by J. D. Heyes­

Natural News

Illustration of the Transportation Security Administration.

As the lame-duck session of the 112th Congress begins, millions of Americans are looking to the elected members of the 113th Congress to fix a host of problems ailing the country. The economy and job creation aside, one of the most pressing issues is reining in out-of-control federal bureaucracies. The Environmental Protection Agency comes to mind, as does the Department of Agriculture’s promotion of GM foods.

But additionally concerning is the rapid expansion of the size, scope and reach of the Transportation Security Administration, which continues to usurp authority and trample constitutional rights of more and more Americans – especially those who aren’t flying.

The TSA and its mother agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was hurriedly established during the harried, hysterical weeks following the 9/11 attacks. Once designed to replace private airport security firms that were blamed for allowing the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists to slip past checkpoints and take over four commercial airliners with razor blades, the TSA has since grown into a regulatory, bureaucratic behemoth that now claims jurisdiction over other modes of travel, including bus and train stations.

­‘The future of transportation security will be gathering intelligence technologically’

In the future, the agency will want to track all of your daily travels, no matter where you go, according to predictions made by some security experts.

“Air travelers are increasingly subjected to revealing full-body scans or enhanced pat-downs – all in the name of keeping the skies safe,” writes Bill Briggs at NBC News. But apparently, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

“As America prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks in the U.S., security experts question whether freedom, speed and personal space will one day return to air travel – while still maintaining high standards of safety,” he wrote in August 2011.

Technology, which is increasingly serving as a double-edged sword these days, could produce what security experts foresee as a bumper crop of detection tools in the future. That could include biometrics, electronic fingerprinting and behavioral analysis, all of which would produce quicker, smoother and less intrusive travel screening in the years ahead.

Others; however, envision a Big Brother-type of government that gets even more intrusive, perhaps even requiring chip-embedded passports or other travel documents we’d be required to carry that would reveal to federal transportation watchdogs everything about our daily travels – commutes to work, to sporting events, shopping centers – even to social gatherings.

All, of course, in the name of “security.”

Ed Daly is one expert who sees both versions of events transpiring.

“The future of transportation security will be gathering intelligence technologically while people are moving at the speed of life, not beginning at a point where passengers are queued up, delayed, stripped down and probed,” he told Briggs.

Using technology to abuse liberty is no ‘solution’

Daly, the director of intelligence-watch operations for iJet, an Annapolis, Md.-based firm that offers risk management solutions for some 500 multinational corporations and government entities, talked about tweaks in software that can instantly read, record and categorize everything about your person – from your face to your license plate – that he says must be expanded to all public buildings and modes of transportation, from airplanes to trains, buses and subways.

“[However,] if technology fails to provide an adequate solution, the option in the face of future attacks would be further restrictions and potential for humiliating human-to-human interaction,” he said – pretty much what is taking place already, via the TSA.

Can you imagine this agency, which hires criminals and perverts, whose administrators seem to take some sort of sordid pleasure in adopting search-and-surveillance policies that seem designed to cause humiliation or subordination, having access to this kind of highly personal, highly invasive information?

The founding fathers could not have foreseen biometric technology or x-ray scanners, but they knew human nature, which is why they adopted clear-cut, unambiguous constitutional protections for American citizens.

Will the 113th Congress become the first in modern history to reaffirm them, beginning with the castration of the TSA?

by Mike Adams
Natural News

Proposition 37 appears to have failed at the ballot box in California, according to the California Secretary of State ballot measures results. The GMO labeling ballot measure, which would have required food companies to label the GM content of foods, was defeated with the use of over $45 million in fraudulent advertising and dirty tricks funded by Monsanto, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, General Mills, DuPont, Bayer and other food and pesticide companies.

Over the last month, this cabal of deceptive companies has funneled money into a campaign of criminal fraud which, among other crimes, fabricated a fake FDA quote and sent out mailers that fraudulently used the FDA seal. A criminal complaint has already been filed with the FBI.

The “No on 37” campaign also used fabricated front groups and impersonated a police organization (among others) to send out yet more fake mailers to voters, claiming that the police oppose GMO labeling. That fraudulent claim, of course, is entirely false.

Huge victory in terms of GMO awareness and grassroots support

The grassroots effort to pass Proposition 37 was supported by the efforts of millions of activists, plus financial donations from Mercola, Nature’s Path, Amy’s, Dr. Bronner and other companies. Natural News donated $10,000 to the effort and provided comprehensive editorial coverage of the grassroots effort. Click here to see a chart of who gave money to the effort.

And click here to see some of the “natural” brands that betrayed consumers with the “No on 37” deception.

Those brands include Kashi, Silk, Cascadian Farm, Larabar and more.

In many ways, the YES on 37 campaign was a huge victory for awareness. The campaign organized over 10,000 volunteers in California alone and succeeded in achieving a massive social media presence.

The YES on 37 campaign also forced Monsanto and the biotech giants to spend $45 million to defeat the measure.That’s a record expenditure by the world’s largest toxic pesticide companies to try to prevent consumers from knowing what they’re buying. Remember: GMOs are the only products that consumers accidentally purchase without knowing what they’re buying.

What’s clear from all this is that GMO labeling has a foothold in the minds of American consumers, and this effort to label GMOs is going to be repeated state after state, year after year, until victory is achieved.

­The biotech industry can no longer keep its dirty little secret: There’s poison in your food, folks, and the big food producers absolutely do not want you to know that you’re eating it.

The GMO labeling battle has only just begun

Monsanto and other companies appear to have won this showdown in California, but they are going to lose the war of deception against consumers. As awareness of GMOs continues to spread, people will demand honest labeling in increasing numbers

The huge burst of awareness on Prop 37 has a lot of people asking the questions: Hey, what are GMOs? And why aren’t they labeled on foods?

That question will ultimately spell defeat for Monsanto, Kellogg, General Mills, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and all the other evil, deceptive corporations who bankrolled the “No in 37” criminal fraud that deceived a majority of California voters.

­

bythe El Reportero’s news services

Roberto Eisenmann

In the Guatemalan capital, the quake lasted just one minute, generating panic among the population. Victims or material damages have not yet been reported.

The first radio reports from the Guatemalan capital said that the tremor registered an intensity of 7.5 degrees Richter, and the Geological Service located the epicenter in front of the coasts of Champerico, department of Retalhuleu, 105.6 miles southwest of this capital.

The authorities transmitted a tsunami alert immediately for the whole Guatemalan sea shore, and the radio reported the quake was felt in Mexico.

In Mexico, a preliminary intensity of 7.3 Richter degrees was felt at the Federal District, capital of Mexico. No damages have been reported up to this moment.

The seismologic service of Mexico located the epicentre at 43.4 miles south of Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexican state of Chiapas.

­Panamanians denounce militarization

Deployment of miltary forces during the national celebrations and repression by coastguards in Colon showed Panama’’s militarization, something unconstitutional, national figures denounced today.

Businessman Roberto Eisenmann (Senafront) said a new army was created in the country that violates the Constitution and is against the national public opinion.

Former leader of the Lawyer’s Crusade Aurelio Barria called indignant how they are trying to turn the National Police (PN) into a military force with the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.

Those maneuvers are a violation of the Constitution, which bans the existence of an army in Panama.

Panamanian Ex-Attorney General Ana Matilde 5Gómez said it was worrying what is happening with the PN, because the Constitution establishes a security institution, not an army.

Ex-attorney of the Supreme Court of Justice Esmeralda de Tritino insisted that the miliatry deployment in the celebration parades and their behavior in the protests in Colon are examples of the PN militarization.

As an answer to such statements, PN Director Julio Molto said that institution is turning professional. Belsio González, director of the Senan, did not make any statement and Frank Abrego, director of Senafront, did not answer the journalists’ calls.

by Washington’s Blog

Preface: Many Americans are waking up to the fact that the Republican and Democratic candidates are incredibly similar. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

Many people are starting to realize that Obama and Romney are virtually indistinguishable on war,jobs, freedoms and favoring fatcats instead of the little guy.

Many of us want a third party candidate to win … but are afraid of “wasting our vote”.

Leading conservatives and liberals say that we should vote for a third party candidate.

Judge Napolitano explained today why voting for a third party is not wasting one’s vote.

Can one morally vote for the lesser of two evils? In a word, no. A basic principle of Judeo-Christian teaching and of the natural law to which the country was married by the Declaration of Independence is that one may not knowingly do evil that good may come of it.

So, is a vote for [a third party] or no vote at all wasted? I reject the idea that a principled vote is wasted. Your vote is yours, and so long as your vote is consistent with your conscience, it is impossible to waste your vote.

On the other hand, even a small step toward the free market and away from … central economic planning would be at least a small improvement for every American’s freedom. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

(Conservatives like Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin have spoken favorably of third parties as well.)

Liberal news commentator Lawrence O’Donnell urges us to vote for a third party candidate:

The liberal former chief aide to progressive Congressman Alan Grayson – Matt Stoller – agrees. After demonstrating how similar Obama and Romney are on most major issues, Stoller concludes:

I think it’s worth voting for a third party candidate, and I’ll explain why below.

There are only five or six states that matter in this election; in the other 44 or 45, your vote on the presidential level doesn’t matter. It is as decorative as a vote for an “American Idol contestant.” So, unless you are in one of the few swing states that matters, a vote for Obama is simply an unabashed endorsement of his policies.

But if you are in a swing state, then the question is, what should you do?

The people themselves, what they believe and what they don’t, can constrain political leaders. And under Obama, because there is now no one making the anti-torture argument, Americans have become more tolerant of torture, drones, war and authoritarianism in general. The case against Obama is that the people themselves will be better citizens under a Romney administration, distrusting him and placing constraints on his behavior the way they won’t on Obama. As a candidate, Obama promised a whole slew of civil liberties protections, lying the whole time. Obama has successfully organized the left part of the Democratic Party into a force that had rhetorically opposed war and civil liberties violations, but now cheerleads a weakened America …. We must fight this thuggish political culture Bush popularized, and Obama solidified in place.

But can a third-party candidate win? No. So what is the point of voting at all, or voting for a third-party candidate? My answer is that this election is, first and foremost, practice for crisis moments. Elections are just one small part of how social justice change can happen. The best moment for change is actually a crisis, where there is actually policy leverage. … Saying no to evil in 2012 will help us understand who is willing to say no to evil when it really matters. And when you have power during a crisis, there’s no end to the amount of good you can do.

How do we drive large-scale change during moments of crisis? How do we use this election to do so? Well, voting third party or even just honestly portraying Obama’s policy architecture is a good way to identify to ourselves and each other who actually has the integrity to not cave to bullying…. We need to put ourselves into the position to be able to run the government.

After all, if a political revolution came tomorrow, could those who believe in social justice and climate change actually govern?

[If we had had more courage, we could have] reorganized our politics. Instead the oligarchs took control, because we weren’t willing to face them down when we needed to show courage. So now we have the worst of all worlds, an inevitably worse crisis and an even more authoritarian structure of governance.

The reason to advocate for a third-party candidate is to build the civic muscles willing to say no to the establishment in a crisis moment we all know is coming. Right now, the liberal establishment is teaching its people that letting malevolent political elites do what they want is not only the right path, it is the only path. Anything other than that is dubbed an affront to common decency. Just telling the truth is considered beyond rude.

We can do this. And the moments to let us make the changes we need are coming. There is endless good we can do, if enough of us are willing to show the courage that exists within every human being instead of the malevolence and desire for conformity that also exists within every heart.

Systems that can’t go on, don’t. The political elites, as much as they kick the can down the road, know this. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we?

Why I’m Voting for Gary Johnson

One of the main reasons to vote for a third party candidate is that the broken two-party system will never change unless third parties get more backing.

If 5 percent of the American people vote for a third party candidate, that candidate will receive government matching funds, which will give them a better shot at competing.

Moreover, a showing of 5 percent or more would create buzz and start a self-fulfilling dynamic of lending credibility and a sense of possibility for a third party.

But do any third party candidates have a chance of getting 5 percent of the vote?

Yes … Gary Johnson.

­Judge Napolitano endorses Gary Johnson. Jesse Ventura endorsed Johnson.

Even Ron Paul hinted that he would vote for Johnson. And in 2010, Paul said that if he didn’t run in 2012, he would endorse Johnson.

A bunch of other people have endorsed Johnson as well. And at least some newspapers – such as the Chattanooga Free Press – have endorsed Johnson.

In fact, polls show that Johnson might reach 5 percent. A September CNN/ORC International poll showed that 3 percent of likely voters and 4 percent of registered voters say they’d vote for Johnson. A Reason-Rupe poll the same month showed Johnson raking in 6 percent of likely voters.

Those polls were taken before Ron Paul convinced his supporters that he’s out of the race, and before he virtually endorsed Johnson.

Moreover – since the polls were taken – Johnson has gotten on the ballot in 48 states … and won the right for write-in votes for Johnson to be counted in the remaining 2.

Ron Paul supporters can, of course, write in Paul on the ballot. But a write-in vote for Paul will not be counted in most states.

And since he is not affiliated with any party at this point – and since even he will likely himself vote for Johnson – a vote for Paul will not help any third party. No wonder many diehard Paul fans are announcing that they’re going with Johnson.

As such, I’m voting for Gary Johnson.

Postscript: Johnson is not perfect, but he is solid on issues of civil rights, liberty, peace and fiscal responsibility.