Right to farm being stripped from Americans: Michigan to criminalize small family farms with chickens, goats, honey bees and more

naturalnews.com

Originally published May 2 2014by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) In the latest stunning assault on Americans' right to grow their own food, the freedom-crushing state of Michigan has ruled that local governments (cities, towns, counties) can now ban any animal they wish from small residential farms. The move opens the door to the mass criminalization of backyard farms and small, residential farming operations where people might keep a few goats or honey bees for food security.

According to Michigan Public Radio (1), the ruling could ban all chickens, goats, honey bees and other animals from farms which have another residential house less than 250 feet away.

Off The Grid News(2) goes on to report:
Some homesteaders in Michigan could find themselves in a complete regulatory limbo because of the Commission's action. Blogger, writer and organic farmer Michelle Regalado Deatrick does not know if she'll be able to keep her livestock, because about half of her 80-acre farm may not be zoned for farm animals.

"We're building up a mixed production farm, planning to farm during retirement, and we have a permit in hand for a livestock facility," Deatrick said, "...Now we're having to reconsider our business plans and may sell the farm and buy a farm in a more rural area with definite [Right To Farm] protection, or move to another state that's more welcoming and protective of small farm rights."

Michigan DNR previously ordered small local farmer to shoot his own pigs

Michigan is the same state where the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) ordered one small, local farmer to shoot all his pigs because they were the wrong "race" of pigs. This genocidal demand by the Michigan state government echoes a tyrannical anti-farming agenda at the highest levels of state government.

Michigan is also the state where Julie Bass of Oak Park was threatened with jail time for teaching her children how to grow vegetables in their own home garden. All charges against Julie were later dropped after Natural News and other independent news sources publicly shamed Oak Park bureaucrats into backing down.

Nationwide, people who attempt to grow their own food are routinely threatened with arrest and fines. One woman in Oklahoma suffered the complete destruction of her medicinal herb landscaping by local city officials who raided her home garden while she was away.

The war against small farms is an attack against America

This obscene war against small farms is an attack against America herself. Our heritage, values, and culture are forever interwtined with small local farms.

Attacks against small local farms are also attacks on America's food security. Local, independent food production provides a buffer against systemic food failures that might occur, for example, after an EMP attack causes a national power grid blackout. Without power, centralized systems of food production, harvesting, transportation and retailing cannot function. But small, local farms can still produce food without electricity. So any attack against local farming is, in essense, an attack on America's national security.

And no state seems to be more determined to undermine America's national food security than Michigan, where state leaders appear to be even more insane than the leaders of Illinois.

Natural News urges farmers everywhere to fight back against this insanity and stand up for your divine right to produce your own food on your own property. Any government "authority" that attempts to take this right away from you is no authority at all: it is a tyranny.

With food prices already skyrocketing nationwide, and food security on the brink of systemic failures, only a government run by absolute fools would try to limit local food production. Perhaps when these bureaucrats are all starving one day, they can eat their regulations.

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://michiganradio.org/post/state-agricult...
(2) http://www.offthegridnews.com/2014/05/02/mic...

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Geopolitics of Organic Food: Russia, China and France Ban GMOs

By Ulson Gunnar

Global Research, May 02, 2014

New Eastern Outlook

Theme: Environment

Russia’s RT reported in an article titled, “Russia will not import GMO products – PM Medvedev,” that, “Russia will not import GMO products, the country’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said, adding that the nation has enough space and resources to produce organic food.” The article would quote Russia’s prime minister who stated specifically, “if the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food.”

The article would also state that products in Russia containing more than 0.9% genetically modified ingredients must be labeled, as opposed to US laws where no labeling is required for genetically modified products despite steadily growing public opposition to the practice.

Russia’s stance against GMO is mirrored elsewhere, including in France where just recently Monsanto’s GM corn was banned and in China where the importing of US GM corn has been outlawed. The backlash against GMO has widespread appeal due to well-placed health and environmental concerns among increasingly informed populations. But the drive to push back against GMO in nations like Russia and China also has a geopolitical dimension.

An Army Marches on Its Stomach

The biotechnology from which genetically modified organisms are derived, is currently monopolized by a handful of very powerful multinational corporations centered in the West. This monopoly forms (in part) the foundation of Western hegemonic power. As seen in Afghanistan, big-ag monopolies like Monsanto played a pivotal role in the attempted corporate colonization of the South Asian nation. Corporate interests and technology, coupled with Western aid organizations, backed by NATO’s military force, helped transform Afghanistan’s agricultural landscape through the systematic poisoning of traditional crops and their replacement with genetically modified soybeans (a crop previously alien to Afghan agriculture and cuisine).

The roots Monsanto sank into Afghanistan will be deep and lasting. Farmers dependent on patented genetically modified soybeans will be dependent on Monsanto and other Western biotech/big-ag giants indefinitely, and in turn, so will the people who depend on those farmers for daily sustenance. The very sovereignty of Afghanistan as an independent nation has been undermined at the most basic and fundamental level, its food security which now resides in the hands of foreigners.
It is clear then that nations like Russia, China, and others are not only responding to growing concern from among their populations regarding the safety and environmental impact of GMO products, but the threat this monopolized technology poses toward each respective nation’s food supply and consequently, their sovereignty.

Recent sanctions aimed at Russia in the West’s bid to cement regime change in neighboring Ukraine illustrates perfectly just how potentially damaging absolute dependence on Western big-ag corporations can be. Had Russian agriculture been more dependent on Western GMOs, and had the West’s sanctions been across a wider or full spectrum as they are against nations like Iran, the potential survival of Russia’s population could have been put at risk and foreign-backed political instability able to threaten Moscow easily achieved.

Each Nation a Castle

Sanctions against Iran have forced the nation to become self-sufficient across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic activity including food production, technological research and development, and weapons development. While the sanctions the West aims at Iran are designed to act as a modern form of siege warfare practiced at a national level, weakening the nation and ultimately contributing to its collapse, they have instead made Iran more resilient.

Iran has become a proverbial “castle,” weathering the siege by breaking it in some places, and undermining it with self-sufficient economic activity within its borders in other places. Nations like Russia and China, directly confronted by a West openly attempting to encircle both with specified alliances and strategies (NATO and the “pivot toward Asia” respectively), must likewise ensure independence and self-sufficiency across a wide range of socioeconomic activity, with fundamental necessities like food security taking priority.
Organic farming augmented by modern technology, as suggested by Prime Minister Medvedev has the power to ensure food security for Russia now and well into the future. With growing global demand for healthier, GMO-free food, a national policy leaning toward organic could eventually become an economic advantage beyond Russia’s borders. Other nations, communities, and indeed individuals around the world should look at this basic first step, securing one’s food supply, and understand how it is the key to national, local, and individual sovereignty, as well as a means toward enhancing economic prospects.

The West’s mega agricultural monopolies seek to infiltrate and overrun national food supplies worldwide, while it aims crippling sanctions at nations it seeks to influence or control geopolitically. A nation made dependent on the West’s mega agricultural monopolies, if ever targeted by sanctions or other means to undermine and overthrow its existing political order, will be particularly vulnerable. Thus, going organic is not just a means to keep a nation’s population healthy and therefore more productive, but also a fundamental means to protect national sovereignty.

The shortsighted benefits in terms of payoffs from mega agricultural monopolies governments around the world may be tempted by today, might be the leverage used by the West tomorrow to uproot them when their utility is perceived by the West to be exhausted, and new leadership is desired. For nations that believe in the merits of GMO, their people should demand that such technology be developed, implemented, regulated, and monitored indigenously, preempting the multitude of dangers the foreign domination of their food supply poses.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Wall Street and the Global Laundering of Drug Money

Big Banks Started Laundering Massive Sums of Drug Money In the 1980s … And Are Still Doing It Today

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, May 02, 2014

Washington's Blog

Theme: Global Economy

For More Than 30 Years, the Big Banks Have Been Key Players In the Drug Trade
Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a study to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered.  The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7%  (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.

This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product.  Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.

Indeed, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
This started a long time ago. For example, Citibank was caught laundering drug money for Mexican cartels in 2001.
In the 1990s, earlier, Citibank apparently set up special client accounts for a big drug dealer:

One of the more infamous cases involving taxpayer bailed-out Citigroup’s ties to money laundering drug cartels emerged in the late 1990s when Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, was arrested after his wife, Paulina Castañón, attempted to withdraw $84 million from a Swiss account controlled by Raúl under an alias.
***
According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times report, Salinas “amassed at least $100 million in suspected drug money.”
Switzerland’s top prosecutor at the time, Carla del Ponte, “launched the investigation after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supplied information that led Swiss agents to the accounts in Geneva, where they arrested Raúl Salinas’ wife and her brother on Nov. 15 as the pair attempted to withdraw more than $83 million.”
Del Ponte told the Los Angeles Times that after observing Salinas’ interrogation by Mexican federal prosecutors the sums found in those accounts were “suspected to be from the laundering of money related to narcotics trafficking.”
In 1998, when Swiss prosecutors completed their Salinas investigation, The New York Times disclosed that “Swiss police investigators have concluded that a brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a central role in Mexico’s cocaine trade, raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the United States.”
***
A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) pointed a finger directly at Citibank. Investigators revealed that “Mr. Salinas was able to transfer $90 million to $100 million between 1992 and 1994 by using a private banking relationship formed by Citibank New York in 1992. The funds were transferred through Citibank Mexico and Citibank New York to private banking investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”
With the connivance of bank officials, in 1992 Salinas was able to “effectively disguise” the source of those funds and their destination.
Indeed, with hefty fees secured from assisting their well-connected client Salinas, Citibank “set up an offshore private investment company named Trocca, to hold Mr. Salinas’s assets, through Cititrust (Cayman) and investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”
***
A 1999 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on “Private Banking and Money Laundering” revealed that “a culture of secrecy pervades the private banking industry.”
“For example,” Senate investigators disclosed, “in the case of Raul Salinas . . . the private bank hid Mr. Salinas’ ownership of Trocca by omitting his name from the Trocca incorporation papers and naming still other shell companies as the shareholders, directors, and officers. Citibank consistently referred to Mr. Salinas in internal bank communications by the code name ‘Confidential Client Number 2′ or ‘CC-2.’ The private bank’s Swiss office opened a special name account for him under the name of ‘Bonaparte’.”

In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – apparently backed by top CIA officials – laundered drug money.  Time Magazine reported in 1991:

Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer.

As Wikipedia notes, Alfred McCoy (Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the world’s top experts on drug trafficking)

[McCoy] uncovered money laundering activities by banks controlled by the CIA, first the Castle Bank which was then replaced by the Nugan Hand Bank, which had as legal counsel William Colby, retired head of the CIA.  He also alludes to the BCCI, which seems to have played the same role as the Nugan Hand Bank after its collapse in the early 1980s, claiming that “the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.

Citibank was still laundering Mexican drug money in 2001.
And nothing has changed since then.
The big banks are still laundering staggering sums of drug money.  See this, this, this, this, this, this and and this.
An HSBC employee who blew the whistle on that banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says: “America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still] financing the cartels“, and “Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American“.
(And see this.)
If you can’t believe that the banks would launder drug money, just take a look at their other crimes.
The Feds are a big part of the problem. After all, they support some ruthless, criminal drug cartels, have repeatedly protected drug smugglers, supported  drug producers (update).
Obviously the war on drugs is a total boondoggle.

RUSSIA AND EGYPT SIGN $3 BILLION ARMS DEAL: MORE (REALLY HIGH) OCTANE SPECULATION

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: News • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/05/russia-egypt-sign-3-billion-arms-deal-really-high-octane-speculation/

The past three days we’ve been exploring the “Renaissance Model” hypothesis that I believe may be informing a gradual strategy of disclosure and space matters. Mr. Richard Dolan, whose crucial and signally important volumes, UFOs and the National Security State, made the profound observation that UFOs constitute the significant key to understanding post-war history, and that the absence of consideration of this problem from most-war historiography constitutes a kind of material omission in that discipline. Additionally, former Assistant Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts, I, and others, have made similar statements with respect to post-war financial arrangements; it is impossible to understand the vast amount of fraud in the system, and the huge amounts of money sloshing around in it, without understanding that this is related, ultimately, to the UFO problem that began to confront the post-war power elites. To fail to consider it is, again, in Fitts’ estimation, a material omission.
I have been proposing yet a third form of “material omission”, one in fact suggested first by, believe it or not, the late Philip Corso, namely, that the UFO constitutes also the significant hidden geopolitical factor. And it is in this context that I wish to consider recent events, and this story:
Egypt Signs Unprecedented Military Deal with Russia
Clearly, as the article indicates, the Russian-Egyptian arms deal recalls the significant influence that Russia exercised within the Egypt of Gamel Abdul Nasser and during the early period of Anwar Sadat, during the heyday of Cold War, Act One. It was Sadat, of course, who began the process of orienting Egypt in a more pro-Western direction. The fact that the Egyptian military is turning once more to its old Cold War arms supplier and erstwhile ally, Russia, is a measure of the degree to which American attempts to strong arm the region(and for that matter, most of the world), are backfiring with huge geopolitical repercussions.
The fiasco of Western “assistance” in the Ukraine has also backfired, in my opinion.
All of these types of considerations have fueled speculations on the internet and even in the mainstream lamestream media that the Cold War is reviving, with Russia, of course, playing the bad guy.
But while all this has been going on, we’ve been observing a quiet “war” in space: Russian GLONASS satellites go offline, meteors once again streak over that country, China’s president openly announces he wants his country to militarize space(at least he’s honest, no other power admits it, or, if they do, it’s all in the context of asteroid defense, and see? we’ve got meteors streaking over our country and exploding to prove the need! How convenient!) On top of all of this, we’ve seen the the rise of the BRICSA nations and their own calls for independent financial clearing.
The world, we are informed, is once again forming into two large economic-military blocs; the dream of a unipolar American-hegemonic New World Order is dying before our eyes.
But now filter in the UFO, and the geopolitical picture changes dramatically. True enough, the world is once again dividing into two major blocs, but this comes in the wake of the inability of the unipolar vision to manage things. Calls for independent financial clearing could equally be seen as a nice way of calling for “systems redundancy.” In the wake of the inability to introduce a truly global socio-political-financial order, then the next best thing to unipolarism is bi-polarism.
Add to this, the Chinese call for militarization of space, Medvedev’s call for a Russian Asteroid defense system (which, it will be recalled, he welcomed others to join, but insisted Russia go ahead on its own anyway)…and, securing a Russian influence in Egypt once again, favorite haunt of ancient astronaut theories and…
…well, you get the idea.
I’m far from suggesting here that there are not real, genuine, strictly terrestrial considerations driving geopolitics. There are. What I am proposing, however, is that once the “material omission” in geopolitics is factored into the picture, the basis of interpretation shifts dramatically, and suggests other more hidden motivations behind some events, motivations not contrary to terrestrial ones, but rather, evidencing very different long term goals.
Simple bi-polarism is a much tidier, easier picture to coordinate long term social engineering agendas, than is unipolarism + chaos… Either way, simple terrestrial geopolitics, or deeper agendas, Mr. Putin is willing to play the game, and he’s holding some high cards.

            

Universal Time May Not Be Universal At All

May 1, 2014 by Evan Kail.//http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/05/01/universal-time-may-not-be-universal-at-all/

Here you sit, reading this article, when suddenly you hear a jet engine from an overhead plane. Aboard this plane, someone else is reading this article. Curiously, you two are not reading it in a relevant time frame. Time is actually moving at a different speed for you on the ground than it is for the person on the plane. It’s not much of a difference, just a few fractions of a second, but it is a difference.

This phenomena is explained among Einstein’s theories of relativity. In it, he says “the passage of time on the fast-moving object is slower than if the object was at rest.” This is why it is scientifically theorized that if you fell into a black hole, all of time would pass before your eyes – the birth and death of the universe. At the black hole’s event horizon, or point of no return, you would hit a terminal velocity of shooting into the black hole, and would be traveling so fast, everything around you would appear to be going faster. This is all very convoluted, but it’s simply to demonstrate the power of the theory.

Taking this information into account, we can only assume that time is not uniform within the Universe. Rather, is it semi-subjective. Perhaps the speed of reality is different here on earth at our cosmic address than it is at another point in the universe.

Consider a star system very closely orbiting a black hole. Time would be going by much faster relative to that star system versus with the universe around it. Now if there were life in this star system, it’s only logical to assume that it would evolve quicker. We know evolution takes millions of years. But what if millions of our years were mere seconds to the life inside this star system. Anything from this theoretical star system would be more far more evolved than anything outside it.

The Drake Equation assumes that the properties capable of starting life, and the properties of a proper, hospitable planet can be broken down to a working formula. It  derives that this  life-sparking equation which is found on planet earth also exists somewhere else inside the Universe. I imagine the theoretical star system orbiting closely to a black hole would be far more commonplace.

The question of time passing at a different rate isn’t just limited to the scope of a black hole. Let’s examine the Big Bang Theory for a moment. The universe comes to be by exploding in every direction. That was 14 billion years ago. It’s fair to say the Universe has expanded quite a bit since, and still continues to. Things at the edge of the Universe would be moving at a much different rate than things towards the center of the Universe. Therefore, once again, the flow of time would be different throughout the entire Universe.

If time is so subjective, one can’t help but question how much it actually matters. As we understand it, time travel is impossible. Perhaps it’s not as strict a rule as we originally imagined it to be.

Sources:

http://www.astronomynotes.com/relativity/s2.htm

http://www.seti.org/drakeequation

http://www.livescience.com/19683-happen-fall-black-hole.html

Holder’s Latest Scandal: DOJ Now Pressuring Banks to Refuse Service to Gun Stores

Kit Daniels April 30th, 2014 Infowars.com

This article and research was originally published by Kit Daniels at Infowars.com
Comment from Alex Jones: This is a classic example of criminal racketeering. Holder is shutting down businesses just like the Nazis targeted the assets and later the companies of Jews in the 1930′s. The DoJ has been caught shipping guns to drug dealers, terrorists and gang members in Mexico under Fast and Furious, yet Holder is targeting legitimate, lawful gun shops. This is completely outside of the law and resembles the behavior of a dictatorship. Impeachment proceedings must begin immediately.
For the past several months, the U.S. Department of Justice has been pressuring banks to refuse service to businesses the DOJ is targeting politically, such as gun stores, in a program entitled Operation Choke Point.
Under the program, the DOJ, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, is attempting to shut down various legal businesses, including firearm dealers, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia and pornography distributors, by coercing financial institutions to close the bank and merchant accounts associated with these businesses.
The businesses targeted follow a 2011 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation bulletin which lists all of the above legal activities and others as “merchant categories that have been associated with high-risk activity” involving “disreputable merchants.”
“Although many clients of payment processors are reputable merchants, an increasing number are not and should be considered ‘high risk,’” the bulletin reads. “These disreputable merchants use payment processors to charge consumers for questionable or fraudulent goods and services.”
In other words, the FDIC, and now the DOJ, are trying to demonize gun shops by causing banks to view legal firearm dealers as no different than pushers of “ponzi schemes” and “get rich products,” two “high-risk” activities that are also listed in the bulletin.
In 2012, Bank of America told a gun company, McMillan Group International, that because the company was expanding into firearms manufacturing, the bank no longer wanted McMillan’s business.
“We have to assess the risk of doing business with a firearms-related industry,” the bank’s representative told operations director Kelly McMillan.
Last month, BitPay, a U.S.-based bitcoin processor, likewise refused to do business with gun dealer Michael Cargill of Central Texas Gunworks due to a similar policy.
And also in March, a Florida couple who own a gun store received a letter from BankUnited informing them that the bank was closing their business account, which they opened seven years prior, and gave them three days to transfer their money elsewhere.
“I was very angry,” Elizabeth Liberti told the Miami New Times. “They were very inconsiderate. We had all our credit cards going through that bank.”
“All of a sudden, we had to run and find another bank to keep our business going. We shut down for two weeks, and they wouldn’t even tell us why.”
BankUnited finally gave them a reason some time later.
“This letter in no way reflects any derogatory reasons for such action on your behalf, but rather one of industry,” wrote branch manager Ricardo Garcia. “Unfortunately your company’s line of business is not commensurate with the industries we work with.”
And it isn’t just gun stores that the Justice Dept. is targeting.
Last week, Xbiz, a news outlet pertaining to adult entertainment, reported that Chase Bank was sending out letters to hundreds of porn stars notifying them that their accounts would be terminated.
“I got a letter and it was like please cancel all transactions, please fix your automatic pay account and make sure everything’s taken care of by May 11,” actress Teagan Presley told Xbiz. “I called them and they told me that because I am, I guess, public and am recognizable in the adult business, they’re closing my account.”
“Even though I don’t use my account, it’s my personal account that I’ve had since I was 18, when it was Washington Mutual before Chase bought them out.”
And when Presley went to Bank of America to open a new account, the bank also turned her away.
An adult industry attorney, Michael Fattorosi, told Xbiz that banks in the past have “notoriously closed adult accounts or people in the industry’s accounts, but nothing like this.”
That’s because this discrimination is coming straight from the Justice Dept.
Jason Oxman, the CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, recently revealed the massive scope of Operation Choke Point, which he indicated was also targeting ammunition sales.
The DOJ is ensuring the banks’ cooperation by threatening them “with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands,” he wrote on The Hill. “And it’s working – payments companies across the country are cutting off service to categories of merchants that – although providing a legal service – are creating the potential for significant financial and reputational harm as law enforcement publicizes its activities.”
The Justice Dept.’s ultimate goal is to shut down these businesses completely.