Documentaries on Government Spying: “What Was Illegal Under Nixon Is Legal Under Obama”

“Silenced” and “1971” deal with 43 years of surveillance and retaliation against whistleblowers

By Steve Pond

Global Research, April 28, 2014

The Wrap 19 April 2014

Region: USA

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

Government surveillance, abuses of power and the supression of dissent kicked into high gear after 9/11, one documentary argued at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night.
But the whistleblowers who exposed recent activities were hardly breaking new ground, because some of the same things were going on more than four decades ago, another Tribeca doc pointed out.
Both “Silenced” and “1971” tackle issues that reverberate in light of Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures of the extent of domestic spying, and the risks some citizens take to expose activity they feel subverts the Constitition. The two films made for bracing and frightening conversations both onscreen and off during the festival’s first weekend.
One key point: Disclosure of illegal government activities was a lot more damaging to the presidency of Richard Nixon, driven from office in 1973 because of government abuses and the subsequent coverup, than it was to the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“The things that were illegal in Nixon’s era are now legal under the Obama administration,” whistleblower and former National Security Agency staffer Thomas Drake said following the premiere of James Spione’s “Silenced.”
Drake is one of the subjects of “Silenced,” and a participant in the Q&A that made up part of the festival’s “Tribeca Talks” series of post-screening conversations. Another subject, attorney for former Justice Department lawyer Jesselyn Radack, was also on hand; the third, onetime CIA agent John Kiriakou, is serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison for confirming the name of an undercover agent to a reporter.
Drake and Kiriakou were all charged with violating the Espionage Act, a 1917 law that had virtually nothing to do with whistleblowing and had been used less than five times in 90 years before the Obama administration dusted it off.
“I had to finish the movie quickly because I wanted to be timely with the Edward Snowden revelations, but also because it could be a never-ending story,” said Spione. “While we were making the movie, there were six Espionage Act prosecutions under Obama. Then seven, then eight.”
At the same time, he said, the extent of government spying on its own populace has been shown to be far more extensive than he initially imagined.
“I don’t know if there’s any such thing as paranoia anymore,” he said of the Snowden revelations. “The scope of the program is just enormous.”
“Silenced” makes the damning case that the federal government, in hanging onto the expanded powers granted after 9/11, selectively uses the threat of prosecution not to go after true spies, but to harass whistleblowers for revealing illegal activities or government scandals. In the film, executive produced by Susan Sarandon, Spione artfully mixes three case studies from three different government agencies: Kiriakou spoke out against the use of waterboarding, Drake found the NSA hiding from Congress its culpability in missing signs that the 9/11 attacks were coming, and Radack grew incensed that the Justice Department was trying to hide emails that proved it ignored American citizen John Walker Lindh’s constitutional rights.
All three spoke out – “If I remained silent, I’d be complicit in the subversion of the American Constitution,” Drake says in the film – and all three were charged under the Espionage Act. Only Kiriakou, who has young children and could not afford to fight the charges and lose, went to prison; the government dropped the charges against Drake, and was scolded by a judge for bringing them in the first place.
Radack is now director of national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, and counts Snowden among her clients.
Although Spione’s film is at times heavy-handed in its use of portentous black-and-white reenactments, it is effective is showing how the weight of the government can be used against citizens under the anything-goes heading of the War on Terror.
“The biggest leaker of classified information in our nation is the U.S. government,” said Radack in the Q&A moderated by Pulitzer-winning Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman. “It happens on a daily basis to make themselves look good. But if someone does it to expose the biggest scandals of my generation, the full force of the government comes down on you.”
(Photo at top, left to right: Gellman, Spione, Radack and Drake.)
When an audience member asked if people who aren’t doing anything illegal should really be concerned about the government keeping tabs on their activity, Drake offered a quick answer.
“The phrase you use, ‘You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide,’ is attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda,” he said. “If you lose the First and Fourth Amendments, we’re no longer America. It’s that simple.”
In a fascinating backstory to the events chronicled in “Silenced,” Tribeca premiered Johanna Hamilton’s doc “1971” on Friday night, and ran it again on Saturday. Her film also deals with citizens uncovering government wrongdoing – but as the title suggests, it goes back more than four decades, to the height of protests against the Vietnam War.
“1971” details a break-in at the FBI offices in Media, Penn. in March ’71, in which eight activists stole bureau files and mailed them to press organizations. The files revealed a pattern of illegal infiltration and disruption of anti-war, black-power and women’s-liberation groups, exposing the abuses of Hoover’s bureau and identifying the incendiary Counter Intelligence Program, COINTEL-PRO, for the first time.
The revelations led to the first congressional investigation of the FBI, but the eight activists who staged the raid were never caught, and they never revealed themselves publicly until Hamilton’s film. Their story is both a cat-and-mouse thriller, told in well-handled reenactments, and an examination of the the abuses of government power that could hardly be timelier.
In the end, perhaps sadly, a line from “1971” may best sum up the message of that movie and of “Silenced.” Interviewed on tape more than 20 years ago, a former FBI agent says of the bureau’s abuses, “It’s the nature of government. It happened. It will happen.”
CORRECTION: The original version of this story said that Jesselyn Radack was charged under the Espionage Act. She was not.

The Biggest Secret About Banking Has Just Gone Mainstream

Banks Create Money Out of Thin Air … Conferring Enormous Windfall Profits At the Expense of the People

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, April 28, 2014

Washington's Blog

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

We’ve pointed out for 4 1/2 years that banks create money out of thin air. Specifically, it has now been conclusively proven that loans come first … and then deposits FOLLOW.This is the most important secret about modern banking … because it debunks one of the biggest myths preventing a strong economy, challenges one of the main pork barrel profit centers for big banks … andopens up incredible opportunities for a prosperous economy.This odd and counter-intuitive – but crucially important – truth has now gone mainstream …Specifically, the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf – one of the world’s most influential mainstream financial writers -  says that, since banks create money out of thin air, they should be stripped of this power, and limited to normal depository functions. Wolf indicates the centrality and importance of the issue with his subtitle:

The giant hole at the heart of our market economies needs to be plugged.

And Business Insider – the world’s most popular financial news blog – is currently running this as its top two front page stories:(Read the Business Insider stories here and here.)If we reclaimed the power to create credit from the too big to fail banks, we would all be much wealthier…

Stunning Facts About How the Banking System Really Works … And How It Is Destroying America

Posted on March 27, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Paintings by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com.

Reclaiming the Founding Fathers’ Vision of Prosperity

To understand the core problem in America today, we have to look back to the very founding of our country.
The Founding Fathers fought for liberty and justice. But they also fought for a sound economy and freedom from the tyranny of big banks:
“[It was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
- John Adams
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”
- John Adams
“If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied”.
— Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the Government, to whom it properly belongs.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, ‘friends of paper money. They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. ”
-Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet “Economic Solutions”
Indeed, everyone knows that the American colonists revolted largely because of taxation without representation and related forms of oppression by the British. See this and this. But – according to Benjamin Franklin and others in the thick of the action – a little-known factor was actually the main reason for the revolution.
To give some background on the issue, when Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1764, this is what he observed:

When he arrived, he was surprised to find rampant unemployment and poverty among the British working classes… Franklin was then asked how the American colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor houses. He reportedly replied:
“We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.”
In 1764, the Bank of England used its influence on Parliament to get a Currency Act passed that made it illegal for any of the colonies to print their own money. The colonists were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold. Anyone lacking in those precious metals had to borrow them at interest from the banks.
Only a year later, Franklin said, the streets of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were in England. The money supply had suddenly been reduced by half, leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these workers could have provided. He maintained that it was “the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War.” This, he said, was the real reason for the Revolution: “the colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.”

(for more on the Currency Act, see this.)
Alexander Hamilton echoed similar sentiments:

Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, said that paper money had composed three-fourths of the total money supply before the American Revolution. When the colonists could not issue their own currency, the money supply had suddenly shrunk, leaving widespread unemployment, hunger and poverty in its wake. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, people in the 1770s were keenly aware of who was responsible for their distress.

As historian Alexander Del Mar wrote in 1895:

[T]he creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies…coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America [were] acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was thereafter impossible . . . [T]here was but one course for the crown to pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of rebellion…Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution. they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!

And British historian John Twells said the same thing:

The British Parliament took away from America its representative money, forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins … Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies . . . discontent became desperation, and reached a point . . . when human nature rises up and asserts itself.

In fact, the Americans ignored the British ban on American currency, and:

“Succeeded in financing a war against a major power, with virtually no ‘hard’ currency of their own, without taxing the people.”

Indeed, the first act of the New Continental Congress was to issue its own paper scrip, popularly called the Continental.
Franklin and Thomas Paine later praised the local currency as a “corner stone” of the Revolution. And Franklin consistently wrote that the American ability to create its own credit led to prosperity, as it allowed the creation of ample credit, with low interest rates to borrowers, and no interest to pay to private or foreign bankers .

Not Ancient History … One of the Most Vital Issues of Today

Is this just ancient history?
No.
The ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has largely been lost to private bankers. The lion’s share of new credit creation is done by private banks, so – instead of being able to itself create money without owing interest – the government owes unfathomable trillions in interest to private banks.

Read this background to understand how money is really created in our crazy current banking system. And read this and this to learn why we are paying trillions of dollars to the big banks in unnecessary interest costs.

America may have won the Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.

No More Federal than Federal Express

While many Americans assume that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency, the Fed itself admits that the 12 Federal Reserve banks are private. See this, this, this and this.
Indeed, the money-center banks in New York control the New York Fed, the most powerful Fed bank. Until recently, Jamie Dimon – the head of JP Morgan Chase – was a Director of the New York Fed. Everyone knows that the Fed is riddled with conflicts of interest and corruption.
The long-time Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee (Charles McFadden) said on June 10, 1932:

Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies ….

And congressman Dennis Kucinich said:

The Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express!

The Fed Is Owned By – And Is Enabling – The Worst Behavior of the Big Banks

Most people now realize that the big banks have become little more than criminal enterprises.
No wonder a stunning list of economists, financial experts and bankers are calling for them to be broken up.
But the Federal Reserve is enabling the banks. Indeed, the giant banks and the Fed are part of a malignant, symbiotic relationship.
Specifically:

The corrupt, giant banks would never have gotten so big and powerful on their own. In a free market, the leaner banks with sounder business models would be growing, while the giants who made reckless speculative gambles would have gone bust. See this, this and this.
It is the Federal Reserve, Treasury and Congress who have repeatedly bailed out the big banks, ensured they make money at taxpayer expense, exempted them from standard accounting practices and the criminal and fraud laws which govern the little guy, encouraged insane amounts of leverage, and enabled the too big to fail banks – through “moral hazard” – to become even more reckless.
Indeed, the government made them big in the first place. As I noted in 2009:

As MIT economics professor and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson points out today, the official White House position is that:

(1) The government created the mega-giants, and they are not the product of free market competition

***

(3) Giant banks are good for the economy

***
The [corrupt, captured government "regulators"] and the giant banks are part of a single malignant, symbiotic relationship.

Indeed, the Fed and their big bank owners form a crony capitalist cartel that is destroying the economy for most Americans. The Fed has been bailing out the giant banks while shafting the little guy.
Fed boss Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving bailout money were healthy, when they were not. They were insolvent. By choosing the big banks over the little guy, the Fed is dooming both.
No wonder many top economists say that we should end – or strip most of the powers from – the Federal Reserve.
Even long-time Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan says that we should end the Fed.

A Better Alternative

Conservative and liberal economists both point out that the big banks are already state-sponsored institutions … so the government should create a little competition through public banking.
State-owned public banks – like North Dakota has – would take the power away from the big banks, and give it back to the people … as the Founding Fathers intended.
Even a 12-year old sees the wisdom of public banking.
And see this.

Top U.S. Diplomat: Russia Has Betrayed the “New World Order”

 "our"  elites r git~in "their" ass's handed 2 em  ... BRICS r push~in back ,folks  still don't "think" so ???  READ ... or maybe ,just maybe the "rest" of the World ( & off)  r  get~in ..tired of "their" (western elites)  ..bullshit hum ? 

RUSSIAN SU-24 BOMBER SQUARES OFF AGAINST USS DONALD COOK // http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/04/russian-su-24-fighter-bomber-squares-uss-donald-cook/

Moscow’s refusal to acquiesce to NATO over Ukraine signals new cold war

By Paul Joseph Watson

Global Research, April 28, 2014

Infowars 25 April 2014

Region: Russia and FSU

In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT

Top diplomat Christopher R. Hill says that Russia’s response to the Ukraine crisis means that Moscow has betrayed the “new world order” it has been a part of for the last 25 years.

In a piece for the influential Project Syndicate publication, Hill, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Korea, writes that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and “intimidation” campaign against Kiev has brought an end to a 25-year historical period, accusing Moscow of engaging in “regression, recidivism, and revanchism”.

Hill’s definition of the “new world order” is Russia’s post-Glasnost involvement in “Western institutions, a market economy, and a multi-party parliamentary democracy.”

“This new world order held for almost 25 years. Except for Russia’s brief war with Georgia in August 2008 (a conflict generally seen as instigated by reckless Georgian leadership), Russia’s acquiescence and commitment to the “new world order,” however problematic, was one of the great accomplishments of the post-Cold War era,” writes Hill.

Hill, who is an advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “global strategy company” with tentacles deep within the White House and the State Department, goes on to accuse Moscow of reviving the days of the Soviet empire, adding that, “Russia….no longer seems interested in what the West has been offering for the last 25 years: special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavors.”

Arguing that western sanctions are unlikely to have any impact, Hill asserts that NATO should prepare itself for the long haul, warning that Russia “will seek to make similar trouble among former Soviet “allies,” invoking the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to suggest that Moscow may launch aggression against other eastern European nations.

Hill’s assertion that Russia has turned its back on the “new world order” illustrates how Moscow is seeking to lead an alternate BRICS-aligned faction that will pose a major threat to the unipolar future envisaged by the United States and NATO.

In other words, whether Russia wants one or not, the western elite is digging in for a new Cold War and the world may be entering the most dangerous period of history since the Cuban missile crisis.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF CAMILLA'S BROTHER MARK SHAND

Posted by George Freund on April 26, 2014

There are sudden deaths that rival the greatest of the mystery writer's abilities. One last week surely fits the case. It was the death of Camilla of Parker Bowles fame's brother Mark Strand aged 62. In a mysterious twist of fate he was leaving a party which was alleged to be the greatest day in his life. It was the last day of his life as well. He was done in by a revolving door at the Gramercy Park Hotel's Rose Bar In Manhattan. My Columbo bones are a boil with the absurdity of the matter. How could someone actually come in contact with a door used with no unforeseen consequences for many long years and actually get killed? It is a long convoluted tale, but one that must be told because the writer of the mystery may very well have seeded the outcome. He was Alfred Hitchcock. He authored many fine tales of the bizarre over the years. His TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents coined the phrase Alfred Hitchcock Presents showed how rotten respectable people could be. It is a strange irony because the woman he was staying with in New York was an attractive model in the company of the master Alfred along with the likes of Andy Warhol. She was identified as Barbara Allen Kwiatkowska. She once asked the master what was the best murder weapon?

The answer was not made clear, but in his show 'Lamb to the Slaughter' it was one that could not be readily identified as such. How could a mere door that revolves ever be expected to be used as an instrument in the demise of a famous person. There are several cases though where injury was sustained. One was even in Manhattan. A 91 year old woman had fallen and broken her hip at the Jumeirah Essex House. The master would have been impressed. 

Mark with his sister Camilla

It all started Tuesday April 22nd at a charity event for Elephant Family Mark's effort to protect the Asian elephant. It included a Faberge egg hunt with an auction fundraising that raised $1 million at Sotheby's. The event moved to the Diamond Horseshoe for an after party and then to the Gramercy Park Hotel's Rose Bar where the incident occurred in the early morning hours of the 23rd. Mr. Shand was the life of the party revelling in dance and drink. He was taking the usual cardiac medications the press termed a cocktail of blood pressure medications. The side effects of same can cause dizziness and more. They are not meant to be mixed with copious amounts of alcohol. His smoking habit would counteract the effect narrowing blood vessels the drugs are trying to open. It was a recipe for disaster. 

The 'crime' scene

There are two distinct story lines on the event. The most commonly accepted one is that Mark took a smoke break and went out to the street with his hands in his pockets; he lost his balance going through the revolving door crashing into the sidewalk fracturing his skull. Another version had him hitting a tree. A third version said he was leaving for the night. It all happened at 2:30 a.m. An ambulance was called and they waited until the police arrived at 02:50 to remove the body. He must have been obviously deceased if they waited crucial moments to get permission to do that. Regardless something smells rotten in Manhattan. Our man Shand was a notorious womanizer. What if one of them took the mating game a little more serious than others? Then we could have a mystery worthy of the master.

Ruth Powys and Mark. The secret love seems a bit distant.

At the function Mark's 'secret' love and CEO of his Elephant trust was in attendance. They were rumoured to have been an item since Mark's divorce from his wife Clio in 2009. Perhaps they were an item prior to the breakup as well. She is Ruth Powys. She started with the trust in 2004. She has a prior arrest record dating from 1997 relating to a protest of Virgin Cola's exploitative advertising. Her twin sister Mary is also working for the Elephant trust. In a statement she said, "We were not together at this moment." She didn't attend the last session at the Rose Bar. She was at the dinner and the after party event. There is speculation that Mark was under the spell of another woman Nancy Dell'Olio described in some press accounts as a 'maneater.'

Nancy Dell'Olio

I would anticipate the average male would last less than ten seconds in resisting the 'maneater.' I would suspect the fiancee would last even less before the pots and pans flew in his general direction. Mark denied any romance with Nancy. He said, "I am more likely to have an affair with a ripe pomegranate! And I am very fond of pomegranates." Well that some pair of pomegranates. His choice of words probably didn't win his case with Ruth. 

Album cover girl Barbara. We can see why Mark needs heart pills.

Mark was staying in New York with another female friend Barbara Allen Kwiatkowska. She was a model in the late 70's being the cover girl on the album “The Bride Stripped Bare.” Well somebody's got to do it I guess. She was involved with Andy Warhol and saw the light when she met Mark. She asked Hitchcock the million dollar question. She could have had access to his meds as well if we desired mystery. She only attended the dinner because someone offered her a ride home. I guess it's hard to get a cab in Manhattan after midnight when they roll up the sidewalks. We are left to wonder what the master would have answered with regard to the best murder weapon question. I'm sure we can surmise it would be the one that wouldn't ever be considered one like a common revolving door. We haven't seen the surveillance video, but we wonder if Mark was alone or was there another person using it too. Smoking is usually a social occasion especially at a party. 

They say where there's a will there's a way. We wonder if another person pulled a trick like this? It most likely wouldn't kill him, but it could knock him to the ground where the sidewalk could finish him off. I don't think even the great Hitchcock could have crafted such a thought. Maybe no one ever has, but it is hard to believe Mark died in this fall. To fracture the skull you would generally have to pile drive into the sidewalk. That would imply a loss of consciousness. Mark was known to drink to excess. Another femme fatale who called him the gentleman Tarzan said so. Combined with the drug cocktail, that may have done it. 

Marie says she and Shand would spend whole weekends in bed: making love, drinking champagne, eating pasta, watching movies and then making love all over again

The plot gets more interesting with the fact that Mark's wife was the niece of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. That means nothing to almost everyone except the Royal family because he was close to Frances Shand Kydd Princess Diana's mother. The rumour mill has implied that Frances was in trouble in her marriage around the time Diana was born and Sir James may very well be her father. That would sure mess up the gene pool, and if you noticed her surname matches Mark's and another famous character known for action on the high seas Captain William Kidd notorious pirate. There is another William Kyd pirate in the 15th century.



Captain Kidd in New York Harbor, ca. 1920 painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

There may be more to Skull & Bones than we have been lead to believe. The bloodlines of the monarchy may not be so pure as they are touted to be. Diana died with a great secret on her lips that put her in fear of her life and most likely provided the cause to end it. Was she a bastard child? Was the Royal family hoodwinked? Are the Spencers really in the broth? Dead men tell no tales and another one has bit the dust. Was there a conspiracy in the death of Mark Shand? Could a mysterious hand have arranged his fall in Hitchcock style? Could a jilted love flame had the nerve to do it? Are there pirates out for the Elephant Family funds? Alfred Hitchcock Presents was seen in company with the Twilight Zone. In some episode in another dimension of time and space is there a woman trapped in a revolving door for eternity unable to escape?

Exclusive: NY Judge in Largest Bankruptcy Case in History Receives IRS & SEC Whistleblower Filing

24 April 2014 Here’s something that I think needs no comment… read carefully:

**WORLD EXCLUSIVE BREAKING STORY.** **MUST CREDIT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST MARINKA PESCHMANN**
Judge Martin Glenn. Photo credit Cornell University Law School Creditor and Whistleblower evidence alleges securities fraud, income tax fraud and income tax evasion. Further investigation is necessary to protect millions of homeowners. New York City, New York – U. S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York’s Judge Martin Glenn, presiding over the simultaneous Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings of 51 residential mortgage companies, received a whistleblower filing package today from one of the creditors in this case, a private American citizen, Greg Morse.
The Internal Revenue Service and Securities Exchange Commission received the same package today. Among its contents is Morse’s whistleblower submission of IRS Form 211—Application for Award for Original Information, and SEC Form TCR—SEC Tip, Complaint or Referral, accompanied by voluminous supporting documentation. These federal agencies are mandated to investigate allegations of corruption and fraud.
The 51 bankrupt residential mortgage companies are directly or indirectly owned by Residential Capital, also known as ResCap.
Morse, a commissioned officer was honorably discharged from the U. S. Air Force and the U. S. Navy as an F-4 Phantom fighter pilot. He was one of the initial people who uncovered and successfully prosecuted a federal fraud case regarding the savings and loan debacle in the late 1980’s.
Like millions of Americans, Morse, believed when he refinanced his home mortgage in 2008 that it was legitimate but found out otherwise when he discovered that his chain of title had been broken by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS). His home in Texas was not and is not in foreclosure. He has never been late or missed a mortgage payment.
According to N.Y. bankruptcy court records, as of March, 2012, at stake are over 2.4 million mortgages and Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) representing over 6.2 million Americans, according to U. S. census statistics.
The value of this bankruptcy case, as of today, is well over $400 billion—making it the largest bankruptcy in history.
There has been virtually no press coverage of this bankruptcy that affects the entire U.S. economy, millions of homeowners and nations who purchased RMBS securities. It far exceeds, in dollar volume and social impact, the General Motors bankruptcy which garnered front page media coverage for months.
68 percent of these mortgages in this N.Y. bankruptcy are either owned, insured, or guaranteed by Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Purportedly, a significant number of the mortgages are owned by RMBS Trusts.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in conservatorship (bankruptcy). Their conservator is the U. S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). $45 billion is guaranteed by Ginnie Mae.
It appears this single bankruptcy represents at least 3% of all active U.S. residential mortgages.
Morse’s whistleblower filing package that was received by Judge Glenn today includes his 279 page jurat affidavit in support of IRS Form 211 and SEC Form TCR. His jurat affidavit is supported by 11,000 pages of corroborated, publicly sourced and court admissible evidence related to the mortgage crisis, the 2008 economic crash, his 2011 Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) civil case addressing his fraudulent mortgage—and the alleged acts of securities fraud, income tax fraud and income tax evasion.
As a court designated creditor, Morse has had access to documents through the official court-ordered website for large bankruptcies. He and his team have scoured through court documents and, to the best of their knowledge, it appears that these issues have not been introduced or investigated by the bankruptcy court.

Cars That Drive Themselves. Imagine Never Seeing An Accident Again

& just think ..when "they" (nazi) ...need 2 Q's  ya ...yer car ill ..drive ya right 2 nazi head 1/4's lol Oops  !  fucking gooooooooooooogle "they" r  just doing ...gods  ...work lol  ...which 1 is it ...again :o    http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/04/28/cars-that-drive-themselves-imagine-never-seeing-an-accident-again/

April 28, 2014 by Evan Kail.

It’s 2034. You’re driving along, minding your business, when suddenly you see the one thing that every motorist fears – red and blue lights flashing in your rearview camera. You’re being pulled over, but it’s not for speeding. It’s for driving.

Welcome to the roads of tomorrow—a place where human error is non-existent and the roads are automated freeways of locomotive perfection. There is no more traffic, no more accidents, and most importantly, no more fatalities.

By 2020, GM, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi all plan to have autonomous “self-driving” cars available to the public. Google has been working on the technology for almost a decade now, and autonomous cars are already street-legal in California, Nevada, Florida, and Washington DC.

Google has been working on this technology for almost a decade.

Cars have been making amazing leaps in technology recently, but the autonomous leap will no doubt be the biggest and most crucial in shaping vehicles of the future. But with autonomous cars, the devil is in the details. Although the autonomous car’s computer will be able to navigate and drive like a professional, there is still the question of road practicality. The most efficient way to implement these cars would be to introduce a set of algorithms in the form of a transportation grid. In this case, every single computer on the road would work together in order to navigate all the individual cars through traffic as part of an efficient, collective whole. When you want to go somewhere, you would simply enter the data into your car’s computer. The data is then uploaded into the collective grid, and your destination is worked into the system to move you as one with the rest of traffic. By working together in this fashion, traffic would virtually be non-existent. Cars would have no need to drive slow or stop, even in high volume. The only real reason traffic exists in the first place is because of human error.

But what happens to the human driver in this scenario? The answer is simple, yet grim—they do not exist. In order to maintain this utopia of perfect locomotion, human error cannot be allowed to interfere. There is no human that is incapable of error, no matter how good a driver they may be. For the sanctity of the collective grid itself, danger and unpredictability completely undermine the purpose of such an algorithm. Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death for human beings. It only makes sense that our species would evolve out of one of the deadliest aspects of society. Sure, there will be heavy resistance, but ultimately it simply won’t make sense to endure danger when the technology eliminates it.

Horses were once considered a necessity for daily life. Then the car came around and did away with our dependency on animal-based transportation. Perhaps the non-autonomous car will go the same way. After all, what would be the point of having a car that wasn’t street legal? Unless you are wealthy enough to take such a car to a private track, it holds no value or practicality for you as a driver. In today’s world, horses (in America) are largely considered to be an expensive luxury. Perhaps the same will be true with non-autonomous cars and human driving. It could become a privilege for the wealthy to do on private roads and tracks, rendering the act of driving as an old nostalgia of a different age.

Driver Finds Himself Surrounded By Cops With Guns Out After Automatic License Plate Reader Misreads His Plate

just gotta love ..thum nazis  huh

from the automatic-bullet-catcher-creator dept

Automatic license plate readers can scan plates at a rate of one per second. Nationwide, several hundred million plate/location records have been captured and stored by a variety of contractors. Mathematics alone says mistakes will be made. Except when mistakes are made with ALPRs, they tend to put citizens on the bad side of men with guns.

According to the Prairie Village Post, earlier this month lawyer Mark Molner was driving through a Kansas City suburb on his way home from his wife’s sonogram. All of a sudden, his BMW was blocked in front by a police car as another officer on a motorcycle pulled up behind him. (His pregnant wife witnessed the incident from a nearby parked car.)

According to what Molner told the Post, one of the officers then approached his car with his gun out.

“He did not point it at me, but it was definitely out of the holster,” Molner told the Post. “I am guessing that he saw the shock and horror on my face, and realized that I was unlikely to make (more of) a scene.”

The mistake prompting this guns-drawn approach of Molner's video could have been made by anybody. The ALPR read a "7" as a "2" and returned a hit for a stolen vehicle. The hit also returned info for a stolen Oldsmobile, which clearly wasn't what Molner was driving. But that could mean the plates were on the wrong vehicle, which is also an indication of Something Not Quite Right.

The PD's statement on the incident is fairly sensible and measured.

“The officer has discretion on whether or not to unholster his weapon depending on the severity of the crime. In this case he did not point it at the driver, rather kept it down to his side because he thought the vehicle could possibly be stolen. If he was 100 percent sure it was stolen, then he would have conducted a felony car stop which means both officers would have been pointing guns at him while they gave him commands to exit the vehicle.”

That makes sense, but there's still a chance this situation could have been averted. Molner's plate triggered the hit several miles before he was pulled over as pursuing police were unable to verify the plate due to traffic density. But it appears the officers made a last-minute decision to perform the unverified stop shortly before Molner would have driven out of the PD's jurisdiction. The stop occurred on the city/state boundary between Kansas and Missouri.

This lack of verification is what bothers Molner.

“I’m armchair quarterbacking the police, which is not a good position to be in,” Molner told the Post. “But before you unholster your gun, you might want to confirm that you’ve got the people you’re looking for.”

So, when the plate reader kicked back a bad hit, the cops did attempt to verify the plate, but it looks very much like they overrode procedural safeguards in order to prevent possibly losing a collar.

As these plate readers become more common, the number of erroneous readings will increase. If the verification safeguards are followed, problems will be minimal. But if anyone's in a hurry... or the vehicle description is too vague... or it's night... or someone's had a bad/slow day... or if the end of the month is approaching and the definitely-not-a-quota hasn't been met… bad things will happen to good people.

Placing too much faith in an automated system can have terrible consequences. Molner came out of this without extra holes, electricity or bruises. Others may not be so lucky.

What Does It Say About The US Press That The Toughest Interview Keith Alexander Has Is From A Comedian?

hehe "our" so~called media ... bunch of whore's , suck~in the ..ass pipe :O

from the too-much-and-none-of-it-good dept

Last night was the debut of comedian John Oliver's new show on HBO called Last Week Tonight. Oliver, of course, is well known from his years on The Daily Show (though, if you're not familiar with it, you should also listen to his podcast, The Bugle). On his first show, Oliver was able to get former NSA boss Keith Alexander, who retired about a month ago. The resulting ten minute interview is well worth watching, not just because it's pretty damn funny, but because it's one of the few times a journalist has actually asked Alexander direct tough questions about the NSA -- and it's not even from a journalist: Seriously, compare that interview to the one Alexander gave to 60 Minutes, a show that used to be associated with asking the tough questions of people in power.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: General Keith Alexander Extended Interview (HBO)

Alexander kicks off this new interview claiming that Americans don't understand that they're not the target of the NSA, and Oliver immediately shoots back:

Oliver: No, the target is not the American people, but it seems that too often you miss the target and hit the person next to them going 'Whoa, him!'

Alexander: You see, we're not just out there gathering information, listening to their phone calls, or collecting their emails. But, that's the first thing that people jump to.

Oliver: But you are out there doing that. You're just saying that you're not then reading them. You are gathering that data.

Alexander responds with the usual NSA talking points about "we just collect metadata" and again, Oliver immediately hits back:

Oliver: That's not nothing. That's significant information. Otherwise, you wouldn't want it.

Oliver also pushes back on the whole "needle and haystack" argument, by pointing out that people's "concerns" are that the NSA is also collecting "the whole farm, and the county and the state, and now you've got photos of the farmer's wife in the shower as well." Later on, after a series of funny exchanges, including Oliver being shocked that Keith Alexander has never heard of Pinterest (where Oliver suggests all the worst people in the world gather), Oliver asks:

Oliver: In your mind, has the NSA ever done something illegal.

Alexander: In my time, no. Not that I know of. You know, one of the most impressive things that I've seen in my career was people who made a mistake, that could be a huge mistake, stepping up to say 'I made a mistake.' And in every case, to my knowledge, everyone but 12 individuals stepped forward at the time they made those mistakes.

Oliver: Right, but you can't say 'everyone... except for 12.' That's like saying 'I've never killed anyone... apart from those three people I have buried under my patio at home.'

Alexander: The key issue I was trying to make was, in every case, we reported. In some cases, those who made a mistake, but were still caught.

Alexander is being incredibly dishonest here, not surprisingly. The NSA's own internal audit highlighted that the NSA abused its power to spy on Americans thousands of times each year. The NSA's Inspector General's report noted a track record of flagrant abuse which led to the program almost getting shut down. As for those "12 individuals," Alexander is simply wrong. As we detailed, most of those 12 actually self-reported the details but often did so years later (in one case seven years later).

So Alexander is flat out lying in saying that there were 12 non-self-reported cases that got caught. In fact, it's pretty clear that if most of those 12 had chosen to keep their abuses secret, we'd have never known about them. Which should lead to the obvious question: how many people within the NSA abused the powers to spy on people, didn't self-report, and therefore were never caught. It's incredible for him to basically be arguing that everyone who abused the system was caught, when the details show they actually failed to discover most of the intentional abuses until someone admitted to them much later.

And we won't even get into the fact that a court and the federal government's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) have both found the entire program to be illegal and unconstitutional.

Either way, those are only a few examples, but the pushback against Alexander still seems much greater from Oliver than any journalist so far, and that says something (not good) about the state of journalism today.

ANOTHER BANKER SUICIDED IN FRANCE…

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Bankers • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/04/another-banker-suicided-france/

No sooner had I completed last Thursday’s News and Views from the Nefarium on the death of Chinese banking regulator Li Jinhua, and the Belgian banker, his wife, and nine-year old nephew, than I received from many people the breaking news that yet another banker, this time in France, had jumped to her death in Paris. The story was reported, once again, by Zero Hedge:
52 Year Old French banker jumps to her death in Paris after questioning her superiors
There’s not much to go on here, and that raises my suspicion meters into the red zone. The article makes clear that as of April 24 (Thursday), Mme. Lydia X’s surname was being withheld, presumably while French authorities had time to notify her family. But there are other curious omissions from the story. We are not told, for example, what department of the bank (Bred-Banque-Populaire) Mme Lydia X was employed in. The article does state, in its garbled translation from the French, that Mme X decided to jump apparently after “questioning her superiors.” Then, the bank(we are “informed”), states that Mme Lydia X had been in therapy for years.
Frankly, when I read that, I was sickened, for apparently there is no depth of sleaze to which the financial class will not stoop in order to deflect attention away from a story that only seems to grow, with each new week seeming to add yet more curious “suicides” and “mysterious deaths” and even Mafia-style murders of bankers who suddenly decide to talk a walk out the window, a flight from a roof, or to throw themselves in front of a train, or who have a sudden urge to use a nail gun on their skulls.
There’s little getting around the implications here: (1) why was Mme Lydia X in therapy to begin with? That issue could either be highly relevant, or highly irrelevant, to the case. Was she in therapy because of job-related issues? or something purely personal? Again, the bank’s sleaze factor here is a matter of concern, for if it knew she was in therapy, it likely had some idea as to why. So why withhold that information? Fear of lawsuits? or something else? Fear of lawsuits for divulging too much seems to be out of the picture, since the bank took the step of revealing the highly personal information about her therapy in the first place. Again, my suspicion meter goes into the red zone.
Then there’s the sequence of events: (1) a banker consults her superiors, then (2) suddenly decides to take a walk out of a high rise window. The clear implication is that the two are causally related. So we’re left, in my opinion, with the following two basic scenarios, both of which are speculative. One: Mme Lydia X consulted her superiors regarding some aspect of bank or wider financial policy, or perhaps brought information to them that she had discovered. In any case, the answers or responses of her superiors so unnerved her, or frightened her, that she immediately decided to end it all, and walk out the window.   Two: Mme Lydia X consulted her superiors regarding some aspect of bank or wider financial policy, or perhaps brought information to them that she had discovered. Her superiors immediately took action to silence Mme X by assisting her out the high rise window.
There’s a context that should not be forgotten, for Mme X’s window walk occurred mere days after the murder of the Belgian banker, his wife, and nine-year old nephew. In his case, he too worked for a French bank, in fact, for the largest French bank, the powerful BNP Paribas. So within mere days, the banker deaths have now spread to two French banks.
For once, I will leave the high octane speculations to the reader. For my part, I continue to suspect that the “death-by-nailgun” case of Richard Talley may hold an important key or clue to the puzzle.

  

5 Myths That GMO Companies Want You To Believe

April 27, 2014 by Arjun Walia. http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/04/27/5-myths-that-gmo-companies-want-you-to-believe/                A few years ago GMOs weren’t even on the radar, today, GMOs and the pesticides that accompany them have been completely banned in numerous countries all over the world.  I’ve mentioned this in my other GMO articles before, but I will mention it again, when it comes to GMOs, we really have no idea what the long term effects will be on the public. The very first commercial sale of GMOs was only twenty years ago in the year 1994. There is no possible way that our health authorities can test all possible combinations on a large enough population, over a long enough period of time to be able to say with certainty that they are completely harmless.

 I also think it’s important to note that biotech corporations have been caught lying before. They’ve recently been caught using deceptive semantics of pesticide formulations and their regulations. A new study recently published in the journal Biomedical Research International shows how roundup herbicide is 125 more toxic than regulators claimed. You can read more about that here.

Myth #1: No One Has Ever Proven That GMOs Are Harmful To People

This is probably the most common argument I see against GMOs. If GMOs were completely safe, they wouldn’t be banned from multiple countries around the globe. Russia was the latest country to do so after government scientists told the parliament that they’re not safe to consume. You can read more about that here.

Monsanto has stated time and time and time again that GMOs have never been proven to harm people. The reality is, there is a plethora of research (independent, peer-reviewed studies and more) that clearly indicate that GMOs should not be approved safe to consume. Further testing is required, and we just don’t know enough about them yet.

GMOs have been linked to tumors, premature death, organ failure, gastric lesions, liver damage, kidney damage, sever allergic reactions, and more. We recently published a study titled 10 Scientific Studies Proving GMOs Can Be Harmful To Human Health, you can access  those studies and read about them HERE. You can also find links to more studies here.

Myth #2: GMO Crops Are The Only Way To Solve World Hunger

This is also a very common argument amongst GMO proponents. These activists claim that without GMOs, world hunger will continue claiming the lives of millions of people over the next ten years.

The amount of money we spend in one day alone on war and defence could feed the entire planet for an entire year,  to say we don’t have the resources and money to feed the world is ridiculous. That being said, money should never come in the way of necessity, it just doesn’t have to be this way. Our potential as one human race is far greater than what we’ve created for ourselves so far.

Sustainable agricultural practices could be set up all over the world. GMO farming is not really sustainable and this has been demonstrated time and time again. One example is in India, where  Monsanto’s insect-repellent Bt cotton wreaked havoc on the country’s farmers. Those seeds cost twice as much as conventional ones and required greater inputs of water and expensive herbicides and pesticides. As a result, thousands of Indian farmers committed suicide.

The Union of Concerned Scientists reminds us that GM crops are not guaranteed, as promised by company advertising. They still fail to produce promised yields, and farmers are not permitted to save seeds due to the company’s patent. As a result, entire communities can be pushed to the brink of starvation.

Every person on the planet can feed themselves with just 100 square feet of well managed land. In 2008, the UN Conference of Trade and development supported organics, saying that organic agriculture can be more conducive to food security in Africa than most conventional production systems, and is more likely to be sustainable in the long term. You can read that full report HERE.

Below, international activist and scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva explains in two minutes how GMOs are a threat to biodiversity and farmers’ livelihoods. World hunger and poverty are a justification for GMOs just as 9/11 was a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

Vandana Shiva explains clearly why GMOs are a death knell to biodiversity and farming

 Myth #3: GMOs Need Less Pesticide Spraying

A new study from the U.S. Geological Survey, titled “Pesticides in Mississippi Air and Rain: A Comparison Between 1995 and 2007,” reveals that Roundup herbicide (aka glyphosate) and its toxic degradation byproduct AMPA were found in over 75% of the air and rain samples tested from Mississippi in 2007. Researchers weren’t surprised given the fact that 2 million kilograms of glyphosate were applied statewide in 2007. You can read this full study HERE. Sri Lanka recently had to ban Monsanto herbicide citing a link to deadly kidney disease, you can read about that HERE.

Not long ago, the EPA raised their allowable concentrations of Monsanto’s glyphosate on food crops, HERE. Significant concentrations of Glyphosate have also been found in the urine of people across Europe, HERE.

 A new study released by Food & Water Watch yesterday finds the goal of reduced chemical use has not panned out as planned.  In fact, according to the USDA and EPA data used in the report, the quick adoption of genetically engineered crops by farmers has increased herbicide use over the past 9 years in the U.S.  The report follows on the heels of another  study  by Washington State University research professor Charles Benbrook just last year.

Both reports focus on “superweeds.” It turns out that spraying a pesticide repeatedly selects for weeds which also resist the chemical.  Ever more resistant weeds are then  bred, able to withstand increasing amounts – and often different forms – of herbicide.

At the center of debate is the pesticide glyphosate, the active ingredient in MonsantoMON +2.23%‘s Round Up.  Food & Water Watch found that the “total volume of glyphosate applied to the three biggest GE crops — corn, cotton and soybeans — increased 10-fold from 15 million pounds in 1996 to 159 million pounds in 2012.”  Overall pesticide use decreased only in the first few years GE crops were used (42 percent between 1998 and 2001) and has since then risen by 26 percent from 2001 to 2010.

You can read more CE articles on glyphosate and roundup herbicide HERE.

Other organizations concur and even the mainstream media has been forced to report that pesticide and herbicide usage is on the rise.  Check out these recent articles from Huffington Post and Reuters for more information.

Myth #4: GMO Technology is Comparable to The Cross-Breeding That our Ancestors Did To Create Hardier Versions of Heritage Crops.

 This also isn’t true, what our ancestors did and what we are doing is completely different. Cross-pollination of different varieties of the same plant species is what responsible farmers do, this can also occur naturally.  Genetically modifying seeds is a whole different ballgame, geneticist David Suzuki explains it well.

“By slipping it into our food without our knowledge, without any indication that there are genetically modified organisms in our food, we are now unwittingly part of a massive experiment.”

“The FDA has said that genetically modified organisms are not much different from regular food, so they’ll be treated in the same way. The problem is this, geneticists follow the inheritance of genes, what biotechnology allows us to do is to take this organism, and move it horizontally into a totally unrelated species. Now David Suzuki doesn’t normally mate with a carrot and exchange genes, what biotechnology allows us to do is to switch genes from one to the other without regard to the biological constraints. It’s very very bad science, we assume that the principles governing the inheritance of genes vertically, applies when you move genes laterally or horizontally. There’s absolutely no reason to make that conclusion.” (source)

With GMO seeds, crossing goes far beyond the bounds of nature, into completely unknown realms of biology that we know nothing about. For example, Monsanto has crossed genetic material from a bacteria known as Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) with corn. The goal was to create a pest-resistant plant, this means that any pests attempting to eat the corn plant will die since the pesticide is part of every cell of the plant. Basically, if you eat this corn you are eating pesticides.

Myth #5: The FDA and the USDA allow GMO’s, They Must Be Safe To Consume

Organizations like the FDA, the EPA, and the USDA all receive their power and influence from the mere fact that the public believes that their number one priority is the health and safety of the citizens they are supposed to be serving. All of the agencies vow that they are there to protect the public on their websites:

The FDA:

FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring that foods (except for meat from livestock, poultry and some egg products which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture) are safe, wholesome, sanitary and properly labeled; ensuring that human and veterinary drugs, and vaccines and other biological products and medical devices intended for human use are safe and effective.

The Vision Statement of the USDA:

To expand economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production sustainability that better nourishes Americans while also helping feed others throughout the world; and to preserve and conserve our Nation’s natural resources through restored forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands.

The EPA:

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.  EPA’s purpose is to ensure that all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work…

The reality: All of the above is just feel-good, warm and fuzzy rhetoric. Perhaps there are employees that truly believe in what they’re doing, but the leadership is as sickeningly tainted as Bt Corn. With all that’s been revealed over the past few years, it’s very clear that these corporations do not have our best interests at heart.

There seems to be a revolving door.

• Michael Taylor: VP of Monsanto > Deputy Commissioner of the FDA
• Roger Beachy:  Director of the Danforth Plant Science Center (paid for by Monsanto) >director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Elena Kagan:  Obama Solicitor General (when she famously took Monsanto’s side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready Alfalfa case) > US Supreme Court justice.
• Clarence Thomas:  General Counsel for Monsanto > US Supreme Court justice.
• Margaret Miller:  Monsanto supervisor > Deputy Director of Human Food Safety
• Donald Rumsfield: Board of Directors for Monsanto’s Searle Pharmaceuticals > US Secretary of Defense
• Ann Veneman:  Monsanto Board of Directors > US Secretary of Agriculture
• Linda Fisher: Assistant Administrator at the EPA >VP of Monsanto > Deputy Administrator of the EPA
• Dr. Michael A.Friedman: Deputy Commissioner of the FDA > Senior VP of Monsanto

Make no mistake, the commissioners, directors, and secretaries of these agencies are put in place for a reason. If the FDA, USDA, or the EPA approve something, you might want to view it with more suspicion than acceptance. If they can say that radiation and pesticides are acceptable in your food, but that raw milk isn’t acceptable for consumption… there’s something incredibly wrong here.

The paragraph (above) for this final myth was taken from eatlocalgrown.com. You can view more myths by visiting that site. The first four myths and the information that accompany them were written by me. Thanks for reading.