USDA Reports Food Shortages: Wall Street 'Caught Off Guard' by Severity

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Several recent headlines indicate that food prices will continue their swift climb upward. These troubling new reports show that agriculture production and stored grains are critically low and experts are now predicting food shortages on a grand scale.

Look at a few mainstream headlines: Drought threatens global rice supply in the India Times; VA farmers say heat taking toll on crops, Associated Press; Severe food shortage follows lack of rainfall in Syria; and, finally, Corn prices bolt as USDA downsizes crop estimates, which states that, "Commodity professionals were caught off guard Wednesday by a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn planted this year than earlier projected, and almost 300 million fewer bushels of corn in storage." And these articles don't begin to address crops being damaged by the toxic rain from the Gulf oil disaster.

We are back to recession economics and rapidly heading toward a deeper, longer “Third Depression.”  With all recent economic indicators setting new record lows and deficits at record highs, this ship is only going one way folks, down, down to Chinatown.  This WTC-Building 7-style-controlled-demolition of the U.S. economy has long been engineered by the borderless banksters and has been set in the same way to collapse at a free-fall rate.  With all of the manufactured confusion it may be difficult to know where best to invest your limited assets, but it seems to be clear that Food is on the march.

There were several trend forecasters and financial firms predicting upwards of $200/barrel of oil before the Gulf oil gusher. The “analysts” said this would occur because of the perception of scarcity and a weakening dollar. The oil disaster and the subsequent outrage at Big Oil will surely take care of selling the perception of scarcity, while the Federal Reserve and Congress will surely take care of weakening the dollar.

We’ve seen this Beta test before when oil prices reached their peak of $147 in 2008 sending the price of food to the stratosphere.  Food staples like rice nearly tripled in six months and at times increased 50% in just two weeks, primarily because of record oil prices and a weak dollar in 2008. During this run-up on prices, big box stores like Sam's Club and Costco were rationing the number of bags of rice customers could buy.  You can bet that Food Crisis Beta 2.010 will be far more severe.

This third factor of actual Food Scarcity, coupled with high oil prices and a feeble dollar, will multiply the severity of increasing food prices.  Whether this scarcity is being engineered to further cull the population or is a genuine imbalance in supply and demand is not important.  The fact is that this reality is playing out in the matrix.  Being aware of this triple-threat to food costs creates an opportunity to soften the recessionary blow, and perhaps offer some economic freedom from those who would like to reduce us all to serfdom.

You don’t have to be an End Times survivalist to believe that storing food is pragmatic.  Everyone with expendable cash can and should design a good food storage and rotation system and buy bulk food as an investment -- in addition to creating self-sufficiency.

Many rationalists are touting guns, ammo, and gold as good small-scale investments given the despicable agenda unfolding in our matrix.  Certainly those are critical investments in an economy dwindling down to the rationing of necessity, but not everyone is into guns or can afford bundles of gold.  And gold, at the end of the day, can only be traded for necessity.

These recent food alerts seem to indicate that food may be the best short-term investment for the “Average Joe.” It's simple:  if the retail cost of rice doubles, as it did in 2008, then you (the investor) make 100% return in something that's immediately tangible and usable.  It’s time to pay the tax penalty for cashing out your mediocre "I-bought-in-to-the-American-Dream" 401K and invest in Food!

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FEMA's Formaldehyde Trailers: Adding Insult to Injury

FEMA's Formaldehyde Trailers are Back in the Gulf

Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones

As if people in the Gulf coast didn't already have enough health concerns due to the BP disaster, now it appears the infamous formaldehyde trailers used in the region after Hurricane Katrina are making a reappearance.

After Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided 120,000 trailers to people who lost their homes during the storm. The government banned them from use for long-term housing though, after they were found to have high levels of formaldehyde, which can cause cancer, respiratory problems, leukemia, and other health conditions. They were back in the news earlier this year when the federal government put some of the trailers up for auction, sparking concern among environmental and public health groups. Now the New York Times reports that they're making a comeback as living quarters for cleanup workers:

Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said that in the past two weeks he had sold more than 20 of the trailers to cleanup workers and the companies that employ them in Venice and Grand Isle, La.

Even though federal regulators have said the trailers are not to be used for housing because of formaldehyde’s health risks, Mr. Mason said some of these workers had bought them so they could be together with their wives and children after work.

"These are perfectly good trailers," Mr. Mason said, adding that he has leased land in and around Venice for 40 more trailers that are being delivered from Texas in the coming weeks. "Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It’s not a big deal."

Of course, many, many others would disagree. The tainted trailers are supposed to have placards on them noting thy are "not to be used for housing," but as the Times reports, these warning are not always in place. There's also a risk that the trailers, which are going for as little as $2,500, could be resold several times in the coming months and years, long after the warnings have disappeared (if they were ever posted in the first place).

The policy of selling the trailers off to likely unsuspecting and probably low-income people, is highly questionable by itself. But a piece on the auction in the Washington Post in March included this ominous passage, which made it clear that the government hasn’t made much of an effort to change its ways:

But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still have not issued a contract for a long-promised study of the health effects on children who lived in trailers; no binding safety standards for formaldehyde in housing have been set; and FEMA is still fleshing out how it would manage housing in a future Katrina-scale catastrophe.

Now we're in the midst of that next Katrina-scale catastrophe, and FEMA was no more prepared.

RELATED ARTICLE:   2010 Hurricane Season:  FEMA Beta Test?

CALL to ACTION: Amnesty International Issues Open Letter to Canadian Government for Independent Review of G8/G20 Police

Hilary Home
Amnesty International

Dear Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGuinty,

 

We are writing on behalf of the more than 80,000 members of Amnesty International across Canada to urge that you work together to launch an independent review of the security measures adopted and the range of police actions taken in association with the G20 Summit in Toronto.  This letter highlights many of the crucial issues that we believe need to be examined in that independent review. 

We first called for such a review in a Closing Communiqué issued at the end of Amnesty International Canada (English branch)’s Annual General Meeting on June 27th.  The meeting was held in Toronto, with some 200 members from across the country in attendance.  Amnesty International members took part in the People First demonstration on June 26th and witnessed many other demonstrations and some instances of arrest and other confrontation between police and demonstrators over the course of the weekend. We have also reviewed many of the growing number of media accounts, individual testimonies and monitoring reports describing police tactics, patterns of arrest, conditions of detention, and acts of vandalism and other violence, including the Preliminary Report of Observations issued by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association on June 29th. 

Amnesty's Open Letter to Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGuinty | Preliminary Report of Observations issued by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (29 June 2010)

UPDATE: Charlie Veitch Out on Bail From the G20

Man Accused Of Impersonating Police Officer Released On Bail 

CityNews.ca Staff 
City News

A man accused of impersonating a police officer has been released on $500 bail.

Charlie Veitch, 29, lives in England but was in Toronto for the G20 summit.  He's been described as an absurdist comedian - but police aren't laughing.

“He was filming the fence area – again, these are allegations – he was filming the fence area and a security officer approached him and asked him for identification,” Const. Tony Vella said on Wednesday."

The allegations are that Mr. Veitch indicated to the security guard that he was an undercover police officer. Mr. Veitch taped the entire incident and posted it on social media.  A copy was retrieved by the Toronto Police Service who conducted an investigation.

“A warrant was issued for Mr. Veitch’s arrest for impersonating a police officer. He was arrested on Tuesday as he was boarding a plane to go back to England,” Vella said.

“Anytime someone poses as a police officer, we take it very seriously,”  he added. 

Veitch spoke to reporters when he was released on Wednesday.

"Of my six days in Toronto, I've spend 48 hours in custody," he said.  "I'm scared to say anything until I'm actually at home in Great Britain...I come from a country where you can actually hug police officers," Veitch added.

Veitch will next appear in court on August 23.

'War is Peace' as Blair Gets Medal for Liberty

Tony Blair wins 2010 Liberty Medal award for work on peace

Richard Adams
The Guardian

Tony Blair, in his inevitable career progression from world leader to elder statesman, picks up another award, this time the 2010 Liberty Medal, a prize given annually by the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia.

In announcing the $100,000 prize, Philadelphia's mayor Michael Nutter praised Blair's "relentless pursuit of a long-elusive peace in Northern Ireland as British prime minister and his dedication to the Middle East peace process".

The former prime minister has announced that he will donate the prize money to two of his charities: the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative.

"It is an honour to receive the Liberty Medal," Blair said, in a statement. "I am deeply indebted to the National Constitution Centre for adding my name to such a distinguished list of recipients."

Blair will receive the medal from a previous winner, Bill Clinton, at a ceremony on Philadelphia's Independence Mall on 13 September. Other winners include Bono, Nelson Mandela, Hamid Karzai, CNN and – last year – director Steven Spielberg.

Blair's peace efforts in the Middle East presumably don't encompass his support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Philadelphia blogger Duncan Black noted: "I guess Tony Blair won this for his success in helping to liberate souls from the earthly existence."

One of George Bush's last acts as US president in 2009 was to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Blair.

The award was created to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution in 1988. The first Liberty Medal was awarded in 1989 to Lech Walesa of Poland.

G20 Reporter Strip Searched and Threatened with RAPE by Police

Dylan Ratigan: Stock Market an 'Obviously Corrupt' Fraud

Daniel Tencer - Raw Story

July 1, 2010

On his afternoon show Tuesday, MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan explained why he believes the usual explanations given in the media for why the stock market went up or down on a given day are nonsense.

“Seventy percent of the volume [of trades on the stock market] is computers that are run by the banks playing ping pong with stocks for 10 seconds at at time,” Ratigan said.

“The stock market at this point, which used to be a reflection of the future value of actual businesses in this country, has been turned by our government and our banks into little more than a paper shredding facility [about which] we can make up reasons why it goes up and down,” Ratigan said. “But when the computers … at the banks are controlling the action, most everything else is kind of silly.”

Ratigan concluded that it’s time to create an “alternative investment structure” that would allow people to invest their money without putting it “into the obviously corrupt stock market in this country.”

Ratigan was referring to the relatively new phenomenon known as high-frequency trading: High-speed computer programs that are able to “peek” at stock trades less than a second before the trades are made. If the computer sees that a trade about to be made will raise the price of a particular stock, it can purchase the stock in the split-second before that trade is made.

READ FULL STORY

PROOF: The Mainstream Media Serves the Government

New study documents media's servitude to government

by Glenn Greenwald
Salon

A newly released study from students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government provides the latest evidence of how thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials.  This new study examines how waterboarding has been discussed by America's four largest newspapers over the past 100 years, and finds that the technique, almost invariably, was unequivocally referred to as "torture" -- until the U.S. Government began openly using it and insisting that it was not torture, at which time these newspapers obediently ceased describing it that way:

Similarly, American newspapers are highly inclined to refer to waterboarding as "torture" when practiced by other nations, but will suddenly refuse to use the term when it's the U.S. employing that technique:

As always, the American establishment media is simply following in the path of the U.S. Government (which is why it's the "establishment media"): the U.S. itself long condemned waterboarding as "torture" and even prosecuted it as such, only to suddenly turn around and declare it not to be so once it began using the tactic.  That's exactly when there occurred, as the study puts it, "a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboading."  As the U.S. Government goes, so goes our establishment media.

READ FULL ARTICLE

Fed Made Taxpayers Unwitting Junk-Bond Buyers

By Caroline Salas, Craig Torres and Shannon D. Harrington - 
Bloomberg

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.

The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.

By using its balance sheet to protect an investment bank against failure, the Fed took on the most credit risk in its 96- year history and increased the chance that Americans would be on the hook for billions of dollars as the central bank began insuring Wall Street firms against collapse. The Fed’s secrecy spurred legislation that will require government audits of the Fed bailouts and force the central bank to reveal recipients of emergency credit.

“Either the Fed did not understand the distressed state of some of the assets that it was purchasing from banks and is only now discovering their true value, or it understood that it was buying weak assets and attempted to obscure that fact,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in an e-mail when informed about the credit quality of holdings in the Maiden Lane LLC portfolio. The committee held the April 3 hearing.

READ FULL STORY

Hundreds Sick Along Toxic Beaches - VIDEO

Toxic Beaches: Blisters on Mouth, Sore Throats, Lung Problems; Danger to City Water Supplies; Gov Approves Decontamination Centers

SHTFPlan

In a previous story we noted that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) says that everyone should avoid oil and spill-affected areas.

Casey Nunez, a Louisiana resident, visited Pensacola beach in the last 48 hours.
He reports that 400 people on the beach became sick with a variety of problems like blisters, sore throat and lung problems, symptoms that Nunez himself says that he experienced, going as far as to show the blister on his tongue in the video below.

Nunez says that Florida officials, fully aware of the prior day’s incident involving sick beach goers, have actually deemed the beaches safe in Pensacola by changing the red danger flags on the beach to yellow, with Beach Patrol reportedly saying that they have everything under control.

Nunez also reports something we’ve discussed in prior articles regarding contamination of drinking water supplies as a result of this oil leak and dispersants being used for clean-up. In addition, the boats being used to help with the oil spill are docking in the Mississippi river and Nunez says this will lead to contamination of the water supply:

My biggest concern…this confirms my theory [Nunez holds up vial of crude/sludge]…I have been saying from day one that all coated ships are coming up the mouth of the Mississippi river and directly through metro New Orleans residents’ drinking water source. 

Now they’re telling us they’re cleaning these ships at six stations. Sure they are. They’re cleaning what you can see at and above the water line. Beyond that, short of dry docking, they can’t clean this thick sludge, this crude, from the bottoms of these ships. 

It’s only a matter of time people in New Orleans are going to start getting sick.
You need to know what’s being done and what’s not being done.