The Hemp Revolution (1995) covers the history, cultivation and usage of hemp including food, fuel, building material and medicine. It also explores some of the factors behind the prohibition of hemp production in the U.S. in 1938 (including pressure from the petro-chemical industry). The impressive roster of interview subjects featured in the film includes such notable figures as Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Terence McKenna, Peter Dale Scott, and Prof. Sheri Tonn among many others.
The Emperor of Hemp (1999) documents the life of Jack Herer, his struggle for the decriminalization of cannabis and hemp and his legacy. It’s also an overview of his seminal book The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Official Hemp Bible including the history and many utilizations of hemp, the conspiracy against it, and a rallying cry to end its prohibition.
Modern ghost towns, abandoned houses, and far stretching roads lined with plastic bags of radioactive garbage have replaced the once bustling neighborhoods and cities of the Fukushima Prefecture. Formerly home to thousands, the massive release of radiation has forced residents to evacuate their beautiful homeland, leaving the land they love behind without knowing whether or not they may ever return without putting their lives at risk. Join the Fairewinds Crew and ask yourself this: With 99 operating atomic power reactors generating electricity in the U.S., what’s so different about your home, your town, your state that what happened to Fukushima couldn’t happen to you and your family?
Many Japanese and millions of Americans are currently living in the shadow of atomic reactors, plutonium reprocessing plants, and atomic waste dumps. It will be five years in March since the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi began and the Japanese public and people around the world continue to search for the truth about nuclear risk and honest answers to their energy future. Fukushima@5 exposes the truth of the ongoing atomic devastation caused by the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi.
Society is slowly evolving into a collective consciousness that has disengaged from the false narratives that have been manipulated into official ‘truths’ for humanity. That’s right, if you don’t know yet; we’ve all been deceived in many ways and we all have a responsibility to do our research and play our small part to help out our fellow man and our future generations.
The good news is that individuals are unplugging from this matrix of delusion at an ever-increasing rate, which is fueling a tipping point for basically the whole world to awaken in a domino-like effect. This global awakening has been a long time in the making and is characterized by two equally important parts.
The first is that we all need to come together to facilitate the social changes we desperately need as a uniting global culture. We have made some great progress and shown some genius qualities to get to where we are today; however the tragic reality is that our collective and environmental health is suffering on a wide-spread scale.
There are epidemics of dysfunctional, disharmonious and destructive realities which have resulted from not just the shadow government that runs our world, but also the fact that we continue to ‘choose’ to organize, collaborate and act on a global scale in the manner that we’ve been provided. For a straightforward introduction to these issues, 11 Toxic Realities Society is Finally Waking Up About is a must read.
The second is a philosophical shift which understands that consciousness, not matter, is the core component of our interconnected reality. Individuals and even entire cultures and traditions have known this for centuries; however for the first time in our known history this is being embraced on a planetary scale.
Given that science has now taken the lead for how humanity views the world, we should expect it to be an unbiased and progressive description of it. The harsh truth though is that science has been hijacked by a false philosophy of reality called materialism, so it has not ethically done its job of bringing this spiritual ‘truth’ into the mainstream mindset.
The fields of quantum physics, psychology and parapsychology have conclusively shown why we need to move to a post-materialist era of human consensus. Scientists and laymen alike are awakening to this fact through not just the art of science, but also the art of experience. Simply, with the right type of perspective, we can open our minds and hearts to the symbolism that exists in our day to day experience, as well as the subtle and explicit synchronicities that occur throughout our lives.
Time for Reflection
Can you feel the momentum building for the conscious society? One in which the masses have awoken to both the spiritual and systemic revolution that is required for humanity’s evolution?
You’d have to be deep in the matrix if you can’t sense it. Yet, even if you are, look within yourself and feel the changes that have been happening in your own life. They are a reflection of what’s happening outside of you; the energy of our era is propelling us towards the inevitable moment when the people take back the power to organize their lives in a way which is actually conducive to their physical, mental, emotional, intellectual and spiritual health, as well as their life vitality.
Beware though; we need to be patient. This is a spiritual process which has been happening for all of eternity.
So, given we’re all a part of this process, you need to ask yourself: “How awake am I?”:
Are your beliefs about the world continuing to be shaped by the matrix-media, or have you accepted that the mainstream channels are limiting your potential in mind and heart?
Do you realize yet that the materialist paradigm is a shallow, dogmatic and inaccurate conception of existence?
What about the fact that our world is run by a shadow order in which the banking sector, along with the media, are their primary control mechanisms?
Do you see that the political framework has been hijacked by big money and big business?
Is it obvious that the wars that our families have been thrown into are part of the agenda of the military-industrial-media-politico-banking complex?
Is the corporate monopolization of our resources obvious to you?
Have you locked it in that the pharmaceutical giants want customers, not cures?
Are you conscious that our food, medicine, water and air is becoming more toxic?
Does the way that we treat our fellow sentient beings through the animal-agriculture industry disgust you?
Do you acknowledge that so-called experts are less hit than miss, including journalists, doctors, politicians, scientists, academics and gurus?
I mean shit, this stuff is clear as day once you’ve been shaken from your slumber. The entire official narrative on life makes those who see right through it feel like they’re living in crazy town. Really, it’s so embrassing for our species that I feel like at any stage now our so-called leaders are going to come out and say “Haha, got ya’s, it was just a joke”.
But it’s not; this is as real as fuck. There’s no need to be afraid though; there’s plenty of amazing people who have designed the progressive and honorable ways forward for humanity.
So, in that light, let’s look forward:
Have you been able to accept that there are radically different ways in which we can organize and economize our societies, so that everyone benefits?
Is it clear to you that your human and animal families deserve justice?
Are you living a life which connects you to the deeper truths of your spiritual nature?
Do you recognize the real values of life such as connection, community, compassion and creativity?
Are you tapped into the real reflections of self-worth such as love, honor, truth, authenticity and giving back to those around you?
Have you compelled yourself to think and act beyond your own personal bubble?
Let’s hope so, but it’s understandable if not, because it is bloody challenging. We live in a world characterized by both positive and negative energy, so unfortunately many people get lost in the victim mentality. If that’s you, I’ll give you a tip; embrace and respect both sides of the duality and contextualize it into the oneness that permeates our entire existence.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the truth remains that we’re in a particularly dark part of the macro-cycle right now which is why the mainstream reality is full of fraud, lies, deception, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery. But, it’s moving fast, it’s changing fast, and so should we.
Seriously, you should stand up and be counted as a genuine agent in the transformation of our collective mindscape so that we can make the process of weeding out the social dysfunctions and systemic oppressors as effective and efficient as we can.
Simply, it’s all of our responsibility. Own it.
For a short and sharp account of the ‘choice point’ that humanity is faced with, watch this interview by The Conscious Society Youtube Channel with the renowned Gregg Braden. And for follow up research, there are many articles linked below too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phillip J. Watt lives in Australia. He best identifies as a writer, guide and truthseeker. His written work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook or visit his website.
ST. JOSEPH, Louisiana – “I’m scared to take a bath,” said Ethel Strum, who lives in St. Joseph, a community of barely 1,000 people in northeast Louisiana.
She turned on the tap in the bathroom sink of her tidy one-story home and the water flowed clear for a second before fading to a milky brown. In her kitchen, a few cases of bottled water, which she uses for everything from brushing her teeth to cooking, are stacked on the table.
“I drive to Newellton to shower. It’s a 20-minute drive but I can do it in 12,” she laughed.
But talking about the town’s water issues makes her visibly upset. Among the many problems are frequent outages, water thick with iron sediment from the aging pipes, and poorly communicated boil-water advisories. “Water should be free until it’s fixed,” she said.
Strum can’t even wash her car with town water because it leaves a rust coating. Despite minimal use, she says she has received high bills and has to buy 20 cases of bottled water every month.
While state officials and the EPA have deemed the water safe to drink, virtually no one risks it. Most here do not even use tap water to cook or brush teeth, and many, especially children, bathe with bottled water. Lots of residents spend several hundred a month on store-bought water.
To add to the mounting frustration, $6 million of state funds allocated to St. Joseph for water line repairs in 2013 are still being withheld because the town’s mayor, Edward Brown, has failed several times to turn in a mandatory financial audit on time. New Governor John Bel Edwards said this week his office was working with the town of St. Joseph and the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to fast track the allocation of at least some of that money to start system repair work. Mayor Brown said he expects to file the overdue audit by the end of February.
“What we’ve experienced here is policy failures that have allowed these communities to fall through the cracks,” said St. Joseph resident Garrett Boyte, drawing a comparison to the disaster in Flint, Michigan.
Boyte, along with colleagues in the Servant Leadership Corps of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, have sought to attract public attention on the issue through a recent social media push and an online petition to the Obama administration for federal assistance to St. Joseph. The effort has just over one-tenth of the 100,000 signatures it needs by Feb. 19 to reach its goal. The group notes, however, that with no evidence of lead contamination, the situation in St. Joseph is considerably less dire than in Flint.
Nevertheless, the town’s water woes illustrate a more slow-moving and commonplace catastrophe: failing infrastructure in small, impoverished communities that cannot afford to replace their systems, leaving residents with limited resources to cope on their own.
Established in 1834, St. Joseph lies squarely in the so-called Black Belt, a term coined by Booker T. Washington at the turn of the century to refer to the swath of dark, fertile soil that spans much of the American south. It has evolved to describe the largely black, poor communities that have been in decline since the mechanization of farming drove out small farmers, with no industry to replace it.
The town is the seat of Tensas Parish — one of the state’s poorest, with 34 percent of residents living in poverty and a median household income of around $27,000 (compared to $45,000 statewide). The least populous parish in the state, over half of its population is African-American. Unemployment in St. Joseph is likely higher than the official parish average of 9 percent, and the town’s poverty is written in its shoddy roads and houses in dire need of repair.
St. Joseph’s decaying water distribution system, installed in the 1930’s, is the main cause of the town’s water problems. “Over time, these old cast iron pipes that convey the water, they deteriorate and start to crack and leak,” said Davis Cole, a Baton Rouge-based civil engineer working on the redesign of St. Joseph’s water system. Leaks cost the town money; according to Mayor Brown, the system loses 50 percent of its water. And with resources already stretched thin, long-term repairs are out of reach. “This is typical of communities probably all over the U.S., especially poor communities,” Cole said.
The water’s rusty tint comes from naturally occurring iron and manganese sediment in the underground well that has built up in the water lines over the years. Every time the system has to be shut down for repairs, and then restarted, sediment is injected into the water flow. The problem started to become obvious over a decade ago, according to residents, but has gotten progressively worse. The water main reportedly broke four times last month alone.
While the state does monthly bacterial tests, the last detailed analysis of St. Joseph’s water was in 2013. It showed 32 times the EPA-recommended level of iron and 9 times that of manganese, according to an analysis by the local Sierra Club. But the EPA considers these contaminants to have merely “aesthetic” affects on the water. They are not regulated by the EPA or the state.
The state’s official approval of the water quality is of little comfort to most residents here. “We don’t know what’s in that water. They say it’s rust but there are so many ‘what if’s’,” said Marie, a grandmother and lifelong resident of St. Joseph who declined to give her real name because of the sensitivities around local politics.
“Who’s more important: the people or the paperwork?” asked Marie, implying that the audit issue was to blame. “Get the water straight and then work on that. It’s not the community’s fault, don’t make it hard on us.”
Iron contamination and aging infrastructure are not uncommon problems in the region. Dr. Jimmy Guidry, state health officer at the Department of Health and Hospitals, confirms that water discoloration caused by iron is a common complaint across the state. “There are probably several hundred water systems that deal with this,” Guidry said, out of approximately 1,360 local water systems in Louisiana.
“As a physician, I’m not going to tell you a lot of iron in your system is not going to affect your health,” Guidry said, when asked about the long-term effects of high iron exposure. “But that’s not something we regulate.” In light of renewed attention on the issue, he said the DHH would be looking again at an iron and manganese water rule that was legislated in 2014.
Of more pressing concern to Guidry was replacing St. Joseph’s decrepit water pipes, which pose a risk of bacterial contamination every time they break. Many Louisianans have been on high alert for water contamination after a brain-eating amoeba was found in four separate water systems last year.
Guidry also noted that frequent leaks in the St. Joseph water main present another threat — they have started to erode the nearby levee. The Mississippi River has swelled to record heights in some areas this winter following heavy rainfall.
“I understand their urgency to [fix the water color]. That will take time,” said Dr. Guidry. “The urgency to get their system back to where they are not at risk of contamination is most important to me.” He said that if they receive approval for two grants totaling around $600,000, the most-needed repairs on the town’s storage tank and water pipes could begin in a matter of weeks.
However, he noted that even with a full revamp of the system, which is planned once an additional $2 million in funding is secured, the brown water of St. Joseph might not disappear. “It may not get rid of it completely, because it doesn’t address the treatment part,” he said. While there are expensive chemicals and filters that can get rid of iron discoloration, “for a poor community, it’s not an easy option to address the iron,” he added.
“If you were born after 2000 in this parish, you were always taught not to drink that water,” said Rosalie Bouobda, who moved to St. Joseph two years ago as a consultant for the Servant Leadership Corps of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. That group has been meeting with state and local officials about the water issue for the past two years. “Children are taught not to deal with [the water]. It’s a reflex to them…They’ve never known clean water.”
Bouobda, along with Garrett Boyte, who started posting pictures of the muddy water on Twitter, has been instrumental in garnering attention beyond social media. But many lifelong residents of St. Joseph have been reluctant to speak out, either because of a fatalistic sense that nothing will change, or out of deference to local politics in a town where so many people are related to each other.
“They just accept it as a fact of life, their water is dirty and there is nothing they can do about it,” Boyte says of people’s perceptions.
For St. Joseph, dirty water may be as much a fact of life as high unemployment and failing schools.
“It’s like nobody cares. That’s how people in this town feel,” Michael Thomas, Jr., a 25-year old father of two, said. His apartment in a small subsidized housing complex stands across from the overgrown ruins of a long-abandoned Tensas Rosenwald High School, one of many built in the early 20th century with funds from Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, to educate African-Americans in the South.
“We gotta boil the water just to wash the babies,” he said. “If I could afford it, I’d move.” He said he spends as much as $300 every month on bottled water.
Sitting nearby, Kristi McWilliams, 23, and John Jackson, 24, echoed Thomas’ frustration. “I think about moving all the time, but we don’t have the jobs or the money,” said McWilliams.
“There is more they could be doing,” said Jackson of state officials. “They could drop the water bill. Water should be cheaper in the stores.”
Some residents, like Ann South, an elderly woman who recently suffered a stroke and a heart attack, were frustrated by the disparities with other communities. “Around the lake there is no water problem,” she said, referring to the more affluent, largely white area around Lake Bruin nearby. “Who in the world do we have to talk to about helping my people in St. Joseph?”
Others, like Ethel Strum, were more sharply critical of Mayor Brown’s role in the water crisis. “The Mayor – he’s doing nothing!” she said. Valerie and Chip Sloan, a white couple who own a large house by the levee, claims that Mayor Brown has kicked them out of multiple town hall meetings for asking questions about the water, and that he has ignored their Freedom of Information Act requests for data on town finances.
“There are residents who have spoken out and they are retaliated against, either by the community at large or someone from the city,” added Boyte.
For his part, Brown, the town’s first African-American mayor, says his hands are largely tied on the water issue. “The state of Louisiana is testing this water and is saying that it is safe. And for me to overrule, [the Department of] Health and Hospitals or EPA … I don’t have that expertise, and no one in this town does,” he told Al Jazeera.
He says that with a budget of around $1.5 million – including a $500,000 general fund and around $1 million in water and gas sales – he is left with around $50,000 a year. That would leave little cash for infrastructure upgrades.
As for the lapsed financial audits that have delayed water system funding, Brown says that after an audit firm pulled out mid-audit in 2013, the town was forced to file late. With various lawsuits looming over the town since then, he says he has struggled to find an audit firm that will take on his case.
Brown also points to tight oversight from legislative auditors closely monitoring the town, in light of its failure to comply with financial audit rules. He says state law requires him to cut off utility connections after two months of missed payments and that, in the past, he has been issued a citation by auditors for granting extensions to individuals. Now, he turns off about 10-15 utility connections per month, including houses where he knows there are children and elderly people.
“You tell me what the state cares about the people in this town,” said Brown. “Did they care about people in Flint? They care about them now.”
When we think of national security, we think of tanks, jets, missile defense systems and more recently, information space. But what about the realm of the microscopic, the biological or the genetic?
Whether you think biotechnology, genetics and microbes constitute another plane upon the modern battlefield or not is irrelevant. Someone else already does, and they have a head start on the rest of the world.
Genotype Specific Bioweapons
The Project for a New American Century or PNAC for short, penned a particularly unhinged policy paper in 2000 titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century.”
In it, among many other things, it specifically writes:
Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.
…advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
Advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes sound like the stuff of science fiction, and even if it were developed, it would be by the “bad guys,” right?
Wrong. As a matter of fact, the Western-backed apartheid government in South Africa in the 1980’s under Project Coast, attempted to create genotype specific bioweapons aimed at sterilizing the nation’s black women. PBS Frontline’s article, “What Happened in South Africa?” would recount:
In 1998 South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission held hearings investigating activities of the apartheid-era government. Toward the end of the hearings, the Commission looked into the apartheid regime’s Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) program and allegations that it developed a sterility vaccine to use on black South Africans, employed toxic and chemical poison weapons for political asssassination, and in the late 1970s provided anthrax and cholera to Rhodesian troops for use against guerrilla rebels in their war to overthrow Rhodesia’s white minority rule.
While South Africa’s entire CBW program was abhorrent, what is particularly frightening is the use of South Africa’s national vaccination program as a vector for infecting black women with viruses meant to sterilize them. Now that vaccination programs are being pushed globally, there lies the danger that such weapons could be used against entire regions of the planet.
PBS would elaborate further on the CBW program, stating that the South African government:
Developed lethal chemical and biological weapons that targeted ANC [African National Congress] political leaders and their supporters as well as populations living in the black townships. These weapons included an infertility toxin to secretly sterilize the black population; skin-absorbing poisons that could be applied to the clothing of targets; and poison concealed in products such as chocolates and cigarettes.
PNAC’s dream of genotype specific bioweapons then, is not some far-off science fiction future, it is something that has been pursued in earnest for decades, and apparently by interests aligned to the West, not enemies of it.
Zika and GM Mosquitoes
Though it is so far impossible to confirm a link between the two, it is troubling nonetheless to see the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus spreading in Brazil precisely from where GM (genetically modified) mosquitoes were released several years ago.
Scientists in Brazil say an experiment to reduce populations of the dengue-carrying Aedes aegyptimosquito, by releasing millions of genetically modified (GM) insects into the wild, is working. More than ten million modified male mosquitoes were released in the city of Juazeiro, a city of 288,000 people, over a period of time starting a year ago.
The US CDC (Center for Disease Control) would report that Zika virus cases in northeast Brazil were first officially recognized in early 2015, with international hysteria finally reached early this year. The cases seem most concentrated in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, upon the borders of which the city of Juazeiro lies.
What could have happened between 2011 and 2016 that might have led to this development? Could the GM mosquitoes designed to stamp out dengue have mutated in some unpredictable way? And could this experiment have caused the Zika virus itself to mutate in an unpredictable way? It already has mutated once, allowing it to spread among humans more prolifically.
Or what if GM mosquitoes supposedly meant to wipe out dengue were serving as a vector for something else entirely? We can only imagine the sort of stories, excuses and feigned ignorance the South African government would have conjured had its genotype specific bioweapons worked, and black women began turning up sterilized in huge numbers after receiving their “vaccines.”
Experts believe “flying vaccinators” could eventually be a radical new way of tackling malaria.
The new approach targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito.
Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites.
The “prototype” mosquito carries a vaccine against Leishmania, another potentially fatal parasite disease spread by sand flies.
And if mosquitoes can naturally deliver viruses, and scientists can alter what mosquitoes carry and infect hosts with, it is possible to engineer viruses to deliver virtually anything into targeted populations much in the same way viruses are re-engineered into vectors in labs today through a process called gene therapy. In the wrong hands, this technology and these techniques could become terrifying weapons.
For those in the middle of the Zika virus hysteria, perhaps it already has.
How Could They? Why Would They?
To answer “how could they possibly do something so diabolical?” we need only think back to 2003 and recall how the United States intentionally lied to the world, then between its initial invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, killed upward to a million people. This includes several thousand of its own soldiers and civilians, many of whom it appears were killed by militants armed and funneled into the country by the United States’ closest regional allies, with the US’ resolute backing.
To answer “why” American and European special interests seek to render any particular population sick, weak and they and/or their offspring incapable of perpetuating a viable civilization, PNAC itself sums it up quite clearly:
The United States is the world’s only superpower, combining preeminent military power, global technological leadership, and the world’s largest economy. Moreover, America stands at the head of a system of alliances which includes the world’s other leading democratic powers. At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.
A population racked with birth defects, diminishing health and IQs and a lack of physical vitality constitutes the enemy every hegemon throughout history has dreamt of facing both on the battlefield and upon the grand chessboard of geopolitics.
Whether the Zika outbreak is linked to some insidious biowarefare program, an experiment gone wrong or simply the forces of nature, it showcases the danger biology can pose and reminds us of what greater dangers may yet await us if we do not properly prepare and protect ourselves.
Domestic Biotech is Imperative to National Defense
It has been almost painful to watch the rest of the world attempt to catch up to the United States and Europe in the information war. For decades the West dominated information warfare without contest.
Only now have nations like Russia, China, Iran and others finally caught up and in some cases exceeded Western capabilities. Only now are nations finally investing seriously in information and cyber warfare capabilities. Only now does it seem that nations realize the folly of depending on others for both information, and information technology.
Russia recently decided to switch to local computer processor manufacturers to run on all computers used for official business. This is because foreign corporations making processors imported into the Russian Federation had been apparently compromised on the factory floor with the cooperation of these foreign corporations by US intelligence agencies.
We can easily imagine the danger of having US intelligence agencies getting into Russia’s IT infrastructure through these backdoor passes. It doesn’t take much imagination to think about the trouble US intelligence agencies could cause if they could get inside Russia’s human, natural and agricultural genomes.
Developing a viable domestic biotech industry is not only a matter of economic prosperity, but clearly also a matter of vital national security. Foreign corporations should no better be able to access a nation’s “genetic code and files” than it can its computer code and files. After all, genetic information is not entirely unlike digital information.
Brazil and other nations that have invited foreign biotech corporations to meddle with their human, natural and agricultural genomes are likened to those nations who hand their vital infrastructure over to foreign interests only to find out through Wikileaks years later the sort of invasive spying, abuses and other means of self-serving treachery this access has been exploited for.
Let’s not wait for Wikileaks to tell us 10 years from now just how bad the nations of the world had been infiltrated and exploited through biotechnology before we recognize this industry as absolutely vital to national security and begin investing in it domestically, rather than outsourcing it overseas.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Federal and state officials are warning Flint residents that the lead filters they are using may be inadequate to protect them from the effects of elevated levels of lead in the city’s drinking water.
The warning came Friday after random samples collected from 26 residences since the final week of December came back with lead levels higher than the filters are designed to handle. The highest reading among the 26 homes was 4,000 parts per billion (ppb). The filters are not rated to handle lead levels above 150 ppb. The tests covered 3,900 homes.
After more than two years of lies and cover-up by federal, state and local officials, Flint residents are in a restive mood. Megan Kreger, a member of the local activist group Water You Fighting For, told the WSWS, “I didn’t believe it [about the lead filters] from the beginning. It has only finally hit the press.
“There has been fraud and negligence at all levels. It is a humanitarian disaster. We should not be living without clean water when we are only one hour away from one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.”
She rejected claims that Flint water is now safe for bathing. “My boyfriend took a shower before the Rachel Maddow town hall [over the weekend] and got the worst rash he has ever gotten. It almost looked like chicken pox.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends action be taken when lead levels exceed 15 ppb, though there is no safe level of lead exposure. Mark Durno of the EPA said the affected residents have now been contacted. The state had previously insisted that drinking filtered water was safe.
In the wake of the findings, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder urged all Flint residents to have their water tested as soon as possible. Dr. Eden Well, chief medical executive of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), advised children under six and pregnant women to drink only bottled water.
In an effort at damage control, Snyder sent a letter to state employees Friday, stating “what happened in Flint can never be allowed to happen again anywhere in our state.” The governor has tried to deflect all blame for the crisis to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and lower-ranking officials.
The DEQ said Monday that it has undertaken a five-part strategy to determine whether Flint water is safe to drink. The DEQ said it is working on a plan to make sure that residents with high lead-blood levels get their water tested.
Another issue of concern to Flint residents is that filters only have a limited life span, after which they are no longer effective. This is particularly true if the faucet where the filter is installed is the only source of water in the home.
Further, many Flint homes have older faucets that will not accommodate the water filters provided by the state. Over the weekend some 300 plumber volunteers installed new faucets free of charge in some 1,100 Flint homes, still a fraction of the city’s residences.
Federal officials said they were not sure why recent samples came back showing elevated levels of lead. Despite the findings, the EPA did not call on residents to stop using the lead filters. More testing is being planned.
The report on lead filters comes as state officials on Friday informed residents at more than 250 addresses living in areas of Genesee County outside of Flint that their water may also be tainted.
Dana, an auto parts worker who lives just outside of Flint, said she had just learned that her water may be dangerous to drink. “This is crazy. I live in the county and they just posted a whole bunch of addresses that might be affected. It appears it is impacting more than just the city of Flint. They had us misled. They told us it was fine. I was making coffee with the tap water every morning.
“It is an outrage. It is getting worse and worse. Everyone in the government is to blame. We as citizens do not know what is going on.”
Soon after the switch by the city of Flint in 2014 from its traditional water source, the Detroit water system, to the polluted Flint River, residents began to complain of foul-tasting, discolored water coming out of their taps. Nevertheless, citizens were repeatedly told the water was safe.
It later emerged that the highly corrosive water from the Flint River was leaching lead from the city’s antiquated piping, poisoning the city’s 100,000 residents. Even after the switch back to the Detroit water system in October, lead levels remain dangerously high due to the damage already done to the city’s water pipes.
Ten deaths from the deadly Legionnaires’ virus have also been traced to Flint water.
In another development, the US Department of Agriculture rejected a request by Snyder to extend the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program to Flint residents up to the age of 10. A department spokesperson said federal law limited the program to children under age five. The program provides grants to states for supplemental foods, health referrals and nutrition information to pregnant and postpartum women with infant children.
Health professionals say proper nutrition is important in mitigating the long-term effects of lead poisoning in children. Children are especially vulnerable to lead, since their developing brains and nervous systems are more sensitive to toxins. The city has a child poverty rate of nearly 67 percent, 10 percentage points higher than Detroit.
According to the Michigan DHHS, 130,095 people in Genesee County, where Flint is located, are using food stamp assistance now, compared with 87,847 in 2005.
The report on continued high levels of lead in Flint’s water supply comes as Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette says the state may not provide legal counsel for seven DEQ employees who are the subject of a class action lawsuit by Flint residents. Schuette has asked a federal judge to decide the matter of representation.
The lawsuit alleges the state endangered Flint residents by switching the city’s water source to the Flint River. In addition to the DEQ employees, the lawsuit also names Snyder, the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, two former emergency managers, the former Flint mayor and three city employees.
It has been filed on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, but seeks class action status for all Flint residents. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, the creation of a medical monitoring fund and the appointment of a monitor to oversee Flint water.
The suit does not name federal officials, however the Obama administration’s EPA is deeply implicated in the cover-up of the lead poisoning danger. As early as April 2015, the highest-level EPA official in Michigan was aware that Flint water was not being treated for corrosion control, but said nothing. This, despite the fact that water professionals understand that such treatment is necessary if highly corrosive water like that from the Flint River is being used for drinking because of the danger of lead leaching from old piping.
Snyder has claimed he did not become aware of problems with Flint’s drinking water until October 1, 2015.
I, Michael Hudson, John Perkins, and a few others have reported the multi-pronged looting of peoples by Western economic institutions, principally the big New York Banks with the aid of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Third World countries were and are looted by being inticed into development plans for electrification or some such purpose. The gullible and trusting governments are told that they can make their countries rich by taking out foreign loans to implement a Western-presented development plan, with the result being sufficient tax revenues from economic development to service the foreign loan.
Seldom, if ever, does this happen. What happens is that the plan results in the country becoming indebted to the limit and beyond of its foreign currency earnings. When the country is unable to service the development loan, the creditors send the IMF to tell the indebted government that the IMF will protect the government’s credit rating by lending it the money to pay its bank creditors. However, the conditions are that the government take necessary austerity measures so that the government can repay the IMF. These measures are to curtail public services and the government sector, reduce public pensions, and sell national resources to foreigners. The money saved by reduced social benefits and raised by selling off the country’s assets to foreigners serves to repay the IMF.
This is the way the West has historically looted Third World countries. If a country’s president is reluctant to enter into such a deal, he is simply paid bribes, as the Greek governments were, to go along with the looting of the country the president pretends to represent.
When this method of looting became exhausted, the West bought up agricultural lands and pushed a policy on Third World countries of abandoning food self-sufficiency and producing one or two crops for export earnings. This policy makes Third World populations dependent on food imports from the West. Typically the export earnings are drained off by corrupt governments or by foreign purchasers who pay little while the foreigners selling food charge much. Thus, self-sufficiency is transformed into indebtedness.
With the entire Third World now exploited to the limits possible, the West has turned to looting its own. Ireland has been looted, and the looting of Greece and Portugal is so severe that it has forced large numbers of young women into prostitution. But this doesn’t bother the Western conscience.
Previously, when a sovereign country found itself with more debt than could be serviced, creditors had to write down the debt to an amount that the country could service. In the 21st century, as I relate in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, this traditional rule was abandoned.
The new rule is that the people of a country, even a country whose top offiials accepted bribes in order to indebt the country to foreigners, must have their pensions, employment, and social services slashed and valuable national resources such as municipal water systems, ports, the national lottery, and protected national lands, such as the protected Greek islands, sold to foreigners, who have the freedom to raise water prices, deny the Greek government the revenues from the national lottery, and sell the protected national heritage of Greece to real estate developers.
What has happened to Greece and Portugal is underway in Spain and Italy. The peoples are powerless because their governments do not represent them. Not only are their governments receiving bribes, the members of the governments are brainwashed that their countries must be in the European Union. Otherwise, they are bypassed by history. The oppressed and suffering peoples themselves are brainwashed in the same way. For example, in Greece the government elected to prevent the looting of Greece was powerless, because the Greek people are brainwashed that no matter the cost to them, they must be in the EU.
The combination of propaganda, financial power, stupidity and bribes means that there is no hope for European peoples.
The same is true in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK. In the US tens of millions of US citizens have quietly accepted the absence of any interest income on their savings for seven years. Instead of raising questions and protesting, Americans have accepted without thought the propaganda that their existence depends upon the success of a handful of artificially created mega-banks that are “too big to fail.” Millions of Americans are convinced that it is better for them to draw down their savings than for a corrupt bank to fail.
To keep Western peoples confused about the real threat that they face, the people are told that there are terrorists behind every tree, every passport, under every bed, and that all will be killed unless the government’s overarching power is unquestioned. So far this has worked perfectly, with one false flag after another reinforcing the faked terror attacks that serve to prevent any awareness that this a hoax for accumulating all income and wealth in a few hands.
Not content with their supremacy over “democratic peoples,” the One Percent has come forward with the Trans-Atlanta and Trans-Pacific partnerships. Allegedly these are “free trade deals” that will benefit everyone. In truth, these are carefully hidden, secret, deals that give private businesses control over the laws of sovereign governments.
For example, it has come to light that under the Trans-Atlantic partnership the National Health Service in the UK could be ruled in the private tribunals set up under the partnership as an impediment to private medical insurance and sued for damages by private firms and even forced into abolishment.
For any citizen of any Western country who is so stupid or brainwashed as not to have caught on, the entire thrust of “their” government’s policy is to turn every aspect of their lives over to grasping private interests.
In the UK the postal service was sold at a nominal price to politically connected private interests. In the US the Republicans, and perhaps the Democrats, intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security, just as they have privatized many aspects of the military and the prison system. Public functions are targets for private profit-making.
One of the reasons for the escalation in the cost of the US military budget is its privatization. The privatization of the US prison system has resulted in huge numbers of innocent people being sent to prison, where they are forced to work for Apple Computer, IT services, clothing companies that manufacture for the US military, and a large number of other private businesses. The prison laborers are paid as low as 69 cents per hour, below the Chinese wage.
This is America today. Corrupt police. Corrupt prosecutors. Corrupt judges. But maximum profits for US Capitalism from prison labor. Free market economists glorified private prisons, alleging that they would be more efficient. And indeed they are efficient in providing the profits of slave labor for capitalists.
The UK Guardian, which often has to prostitute itself in order to maintain a bit of independence, describes the anger that the British people feel toward the government’s secrecy about an issue so fundamental to the well being of the British people. Yet, the British continue to vote for political parties that have betrayed the British people.
All over Europe, the corrupt Washington-contolled governments have distracted people from their sellout by “their” governments by focusing their attention on immigrants, whose presence is a consequence of the European governments representing Washington’s interests and not the interest of their own peoples.
Somthing dire has happened to the intelligence and awareness of Western peoples who seem no longer capable of comprehending the machinations of “their” governments.
Accountable government in the West is history. Nothing but failure and collapse awaits Western civilization.
They drowned New Orleans. Now they have poisoned Flint, Michigan. The corporate campaign to ethnically cleanse U.S. cities knows no bounds. Michigan’s emergency financial manager law is “part of Wall Street’s tool kit to starve, bulldoze, redline, over-price, oppressively police, and even poison Black people out of the urban centers.”
“Michigan’s emergency financial manager system is the lead-tipped point of the spear that is gutting urban Black America.”
It has taken the poisoning of an entire city of 100,000 people – 52 percent of them Black – to draw national attention to the human effects of systematic corporatization of the public sphere under neoliberal U.S. capitalism. Republican Governor Rick Synder promises to “fix” the ruined water infrastructure of Flint, Michigan, now hopelessly corroded and saturated with lead – a repair that could cost as much as $1.5 billion. But, even if Snyder is forced to resign, as demonstrators demand, or is jailed, as filmmaker Michael Moore would prefer, it won’t fix the irreparably damaged brains of the city’s children or prevent a cascade of Flint-like catastrophes from unfolding across the country.
We are experiencing another Katrina moment, a dreadful epiphany in which the nature of the beast that is preying upon us becomes horrifically clear. Michigan’s emergency financial manager system – a weapon of corporate dictatorship imposed selectively on heavily Black and brown cities and school systems – is the lead-tipped point of the spear that is gutting urban Black America. It is not a unique instrument – and certainly not a Republican invention – but part of Wall Street’s tool kit to starve, bulldoze, redline, over-price, oppressively police, and even poison Black people out of the urban centers.
“A Katrina moment.”
Katrina should have been the wake-up call, a decade ago, but the hegemonic influence of the bankster-infested Democratic Party in Black America muted the warning, that the Lords of Capital were determined to eject Blacks from valuable real estate by any means necessary. After their success in expelling 100,000 Black people from New Orleans under cover of a hurricane, the corporate designers of the New American City stepped up the pace of gentrification, deploying every soft and hard tool available to them. The Black-removal machine was revved up to maximum, erasing Black urban majorities and pluralities with dizzying speed.
Having met little organized resistance, the corporate ethnic cleansers grew bolder. Republicans like Rick Synder get elected by trashing Black people; they hardly need an economic motivation for race-baiting. Corporate Democrats are more subtle. Rick Snyder wasn’t the first governor to disenfranchise Black urbanites in Michigan; his Democratic predecessor, Jennifer Granholm, a reputed “liberal,” appointed emergency managers to lord it over mostly Black Benton Harbor, Highland Park, Pontiac, and the Detroit Public Schools (where teachers have been on a sick-out to protest the ghastly conditions wrought by that bipartisan legacy of plantation-like governance).
“The Black-removal machine is erasing Black urban majorities and pluralities with dizzying speed.”
The Obama administration was a full partner in the deal that finalized the bankrupting of Detroit, providing federal funds to protect prime city assets necessary for future “revitalization” (to benefit anticipated new residents) but uttering not a word in protest of the disenfranchisement of the current, 83 percent Black population. The U.S. Justice Department failed to file a brief in support of the local NAACP’s appeal to the federal courts, that Michigan’s emergency financial manager law is racially selective, sparing financially troubled “municipalities with majority-white populations” from financial oversight while negating the votes of more than half of the state’s Black citizenry. “You do not throw out the right to vote on the basis of economic distress,” said Detroit NAACP president Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony.
On the contrary, that’s exactly what corporations do when they set an economic or political goal that cannot be achieved at the local ballot box: they disenfranchise the uncooperative voters. In the United States, Black votes are the easiest to nullify, because huge numbers of whites don’t think Blacks are worthy of full citizenship. They take pleasure in bringing Detroit low, and in the enforced shrinking of Black New Orleans, never considering that the weakening of democratic norms will ultimately expose whites to the whims of Capital, as well. It is the oldest story in the United States.
“Corporate tentacles encroach upon the traditional powers of ‘too-Black’ cities until there is little left for the local government to tax or administer.”
White racism thus shapes the corporate model for direct rule by moneyed interests. Typically, the urban disenfranchisement process begins with the public schools, which become overwhelmingly Black and brown ahead of the general population. Locally elected inner city school boards are swept away in favor of state or direct mayoral control, while suburbanites retain the old, hands-on democratic model. (The Michigan legislature took over Detroit’s schools in 1999.) Corporate tentacles encroach upon the traditional powers of “too-Black” cities in ways not visible to ordinary citizens – through regional agencies, special industrial and development zones, targeted tax abatements, etc. – until there is little left for the local Black government to tax or administer except its largely impoverished constituents. Black governance is discredited – even though, in the last stages of urban distress, there are few resources with which to govern. The city writhes in protracted pain until “rescued” by the state for the purpose of corporate makeover (“renaissance”) and repopulation.
The corporate rulers and their minions must be held responsible for all of the pain that is inflicted on the people of intentionally distressed cities, whose residents are stripped of the means to defend themselves against the tortures, humiliations and various poisons of the state.
The Hemp Revolution (1995) covers the history, cultivation and usage of hemp including food, fuel, building material and medicine. It also explores some of the factors behind the prohibition of hemp production in the U.S. in 1938 (including pressure from the petro-chemical industry). The impressive roster of interview subjects featured in the film includes such notable figures as Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Terence McKenna, Peter Dale Scott, and Prof. Sheri Tonn among many others.
After the Crash 