It was unclear how long it would take the committee to pass the report to the Security Council. Last year’s expert panel report on Iran was never made public because Russia blocked its publication.

The report also discusses Iran’s attempts to circumvent sanctions on its nuclear program but notes that the four rounds of punitive measures the 15-nation Security Council imposed on Iran between 2006 and 2010 are having an impact.

“Sanctions are slowing Iran’s procurement of some critical items required for its prohibited nuclear program,” it said. “At the same time prohibited activities continue, including uranium enrichment.”

Among the items Iran has attempted to procure for its nuclear program, the panel said, were nuclear-grade graphite, high-strength aluminum, aluminum, powder, specialized alloys, maraging steel, carbon fiber, magnets, vacuum pumps, turbines, electrical switchboards and helium gas detectors.

“The Panel identifies the acquisition of high-grade carbon fiber as one of a number of critical items Iran requires for the development of more advanced centrifuges,” the report said, adding that nations should be on alert for illicit attempts to acquire such items.

Iran rejects allegations by Western nations and their allies that it is secretly developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. It has refused to suspend its enrichment program as demanded by the Security Council despite being hit with increasingly draconian U.N. and various national sanctions.

The report said Iran has been trying to circumvent U.N. and other unilateral sanctions on financial firms by using correspondence banking relationships with institutions not under sanctions, and appears to be relying on Iranians abroad to carry out such transfers. Transfer traffic has risen sharply, it said.

The panel said it had received information about a small firm set up abroad by an Iranian national that was involved in funds transfers to various recipients worldwide. The firm, which the report did not identify, had processed transfers amounting to some $11 billion over an 18-month period, it said.

The report discussed at length the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, known as IRISL. While IRISL itself is not formally under U.N. sanctions, three of its subsidiaries are, and the council has warned U.N. member states to be vigilant regarding potential sanctions violations by IRISL.

The panel report said that Irano Hind Shipping Company, one of the IRISL subsidiaries subject to sanctions, continues to operate vessels. IRISL is a difficult company to monitor because it is constantly changing the ownership, names and national flags of its ships, the report said.

The panel said that IRISL, as Reuters has previously reported, has set up what appear to be front companies intended to operate vessels and obscure its ownership. Currently IRISL’s more than 130 ships are owned by some 75 different companies, which the panel said was unusual for a major shipping line.

IRISL and its related companies have also been changing the names of their ships to get the word “Iran” out of them.

Before the council passed resolution 1803 in March 2008, which warned all U.N. member states to be “vigilant” about IRISL, most of its vessels’ names contained the word “Iran.” Now fewer than 10 do, the panel said.

Since March 2008, IRISL and its related companies have carried out more than 220 changes in ownership of vessels, the report said. Turning to Iran’s ballistic missile program, the report said it “continues to develop with additional launches, which are prohibited under resolution 1929,” adopted in June 2010.

“The Panel takes note of the recent designations (U.N. Security Council blacklisting) … of two (North Korean) entities and their links to Iran’s ballistic missile program.”

The two North Korean companies linked to Iran’s missile program are the Green Pine Associated Corp and the Korea Heungjin Trading Company. The council’s North Korea sanctions committee blacklisted them on May 2.

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Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

If you needed one more example of how DNA will soon cease to exist as a private piece of information, you need look no further than the latest product launch by Applied DNA Sciences.

On May 10, the company announced that it is releasing a new QR (Quick Read) Code secured by nothing other than DNA. Without a doubt, this new product launch is yet another step toward the ultimate collection, databasing, and use of DNA by governments and corporations on a universal basis.

One quick note for those who are unaware of what a QR code is. QR codes are inked, coded diagrams that are recognizable by electronic scanners, often serving the same purpose as a barcode. These codes can be found on a wide variety of product packaging including the shipping labels used by companies like UPS. In addition, QR Codes are sometimes used as a part of smartphone apps which require the user to scan a barcode.

If Applied DNA Sciences has anything to say about it, however, QR Codes will become much more than mere ink blots on paper. Indeed, instead of containing basic inventory or app-related information as they have in the past, QR Codes will also contain strands of botanical DNA, a possible precursor to a more invasive and “secure” method of identification, tracking, and tracing in the not so distant future.

The new product is called digitalDNA and it is described by Government Security News as being “a new security tool that utilizes the flexibility of mobile communications, the instant accessibility of secure, cloud-based data, and the absolute certainty of DNA to make item tracking and authentification fast, easy and definitive, while providing the opportunity to create a new and exciting customer interface.”

Apart from that glowing description however, digitalDNA is actually a forensic authentication technology or, one could also say, a biometric encoding/reading program. At the heart of the system is the physical “sequence encryption” of “botanical DNA markers” into the ink used to print the QR Code. The pattern that results from the process, called a “rune,” can then be scanned using an Apple-approved app and an iPhone at any point during the shipping process.

The iPhone scan works by logging in to a “private, secure cloud” where it checks the DNA-based code it has just scanned with the one kept on file online in the Cloud. As GSN writes, “The tracking information is fed into ‘tunable algorithms’ that use pattern recognition to automatically identify supply chain risks, for counterfeits or product diversion.”

“Rapid-reading reporters,” which are closely linked with DNA markers, are physically present within the QR Code ink as well, and function as a means by which to prevent digital copying and phishing. As JGoodwin of GSN writes, “The un-copyable, botanically-derived DNA markers included in all digitalDNA codes serve as a forensic backstop in legal cases where absolute proof of originality is required. Forensic authentication of the DNA in the ink must match the sequences and length polymorphism found in the decrypted digitalDNA code.”

GSN continues, “The ubiquity of the iPhone platform allows the consumer to participate in the authentication scheme, quickly and easily. In addition, end-users could confirm freshness and expiration, connect to real-time or video technical support, identify local resources, easily place re-orders, and participate in peer-to-peer selling.”

This recently introduced technology allegedly developed out of a partnership that was established on January 25 between Applied DNA Sciences and DivineRune Inc., a company that specializes in cloud computing. However, with the announcement of the digitalDNA program made on May 10, after only four months of partnership, one might be justified in wondering whether or not this system was developed long before the financial agreement made between the two companies was divulged to the public. Indeed, four months is a very short time to forge corporate partnerships as well as envision, develop, and release a product like digitalDNA. Particularly, one that potentially has such fundamental implications for privacy if it is expanded to include human DNA in the future.

Both companies, in a joint statement, described the partnership as “taking APDN’s best-in-class anti-counterfeiting and authentication systems and marrying them to the best in secure mobile applications and advanced cloud computing.”

A similar product, Our Signature DNA, is in the pilot stages of military usage in compliance with Section 818 of the National Defense Authorization Act which mandates that defense manufacturers and suppliers take further steps to end counterfeiting within the supply chain.

However, digitalDNA is not necessarily for military use but for civilian purposes. Although the companies are much more vague about just what avenues they expect their new product to take, the fact is that they have a market in the waiting in many different areas; most notably in California where the E-Pedigree Law, which requires an electronic record of all sales of prescription drugs in the state, would fit perfectly with such a system.

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Before It’s News

The Last Official Act of Any Government is to Loot the Nation…

According to in-house memos now circulating, the DHS has issued orders to banks across America which announce to them that “under the Patriot Act” the DHS has the absolute right to seize, without any warrant whatsoever, any and all customer bank accounts, to make “periodic and unannounced” visits to any bank to open and inspect the contents of “selected safe deposit boxes.”

Further, the DHS “shall, at the discretion of the agent supervising the search, remove, photograph or seize as evidence” any of the following items “bar gold, gold coins, firearms of any kind unless manufactured prior to 1878, documents such as passports or foreign bank account records, pornography or any material that, in the opinion of the agent, shall be deemed of to be of a contraband nature.”

DHS memos also state that banks are informed that any bank employee, on any level, that releases “improper” “classified DHS Security information” to any member of the public, to include the customers whose boxes have been clandestinely opened and inspected and “any other party, to include members of the media” and further “that the posting of any such information on the internet will be grounds for the immediate termination of the said employee or employees and their prosecution under the Patriot Act.”

If people have their emergency money in a safe deposit box or an account in a bank that closes, they will not be allowed into the bank to get it out. They can knock on the door and beg to get in but the sheriff’s department or whoever is handling the closure will simply say “no” because they are just following orders.

Deposit box and account holders are not warned of the hazards of banking when they sign up. It is not until they need to get their cash or valuables out in a hurry that they find themselves in trouble.

Rules governing access to safe deposit boxes and money held in accounts are written into the charter of each bank. The charter is the statement of policy under which the bank is allowed by the government to do business.

These rules are subject to change at any time by faceless bureaucrats who are answerable to no one. They can be changed without notice, without the agreement of the people, and against their will.

People can complain but no one will care because this is small potatoes compared to the complaints that will be voiced when the executive order that governs national emergencies is enforced.

From beforeitsnews.com

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