Rather Be Healthy

Gatorade to remove flame retardant chemical from its drinks (yeah, you’ve been drinking this for years)

Now you know that you’ve been saved from spontaneous combustion after a hard workout if you drank Gatorade. It’s had an actual flame retardant chemical in it, and still does. The ingredient is called brominated vegetable oil (BVO), and its been patented in Europe as a flame retardant

A spokesperson for Gatorade’s owner PepsiCo, Molly Carter, mentioned to reporters that Pepsi had been considering removing BVO for about a year, pending their discovery of a new and better replacement ingredient that wouldn’t alter the taste. Molly claims the petition from change.org with over 200,000 signatures had little impact.

Ah yes, you can hear Gatorade consumers concerns: “Yum – this fire retardant sure is tasty. Wonder if I can get some pure BVO if they take it out?” Not to worry, Gatorade gulpers, it will be several months before a new “flavor and color emulsifier” will be replacing the BVO fire retardant: sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB).

Molly Carter asserted there’s no rush or specific date set for getting the reformulated drinks out. The reformulated Gatorade flavors “will start rolling out in the next few months,” Molly said.”We’re not recalling Gatorade. We don’t think our products are unsafe. We don’t think there are health or safety risks,” she claimed.

A brominated vegetable oil (BVO) history
BVO has been banned as a food and beverage additive in Europe and Japan. But it has been used for decades in U.S. beverages such as Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Squirt, Fanta Orange, Sunkist Pineapple, Powerade Strawberry Lemonade or Fresca Original Citrus.

An observer from a gaming bar in the Atlanta, GA suburb of Marietta reports seeing video gamers stack up and drink a half-dozen or more Mountain Dews and gulp them down for their sugar and caffeine, keeping them stimulated and alert while gaming. They’re also unwittingly getting a strong dose of BVO flame retardant.

Binging on these BVO beverages has resulted in medical treatments for skin lesions, memory loss, or nervous disorders. According to Scientific American magazine, studies have indicated that BVO can accumulate in body tissues.

Mice exposed to bromine compound fire retardants exhibited long-term negative health and fertility events in some studies. But maybe it’s okay for humans. After all, BVO solutions are vegetable based. Unfortunately, the vegetables are soy and corn, which are usually GMO planted or GMO contaminated.

As early as 1977, the FDA approved BVO as a food or beverage additive at 15 parts per million. They based this figure on data from “industry studies.” Wonder which industry that might have been? But since then, BVO has been completely banned from foods and beverages in Japan and Europe. Maybe they know something about those long-term effects from BVO tissue accumulation.

So what’s the point of using BVOs in the first place? The heavy bromine atoms keeps synthetic artificial (tautology intentional) flavors from floating to the top of the beverage. Yum, toxic flavorings remaining constant throughout the beverage.

What about Gatorade’s future SAIB replacement to ensure artificial flavor consistency? An Ontario, Canada test, ” Effect of … (SAIB) ingestion on the hepatobiliary function of normal human male and female volunteers,” had 27 humans, male and female, drink orange juice without SAIB for one week then with SAIB for two weeks.

Blood samples were taken at intervals during each week checking markers for liver function issues. It was concluded “that ingestion of 20 mg SAIB/kg body weight daily for 14 days does not affect the hepatobiliary function of human volunteers.”

Many trials conducted on more subjects for longer periods have been dismissed as too short with too few subjects if they were unfavorable to established food or medical products. Oh well, cheers and chuga-lug.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.latimes.com

http://www.scientificamerican.com

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038869_Gatorade_BVO_flame_retardants.html#ixzz2JawlclQT

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TV Watching Linked to 15 Health Risks in Kids

Putting a television in your child’s bedroom may seem like a special treat, but it’s one that could be setting them up for a lifetime of poor sleep habits, and by association, obesity.

And it’s not only TVs that are to blame. Computers, video games, cell phones and other electronic gadgets are just as bad, and new research shows that if they’re in your kids’ rooms, it’s time to get them out.

Electronic Gadgets in Kids’ Rooms Promote Obesity and Unhealthy Lifestyles

In a survey of more than 3,000 fifth graders,1 half of the children said they had either a television, DVD player, or video game in their rooms, 21 percent said they had a computer and 17 percent said they had cellphones (and 5 percent of the kids said they had all three!).

If you think this doesn’t impact your child’s sleep habits … think again. More than half (57 percent) said they would use these devices even after they were supposed to be asleep, for instance staying up later to watch TV in bed. As you might suspect, those who had access to electronic devices generally slept less, and shorter sleep duration is linked to obesity.

Lost Sleep Contributes to Obesity

Getting just one extra hour of sleep a night was linked to a 28 percent lower risk of being overweight and a 30 percent lower risk of being obese, according to the study. On the other hand, kids who used electronic devices at bedtime were nearly 1.5 times more likely to be overweight. Among those who had three or more such devices in their bedroom (such as a TV, computer and video games), the risk jumped to over 2.5 times.

Part of the problem is that the kids are staying up later than they should to watch TV or play video games, and this means they’re sacrificing valuable sleep time. Your circadian rhythm has evolved over hundreds of generations to align your physiology with your environment. Your body clock is “set” to sleep at night and stay awake during daylight hours. If you are deprived of sleep, conflicting signals get sent to your body.

Too little sleep impacts your levels of thyroid and stress hormones, which in turn can affect your memory, immune system, heart and metabolism, and much more. Over time, lack of sleep can lead to:
•High blood sugar levels and an increased risk of diabetes — Sleep-deprived people tend to eat more sweet and starchy foods rather than vegetables and dairy products. Researchers suspect these cravings stem from the fact that your brain is fueled by glucose (blood sugar); therefore, when lack of sleep occurs, your brain searches for carbohydrates. In short, sleep deprivation puts your body into a pre-diabetic state, and makes you feel hungry, even if you’ve already eaten.
•Weight gain — When you are sleep deprived, your body decreases production of leptin, the hormone that tells your brain there is no need for more food. At the same time it increases levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger.
•Accelerated aging
•Hypertension (high blood pressure) and depression
•Increased risk of cancer by altering the balance of hormones in your body, such as reducing the production of melatonin

TV also appears to be linked to health risks regardless of its impact on sleep, through other mechanisms, such as reducing physical activity. One study found, for instance, that the more hours spent in front of a television in early childhood, the more a child’s muscular fitness decreased and the larger their waistlines became as pre-teens.2

TV Watching Linked to 15 Health Risks in Kids

Much of the TV debate focuses on advertising messages and violent or sexually explicit programming, and their impacts on young minds. And while these certainly can be damaging, it turns out that TV may be harmful no matter what your kids are watching.

Dr. Aric Sigman, a British psychologist, analyzed 35 different scientific studies on television and its effect on the viewer.3 He found the damage comes not from the TV programs themselves, but from the vast amount of time kids are spending watching television and computer screens. This activity produces an almost narcotic effect on your brain, actually numbing areas that would be stimulated by other activities, like reading.

Dr. Sigman has identified 15 negative effects that he believes can be blamed on watching television, stating:4

“Watching television, irrespective of the content, is increasingly associated with unfavorable biological and cognitive changes. These alterations occur at viewing levels far below the population norm. Given the population’s sheer exposure time to this environmental factor it is more than puzzling to consider how little awareness and action has resulted.”

The risks Dr. Sigman revealed include:

Obesity

Delayed healing

Heart trouble

Decreased metabolism

Damaged eyesight

Alzheimer’s disease

Decreased attention span

Hormone disturbances

Cancer

Early puberty

Autism

Sleep difficulties

Increased appetite

Limited brain growth

Diabetes

Even the Light from TVs and Other Glowing Gadgets Interferes With Your Child’s Sleep … and Health

Computer screens, televisions and most light bulbs emit blue light, to which your eyes are particularly sensitive because it’s the type of light most common outdoors during daytime hours. As a result, they can fool your brain into thinking it’s still daytime when it’s actually night, which disrupts your sleep patterns.

A study done with hamsters at Ohio State University Medical Center found that chronic exposure to dim light at night can cause signs of depression after just a few weeks.5 The study also showed changes in the hamsters’ hippocampus similar to brain changes seen in depressed people. They pointed out that rates of depression have risen along with exposure to artificial light at night.

The link could be due to the production of the hormone melatonin, which is interrupted when you’re exposed to light at night. There are many studies that suggest melatonin levels (and by proxy light exposures) control mood-related symptoms, such as those associated with depression — especially winter depression (aka, seasonal affective disorder, or SAD).

Exposure to light during the night can seriously impact your body’s internal clock, even leading to metabolic changes and weight gain. In fact, mice that were exposed to dim light during the night gained 50 percent more weight over an eight-week period than mice kept in complete darkness at night.6 They also had increased levels of glucose intolerance, a marker for pre-diabetes.

The weight gain occurred even though the mice were fed the same amount of food and had similar activity levels, and the researchers believe the findings may hold true for humans as well. So this is another issue to be aware of if your child has access to any type of glowing gadget at night.

The Solution is Simple…

Get the TV, computer, video games and cell phone out of your child’s bedroom, and limit their screen time during the day. Your child may protest, but this is a simple change that can help protect, and even improve, their health.

It’s a no-brainer that if your child has a TV in their room, they’re going to spend more time watching it, but one study really made that point clear, showing that having a TV in the bedroom increased viewing time by nearly nine hours a week.7

According to Dr. Sigman and other experts, children under age 3 should watch no TV at all, while those 3-7 should watch no more than 1.5 hours a day. For older kids, two hours of TV and/or computer/video game use should be the daily limit. In addition, once it’s bedtime, keep all light off at night (even if you get up to go to the bathroom) — and this includes your computer and TV.

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Everyone agrees the Sandy Hook shooting was a tragedy. Lots of people subsequently exploited the deaths of those children to push a political agenda of disarming Americans by claiming “guns kill people.”

But compared to what? Swimming pools kill people. Horseback riding kills people. And yes, even childbirth kills people. (Does that mean we should criminalize getting pregnant?)

To make any sense of death statistics, we have to ask, “Compared to what?” Because if we compare deaths by firearms to other causes of death, the picture is very, very different from the doomsday fear mongering scenarios CNN and other gun control pushers have whipped up into a nationwide frenzy. In fact, as the following infographic shows, doctors kill 2,450% more Americans than all gun-related deaths combined.

Your doctor is FAR more likely to kill you than an armed criminal
It’s true: You are 64 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by someone else wielding a gun. That’s because 19,766 of the total 31,940 gun deaths in the USA (in the year 2011) were suicides. So the actual number of deaths from other people shooting you is only 12,174.

Doctors, comparatively, kill 783,936 people each year, which is 64 times higher than 12,174. Doctors shoot you not with bullets, but with vaccines, chemotherapy and pharmaceuticals… all of which turn out to be FAR more deadly than guns.

This is especially amazing, given that there are just under 700,000 doctors in America, while there are roughly about 80 million gun owners in America.

How do 700,000 doctors manage to kill 783,936 people each year (that’s over one death per doctor), while 80 million gun owners kill only 31,940? Because owning a gun is orders of magnitude safer than “practicing” medicine!

Check out the following infographic, which can also be viewed in a higher resolution at:
www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Firearms-vs-Doctors-Drugs.html

As the infographic explains, you are over three times more likely to be killed by a drug side effect than a firearm.

On the firearms side of things, you are almost twice as likely to be killed by YOURSELF than by someone else using a gun. But even this number can’t be blamed on guns themselves, because if people really want to commit suicide, they will find other ways to accomplish it (such as jumping off buildings or bridges).

Where is the call for “doctor control?”
Despite the statistical fact that you are overall 24.5 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by a gun — and it’s actually far worse if you spend more time around doctors than you do gang members — there is absolutely no call in the media for “doctor control.”

There’s zero talk about making medications safer, or reducing the number of people who are medicated every day in America.

There’s no mention of the astonishing fact that surgical procedures do not need to be proven safe and effective before being tried on patients. Surgery in America is, in effect, a grand experiment often conducted with little or no scientific support.

There’s no discussion of the fact that psychiatric drugs promote violent shootings as we’ve seen over and over again across America.

Nope, the entire focus is on how BAD guns are, while the government simultaneously promotes how GOOD vaccines are! …and chemotherapy, surgery, pharmaceuticals and everything else that’s killing us en masse.

Every U.S. hospital is another Sandy Hook
Hundreds of people are killed every single day across U.S. hospitals from pharmaceutical side effects alone. On top of that, hospitals are killing people with superbug infections, fouled up surgeries, and failed heart stents, among other deadly problems.

Sandy Hook was the tragedy the government wanted you to see. But they didn’t want you to pay attention to all the deaths happening elsewhere — in far greater numbers — such as at hospitals and via pharmacies.

Because all those deaths overseen by doctors and pharmacists are making billions of dollars for the corrupt, criminally-run pharmaceutical industry and the for-profit, corporate-driven health care complex.

While Sandy Hook was mass murder, the U.S. health care system is practically a holocaust. In fact, the U.S. health care system has killed more people than Adolf Hitler — by far!

Spread the word: If we want to save lives, the most important place to start is at the doctors and drug companies. They are dealers of death who have been granted obscene monopolies by the FDA and state medical boards. Until their stranglehold on U.S. health care is finally broken, millions more innocent Americans will die at the hands of doctors, surgeons and pharmacists.

Share this article, and share the infographic at:
www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Firearms-vs-Doctors-Drugs.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038889_doctors_guns_statistics.html#ixzz2JYcTiePU

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Antibiotics are only designed to fight bacterial infections, yet some docs still insist on handing them out for colds and other viral respiratory illnesses where these not-so-magic pills won’t do a darned thing.

The single-worst thing you can do to a magician is reveal the secrets to his tricks. Because once the audience realizes that there’s no rabbit in the hat, or that the lovely assistant hasn’t really disappeared, they’ll never look at the magician the same way again.

Well, I’m about to break mainstream medicine’s sacred “magician’s code” and reveal to you a magic trick that they’ve have been fooling us with for years. It may well be the greatest illusion in medicine today!

As we’ve told you before, many mainstream doctors pass out antibiotics like they’re lollipops, turning those unassuming little pills into a billion-dollar business for Big Pharma. Antibiotics are only designed to fight bacterial infections, yet some docs still insist on handing them out for colds and other viral respiratory illnesses where these not-so-magic pills won’t do a darned thing.

Whenever I talk to people about antibiotics it’s usually right about now that I hear an objection that goes something like this, “Wait a minute, I took antibiotics for a cold once, and they really seemed to work.”

“Seemed” is the operative word here.

According to findings published in the Annals of Family Medicine, timing is the real reason many people believe antibiotics are working for their colds. Typically, the drugs are being prescribed towards the end of a cold’s cycle. So as miserable as you may have been feeling, you were about to get better anyway.

The investigation, led by a top University of Georgia researcher, analyzed medical literature and found that the average acute cough lasts a little less than 18 days — but the typical adult believes a cough should subside in 7-9 days.

So imagine this — you’ve had a nagging cough for a week and a half, and you finally break down and schedule a doctor’s visit. He prescribes antibiotics, and abracadabra, just like magic, within a week you’re all better. Well, that week just put you at 17 days since you got sick — your cold probably just ran its course.

And that, my friend, is The Great Antibiotic Illusion. Ta-da!!!

But, as we’ve told you many times before, prescription antibiotics are not the benign little wonder pills they’re sold as. Even when used correctly, they can wipe out beneficial bacteria in your body, leaving you with tummy troubles like nausea and diarrhea. Even worse, the over-prescribing of antibiotics has led to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, like the deadly MRSA.

Dr. Wright says the best way to fight a cold is with safe and natural solutions. The next time you feel the sniffles coming on, give his recommendation a try — take a minimum of one gram of vitamin C four times a day, and if the C is tolerated well (meaning it doesn’t cause loose bowels or diarrhea), considerably more is not only safe it’s even more effective.

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Coca-Cola Rolling Out New Misinformation Campaign to “Combat Obesity”

Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

A new Coca-Cola ad campaign that encourages people to come together to fight obesity is drawing fire from consumer advocates and obesity experts.1, 2

Coke says it’s trying to make consumers more aware of the healthy choice beverages Coke makes; critics say Coke is simply doing damage control.

There can be no doubt that soda is one of the primary beverages responsible for skyrocketing obesity rates. As Dr. Sanjay Gupta told CNN:3

“…the scientific community has …reached a consensus that soft drinks are the one food or beverage that’s been demonstrated to cause weight gain and obesity. And if we’re going to deal with this obesity epidemic, that’s the place to start.”

Granted, no one is forcing anyone to drink them, but there simply has not been enough public education about the dangers of excessive fructose consumption. In fact, the industry has fought tooth and nail to minimize or flat out deny these health dangers, very similar to the tobacco industry denying the risk of lung cancer..

A perfect example of this ongoing denial is Coca-Cola’s reply to the video below, The Real Bears, produced by CSPI. The company called the short-film “irresponsible” and “grandstanding” that will not help anyone “understand energy balance.”

I cannot think of any instance where you might need a soda in order to maintain correct “energy balance.” You can achieve optimal health without any added sugar or artificial sweeteners. In fact, if you want to understand energy balance, read up on how to become fat-adapted rather than being a sugar burner. This requires cutting out virtually all added sugars.

Still, their vehement refusal to accept responsibility for leading you astray does not surprise me. Just take a look at the history of Coca-Cola’s advertising, and you’ll quickly realize that this leopard is not about to change its spots anytime soon. Two sites offering this history lesson include Arandilla’s “Coca-Cola Advertising Through the Years” blog4, and NPR’s blog page5, “Vigor, Brain Power and Other Health Claims From Coke’s Advertising Past.”

Now, Coca-Cola, the leading beverage brand in the world, realizes it’s losing the information war and is trying to shift your attention to its 180 different no- and low-calorie beverages. Well, this certainly is NOT going to address the obesity problem. On the contrary, artificial sweeteners have been shown to produce even MORE weight gain than regular sugar and even high fructose corn syrup.

Coke Advocating Flawed, Outdated Calorie-Counting Advice

Evidence of just how behind-the-times Coca-Cola is, their brand new multi-million dollar campaign focuses on the sentiment that:

“…beating obesity will take action by all of us, based on one simple, common-sense fact: All calories count, no matter where they come from. …And if you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you’ll gain weight.”4

This “conventional wisdom” has been firmly debunked by science. Not all calories count equally. And the “calories in, calories out” hypothesis for maintaining weight has equally been shown to be incorrect. It is in fact FAR more important to look at the source of the calories than counting them.

In short, you do not get fat because you eat too many calories and don’t exercise enough. You get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories. At the end of the day, your consumption of carbohydrates, whether in the form of grains and sugars (especially fructose), will determine whether or not you’re able to manage your weight and maintain optimal health. This is because these types of carbs (fructose and grains) affect the hormone insulin, which is a very potent fat regulator. Fats and proteins affect insulin to a far lesser degree. Kudos to The Atlantic5 for calling Coca-Cola on its misleading tactics in its recent article titled, Coke’s Unconscionable New Ad:

“Coca-Cola’s latest attempt to position itself against the rising tide of concern about the role of sodas in the obesity epidemic is unconscionable, because of this statement: ‘All calories count. No matter where they come from including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories.’

For Coca-Cola to suggest that all calories are equal flies in the face of reality as best as we can determine it… Coca-Cola wants us to ignore the considerable research confirming that sugary soda is a major contributor to obesity, and that it has no nutritional value… Coca-Cola could use its considerable advertising muscle to promote healthy exercise, yes, but when it does so as a ploy to confuse the public about the dangers of its products, that’s not a public service, that’s unethical.”

The video above is from Youtube and is available to the public for information and entertainment purposes only.
Mercola.com does not own and did not produce this video.

Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work

Dr. Robert Lustig, an expert on the metabolic fate of sugar, explains that fructose is ‘isocaloric but not isometabolic.’ This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. This is a crucial point that must be understood.

Fructose is in fact far worse than other carbs because the vast majority of it converts directly to FAT, both in your fatty tissues, and in your liver. And this is why counting calories does not work… As long as you keep eating fructose and grains, you’re programming your body to create and store fat.

Furthermore, research by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado and author of The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch, demonstrates that large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight. Rather it’s fructose-containing sugars that cause obesity – not by calories, but by turning on your “fat switch,” a powerful biological adaptation that causes cells to accumulate fat in anticipation of scarcity (or hibernation). According to Dr. Johnson, based on his decades of research:

“Those of us who are obese eat more because of a faulty ‘switch’ and exercise less because of a low energy state. If you can learn how to control the specific ‘switch’ located in the powerhouse of each of your cells – the mitochondria – you hold the key to fighting obesity.”

According to Beverage Digest, soda consumption in the US has been on a steady decline since 1998.6 A recent article in The Atlantic7 shows consumption of soda “in freefall,” with US consumption having declined by 40 percent since 2003. Unfortunately, many are simply switching to no- or low-cal beverages, which Coca-Cola is now trying to boost, and quite frankly, if I had to choose between these two evils, I’d choose regular soda, as artificial sweeteners are even worse for your long-term health, and have been linked to increased weight gain when compared to calorie-containing sweeteners.

No- or Low-Cal Beverages CONTRIBUTE to Obesity Problem

While soda consumption has gone down, consumption of artificially sweetened “diet” beverages has risen in that same time, according to an October 11, 2012 report by USA Today.8 The industry has effectively convinced people that diet drinks are a healthier choice because they lack any calories. However, if you’re concerned about your weight and health, switching to artificial sweeteners is NOT a wise move.

Mounting research shows that diet soda is not a “guilt-free” treat at all. For example, two studies published in 2011 linked diet soda to poor health outcomes. In one study, people who drank two or more diet sodas a day experienced waist size increases that were six times greater than those of people who didn’t drink diet soda. A second study that found that aspartame (NutraSweet) raised blood sugar levels in diabetes-prone mice.

As you may know, your waist size is not only a matter of aesthetics, but also a powerful indicator of a build-up of visceral fat, a dangerous type of fat around your internal organs that is strongly linked with type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Your waist size is a far more accurate predictor of your heart risks than your body mass index (BMI). Nearly eight years ago, research by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH9 (who was also involved in the newer studies noted above) found that your risk of obesity increases by 41 percent for each can of diet soda you drink in a day. Furthermore, for diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:
•36.5 percent for up to 1/2 can per day
•57.1 percent for more than 2 cans per day

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:
•26 percent for up to 1/2 can per day
•32.8 percent for 1 to 2 cans per day
•47.2 percent for more than 2 cans per day

How Decreasing Sugar Intake Can Impact Body Weight

In related news, recently published research10 shows that decreasing sugar consumption can help you lose weight. The researchers examined outcomes from 71 studies on sugar consumption and body fat. The duration of included studies ranged from two weeks to one year. According to the authors:

“In trials of adults with ad libitum diets (that is, with no strict control of food intake), reduced intake of dietary sugars was associated with a decrease in body weight (0.80 kg/1.8 lb); increased sugars intake was associated with a comparable weight increase (0.75 kg/1.7 lb).

Isoenergetic exchange of dietary sugars with other carbohydrates showed no change in body weight . Trials in children… in relation to intakes of sugar sweetened beverages after one year follow-up in prospective studies, the odds ratio for being overweight or obese increased was 1.55 (1.32 to 1.82) among groups with the highest intake compared with those with the lowest intake. Despite significant heterogeneity in one meta-analysis and potential bias in some trials, sensitivity analyses showed that the trends were consistent and associations remained after these studies were excluded.”

Skyrocketing Obesity is Related to Misleading You on Health Issues

Obesity is the result of inappropriate lifestyle choices, and unfortunately, our government has done an abysmal job at disseminating accurate information about diet and health. It’s one thing for corporations to put out misleading ads – honesty is not in the self-interest of the processed food and beverage industry. It’s another when the government falls in line with for-profit deception and becomes a propagator of corporate propaganda. And this is exactly what has happened… For example, conventional advice that is driving public health in the wrong direction includes:
•Cutting calories: Not all calories are created equal, and counting calories will not help you lose weight if you’re consuming the wrong kind of calories
•Choosing diet foods will help you lose weight: Substances like Splenda and aspartame may have zero calories, but your body isn’t fooled. When it gets a “sweet” taste, it expects calories to follow, and when this doesn’t occur it leads to distortions in your biochemistry that may actually lead to weight gain
•Avoiding saturated fat: The myth that saturated fat causes heart disease has undoubtedly harmed an incalculable number of lives over the past several decades, even though it all began as little more than a scientifically unsupported marketing strategy for Crisco cooking oil. Most people actually need at least 50 percent of their diet to include healthful saturated fats such as organic, pastured eggs, avocados, coconut oil, real butter and grass-fed beef in order to optimize their health
•Reducing your cholesterol to extremely low levels: Cholesterol is actually NOT the major culprit in heart disease or any disease, and the guidelines that dictate what number your cholesterol levels should be to keep you “healthy” are fraught with conflict of interest — and have never been proven to be good for your health

This is just a tiny sampling of the misleading information on weight and obesity disseminated by our government agencies. A more complete list of conventional health myths could easily fill an entire series of books. The reason behind this sad state of affairs is the fact that the very industries that profit from these lies are the ones funding most of the research; infiltrating our regulatory agencies; and bribing our political officials to support their financially-driven agenda through any number of legal, and at times not so legal, means.

Could Warning Labels Be Part of the Answer?

According to Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the non-profit group The California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA), “43 percent of the increase in daily calories Americans consumed over the last 30 years came from sugary drinks.” The CCPHA has published a list of seven things soda makers could do to create “meaningful change,” such as11:
1.Cease all advertising of sugary drinks to children under 16
2.Add warning labels to containers stating the link between soda consumption and obesity, diabetes and tooth decay, just like cigarettes must declare its connection to lung cancer
3.Declare number of teaspoons of sugar the container contains, in large print
4.Quit marketing sports drinks as healthy beverages

You Can Avoid Becoming a Statistic

Perhaps one of the most powerful scientific discoveries to emerge in the past several years is that the old adage “a calorie is a calorie” is patently false. Furthermore, the idea that in order to lose weight all you have to do is expend more calories than you consume is also false… The research clearly demonstrates that even if you control the number of calories you eat, if those calories come from fructose, you are at increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, or prediabetes, which includes insulin resistance, fatty liver, high blood pressure and high triglycerides.

Conventional thinking tells us that metabolic syndrome is the outcome of obesity, which is simply the result of eating too many calories and not exercising enough. However, Dr. Johnson’s research, discussed above, shows that a high fructose diet is the key to developing metabolic syndrome, and that as soon as you throw fructose into the mix, “calories in versus calories out” is no longer a functional equation.

In short, avoiding fructose in all its forms, along with other sugars, is imperative in order to avoid “flipping the fat switch” that can trigger your body to accumulate excess fat. So please, do yourself and your family a favor, and don’t get swept up in Coca-Cola’s multi-million dollar ad extravaganza. The entire campaign is based on flawed, inaccurate, misleading, and patently false conventions of thinking.

Let’s not forget: Coca-Cola spent $1.2 million to defeat California Proposition 37 last November, which would have required genetically engineered (GE) foods to be labeled as such (which could have included soda containing GE high fructose corn syrup). That, in and of itself, is proof positive that Coca-Cola has no concern for health conscious consumers.

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How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of factory farms? By making it an “act of terrorism” for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs and dairy products.

And who better to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, http://www.greenisthenewred.com designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded and infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Environment,_Energy,_and_Agriculture

New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Environment,_Energy,_and_Agriculture
Lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.

In all, six states now have Ag-Gag laws, including North Dakota, Montana and Kansas, all of which passed the laws in 1990-1991, before the term “Ag-Gag” was coined.

Ag-Gag laws passed 20 years ago were focused more on deterring people from destroying property, or from either stealing animals or setting them free. Today’s ALEC-inspired bills take direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type Big Ag wants to make illegal.

Wyoming’s HB 0126 http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB110/ is the perfect example of a direct link between an undercover investigation of a factory farm and the introduction of an Ag-Gag law. The bill was introduced mere weeks after nine factory workers at Wheatland-WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods, were charged http://www.humanesociety.org animal cruelty following an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS activists videotaped workers kicking live piglets, swinging them by their hind legs and beating and kicking mother pigs. Charges were filed in late December. In January, State Rep. Sue Wallis and Senator Ogden Driskill introduced Wyoming’s Ag-Gag bill which would make it a criminal act to carry out investigations such as the one that exposed the cruelty at Wyoming Premium Farms.

Wallis and Driskill both have ties to Big Ag. Wallis was the subject of a conflict-of-interest complaint filed in 2010 by animal welfare groups. The groups accused http://www.examiner.com of improper and fraudulent abuse of her position as a legislator after she introduced a bill allowing the Wyoming Livestock Board to send stray horses to slaughter. At the time she introduced the bill, Wallis also was planning to develop a family-owned horse slaughter plant in the state. Both Wallis and Driskill are members of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. Driskill has accepted political contributions http://influenceexplorer.com from the livestock industry and Exxon Mobil, a member of ALEC.

Most of the Ag-Gag laws introduced since 2011 borrow the premise, if not the exact language, from model legislation designed by ALEC. ALEC’s sole purpose is to write model legislation that protects corporate profits. Industry then pushes state legislators to adapt the bills for their states and push them through. The idea behind the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act http://www.greenisthenewred.com is to make it illegal to “enter an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.”

In other words, these laws turn journalists and the investigators of crimes into criminals.
Many of the legislators involved in ramming through state Ag-Gag bills have ties http://www.thisdishisvegetarian.com/2012/07/behind-Ag-Gag-laws.html to ALEC, including Missouri’s Rep. Casey Guernsey. Guernsey’s top donor in 2010 was Smithfield Foods, itself a target of undercover investigations that exposed widespread abuse of pigs. Of the 60 Iowa lawmakers http://www.greenisthenewred.com voted for Iowa’s Ag-Gag laws, at least 14 of them, or 23%, are members of ALEC
ALEC’s interest in large-scale factory farm operations, or in industry-speak, Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), can be traced to one of its staunchest members, Koch Industries. Koch Industries once owned the Koch Beef Company, one of the largest cattle feeders in the U.S. When neighbors of one of the company’s huge cattle-feeding operations opposed a planned expansion, claiming it would pose health concerns, Koch persuaded local legislators to rule in its favor. ALEC subsequently wrote the “Right to Farm Act,” http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Environment,_Energy,_and_Agriculture a bill to bar lawsuits by citizens claiming that neighboring farms, including industrial farms, are fouling their air and water.

Ag-Gag bills a threat to animals, public health and the environment

Under U.S. laws, farm animals don’t get the same protection as other animals, such as dogs and cats. Anti-free speech Ag-Gag bills only serve to leave farm animals even more vulnerable to the routine pain and suffering on factory farms. The three federal statutes that address animal welfare, including the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, do not apply to animals raised for food. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act regulates animals raised for food, but applies exclusively to slaughterhouses, where animals may spend only a short time before they are killed. That leaves the states to regulate the often-barbarous treatment of animals raised for food. But as we’ve seen with the Ag-Gag bills, state laws often are written by big corporations. Nowhere is that more obvious than in states where cruel methods of treating animals are exempted from state laws on the basis of their being classified as “customary.” Who decides http://yulr.org a certain practice is “customary” even if most thinking people would consider that practice cruel? Corporations that own and operate CAFOs in that state.

Apart from the obvious ethical concerns, Ag-Gag laws also threaten public health and the environment, and undermine workers’ rights and free speech laws. Undercover investigations at factory farms have exposed the mishandling of meat, eggs and milk in ways that could potentially lead to health risks including mad cow disease, salmonella, e-coli and others. http://www.humanesociety.org in Chino, Calif., revealed widespread mistreatment of “downed” cows – cows that are too sick or injured to walk. The facility is the second-largest supplier of beef to USDA’s Commodity Procurement Branch, which distributes the beef to the National School Lunch Program.

Ag-Gag bills also keep employees and others from blowing the whistle on environmental violations. Huge amounts of waste are generated by the billions of cows, pigs and chickens on factory farms. Much of that waste, full of antibiotics, growth promoters and synthetic hormones, finds its way into our waterways and municipal water supplies. State and federal laws require CAFOs to minimize their environmental damage, but the laws are often not enforced. One of the ways to expose violations is through undercover investigations.

And then there’s the matter of free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has been an outspoken opponent of Ag-Gag bills. In a letter http://nhclu.org opposing the proposed Ag-Gag law in New Hampshire, the executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union wrote that the proposed law “has serious implications for two fundamental rights protected by the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions: the right to freedom of expression and the right against self-incrimination.”

There’s still time to stop Ag-Gag laws in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska
The majority of Americans see Ag-Gag laws for what they are: just another attack on consumers’ right to know. According to a poll http://www.aspca.org/Pressroom/press-releases/021712 conducted last year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 71% of Americans oppose the laws. When consumers learn that 99% of the animals raised for food are raised in factory farms, they generally agree that lawmakers should focus on strengthening animal cruelty laws, not prosecuting the whistleblowers.

It was public outrage that killed proposed bills in seven states last year. Here are the three latest bills to be introduced, and links to petitions telling lawmakers in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska to reject the proposed laws:

New Hampshire: HB110 http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB110/

Primary sponsor: Bob Haefner (R) ; Co-sponsors: Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff (D), Rep. Tara Sad (D), Senator Sharon Carson (R), and Bob Odell (R)

This is a 7-line bill written to look as if its main concern is the protection of animals. However the bill would require whistleblowers to report animal abuse and turn over videotapes, photographs and documents within 24 hours or face prosecution – a clear attempt to intimidate and deter people from conducting undercover investigations. Lawmakers know that in order for anyone to prove a pattern of abuse in factory farms, they must document repeated instances of cruelty. A video or photograph of only one instance will be dismissed as a one-time anomaly, which will get the agribusiness company off the hook.

Sign the petition http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9290 to stop New Hampshire’s AG-GAG bill.

Wyoming: HB0126 http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2013/Introduced/HB0126.pdf

Co-sponsors: Rep. Sue Wallis (R), Sen. Ogden Driskill (R)

Introduced within weeks after nine workers at a Wyoming factory farm were charged with abuse. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sue Wallis, is planning to build horse slaughterhouses in Wyoming and other states. If this bill had been law in 2012, it would have prevented activists from exposing horrific acts of cruelty at Wheatland-WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods. http://www.humanesociety.org

Sign the petition http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9287 to stop Wyoming’s AG-GAG bill.

Nebraska: LB 204 http://openstates.org/ne/bills/103/LB204/

Introduced by Sen. Tyson Larson (R), Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh (R), and Sen. Ken Schilz (R)

The bill would make it a Class IV felony for any person to obtain employment at an animal facility with the broadly defined “intent to disrupt the normal operations,” It would require animal abuse reports to be filed within 12 hours. Co-sponsor Sen. Launtenbaugh has advocated in the past for horse slaughtering.

Sign the petition http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9289 to stop Nebraska’s AG-GAG bill.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038884_terrorism_animal_abuse_factory_farms.html#ixzz2JTDaAsaV

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

By Dr. Mercola

Every year, up to 2 million children in the European Union (EU) are born with methylmercury exposures that exceed the EU’s safe limit. Of them, 200,000 have levels above the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended maximum for mercury exposures, which means they’re born with hazardous levels of mercury in their tiny bodies.

These alarming statistics came from a new study revealing the huge health burden and economic toll that mercury pollution is taking on populations worldwide.1

Controlling Mercury Pollution Could Save 700,000 IQ Points a Year

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin; it doesn’t take much to cause serious damage because there is absolutely no safe level of exposure. For instance, if you were to take the amount of mercury in a typical thermometer and put it in a small lake, that lake could be closed down due to environmental hazards.

Children and fetuses whose brains are still developing are at greatest risk because of their small size, their more permeable blood-brain barriers and the fact that they’re detoxification systems are not yet capable of effectively removing toxic challenges. Exposure to mercury while the brain is still developing has been linked to lower IQ, and therefore a lower lifetime learning potential.

For instance, research has revealed that babies exposed to higher levels of mercury in the womb scored lower on skills tests when they became infants and toddlers.2

According to the new study, if the effects of mercury on developing brains were converted into IQ points, controlling mercury pollution would save 700,000 IQ points per year in the European Union alone, and lead to significant economic benefits as a result. Researchers noted:

“These estimates document that efforts to combat mercury pollution and to reduce MeHg exposures will have very substantial economic benefits in Europe … “

Mercury Fillings Remain a Major Cause of Mercury Pollution

You’ve probably heard about the risks of consuming seafood that’s contaminated with mercury. Ever wonder where all that mercury in fish and seafood comes from? As Charlie Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice put it:

“Mercury fillings are one source of mercury contaminating the fish and seafood that we eat. The environmental health effects of dental mercury are well known: brain damage and neurological problems, especially for children and the unborn babies of pregnant women.”

The use of mercury fillings is very much an issue of global concern, as once in the environment, dental mercury converts to its even more toxic form, methylmercury, and becomes a major source of accumulated mercury in the fish you eat. Mercury from dental amalgam pollutes:
•Water via dental clinic releases and human waste (amalgam is by far the largest source of mercury in our wastewater)
•Air via cremation, dental clinic emissions, sludge incineration, and respiration; and
•Soil via landfills, burials, and fertilizer

Mercury Fillings May Pose Risks to Children, Pregnant Women

Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) admits that amalgam could be dangerous for children and that there is no evidence that it is safe for them. Buried deep in the FDA’s 2009 amalgam rule, FDA conceded:3

“The developing neurological systems in fetuses and young children may be more sensitive to the neurotoxic effects of mercury vapor. Very limited to no clinical information is available regarding long-term health outcomes in pregnant women and their developing fetuses, and children under the age of six, including infants who are breastfed.”

There is overwhelming evidence showing mercury from dental fillings to be easily released in the form of vapor each time you eat, drink, brush your teeth, chew gum, or otherwise stimulate your teeth. This mercury vapor readily passes through cell membranes, across your blood-brain barrier, and into your central nervous system, where it can cause psychological, neurological and immunological problems. In the United States, children and pregnant women continue to have their health and the health of future generations put at risk because the FDA is failing to protect them.

The WHO also reports the known toxic effects of mercury exposure, including in its inhaled vapor form, stating:4

“Mercury is highly toxic and harmful to health. Approximately 80% of inhaled mercury vapor is absorbed in the blood through the lungs, causing damages to lungs, kidneys and the nervous, digestive, respiratory and immune systems. Health effects from excessive mercury exposure include tremors, impaired vision and hearing, paralysis, insomnia, emotional instability, developmental deficits during fetal development, and attention deficit and developmental delays during childhood.”

If You’re Pregnant, WAIT to Have Your Mercury Fillings Removed

For those of you who have mercury fillings, I recommend that you have them removed — but this should NOT be done while you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. This is because when you have these fillings removed you can be exposed to significant amounts of mercury vapors if the dentist doesn’t know what he or she is doing, and this could be quite toxic to a fetus or breastfed infant.

It’s also for this reason that I strongly suggest you get healthy BEFORE having your fillings removed, as you want your detoxification mechanisms optimized prior to removal. Once you are healthy and no longer pregnant or nursing, find a qualified biological dentist who is experienced with mercury filling removal. Some things that need to be done to keep you (and your dentist) safe during mercury filling (amalgam) removal include:
•Providing you with an alternative air source and instructing you not to breathe through your mouth
•Using a cold-water spray to minimize mercury vapors
•Putting a rubber dam in your mouth so you don’t swallow or inhale any toxins
•Using a high-volume evacuator near the tooth at all times to evacuate the mercury vapor
•Washing your mouth out immediately after the fillings have been removed (the dentist should also change gloves after the removal)
•Immediately cleaning your protective wear and face once the fillings are removed
•Using room air purifiers

How to Detoxify from Mercury Exposure

In the video above, Dr. Christopher Shade, a mercury and glutathione expert from the University of Illinois, explains how your body’s natural heavy metal detoxification system works. It’s a lengthy lecture — about three hours. But if you truly want an in-depth understanding of this topic, he gives an excellent presentation of the latest science about the human biochemistry of mercury.

Your body is designed to detoxify mercury and other heavy metals, but an impaired metabolism can lead to mercury toxicity. My revised mercury detoxification protocol, which incorporates the work of Dr. Shade, supports your glutathione system and all of the enzymes and transporter proteins that must be working properly if your body is to efficiently cleanse itself of mercury. You can get all the details in my revised protocol to detoxify your body from mercury exposure.

Forward-Thinking Government Agencies Urging a Phase-Out of Mercury in Dentistry

For example, in a letter to EU member state representatives and dental experts, the EEB asked recipients to support a phase-out of the use of mercury in dentistry, both in the EU and around the world. The EU has been aggressive in both their intent and actions aimed at reducing mercury usage, and even adopted a mercury strategy in 2005, which contains 20 measures to reduce mercury emissions, cut supply and demand protections against exposure.

The EEB letter came on the heels of a July 2012 European Commission report by BIO Intelligence Service (BIOS),5 which also recommended the phase-out of dental amalgam and mercury in button cell batteries.

Sweden has already phased out dental mercury, and several other European countries have either significantly reduced its use or have imposed restrictions on it. The fact that amalgam releases so much mercury into the environment is one reason why WHO is working to facilitate “a switch in use of dental materials” away from amalgam.6 They, too, noted that dental amalgam raises “general health concerns.” The WHO report observed:

“According to the Norwegian Dental Biomaterials Adverse Reaction Unit, the majority of cases of side-effects of dental filling materials are linked with dental amalgam.”

With dental mercury uncontrollably entering the environment from multiple pathways, phasing out amalgam and transitioning to non-mercury alternatives is the only way to phase down – and eventually eliminate – this significant source of mercury that threatens our environment and ultimately our health.

This is why support for Consumers for Dental Choice, which has worked to educate the government about dental mercury pollution and the many mercury-free alternatives to amalgam, is now more important than ever. Consumers for Dental Choice leads the battle for mercury-free dentistry both in the U.S. and worldwide, especially at the UN mercury treaty negotiations. Its financial needs are greater than ever, so we ask for your help! Please consider a donation to Consumers for Dental Choice, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to working for mercury-free dentistry for every child and every adult.

Donations can be made online here. Checks can be mailed to:

Consumers for Dental Choice
316 F St., N.E., Suite 210
Washington DC 20002

Also, for timely updates and information, please join Consumers for Dental Choice on Facebook.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Police state gone wild: Couple facing 60 days in jail for rescuing injured baby deer

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038874_baby_deer_police_state_jail_time.html#ixzz2JT3PxwzW

An Indiana couple saved a wounded baby deer and nursed it back to life, saving its life and giving it a home. They named it “Little Orphan Dani.” When Indiana state officials got word of this courageous act of compassion, they ordered the deer euthanized. (Because government wants to kill everything you love.)

When the deer “escaped” right before it was schedule to be killed — and yes, I think the couple probably set it free rather than have it killed — the man and woman were charged with unlawful possession of a deer.

They now face $2,000 in fines and 60 days in jail.

This is yet another example of the government police state gone wild, and it’s on top of seemingly countless other stories of similar police state insanity such as armed government raids on raw milk distributors.

Click here for more details on this story from ABC News.

Click here for the Facebook support page calling for charges to be dropped against the couple.

Click here for the Change.org petition.

Who wants to kill the deer and imprison the couple? The DNR
The bastard a@#holes behind this action are, predictably, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). This is the same name as the department in Michigan that forced small farmers in that state to murder their own baby pigs.

What we are seeing today across America, both at the state and federal levels, is big government gone BAD, ignoring the real criminals at the top while threatening, fining and imprisoning the “little people” who are only trying to do the right thing.

Recent examples:

Michigan gardener Julie Bass was threatened with jail time for teaching her young son gardening skills in a home garden planted in her front yard.

A woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma had her medicinal garden destroyed by thuggish government “officials” who waited until she was gone before gutting her entire plot of edible herbs.

James Stewart, the California “raw milk man,” was subjected to unbelievable jail torture in LA county for the “crime” of distributing fresh farm milk to happy customers. His “Rawesome Foods” was hit with an armed multi-agency government raid during which $50,000 in fresh eggs, milk, fruit and meat was confiscated and then destroyed. As he was held in jail in LA county, he was subjected to starvation, hypothermia and having his jail cell intentionally flooded with raw human feces as punishment.

These are just a few of the many examples of the government police state gone mad in America. There are many more for anyone who dares to look.

Government has become too large, too powerful, too arrogant and too dangerous
The big picture in all this? America’s current government is a grave danger to America herself. We are living under increasing tyranny, total government surveillance of our emails, texts and phone calls, and selective enforcement of laws in order to punish the little people while the powerful elite run free.

As an example of that, New York Mayor Bloomberg insists that everyone in New York should be stripped of all their firearms, but he walks around with five armed goons who intimidate journalists for daring to ask questions about Bloomberg’s outrageous hypocrisy.

America is being divided into the “privileged” class versus the working class. The privileged elite are immune to virtually all prosecution of existing laws while the working class are subjected to every nit-picking technical violation of every law imaginable. Nearly every person alive today commits three felonies a day without even knowing it. In fact, that’s the title of an eye-opening book by Harvey Silverglate.

As the book’s description states:

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.

That’s why this couple is being terrorized by their government for saving a little Bambi. The government wants to remind them who’s in charge, and the way to do that is to abandon all common sense and compassion and engage in the raw exercise of brute force power.

All government operates with the threat of violence against us all
Remember: All government operates at the end of a gun. Government achieves compliance solely by the threat of violence against the People. This is what is brilliantly revealed by Lew Rockwell and other intelligent critics of big government.

The reason government wants all Americans disarmed right now is because it wants a monopoly of violence that can be used against people to destroy their home gardens, criminalize saving animals, mandate forced vaccines, shut down medicinal herb companies and routinely terrorize the people. Even while the government wants us all to be disarmed, it is buying up thousands of full-auto assault rifles as well as over a billion rounds of ammunition to be used domestically, inside the USA.

Have you figured it out yet? There is no Al-Quaeda. There is no Bin Laden. The real terrorists are power-hungry government berserkers within our own government, and they will stop at nothing to usurp power and enslave the masses.

I’ve been shouting this for years, and with each astonishing transgression of this liberty-crushing government, more and more people are waking up. Every time the government threatens another innocent gardener, parent or animal rescue person with imprisonment, tens of thousands of people hear about it and wake up to the reality that government in America has gone rogue. It no longer serves the People. Instead, it considers the People to be its enemy, and it is dedicated to crushing the People.

It’s time we put government in its place. It’s time we took a stand for all the innocent victims of the terrorist government currently running things in this country. It’s time we stopped the government bailouts to rich, wealthy banksters and the criminalization of routine human activities like saving wounded animals or growing home gardens.

I’ve had enough. Have you? Are you ready yet to call for the end of tyrannical government and the restoration of justice, liberty and the Bill of Rights? Keep reading Natural News because this story has only just begun.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038874_baby_deer_police_state_jail_time.html#ixzz2JT2wfV00

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Many vaccines are made with disturbing ingredients like aborted human fetal proteins

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit vaccine safety group, recently conducted an independent review of the contents of childhood vaccines and found that many of them are tainted with ingredients that would shock most parents. According to the manufacturer-produced package inserts included with each vaccine batch, many vaccines are made with disturbing ingredients like aborted human fetal proteins, altered DNA material, and even genetically-modified (GM) human albumin.

This shocking information was compiled as part of an NVIC safety review on the childhood vaccination schedule, which has been called into question in recent years due to a steady increase in cases of autism and other forms of neurological and brain damage among vaccinated children. As it turns out, there are at least eight, and as many as 23, vaccines routinely administered to children that contain one or more of these questionable ingredients — and if the general public truly knew about this, there would likely be a massive vaccination fallout resulting in the complete collapse of the vaccine industry.

Back in 1966, researchers extracted lung tissue from a 14-week aborted baby and developed a cell line from it known as MRC-5 that is still used in many vaccines today. MRC-5 has admittedly been used to developed the Varivax vaccine for chicken pox, the ProQuad vaccines for both chicken pox and MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), and several other vaccines for Hepatitis A, DTaP, Hib, polio, and rabies. Similarly, a cell line known as RA 27/3, which was derived from another aborted human baby in 1964, is still being used today to produce both ProQuad and MMR II.

The controversial MMR II vaccine also reportedly contains a genetically-engineered human protein known as Recombumin, or recombinant human albumin, that most parents are unaware is being injected into their babies. MMR II is the only known vaccine that contains GM human protein, according to NVIC, but its unique presence in this contentious combination vaccine could help explain the unusual uptick in vaccine-induced neurological damage associated with it in recent years.

You can view the full NVIC graph showing which vaccines contain these and other heinous ingredients here: http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/human.html

Are hidden vaccine ingredients responsible for increasing disease rates?
According to NVIC, there are three main sources of human protein in vaccines: fetal cell lines, human albumin derived from human blood, and human albumin genetically engineered from yeast. Concerning human albumin derived from human blood, NVIC says “package inserts do not contain any information about where the human blood is sourced from,” but the other two sources are clearly questionable, at best.

So what we know is that aborted fetal cell lines, GM human albumin, and human albumin and DNA derived from other unknown sources are all being used to develop many of the vaccines being injected into society’s most fragile and sensitive members today. If this is not a serious cause for concern, then it is hard to know what is, especially as allergies, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, autism, and many other chronic health conditions continue to escalate inexplicably.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/human.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20049118-10391695.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038873_childhood_vaccines_aborted_babies_DNA.html#ixzz2JOdE6eeW

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If you’re not prepared to survive, you’re no better off than the Brazilian nightclub victims

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038859_nightclub_cities_survival.html#ixzz2JOc04v3a

As most of the connected world knows by now, 230 people died recently in a Brazilian nightclub “as fire ravaged the building.” Why didn’t those 230 people get out of the burning building? Because all the exits were blocked except one, of course. And bouncers wouldn’t let people leave because they couldn’t determine whether the patrons had yet paid for their drinks.

So 230 people tragically died, yet again, in yet another fire of a nightclub, just like all the previous fires of previous nightclubs that have killed countless others over the past several decades. Why doesn’t humanity learn?

Here’s another question: Why is all this relevant to you?

Because people like myself, Alex Jones, Gerald Celente and a few others are precisely the kind of people who would have warned everyone to get the heck out of the nightclub BEFORE the fire broke out.

We would have been called “fear mongering pessimists,” of course, for pointing out things like, “Hey, there’s only one exit for this entire building.” People who point out reality are now called “pessimists,” and the act of warning people about reality is called “fear mongering.” If your neighbor’s house is burning down and you tell him about it, you are condemned for “being negative.”

Life is so much easier, we’re told, if we all just drink, party, dance, socialize and don’t pay any attention to the real situation around you. That’s trendy! That’s the kind of happy happy here-look-at-my-funny-cat-photos kind of crap that will go viral on Facebook.

Why you should listen to the critical thinkers who point out problems
Although people like myself are often called pessimists, we’re actually society’s early warning systems.

When most people stroll into a restaurant, they only care about what’s on the menu. I care far more about who is in the restaurant and where the exits are located. That’s the difference between a victim and a survivor. Victims foolishly rely on somebody else to protect them and they put their safety in someone else’s hands. Survivors take responsibility for their own safety and welfare. They think critically about their surroundings, and they take steps to minimize risk.

How do you minimize risk? All crowds are inherently dangerous, for starters. Crowds are insane and have no compassion for individuals. Crowds out in an open space like a public park pose very little danger, but crowds inside buildings or even sports stadiums have murdered countless thousands of innocent victims.

Nightclubs are inherently dangerous as well. For starters, they won’t let you bring weapons into most nightclubs, rendering you completely defenseless. See, if some of those people in Brazil had been allowed to carry handguns, they could have shot the idiotic bouncers and fought open an evacuation route for all the other people who then could have been saved. And yes, if some bar bouncer is trying to prevent me and 200 other people from exiting a burning building, he will absolutely be dealt with using whatever force is necessary, especially if there are other innocent lives at stake which might be saved by doing so.

But all that is beside the point. The real point here is that every major U.S. city is a lot like a Brazilian nightclub that’s about to go up in flames. Here’s why…

How U.S. cities are like “Brazilian nightclubs” with the exits blocked
If you’re an American living in a city right now, you are metaphorically living inside a crowded nightclub with the exits blocked. Most U.S. cities are impossible for the vast majority of the population to evacuate. Roads are too few and population numbers are too high (too dense).

In Brazil, people died because they couldn’t leave, so they were forced to keep inhaling the smoke which eventually caused their deaths. In U.S. cities like Los Angeles, New York City and Miami, a sufficiently large “collapse” event will cause similar mass death because people can’t escape, and many will die from the violence, starvation, dehydration and disease that results from a crisis event.

As a simple thought experiment, suppose a terrorist organization plants a bomb at the base of the massive water pumps that push water up and over the Tehachapi Mountains and deliver it to the city of Los Angeles. One bomb is all it would take to cause an instant water shortage across the region. How do you supply emergency water to the nearly four million people in that city? You call FEMA, and then they come screw everything up like they always do. People will drop dead waiting for FEMA to save them.

The federal government is largely incompetent and unable to deliver much of anything except tyranny. I remember that during the central Texas fires two years ago, the feds showed up and actually ordered local firefighters to stop putting out fires and go home. Usually, the feds make every problem worse than it was to begin with.

Within 24 hours of water being cut off in Los Angeles, you’ll have fights, stabbings and shootings over water sold at retail stores. Within 96 hours, you’ll have riots in the streets. A few days later, people will simply start dropping dead from dehydration. Those who manage to escape will face hundreds of miles of desert — an almost impenetrable geographic barrier unless you have water, fuel and firearms.

Even worse, what happens if a solar flare takes out the power grid transformers across the nation? Now you’ve got a nationwide “grid down” scenario that instantly turns EVERY major city into a Brazilian nightclub inferno. People can’t evacuate. Gas stations can’t pump gas, and nobody stores enough gas to leave the cities. So the cars stall out on the highway, creating miles and miles of road blocks that effectively trap even more people inside the city.

Smart people who live in cities have planned their escape routes. Naive people who live in cities simply can’t imagine anything going wrong. The tap water always works, they imagine. The electricity is always on. The highways are navigable, 911 answers its phones, and so on. They cannot imagine a city with no food, no water, no electricity, no police and no 911. This is all way outside their delusional realm of existence.

And so they live their lives inside literal death traps. They watch the news coverage of the Brazilian nightclub inferno, and they think, “How could those people be so stupid?” But they fail to look in the mirror.

If you are living in a high population density city anywhere in the world, you are living inside a death trap.

If you’re not prepared to survive, you’re no better off than the Brazilian nightclub victims
Preppers are survivors. And it’s not about hoarding a bunch of canned food, it’s about a mindset of caution. We look critically at the world around us and take steps to reduce risks to our safety and our lives.

Only a very small minority of the total population has a prepper mindset. Over 90 percent of the people living in the world today are clueless when it comes to prepping; oblivious to the actual threats that exist to their lives and safety.

Sure, they can be easily manipulated into focusing fear on one thing — such as guns — but back at their home or apartment, they will have ZERO backup water supplies, no water purification equipment, no bug out bag, no escape route, no stored fuel, no means for self defense, and not even the sense to know how to navigate with a map and compass. (It’s all GPS these days.)

I urge you to become the kind of person who has the sense to get away from the “death trap” cities and become a prepper. Learn how to live in the country, and better yet move to the country NOW while you still have that opportunity.

The lower the population density, the safer you’ll be in a grid-down scenario, a financial collapse, social unrest, civil war, solar flares or other threats to survival.

I also strongly recommend you read James Wesley Rawles’ www.SurvivalBlog.com to learn more about practical preparedness skills. Check out his books on Amazon.com at this link:

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Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038859_nightclub_cities_survival.html#ixzz2JObeXxtR