37 Million Bees Found Dead in Canada After Large GMO Crop Planting

via: NaturalSociety.com
Christina Sarich
November 9, 2014

The makers of neonicotinoids, the bee-killing insecticide that was banned all over Europe, won’t be able to refute this latest phenomenon. Millions of bees were found dead after GMO corn was planted in Ontario, Canada. This isn’t new news, but it should be known news.

The keeper of these bees, Dave Schuit, who produces honey, reported that he lost over 600 hives – around 37 million bees.

“Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions,” Schuit said.

With increasing bee deaths and consumer petitions targeted to places like Home Depot and Lowe’s who sell neonics, the US Department of Agriculture has failed to ban neonicotinoids, manufactured primarily by Bayer CropScience Inc., as well as other biotech companies.

Two of Bayer’s best sellers are suspect this time around: Imidacloprid and Clothianidin. They are both known to seep into pollen and nectar, damaging beneficial insects such as bees.

The more widely they are used, the more bees seem to die.

Schuit’s report of dead bees is corroborated by other farmers, too. Nathan Carey is another local farmer who noticed a disappearance of bees on his farm this past Spring. There were so few that he could not count on them as he normally did to help pollinate his crops. He correlates their absence to the use of these toxic insecticides.

While many scientists are still unconvinced that “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) is caused by neonicotinoids, there has been a consecutive die-off of bees in the U.S. for seven years now – directly correlated to higher insecticide spraying.

Even US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are in fact a problem.

Continue Reading At: NaturalSociety.com

NASA Warns California Drought Could Threaten U.S. Food Supply: “There will be some definite changes”

via: SHTFPlan.com
Mac Slavo
November 4, 2014

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has sounded a stark warning over California’s sustained drought, publishing its latest findings where satellite surveys show a rapidly depleting groundwater supply.

And with California as the United States’ most valuable agricultural state, and thus key to America’s food supply (and much of the world’s as well) that could mean drastic consequences for food commodity prices and potential shortages.

The Nature Climate Change journal carried the report, which Think Progress summarized:

A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, warns that “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion.”

The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.”

The most worrisome fact: “nearly all of these underlie the word’s great agricultural regions and are primarily responsible for their high productivity.”

NASA’s satellite map shows the loss of weight height just in the past three years:

According to NASA:

“California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km3 of total water per year since 2011 — more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually — over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”

Yes, of course, California is a desert. So, that isn’t helping things. But it was reformed into a thriving economy by controversial and historically corrupt irrigation scheme, and is now vital to U.S. food security.

The result of these dangerous conditions is, not surprisingly, higher commodity prices – including food and water – creating higher profits for the companies that provide these services. Privatized water could drive prices even higher.

There are storm clouds gathering, so to speak, but they aren’t bringing rain.

In July, California’s state government economic report was already warning of losses in the billions for farmers feeling the weight of drought conditions, though it claimed the national food system would be little impacted.

However, time has made that claim ring hollow. In August, Bloomberg reported on the “global reverberations” occurring because of the drought in California:

“It’s a really big deal,” Sumner said. “Some crops simply grow better here than anyplace else, and our location gives us access to markets you don’t have elsewhere.”

[…]

The success of California agriculture was built in large part on advances in irrigation that allowed the state to expand beyond wheat, which flourishes in dry climates. It’s now the U.S.’s top dairy producer and grows half the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts.

“Water has allowed us to grow more valuable crops,” Sumner said. “Now, we have fruits and vegetables and North Dakota grows our wheat. Without irrigation, we’d be North Dakota.”

[…]

“There will be some definite changes, probably structural changes, to the entire industry” as drought persists, said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. “Farmers have made changes. They’ve shifted. This is what farmers do.”

Locals in California are now reporting everything from reduced availability of produce, to higher prices in restaurants and reduced hours and activity at farmer’s markets and local stores.

Most farmers have cutback on what they are growing. In many cases, that means chopping down trees, orchards and not planting as many fields:

“I was just talking to a farmer today who grows olives and almonds. Expect prices of almonds to skyrocket because they’re cutting the trees down because they don’t have enough water to keep them alive,” said Helstrom.

California is by no means the only place facing life threatening shortages. There are similarly alarming trends having all across the globe, particularly in arid and semi-arid places.

Texas ranchers and farmers have been dealing with returning dust bowl conditions in the panhandle and surrounding regions, with very difficult drought conditions and conflicting urban competition for water which strain supply.

Continue Reading At: SHTFPlan.com

Historic Drought, Giant Dust Storms And Massive Power Grid Failures – A Glimpse Into Our Future

via: ActivistPost
by: Michael Snyder
Wednesday, August 1, 2012

This week has provided two very clear examples of why it is so important to keep on prepping. In the United States, the historic drought ravaging the central part of the country is absolutely devastating our crops.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, drought is affecting nearly 90 percent of all corn crops in America at this point.

This is pushing the price of corn to levels never seen before. On Tuesday, the price of corn hit another new record high of $8.20 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Over the past six weeks the price of corn has risen more than 50 percent, and it could go a lot higher as the drought continues to absolutely bake America.

Meanwhile, the massive power grid failures in India are reminding us all just how incredibly dependent we are on electricity and technology. Power was cut off to nearly a tenth of the entire global population on Tuesday, and there was quite a bit of panic about that even though power is rapidly being restored.

So what would happen to them (or to us) someday if the power went off for good?

As much as humanity would like to think that our technology has conquered nature, that simply is not the case.

Without the rain that falls from the sky, there would be mass starvation on this planet. We are not immune to drought, and there are a lot of indications that the drought we are experiencing right now is just the beginning of a longer trend.

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com

Huffington Post Urges America Pay a Carbon Tax to Fight Climate Change

via: ActivistPost
by: Andrew Puhanic
July 30, 2012

The main stream media and the Globalists in the United States have finally begun to show their true colours. In an article written by Carl Pope published in the Huffington Post titled ‘Why It’s Time to Tax Carbon Pollution’, it has been argued that the United States should follow the lead set by Australia and introduce a carbon tax as part of tax reform and the climate change movement.

The author, Carl Pope, claims that ‘carbon taxes fit conservative tax theory’ and that it would be an ‘important symbol’ for believers of climate change and global warming. He then goes on to claim that a carbon tax would ‘put in place one important piece of an eventual, global, harmonized carbon fee’ (setting the stage for world government).

Many of the claims made by Pope are misleading and outright dishonest…

Pope claims that carbon taxes ‘would generate revenues, and if climate advocates can bring power to the negotiating table, those revenues in part might be devoted to other aspects of energy innovation, like paying for renewable power incentives’.

Of course the tax would generate revenues, but at what cost? As with the current carbon tax experiment in Australia, a carbon tax is nothing but a transfer payment from low-income earners to the pockets of the elite. Having the government force investors to invest in renewable energy will only lead to failure.

He then goes onto claim that:

The threat of climate disruption is real, (that) carbon is harmful and not beneficial, and that something will need to be done.

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com

Survival tips for the urbanite: Part 1 – Nuclear Radiation

via: ActivistPost
by: Rady Ananda
Monday, July 30, 2012

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 Blogand 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.

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com

19 Examples Of How Control Freaks Are Killing America With Their Completely Ridiculous Regulations

via: TheAmericanDream
July 27, 2012

The control freaks are winning, and they are absolutely killing America.  Our founding fathers intended to establish a nation where Americans would be free to pursue “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in an environment where freedom was maximized and government interference was minimized.  Unfortunately, our nation has turned away from those principles and is now running 180 degrees in the other direction.  For some reason, our political system tends to attract psychotic control freaks that want to micromanage our lives and make most of our decisions for us.  These control freaks are actually convinced that freedom and liberty are “dangerous” and that there should be a rule or a regulation for just about everything.  This is not just happening on the federal level either.  The truth is that the control freaks are often the worst on the local level.  When you add up the red tape on all levels of government, we literally have millions of laws, rules and regulations in America today.  All of this red tape is suffocating our businesses, destroying our liberties and our freedoms, and slowly sucking the life out of all of us.  If we ever want to have any hope of restoring America to what it once was, then we have to start doing something about this horrific mountain of red tape.

In America today, there is very little that you can actually do without getting some sort of a “license” or a “permit” first.

Do you want to leave your home?

You better get a license to drive first or find someone that does.

Do you want to get married?

You won’t be able to do that without a license from the government.

Do you want to build a house?

Get ready for miles of red tape.

Do you want to start a business?

You better get ready for a very long relationship with licenses and permits.

At the rate we are going, pretty soon we will need permission from the government just to use the bathroom.

Our liberties and our freedoms have been turned into “limited privileges” that the government can revoke at any time.  With each passing day the grid of rules and regulations that we all live our lives inside is getting tighter and tighter.

How much tighter can this prison of red tape become before we all start going insane?

The following are 10 examples of how control freaks are killing America with their completely ridiculous regulations….

#1 An industrious 13 year old boy up in Michigan has had his hot dog stand shut down because of a zoning violation.  The funny thing is that Nathan Duszynski and his parents actually thought that they had jumped through all of the proper licensing and permitting hoops….

On Tuesday, as the young entrepreneur was downtown setting up a hot dog cart he helped buy with $1,200 saved from mowing lawns and shoveling snow, he got an unpleasant surprise courtesy of Holland City Hall.

Duszynski was told by city officials that his cart was in violation of a Holland zoning law that protects existing food businesses downtown against competition from mobile food vendors, and he would have to cease operation immediately.

It was a shocker for Duszynski, who, along with his parents, thought he had jumped properly through all the licensing and permitting hoops with the city and county.

#2 Could you imagine being sent to prison for collecting the rain that falls from the sky on your own property?

Well, that is exactly what happened to one man in Oregon recently.  The following comes from CNS News….

A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater.

What are they going to arrest us for next?  Breathing the air?

#3 Santa Monica, California has decided to make it illegal to smoke inside your own home.

The following is from a recent report by NBC Los Angeles….

Smoking is already banned at beaches, parks, restaurants and near buildings in Santa Monica, but Tuesday night the city council sought to expand that prohibition and voted 4-2 to ban smoking for all new tenants of apartments and condos inside their residences – with one exception.

“It also requires existing residents to designate their units as smoking or non smoking and from then on it will be prohibited to smoke in a non smoking unit,” said Adam Radinksy, head of the Consumer Protection Unit in Santa Monica.

#4 Apparently you are now considered to be “a terrorist” if you even dare to film what is going on at a TSA checkpoint.  But the TSA has no problem strip-searching elderly women and fiddling with their feeding tubes.

#5 In New Jersey, if you are driving around with an “unrestrained” cat or dog in your vehicle you can be fined up to $1000 for each offense.

#6 Do you believe in being generous with your neighbors?

If so, you might want to be very careful what you share with them.

For example, it is illegal to milk your cow and sell the milk to your neighbors in America today.

If you share raw milk with your neighbors, there is a very good chance that federal agents will be raiding your home at the crack of dawn with their guns drawn.

Continue Reading At: EndOfTheAmericanDream.com

N.J. Wants to Outsource Radioactive Garbage to South Carolina

via: ActivistPost
by: Brandon Turbeville
Thursday, July 26, 2012

In yet another example of how the nation’s waste management methods are absolutely unsustainable, a long-running debate between two waste disposal companies and a South Carolina environmental regulatory agency regarding the shipping of 300 railcars containing about 60,000 to 78,000 tons worth of radioactive dirt from New Jersey to South Carolina landfills is beginning to heat up yet again.

The waste at issue would be coming from a housing site in Sayreville, New Jersey that is currently being redeveloped and “cleaned up” for future purposes. The soil was originally recovered from an industrial cleanup site by the Raritan River, located south of New York City.

While it is claimed that the majority of the dirt contains “natural radiation,” SC regulators claim that radiation has been “technically enhanced” and has become more concentrated while at the site in New Jersey. This would, of course, cause the material to become more radioactive.

Yet Sayreville Seaport Associates, the company currently housing the contaminated soil, is still determined to outsource its own radioactive garbage to the Lee County, South Carolina dump that sits off of Interstate 20.

Unfortunately for Sayreville, the Lee County garbage dump, which is operated by Republic Services, is not designed for radioactive industrial waste – it is only designed to hold household garbage. Indeed, even the household garbage that it currently holds has become somewhat of a local issue regarding the overwhelming smell caused by the landfill.

With that in mind, it is fortunate that some South Carolina environmentalists and some state lawmakers are opposing the new dumping effort.

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com

Monsanto and Recruiter Sued Over U.S. Worker Exploitation Scam

via: ActivistPost
by: Joe Wright
Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Seven Texas farm workers are alleging a wide range of crimes committed by biotech giant Monsanto.

Courthouse News Service is reporting that lead plaintiff Jose Cardenas has filed a lawsuit against Monsanto recruiter Milo Inc. and Milo Inc.’s president, as well as Monsanto itself.

Cardenas is one of seven field workers who are attempting to show a wide-ranging exploitation scam that made promises which were later withdrawn. According to the plaintiffs:

Monsanto promised (the) seven Texas field workers and their children free housing with kitchens in Indiana, then charged them $300 a room, exposed them to pesticides and underpaid them, the men claim in Federal Court. 

The abuses also included unsanitary conditions that violated agricultural safety and health codes; among the violations, a school bus that was converted into a kitchen facility:

The workers say the bus did not have enough stoves for the number of laborers in the camp, lacked adequate sinks with hot and cold water, did not have sufficient lighting and ventilation or enough chairs and tables.

This is not the first lawsuit against Monsanto to make claims of horrific mistreatment; however, it seems to be the first lawsuit of its type filed inside the United States.

A report issued in early 2012 documented abuse of illegal workers held in ‘slave-like’ conditions on plantations in Argentina. According to the report conducted by Argentina’s tax agency, workers were subjected to 14-hour days, forced to buy from the Monsanto company store, were prevented from leaving, and in some cases received zero compensation. (Source)

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com

Absolute Insanity! – Scientists Propose Dumping Hundreds of Tons of Iron into Ocean to ‘Stop Global Warming’

via: NaturalSociety
by: Anthony Gucciardi
July 21, 2012

In an attempt to ‘stop global warming’, scientists have been experimenting with dumping several tons of iron into the Antarctic ocean in order to potentially fertilize the development of plankton. Despite raising a multitude of red flags raised from leading scientific organizations and health watch organizations, a new study is now calling for the practice to be even further extended as a worldwide ‘geoengineering’ strategy to alter the climate via dumping hundreds of tons of iron dust into the ocean. Previous research found that by dumping the heavy metal into oceans worldwide it could not only devastate the marine life population, but deplete oxygen levels and explode the growth of certain unwanted organisms.

The implementation began with a California-based company known as Planktos, a self-described private ‘ecorestoration’ company. While the widescale iron dumping experiment was halted due to lack of funding, some are still calling for the plan to be followed through. Using a 115-foot ship, the company team members aimed to travel over 200 miles west of the Galápagos Islands and ultimately dump a hundred tons of iron dust into international water.

As iron can stimulate plankton growth (organisms which absorb CO2), it has been touted to be a method of artificial engineering the climate with great effectiveness. In fact, one scientist named John Martin said in 1980 that a “half tanker of iron” could cause an ice age.  Planktos sought to dump excessive amounts of iron into the ocean, capture carbon, and then sell carbon credits to companies looking to ‘offset’ their global emissions. A mission that ultimately collapsed.

But now Planktos’ CEO Russ George and some ‘environmental scientists’ are back in the saddles and looking to revisit the concept that involves selling off potentially millions (if not billions) of dollars of outlandish carbon credits to major corporations. An operation that while not only risky in regards to what we know might happen, but also what we don’t know that may happen. As detailed in a UNESCO report, it is documented that such tinkering with the ocean’s natural regulation is quite risky. The report states:

“Large-scale fertilization could have unintended (and difficult to predict) impacts not only locally, e.g. risk of toxic algal blooms, but also far removed in space and time. Impact assessments need to include the possibility of such ‘far-field’ effects on biological productivity, sub-surface oxygen levels, biogas production and ocean acidification.”

For now, the plan has no set date or confirmation. If the organizations and individuals backing this plan get their way, however, hundreds of tons of iron may soon be dumped into the earth’s oceans without properly identifying the risks associated with the process.

Continue Reading At: NaturalSociety.com

Woman Defends Property Against Smart Meter Invasion

via: ActivistPost
July 20, 2012

A Houston area homeowner, Thelma Taormina, was forced to defend her property and her constitutional rights when a utility worker bypassed her “No Trespassing and No Smart Meters” sign, then started a scuffle to install a Smart Meter.

Thelma and her husband demonstrate in the video below that they have educated themselves about the dangers of Smart Meters to their privacy; so much so that they have formed their own local opposition group to ban Texas Smart Meters. It has been revealed that Smart Meters have the capability to wirelessly monitor a full range of personal data, and can be equipped with an automatic shut off. (Source)

The Taorminas also allude to the mounting evidence that these meters are a major health concern, as indicated by a recent warning issued by a major physicians’ group.

Between health and privacy concerns, plus the fact that Smart Meters are an economic and environmental scam, homeowners have every right to defend against Smart Meter slavery in the strongest way possible.

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com