#OBEEZY

Water Liberty: How Innovation Trumps Privatization

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

The World Bank joins Nestlé in wanting to privatize water, deeming it “extremist” to suggest that those born on this planet have a natural right to clean, potable water. Meanwhile, RT’s Abby Martin reports that the watchdog group Corporate Accountability International recently released a new analysis showing that:

“Investing in private water does not extend access and is also counterproductive for economic development. By contrast, infrastructure investment, abandoned by the corporate sector, is where real benefit can be achieved: the World Health Organization estimates more than $10 of economic benefit from every $1 invested in water infrastructure systems.”

This ‘covert nuclear war’ on humanity

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Three incidents this year at the Carlsbad, New Mexico nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant resulted from “a number of serious safety concerns” that led to a fire and radiation leaks, contaminating workers and nearby residents, the NRC reported to the LA Times.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s findings detail ongoing complaints about WIPP’s ongoing failures to meet basic safety standards, let alone nuclear safety.

But Hanford, the 10^th most radioactive region on the planet, also made the news in March when fumes sickened at least 11 workers who were taken to various medical facilities.

All this transpired while Japan attempts to safely remove the spent fuel rods from Fukushima’s destroyed nuclear plants, an operation that Dr Helen Caldicott has characterized as “incredibly dangerous” and which “will take months to complete.”

TransEvolution: Homo predator, not Homo superior

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

In TransEvolution: The Coming Age of Human Deconstruction, Daniel Estulin crafts a cogent and frightening scenario for the end of Homo sapiens, as new technologies enable genetic changes, bionic replacements and artificial, nanosized neural connections. We’re not just evolving into a new species, we’re creating a new life form that marries materials science with biology.

It’s exciting and horrifying, and its implications vast.

Rust Chole’s Conversion – True Detective Finale

This world is a veil and the face you wear is not your own.
Preacher Joel Theriot, True Detective

Tent preacher Joel Theriot’s full sermon from episode three of True Detective provides a preview and explanation of detective Rust Cohle’s conversion from a laconic nihilist extraordinaire who can barely live with himself to an enlightened soul with some prospect for peace.

In episode 7, Cohle laments his long journey through violence and depravity then says I’m ready to tie it off. Many suspected that this forecast death for Cohle in the final episode. In a very real sense, that theory proved correct but it was a different type of death.

Watch Scott Noble’s Counter Intelligence (full film)

Intro by Brasscheck TV

A detailed and fascinating authoritative history of the CIA. How it came to be, who started it, and what it really does.

Counter Intelligence I: The Company, a Scott Noble film, Metanoia-Films.org, (2012, 119 mins)

“National Security”… The justification for:

– sabotage
– assassination
– coups

Selling the public on teratogenic wars: ‘deceptions2’ a lesson in war propaganda

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Under 30 minutes, deceptions 2 is Chris Pratt’s follow-up to his popular full-length documentary from 2010 (reviewed here). D2 focuses on the use of public relations firms to manipulate the public into supporting foreign wars of aggression.

But these aren’t ordinary wars, where industry sends armies into the bush to slaughter natives to seize their lands. Instead, now the US and its allies are poisoning the lands they invade, using depleted uranium and caustic chemicals, and generating an epidemic of birth defects.

Abolishing war, resurrecting Fallujah

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

Iraq vet Ross Caputi’s film opens with a fleeting synopsis of the American heartbreak — and the bandage we tape across it.

His documentary, Fear Not the Path of Truth, is about the U.S. devastation of Fallujah, in which he participated as part of Operation Phantom Fury in November 2004, but the first couple minutes give us an overview of his hometown, the “former industrial city” of Fitchburg, Mass.:

Top Documentary Films picks up Vox Populi

By COTO Report

The online film site, Top Documentary Films, has picked up Vox Populi: Methods of Manipulation by COTO Report’s Megan ‘Verb’ Kargher.

The Beatles: Howard Goodall’s 20th Century Greats

Intro by Lloyd Brookes

An excellent, in-depth analysis of The Beatles’ work by the classical composer Howard Goodall.

Watch Take Back Your Power and Take Action

By Josh del Sol

Utility companies are replacing electricity, gas and water meters worldwide with new generation “smart” meters at an unprecedented rate. Take Back Your Power investigates the benefits and risks of this ubiquitous “smart” grid program, with insight from insiders, expert researchers, politicians, doctors, and concerned communities. Transparency advocate Josh del Sol takes us on a journey of revelation and discovery, as he questions corporations’ right to tap our private information and erode our rights in the name of “green”. What you discover will surprise you, unsettle you, and inspire you to challenge the status quo.

Watch Take Back Your Power on Facebook,

or at the Yerka website

And read thru below for how you can take back your power!

Watch ‘September 11 and the New Pearl Harbor’

Commentary by Global Research

9/11 Truth is an important movement which is spreading across North America.

In relation to the 12th anniversary commemoration of the tragic events of 9/11 and their aftermath, Global Research brings to the attention of our readers this timely and carefully researched documentary on the September 11 attacks by Italy’s award winning film director Massimo Mazzuco.

To see the fully indexed film in one page go to luogocomune.net. You can also purchase the 5-hour film in a 3 DVD set.

“National Security” versus “Food Insecurity”: One in Seven Hungry in America as Obama Prepares for Syrian War

By Rady Ananda
Global Research

The number of starving US citizens during Obama’s terms in office is a whopping one in seven, worse than the global average of one in eight. As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents.

Orwellian Smart Grid Exposé to air Sept. 5

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

A single smart meter measuring a home’s electricity usage, by appliance, emits radiation 100 times higher than the level internationally recognized as “extreme concern” and 450 times higher than a cell phone.

These are but two of the facts presented in Josh del Sol’s long-awaited documentary, Take Back Your Power, which will air online September 5.

Foster Gamble, creator of Thrive, calls it an “astoundingly great job.” Take Back Your Power is a beautiful, tasteful, authoritative and touching account of the dire situation we face, and solutions available here and now.”

Is Obama’s War on Weed Coming to an End?

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Attorney General Eric Holder today announced an Obama Administration policy change on mandatory sentences as they relate to drugs. The new policy includes the “compassionate release” of some prisoners and expanding “at-risk” programs for teens.

“Prisons are operating at 40% above capacity,” he told the audience at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, which was broadcast on C-SPAN.

“Incarceration rates have increased 800% since 1980,” he added, putting over 200,000 people in federal prisons this year. Half of those inmates are incarcerated for drug-related crimes, he said, costing $80 billion a year.

Watch Counter-Intelligence: A 5-Film Series by Scott Noble

Written and Directed by Scott Noble
Narrated by Mikela Jay
Metanoia Films

From the director of Psywar and Human Resources comes a 5-film series covering the über police state created and developed by America’s secret government. Students of current events get a crash course in the dismantling of what these pathological rulers call quaint: the US Constitution.

Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations includes original interviews with:

Rivero: All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars

Commentary by Chris Pratt
Questions of Conscience

Twelve trillion US dollars in banker bailouts, billions more in quantitative easing that now will continue monthly. Constant war and military interventions, yet people keep voting Republican or Democrat as if this is the answer. Our sons and daughters are being sacrificed. FOR WHAT? For freedom and democracy? Do you really think so?

The film below is well-researched and less than 45 minutes long. If you review it on its factual merits versus the propaganda that has been drilled into your head since birth, perhaps an awakening will occur.

Survival tips for the urbanite: Part 1 – Nuclear Radiation

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Though many survivalists like to prepare for TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), joblessness and homelessness have led me to the end of the world as I know it. With coffee in hand, I opened the warehouse door of my temporary digs to greet the dawn. Only, it’s noon, there’s a downpour, and the smell of rubber from a pile of decomposing tires greets me. This marks Month 4 in New Orleans and two years since I was laid off.

In this vein, I finally started reading Mat Stein’s two survival books, When Technology Fails (2008) and When Disaster Strikes (2011). I also headed over to Jim Rawles’ Survival Blog and Mat’s website, whentechfails.com.

Instead of a lone-wolf, Mad Max world which plays well on film, Stein reasonably argues that individual survival relies on a community of like-minded folks. So plan your survival migration or shelter with room for your core group. The essential wisdom from both books and most survival websites is to plan a strategically sound survival budget, taking into account the climate of where you expect to be after you hit the road.

Few experts would call the US a failed or fragile state given to eco-migration, but most Americans already live in toxic zones, with our land, air and water being systematically poisoned by industry. New Orleans is only one of many areas suffering from hyper-industrialization and weather destruction. Locals call the corridor from here to Baton Rouge, “Cancer Alley.”

Thanks to Corexit and the Macondo Blowout (among hundreds of other oil “spills”), Gulf seafood is unfit for human consumption, and anglers and beachcombers are suffering from a host of health issues including respiratory failure. Birds, turtles, dolphins, and other sea life are dying in mass numbers or are showing up deformed, while federal agencies insist all is well.

I met a man who helped with the cleanup. The toxic brew severely damaged circulation in both his legs, leaving him wheelchair-bound. Grandmothers of the Gulf organizer, Laura Regan, insists her and her husband’s respiratory problems are from swimming in the Gulf after authorities promised the water was safe. She, along with most coastal residents, believe they are still spraying Corexit today. That may explain why the Louisiana Senate buried SB 97 in committee last year, which would have banned Corexit and any other oil dispersant not categorized as “Practically Non-Toxic.”

My romantic notion of sticking my toes in the famous Mississippi after I got here was sullied by the strong industrial odor wafting from the river. It sickened both of us who walked the levy that day.

All over the planet, giant multinational corporations are singly and jointly destroying the landbase for huge swaths of people, and New Orleans is no exception. Three major wars settled this area so that tens of thousands of oil wells could be built, right along with all the chemical and oil refineries, labs, agrochemical dumps, and the 25-year-old Waterford nuclear plant, 20 miles outside the city.

Because Fukushima radiated the Northern Hemisphere, because fracking releases rock-bound uranium that contaminates our local water table, and because I’m in Cancer Alley just miles from Waterford, this first essay focuses on nuclear survival.

Some nuclear survival tips are obvious. Dr John W. Gofman, a distinguished medical and nuclear scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb estimated in 2001 that 75% of US women who develop breast cancer get it from medical radiation. Simply refuse such tests, including airport body scanners.

When the US Supreme Court thwarted public will and handed Bush Florida, and thereby the presidency, we were led into 9/11 and nuclear war on the Middle East and Africa. Bob Koehler writes:

“Iraq Syndrome must include awareness of our toxic legacy, in particular the radioactive fallout resulting from exploding several thousand tons of depleted uranium munitions. Last year, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a study of the devastated city of Fallujah, pointing out that, among much else, it is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945. And birth defects abound: ‘Young women in Fallujah are terrified of having children,’ a group of British and Iraqi doctors reported.”

Industrial civilization’s war on the environment is no less radioactive. The US hosts 25% of the world’s nuclear power plants, and even without incidents or accidents, they leak radiation into the local environment, as evidenced by the cancer clusters around nuke plants. Being in New Orleans, I’m exposed daily to whatever is dumped in the Mississippi, including leaking radioactive particles from the several nuke plants that dot its length.

Lest anyone believe health officials and nuclear energy proponents that the harm from Fukushima is minimal (and no longer poses a threat), all they need do is look at the Chernobyl casualties, where only one reactor was involved. Last year, researchers published their review of over 5,000 scientific articles and studies and concluded that a million people have succumbed to Chernobyl radiation. According to one source, the authors explain:

“Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere.”

Fukushima lost four reactors, with three in complete meltdown, but pro-nuke officials from the World Health Organization on down promise thru lying teeth this poses little to no threat to our health or the environment. As Chernobyl showed, in 30 years, we can expect many Northern Hemisphere survivors to sport tumors and other cancers resulting from radiation-damaged DNA. We can only pray for the unborn, from those healthy enough to reproduce.

Expectedly, US officials also lied about the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, while cancer rates jumped for those nearby. Richard Wilcox wrote an excellent article on all this that is well worth the read:

“Independent testing in Japan has revealed that fallout from the accident and ongoing accumulation has contaminated food supplies in the Northeast and Tokyo.”

From plutonium-laden fish, “the most toxic substance known in the universe,” to radioactive cesium in California tuna, Wilcox itemizes the destruction of our food supply. Radioactive fallout, of course, contaminates grazelands, meaning our milk and dairy products absorbed it, too.

All of us have cause, right now, to ensure our water and food is clean and radiation-free. All of us have sound reason to become survivalists.

Food and Water

Disaster migrants and the homeless can both learn from prepper wisdom, since many of the same principles apply. Urban migration survival requires mental clarity and agility; you gotta think on your feet most of the time, despite being emotionally and physically exhausted, and perhaps even injured. You can expect the government to completely fail at providing social services, as we saw with Katrina, where authorities blocked food, water and boat rescue.

Right now, Louisiana illegally withholds food stamps for the homeless, which by federal law must be provided within four days of applying for it. Instead, I was told by Ms Melvisson, Louisiana won’t give me food for a minimum of 17 days from the day I applied. The website is wrong, she says, when it promises food in four days. She also told me they outsource the magnetic cards to Texas. I have to presume the state doesn’t want the work despite an 8.5% unemployment rate, which really means about 20% or more, especially in New Orleans proper with all its wandering musicians, artists and street performers.

My own urban survival manual can’t publicize some survival tricks that are quintessentially my divine right, but which may be considered illegal. Dr John Glass, a sociology professor at Collin College outside Dallas, teaches experiential homelessness. He had this to say about urban poverty:

“I toured the ‘urban slum,’ and I could see how if I had to raise my kids in this setting I would steal. I would do whatever I had to do to survive. I never had that experience before.”

Food market grazing is one survival method. Watertight, bug-proof containers are a must, with a good supply of mixed nuts and dried fruits, or any healthy foods that don’t require refrigeration. I’ve become a big fan of big bags of carrots.

Another tip is to procure unfluoridated water that has been carbon filtered and run thru reverse osmosis. At 30 cents a gallon from the local food co-op, I drink much less of this than I should, but at least I’m getting some good water. My 3-gallon storage bottle is BPA-free, but not my 16-oz bottles. Maybe someone will donate so I can rectify that (though I’d prefer a job).

Preppers urge you to procure 5-gallon and larger water containers, but at 8 pounds a gallon, many women can’t physically haul that much water a long distance. And, if you’re on the move, haul weight is a survival factor that must be considered.

Stein covers surviving a nuclear disaster in both books, but dedicates an entire chapter in When Disaster Strikes. The last section of the book dedicates a chapter to each of several specific disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, and electromagnetic pulses. (In my next essay, I’d like to focus on EMPs, natural or otherwise.)

Radiation isn’t released into the environment only via nukes. In an earlier piece, I reported that geologist Tracy Bank found that fracking mobilizes rock-bound uranium, posing a further radiation risk to our groundwater. Because of some 65 hazardous chemicals used in fracking operations, former industry insider, James Northrup, calls it a “dirty bomb.” With 30 years of experience as an independent oil and gas producer, he explains:

“The volume of fluid in a hydrofrack can exceed three million gallons, or almost 24 million pounds of fluid, about the same weight as 7,500 automobiles. The fracking fluid contains chemicals that would be illegal to use in warfare under the rules of the Geneva Convention. This all adds up to a massive explosion of a ‘dirty bomb’ underground.”

What’s underground seeps into our groundwater. Disaster Strikes offers step-by-step instructions on filtering your water with soil, gravel, bucket and burlap, among many other specific instructions and suggestions.

The book also provides drawings for foragers – not only for edible plants, but medicinal ones, too, and recommends specific foraging books for your survival library.

Hank Shaw, author of Hunt, Gather, Cook, agrees with Stein in recommending Samuel Thayer for his color photographs of plants. Thayer has written two foraging books: Nature’s Garden and The Forager’s Harvest. Shaw’s top 3 (out of 11) recommendations all come from Euell Gibbons:

* Stalking the Wild Asparagus
* Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop
* Stalking the Healthful Herbs

Once you have access to a steady food and water supply, be sure it’s safe.

Dr Perlingieri suggests adding 2 tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar to each gallon of water. Not only does this provide flavor, but it also aids in digestion. She also lists several immune-boosting foods, as long as they are not radioactive. See also Melissa Patterson’s Supplements Shown to Help Prevent Effects of Radiation Fall-Out, and Protocols for Nuclear Contamination – Master List.

Hawaii organic growers suggest washing your fruits and vegetables in bentonite clay, and using Boron “to capture radioactivity on our soils, gardens, orchards, etc. It also can be safely ingested by humans and animals. Boron will accept radiation and ionize it within our bodies, after which our bodies will safely [excrete] the boron and radioactivity.” (Borax is also good at killing roaches, which are ubiquitous in the urban setting.)

Hygiene

No matter the cause of your sudden homelessness, the need for good hygiene closely follows the need for clean food and water. Stein’s books list the items needed in your First Aid kit, and provide an expanded version for “long emergencies” when you may not be able to return to your home.

For urban migrant survival, friends recommend Street Smarts, though not published at a big house. I’d like to read it, and see how much of what I do is mentioned. Like hygiene ~ get it while you can when the facilities are clean, be extra careful when they’re not. In the summer, use fast drying shirts that you can easily wash and wear.

In a hot climate, you’ll need a sweat rag for your face, one that you wash as often as feasible, because face- and clothes-washing is now a luxury dependent on the generosity of others. You’ll also have to plan your wash for when you can hang things to dry. I use a 22″ rag that I thoroughly wet and roll up, for draping around my neck. Its length allows me to also swab my face as needed.

If injured, hygiene becomes the priority. I stepped in one of New Orleans’ foot-deep potholes and donated 5 square inches of skin to the city. I couldn’t soap it until the library opened 12 hours later. The trick to no infection was the warm soapy scrub three times a day, though I also scored some prescription skin salve. The skin has already regenerated, while the bruised ankle is still healing.

Prudence requires everyone to ‘know the exits’ and have the knowledge and tools to get there. Preppers, at the minimum, are prudent. Once a month, urges Mat Stein, you and your family should read, study and discuss a single chapter on survival preparedness. It’s also prudent not to jump in with your wallet wide open. Simple, inexpensive purchases can be made now, but long-term economical purchasing takes planning.

I’d do a hell of a lot better if I had raw milk, but Louisiana criminalized it, blocking me from its probiotic benefits. Big Pharma and Big Dairy sure get their share, simply by criminalizing the competition.

Road Income

Citing an uptick in survival sales, Activist Post opened 2012 with its recommended articles on the topic. One suggests becoming economically independent of the system by monetizing your blog, becoming a picker (old junk, new street corner), or growing or making your own and selling it to local co-ops and other markets. AP itself came up with simple steps to be taken this year that include building economic independence, promising that, “prosperity awaits for those who can properly analyze the landscape and seek new opportunities and alliances.”

Charge $10 an hour and a dollar a mile to be a taxi, if you must, and your shocks are good. The Submerged Roads project is ongoing seven years post-Katrina. It’ll never end, though, because paving over swampland that endures an annual hurricane season ensures pothole proliferation.

During recent flooding, a car drove thru 6” of water until the road collapsed, taking out his axle. One related tip is not to drive on flood-damaged roads, and another is to keep your spare car key in your wallet.

The homeless, more than any other group, employs the axiom, “reuse, recycle, restore,” and if your body odor isn’t too strong, you might even be able to resell some of the stuff.

Study, Train and Practice

Stein hammers at conventional survival wisdom: Read, study, train and practice. What’s between your ears, he says, is more important than your gear. We need to be as proficient at providing sustenance as the tribes who’ve lived sustainably for tens of thousands of years.

Fat chance you can do that in the city, but there might be some gems in wildman Steve Brill’s Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild and Not So Wild Places, which Stein recommends. A list of edible and medicinal urban plants can be found here. And here’s a recipe for pigweed, which is proliferating in the south now that the plant developed resistance to Monsanto’s RoundUp. I wanna try it.

I like how Stein organized When Disaster Strikes, in three concise sections, but prefer the older book, When Technology Fails, for a number of reasons. For one, it’s 100 pages longer. The book is also bigger (11.5×8″ vs 9×6″). Because it’s bigger, so are the pictures. If I ever have to have actually construct my own shelter, I’ll be pulling out WTF instead of WDS.

Climate and peak oil skeptics might choke on Stein’s reasons for disaster preparation, and anyone who knows anything about HAARP or weather modification won’t find any reference to government-directed natural disasters. Regardless, Stein provides well-organized, detailed information on what a new prepper needs to know and do to survive catastrophe.

My task for August is to identify and procure edible weeds. I’d also like to try the solar water filtration gizmo, if I can find a clear plastic bottle that is BPA-free.

Rady Ananda is the creator of Food Freedom News, whose work has appeared in several online and print publications, including four books. She holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture (2003). She is LinkedIn and tweets her own work from @RadysRant; while tweeting both hers and others’ from @geobear7.

Support Rady’s work by donating to her directly – HERE.

Read other reports by Rady Ananda HERE.

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Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story

In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds-the most classified woman in U.S. history-takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded.

Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public’s right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable.

Now Is the Time Like Never Before

By Michael DiBari

We live in amazing times. Revelations are happening at a rate never before calculated. Where before it took time and effort to find out the truth, it now takes but a few strokes of a keyboard. The effect this is having on society is profound, and its just beginning.

What does this mean? It means the elite power-brokers of the world, that have been running things from behind the scenes for hundreds of years, are being exposed. And exposure is death to these people. And what’s bad for them, is good for anyone that values freedom and individual liberty.

May I quote Thomas Jefferson: “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”