Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Futuristic San Francisco!

            San Francisco is already one of the greenest cities in the US, but check out this wild new concept from IwamotoScott Architects to completely remake the city into an ecotopia in the near future (They say 2108, but if we as a society get our proverbial “shit” together, I believe we could easily make this a reality by somewhere closer to 2050!)
            The design, which is as visually stunning as it is thought-provoking, recently won the History Channel’s City of the Future competition. It’s a full-scale urban system that combines the most innovative green technologies with San Francisco’s unique microclimate and geologic conditions, to produce a compelling vision for the future. Hydro-Net, as the project is known, will bring the lovely city-by-the-bay squarely into the 22nd Century with algae-harvesting towers, geothermal energy ‘mushrooms’, and fog catchers which distill fresh water from San Francisco’s infamous fog.
            San Francisco’s Hydro-Net is perhaps the most remarkable, modern and futuristic concept ever envisioned for the City. And considering the hunt for alternative energy sources in the coming century, it’s extremely important! It is an extensive network of above ground and underground systems that fulfill infrastructural needs for the movement of people, water, hover-cars, and energy throughout the city. This network would connect water, power collection, and distribution systems across the city, forming one giant super-system.
           The hydrogen would in turn be used as fuel to run hover-cars in the underground tunnels. The network also includes fog catchers that harvest air moisture, ecotowers, and more. Sound crazy? Designers Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, the partners of San Francisco-based design firm IwamotoScott, don’t think so, and frankly neither do I. The concept recently won the $10,000 grand prize for their entry in the City of the Future competition, organized by the History Channel.
     -Jean Claude


Tuesday, December 28, 2010

S510 "The Food Saftety" Act, DANGEROUS.

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.



 This is what's scary about s510 

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

 

2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:

 

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

 

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

 

3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into "the United States." Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, "entry of food into the US" covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and "entering into" it by virtue of being produced.

 

4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

 

5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds ­ How to criminalize them, for more details.

 

6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

 

7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production ­ put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

 

8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

 

9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil- based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed the Five Pillars of Food Safety are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.

 

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied. It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review.

 

For further information, watch these videos

 

Food Laws ­ Forcing people to globalize?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwqUQ_HIlg&feature=related Corporate Rule? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXoJHG-er7A&feature=related Reclaiming Economies?

Friday, December 10, 2010

TOXIC TAP WATER



Dr. Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University in New York, gives a damning interview on the history of water fluoridation, the involvement of major industries to put certified toxic waste into our drinking water, and why government health authorities refuse to conduct scientific studies into the dangers of fluoridation. After watching this video I will never look at tap water the same way again.
Connett describes how he initially thought people who opposed fluoridation were “a bunch of whackos,” before conducting his own research which found that sodium fluoride was a toxic substance that contributed to a wide array of health defects. Heavy industry is barred from dumping this toxic waste into the sea by international law, but being able to sell it enables them to remove its hazardous characteristic and it becomes a product, explains Connett, polluting not only our water supply but also toothpaste and thousands of different foods.
Connett provides a detail run down of the many health problems caused by fluoride consumption, including dental fluorosis, which the Centers For Disease Control just recently announced was a problem for 41 per cent of children aged 12-15 in the United States, clearly indicating that children are being over-exposed to fluoride and that this is affecting other tissues and organs in the body, including bone disorders, a problem also wreaking havoc amongst adults in the United States as one in three now suffer from arthritis, which again is being caused by a build-up of toxic fluoride in the body. Connett also points to fluoride’s connection with thyroid disorders.
There have now been over 100 studies involving animals which show that fluoride damages the brain, stresses Connett, which is a particular concern for newborn babies who are susceptible to fluoride build up because of their weak blood-brain barrier. Connett cites numerous studies which prove a link between moderate exposure to fluoride and lowered IQ in children. Another important fact is that when studying the dental health of people in fluoridated areas and non-fluoridated areas, research shows that there are no health benefits at all that can be achieved through fluoridating the water supply.
In my opinion Fluoride’s most detrimental impact is on the pineal gland, which is a piece of brain tissue that sits in-between the two hemispheres of the brain. The reason it’s so important is because fluoride attracts to our pineal gland like a magnet! Researchers have found through animal studies that fluoride lowers the ability of the pineal gland to produce the hormone melatonin. The pineal gland has also been described as our spiritual third eye so the calcification of this gland can have dramatic effects on our ability to acess higher levels of consciousness. 
        Connett shows how out of control health authorities in the United States have become, putting out studies that claim vaccines containing mercury is perfectly safe for babies’ brains, while regulating mercury emissions in every other field because it is highly toxic. They have taken a similar approach in the fluoride debate, issuing studies that claim sodium fluoride, a toxic waste which has been heavily regulated in the industrial world for decades, has many beneficial health advantages when ingested into the human body. This is fostering widespread distrust in government health agencies because scientists involved with them are overseeing a “sickening” cover-up of the fluoride issue, states Connett.
The case against fluoride demolishes the notion that fluoride has any rightful place in our public water supply!

Monday, December 6, 2010

From I-pad to I-thought.


Will Mac’s next computer be the Thought-Pad?

A new study, funded by the NIH and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, involved subjects having their brains hooked up to a computer displaying two images, and through thought-control, the subjects were able to make the computer display one image and discard the other.

This study was composed of 12 participants with epilepsy who had wires implanted in their brains to search for the areas causing a seizure. Wires were inserted in the medial temporal lobe, which is responsible for memory and the ability to recognize faces. Connected to a computer, each subject was shown two pictures on a computer screen and told to choose one and focus their thoughts on until it was the only one visible. Subjects had a 70 percent rate of success in forcing one image to show exclusively.

Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, allow people to control computers with their thoughts. They offer real hope for people with prosthetic limbs or suffering from paralysis. In this study, however, the focus was more on understanding the brain’s thought and decision making processes instead of performing tasks, such as controlling a cursor, as in previous BCI studies. Interestingly, signals from only a handful of cells were needed to cause the change to one image.

As Dr. Babcock, M.D., Ph. D. and program director at NINDS said, "The remarkable aspects of this study are that we can concentrate our attention to make a choice by modulating so few brain cells and that we can learn to control those cells very quickly.” This is astounding, especially considering that visual comprehension, memories, information, and decision-making are all involved in a choice like the one in this study.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Google Investing Millions on Human Powered Monorail System.

Google's Investment for the Future "Google Motion"




Two years ago, the search engine giant, Google Inc., made headlines by announcing Project 10^100: a global call for ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible. Over 150,000 ideas were submitted, and "drive innovation in public transportation" was voted one of the five winning concepts.
In response, Google searched high and low for a company that had the most forward looking vision for the transportation industry, as well as the expertise to bring their futuristic ideas to life.
What they found was Shweeb: a space-age transportation device that combines the unique properties of monorail with recumbent cycle technologies. Shweeb get its root from the German word “schweben,” meaning to “float” or “suspend.”
So now the internet giant, Google Inc. is laying the groundwork for something totally new to offer the world. They recently came out with the demonstration of its driverless car, which uses artificial intelligence to run the machine. The car which sailed from its office at Mountain View campus to Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard, making the total journey of this wonder car of about 140,000 miles, making this first of its sort experiment
In total Google demonstrated a group of seven cars which cover almost 1000 miles without human intervention. The robotic cars that were used in the trial run were the hybrid versions of Toyota Prius, and one Audi TT. This next generation car is fitted with almost all the major scientific gadgets like video cameras, radar sensors, a laser range finder, and detailed maps which are used to navigate the road ahead.

Google Inc. had taken the services of the major engineers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who has worked their best for the development of this marvelous machine. Effective care has been taken on the safety mechanisms. The driver's seat is not left vacant, and a trained software operator is seated in the car to monitor the software programming.

The makers of the car are claiming it to be the future wonder in the automobile sector. As this machine would make the journey time more pleasant and will also result in lowering the accidental rates. Though, today the project is in infancy but holds lots of promises for the future and if the advancement in the Artificial Intelligence is properly harnessed, this is likely to be what the future transportation will look like.

Monday, October 25, 2010

GreenTech; Boosting Solar Energy


GreenTech; Boosting Solar Panel Energy Efficiency
"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait till oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison


As Green Technology expands, the consumption of solar energy has gained rapid momentum. Solar energy is the most abundant source of energy however its efficiency, while improving, is not quite amazing yet. But with upcoming inventions, tremendous effort is being put to increase efficiency. The biggest advantage of solar panels is that it is pollution free. The normal solar panel efficiency can easily be used for running various devices at home, while high efficiency panels are used to run industrial machines consuming high energy.
 The latest technologies are applied to increase the energy output and efficiency of the solar panels. Thin film solar cells coated with light absorbing materials have recently been put into use to increase solar panel efficiency to about 40%. Silicon wafer cells are the most widely used solar panels and have a high efficiency.
SiOnyx Solar Panel with Black Silicon Cells
 Modern technologies like magnetic solar modules, the advent of nanotechnology and nano particles can potentially boost efficiency up to 80%. The solar cells are made up of nano particles, which are capable of actually harnessing the infrared radiation from the sun in abundance, even at night! These are not only highly efficient but are also cost effective.
Harvard University spinoff company, SiOnyx, makes black silicon. They have recently commercialized a semiconductor technology with the potential to improve solar-cell efficiency and light sensors in digital cameras. 
    The Beverly, Mass based company announced their collaboration with laser manufacturer Coherent and Vulcan Capital, the investment firm started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The idea behind commercializing its "black silicon" technology in consumer electronics and solar-cell manufacturing comes from the increase of surface area once the silicon has been sprayed.
This semiconductor process blast silicon with a series of laser pulses in a controlled gas environment. The effect is to re-form the crystalline structure of silicon so that the surface captures more light.
CEO of SiOnyx, Stephen Saylor said, "It makes it almost a totally antireflective surface. Almost no light bounces off the stuff, so it's a very efficient way to capture more light in a layer of silicon."  
Other companies have techniques to improve the efficiency of solar cells and bring down the manufacturing costs. Silicon Valley-based Innovalight, for example, has signed deals with solar manufacturers to use its "silicon ink" technology which treats silicon material so that it produces more electricity.
Technology developed at IBM's research labs is inching closer to producing affordable commercial solar panels. Japanese manufacturer Solar Frontier said it has signed a deal to develop thin-film solar cells originally designed by IBM. With changes to the manufacturing process that incorporate its technology, solar-cell efficiency can improve by a few percentages.
One of the challenges for getting SiOnyx's black silicon technology into production is the cost of changing solar manufacturing equipment, but most companies have figured out that even a small efficiency improvement can be financially very significant.
IBM researchers last year showed they were able to improve the efficiency of solar cells made from a combination of copper, zinc, tin, sulfur and selenium,(CZTS) hitting an efficiency mark of 9.6 percent in the lab. Although they are generally less efficient than silicon, thin-film solar cells promise to be cheaper because less material is needed.
"We are interested in exploring CZTS for its evolutionary compatibility with our CIS thin film technology. The goals of the project correspond with Solar Frontier's mission to combine both economical and ecological solar energy solutions," Satoru Kuriyagawa, Solar Frontier's chief technology officer, said in a statement.
"The history of the solar market is incremental improvements," says CEO Steven Saylor. "But these small efficiency increases are dramatic given the overall scale of the energy industry."
I hope this helped you to get some idea about solar panel efficiency. If you are able to convert any percentage of the energy it takes to run your house with solar power, try to equip yourself with the best solar panels available with maximum output.


-Jean Claude Audet III






The Truth About PROP 19! Vote NO!!



“People think it’s legalization, it’s being sold as legalization—even though it’s the opposite of legalization.” - Dennis Peron, author of Prop. 215 that legalized medical marijuana in California 
 When I first read about Prop 19 I was almost proud that we, California voters, we’re making a progressive move forward that would inspire other states. When marijuana activists, growers, and consumers heard the news that the initiative would legalize cannabis in California, they thought it was a dream come true. To many, “legalization” implied that it would no longer be a crime to possess, consume or distribute marijuana. Cannabis consumers rejoiced at the idea of being able to buy from their neighbors with no legal retribution. Small-time growers envisioned being free to sell their product to anyone they choose with no legal repercussions. Marijuana activists thought it meant that people would stop getting arrested for pot, and that the drug war would finally be over. But now that the initiative is headed to ballot, many pro-legalization supporters are coming out against it. Why?
Both NORML and the MPP, the foremost cannabis law reform organizations in the country, have suggested we wait and make another attempt at legalization during the 2012 elections. Dale Gieringer, Director of California’s NORML, said, “I do think it’s going to take a few more years for us to develop a proposal that voters will be comfortable with.” Likewise, Bruce Mirken, MPP’s Director of Communications, was quoted as saying, “In our opinion, we should wait and build our forces and aim at 2012.”

Compared to the present status of cannabis in California, many marijuana activists see this initiative as a giant leap backward. Ironically, it appears that marijuana is more “legal” in California today than it would be if this initiative were to pass. But for an issue that would have such a direct and unprecedented impact on our daily lives, it’s crucial to decide your vote based on knowledge, rather than assumption.
Simply put, Prop 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative does not reflect most people’s ideas of what legalization would be. The media often incorrectly reports that this initiative calls for “full legalization” of marijuana. It DOES NOT.
 In fact, it reverses many of the freedoms marijuana consumers currently enjoy, pushes growers out of the commercial market, paves the way for the corporatization of cannabis, and creates new prohibitions and felonies where there are none now. Apparently, to be pro-legalization and pro-prop 19 are two different things entirely.
Everyone should let their friends and relatives know about this little-known, little-discussed “non-active cannabis” provision in Prop. 19.
Read Prop. 19! Its real purpose is not to legalize marijuana, but to allow big business to control THC, a valuable anti-cancer drug!
If Prop. 19 passes, it will allow large-scale cultivation of genetically-modified (GM) “non-active” (meaning THC-free) cannabis.
As we’ve seen time and time with the Monsanto law suits, Pollen-drift from GM cannabis will destroy average people’s ability to grow active cannabis with a normal THC content.
THC is the active ingredient in cannabis that causes tumors to shrink and cancer cells to engage in autophagy (self-destruction).
 If THC can cure cancer or at least prevent it or keep it in remission, it means that THC is an extremely valuable drug, as well as an extremely dangerous drug, (dangerous to the pharmaceutical industry!) Because a cure for cancer, and a cancer preventative, one that people could grow for themselves in a home garden, would cut into the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry that makes lots and lots of money from drugs to treat cancer.
And that’s where Prop. 19 comes in, and why Prop. 19 has a little sneaky section about allowing the commercial cultivation of “non-active cannabis.” Cannabis without any THC content is important because that is how, ultimately, THC will be controlled by big corporations, like Monsanto and Bayer, and not home gardeners.
So you’re asking what difference will it make if the State of California’s government allows genetically-modified, “non-active cannabis” to be grown throughout California? It will make a HUGE difference! It will ultimately mean the end of the average person’s ability to grow cannabis that is actually “active cannabis,” that’s cannabis with the valuable THC making ability still intact. And it will be practically impossible to have plants that are insusceptible to GM contamination.
That means that once genetically-modified, non-THC-creating, fields of genetically-modified cannabis is grown in California (and, if Big Pharma/Business gets its way, all over North America), the genetically-modified pollen will spread everywhere ,  thus polluting the genetics of normal cannabis. Ultimately, only cannabis plants grown inside, in state-of-the-art “clean labs” from which all such pollen can be excluded, will be capable of producing THC. (See, e.g., information about pollen-drift from genetically-modified crops: http://www.beyondpesticides.org/news/daily_news_archive/2003/2_13_03.htm)
Plans are in the works to pass Prop. 19-like legislation in many states.
Warn friends in other states to watch for similar efforts nationwide!
Monsanto wants you to vote Yes for Prop 19. They produce a plant with no THC content and obviously cannabis must be genetically modified to have no THC content. And that's exactly what non-active cannabis is!!  These genetically-modified cannabis plants that companies like Monsanto and other monster corporations have already developed strains with genes that “knock out” the plant’s ability to make THC.
For a 25-page long investigative report on how Prop. 19 is being backed by the Drug Policy Alliance, whose board of directors include heavy weights in Big Business and Big Pharma, including George Soros, a major shareholder in Monsanto, see http://community.kpfz.org/node/17. This report may also explain why NORML has been urging people to vote for Prop. 19, despite its many flaws: Soros also funds NORML!)
This is serious people! Don’t be fooled by the false promise of legalization! The truth of the matters is that Prop 19; The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative is flawed and we need to realize that Prop 19 is not the only path to legalization! We have come so far, and are now so close, it is imperative that we let the next step be the right one. Legalized marijuana is within reach, yet the movement could be set back with such a problematic initiative at the helm. Instead of rushing to pass a measure that prohibits marijuana under the guise of legalization, we can let them draft an initiative that calls for true legalization and that has the full support of marijuana law reform organizations and leaders of the movement.

The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative is rife with vagueness and ambiguity! Contrary to what you would expect it actually expands the War on Drugs. Prop 19 undermines the medical marijuana movement, arrests more people for marijuana, offers no protection for small farmers and in the end gives insufficient protection for medical marijuana users who are at the center of this battle because they’re the reason why we believe this plant is so important!
If Prop 19 passes there will be a high potential for monopolization because it provides no regulations to prevent corporate takeover of the industry. It will divide our community into poor, unlicensed, mom-and-pop gardeners versus rich, licensed, corporate farmers.
One thing is clear, this initiative is vague which is problematic. Prop 19 could very easily prove to be a Pandora’s box, and open up a shit-storm of unintended consequences. Beyond its vagueness, the impact that such a failed legalization initiative could have on the movement nation-wide could be disastrous.

This is not a question of whether to legalize or not to legalize. Legalization is the goal and it is inevitable. The question is whether we want to rush in and settle for an initiative that is so poorly-worded as to be ambiguous, and so vague as to be open to vast interpretation from judges, or we wait for the wording and other inconsistencies to be corrected for 2012. If we hold out for a perfect initiative we will wait forever. But if we at least hold out for an initiative that is direct, unambiguous, well-defined and clearly written, we will have a better opportunity to inspire the world to join the legalization movement.

Ultimately, the decision is not up to any organization; it’s up to us. Everyone should read the initiative for themselves and decide what they want.


“I hope people find the hope and inspiration to broadcast this, understand (the initiative), read it, and know that it's a step backwards. And we can do better. We will do better.” - Dennis Peron
-Jean Claude Audet III



Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Central Intelligence Agency Controls Drug Trade

 



The CIA has long secured the lucrative global drug market for Wall Street and for its own operational “off-the-books” purposes. “The CIA’s operational covert, black op’s, para-military, black-water, call it whatever you want, has at least 40 years of documentable paper trails tying their budgets to the sales of heroin and cocaine.
The CIA AKA “Cocaine Import Agency” has been in the drug running business since the 1950s. In Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Latin America, and Afghanistan, the CIA has remained at the forefront of the international illicit drug trade. The journalist Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News tied the CIA and the Contras to a large crack cocaine ring in Los Angeles. Webb paid with his life for revealing this information to the public. He tried to get in the way of the people who control a trillion dollar syndicate. And it’s a fact that more than 95 percent of the revenue generated by opium and cocaine production is siphoned off to these business syndicates, organized crime families and banking and financial institutions.

In an amazing propaganda segment, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera talks with a soldier about U.S. support of the opium trade in Afghanistan. The soldier tells Rivera he does not like supporting Afghan opium production. The U.S., he insists, has turned a blind eye to the cultivation because it is a cultural thing. He’d rather the Afghans grow watermelons. What they fail to mention is that before the 1980 Afghanistan produced zero percent of the Worlds heroin so the “it’s a cultural thing” argument is bullshit!
The thing is that Afghanistan grows poppies because CIA paid farmers since the 1980’s to grow poppy fields rather than watermelons!  The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO forces and the British military. In recent reports British occupation forces have even promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements! One was reported to say, “Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers do not destroy poppy fields,” The radio promo said. “They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. They do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods.”
 This is basically the same excuse used by the Bush and Obama Administration based on their display of a complete lack of interest in the Afghan opium trade. And especially since 9/11, the White House and Pentagon have gone out of their way to avoid taking on the Afghan drug lords from the very outset of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since it started a decade ago and currently on into today.
It was reported by The New York Times (link below)  a few months ago that Hamid Karzi, the president of Afghanistan, was on the CIA payroll and intimately involved in the opium trade. The rest of the mainstream news and the corporate media tell us the drug trade is run by the evil Taliban. They never seem to report that before September 11, 2001, and before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had imposed a ban on opium production! This resulted in opium production collapsing by more than 90 per cent. It was the U.S. supported Northern Alliance that came to the rescue and began protecting the production of raw opium!
Under the interim government of U.S. appointed Hamid Karzai, opium poppy cultivation once again began to skyrocket and opium markets were restored. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 per cent in 2002 in relation to its 2001 level! The UNDCP estimated 2002 opium poppy cultivation would cover an area between 45,000 and 65,000 hectares. A hectare equals 2.4 acres! Opium cultivation in 2001 had fallen to an estimated 7,606 hectares! According to the UN, in 2007 alone Afghanistan supplied 93 percent of the world’s supply of opium.
So where does all of this money end up? We’re talking hundreds of Billions every year. Well, in many instances, drug money ends up as liquid investment capital for a wide range of organizations. Former Managing Director of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read has long alleged that the banksters launder imponderable amounts of drug money. According to the Department of Justice, the US launders between $500 billion – $1 trillion annually. Imagine what percentage of that is narcotic dollars! It is probably safe to assume that at least a few hundred billion relates to US drug import-exports trade.

This bombshell article in the New York Times lifts the lid on how the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the suspected kingpin of the country’s booming opium trade, has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years. However, the article serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to address the fact that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the agenda to reinstate the Golden Crescent drug trade.
The CIA pays Karzai and his brother for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.”  The Times reveals how, after security forces discovered a huge tractor-trailer full of heroin outside Kandahar in 2004, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs.”
In 2006, following the discovery of another cache of heroin, “United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai.”
The Times article  discusses how the CIA uses Karzai as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban. He is also directly implicated in the manufacturing of phony ballots and polling stations that were attributed to the President’s disputed election victory.
Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors.
That’s why the Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan! The U.N says that the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan is exporting the equivalent of 3,500 tons that leave the country each year. Other figures put the number far higher, at around 6,100 tons a year.
The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to mention that behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.
 The notion that the “Taliban benefits from the drug trade” and that the U.S. is trying to stop it, as both Bush and Obama claimed, seems to be  the complete opposite of what is actually happening.
What is actually happening is that their flooding the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits!
The New York Times implies that the drug lord Karzai being on the CIA payroll is just an embarrassing coincidence. In reality he is a middle man working for the U.S. military-industrial complex’s whose obvious control of the drug trade in Afghanistan stretches back decades and was only interrupted when the Taliban came to power.
So this is the real history of the Afghan opium trade that the Times won’t tell you, and in failing to do so the article serves only to whitewash the true scale of the agenda behind the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and the real role that the CIA plays in the world wide drug trade!
-Jean Claude Audet III

Monday, October 18, 2010

Epidemic? Half of US teens ‘meet criteria for mental disorder’


Epidemic? Half of US teens ‘meet criteria for mental disorder’





            According to the study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, around half of US teens meet the criteria for a mental disorder and nearly one in four report having a mood, behavior or anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life, American researchers say fifty-one percent of boys and 49 percent of girls aged 13-19 have a mood, behavior, anxiety or substance use disorder
In 22.2 percent of teens, the disorder was so severe it impaired their daily activities and caused great distress, says the study led by Kathleen Merikangas of the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH).
"The prevalence of severe emotional and behavior disorders is even higher than the most frequent major physical conditions in adolescence, including asthma or diabetes," the study says.
Mental problems do not get the same attention from public health authorities even though they cost US families around a quarter of a trillion dollars a year, according to the study.
Around nine percent of all US children have asthma and less than a quarter of one percent of all people under the age of 20 have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Merikangas and a team of researchers analyzed data from the National Comorbidity Study-Adolescent Supplement, which surveyed more than 10,000 US teens.
The study is the first to track the prevalence of a broad range of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of US teens.
They found that nearly a third of the teens met the criteria for the most common mental disorder among US youth, anxiety disorders, which include social phobia and panic "attacks".
This class of disorder also had the earliest median onset age, occurring in children as young as six years old.
Behavior disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, were the next most common condition (19.1 percent), followed by mood disorders (14.3 percent) such as depression.
Eleven percent of teens with a mood disorder, 10 percent with behavior disorders and eight percent who had anxiety disorders, especially social phobics, met the criteria for severe impairment, meaning their condition affected their day-to-day life and caused them great distress.
Teen mental disorder rates mirror those seen in adults, suggesting that most adults develop a mental disorder before adulthood, say the researchers, calling for earlier intervention and prevention, and more research to determine what the risk factors are for mental disorders in youth.