by Jon Rappoport
www.nomorefakenews.com

“When Pope Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires, farm advocates met with him to explain how biotechnology had ruined and changed the face of Argentine agriculture…” (David Andrews, National Catholic Reporter, October 8, 2013)

Priests and ministers spoke out against the war in Vietnam. They went after the drug-dealing Contras in Nicaragua. They are “of the people,” aren’t they?

At least that’s what they claim.

I’m talking about Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Unitarian, Shinto, Hindu priests and ministers. Men of the cloth, of all faiths, including the firebrands who bankroll sin into cash.

Sentence Monsanto to Hell.

Forget Limbo, Purgatory, and all the stops along the way.

And what about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? They don’t think the destruction of countless small farms and communities in Africa is a “good issue” for them?

Seems to me I remember reading the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. As a boy, he had dreams of sheaves of wheat dancing. Food. Clean food. Grown without poisons and injected genes.

What bubble are these churches living in?

Let me see if I understand their position: God made Nature and Nature is sacred. So if Monsanto comes along and shoots genes into food crops and the genes drift and merge with anything that grows, and the insidious effects on health spread, and it turns out that more toxic Roundup, not less, is required, and superweeds resistant to Roundup are taking over huge swathes of farm land…the churches will rise up and declare Monsanto evil…right?

No?

They don’t want to cause trouble? They don’t want to alienate their constituencies? They’re politicians?

Oh.

In that case, what right do they have to act as intermediaries or guides for their people of faith?

Under pressure from the US government and its allies, the last Pope came out in favor of GMO food. This one, Francis, has yet to make a clear declaration. With over a billion members of his church in tow, Francis could change the balance of world opinion.

One domino falls, many follow.

And while I’m at it, what about colleges? Forty years ago, American students rallied and protested and struck in great numbers, on the issue of apartheid. They pointed fingers at their own administrations and demanded dropping investments in any company doing business with South Africa.

Well, how about protesting and striking at colleges, across America, where Monsanto money fuels research? It’s a natural. Then on top of that, students can also demand their colleges sell off stock in the company.

Pressure. Exposure.

For example, in 2012 Salon.com reported that South Dakota State’s president, David Chicoine, landed a plum spot on Monsanto’s board of directors, “where he earns six figures.”

Here’s another one (Mother Jones, May 9, 2012): The University of Illinois accepted a $250,000 grant from Monsanto “to create an endowed chair for the Agriculture Communications Program…”

Then there’s this report from a PhD candidate: “When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’ said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. ‘My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland security to fund my research on why farmer’s markets were stocked with “black market vegetables” that “are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.” It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket.” (May 2012, Salon.com, “Monsanto’s college strangehold”)

There’s a lot more. A lot.

Instead of drinking the corporate Kool-Aid (Agent Orange, Dow), it’s time these college students woke up to what a real rebellion feels like.

Instead of proudly wearing T-shirts from Target and American Eagle Outfitters, they can gather on the campus and take over research buildings and make Monsanto feel some pain.

Churches and colleges.

Trance or action?

Jon Rappoport, the author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com.

Will we get our lost liberties back?

by Andrew Napolitano

Every American who values the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, every American who enjoys the right to be different and the right to be left alone, and every American who believes that the government works for us and we don’t work for the government should thank Edward Snowden for his courageous and heroic revelations of the National Security Agency’s gargantuan spying operations. Without Snowden’s revelations, we would be ignorant children to a paternalistic government and completely in the dark about what the government sees of us and knows about us. And we would not know that it has stolen our freedoms.

When I saw Snowden’s initial revelation — a two-page order signed by a federal judge on the FISA court — I knew immediately that Snowden had a copy of a genuine top-secret document that even the judge who signed it did not have. The NSA reluctantly acknowledged that the document was genuine and claimed that all its snooping on the 113,000,000 Verizon customers covered by that order was lawful because it had been authorized by that federal judge. The NSA also claims that as a result of its spying, it has kept us safe.

I reject the argument that the government is empowered to take our liberties — here, the right to privacy — by majority vote or by secret fiat as part of an involuntary collective bargain that it needs to monitor us in private in order to protect us in public. The government’s job is to keep us free and safe. If it keeps us safe but not free, it is not doing its job.

Since the revelations about Verizon, we have learned that the NSA has captured and stored in its Utah computers the emails, texts, telephone conversations, utility bills, bank statements, credit card statements and digital phone books of everyone in America for the past two and a half years. It also has captured hundreds of millions of phone records in Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico — all U.S. allies — and it has shared much of the seized raw American data with intelligence agencies in Great Britain and Israel. Its agents have spied on their girlfriends and boyfriends literally thousands of times, and they have combed the collected raw data and selectively revealed some of it to law enforcement. All of this directly contradicts the Constitution.

And, if all of this is not enough to induce one to realize that the Orwellian future is here thanks to the secret governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Snowden also revealed that the NSA can hack into anyone’s mobile phone, even when it is turned off, and use each phone as a listening device and as a GPS to track whoever possesses it.

When Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, was confronted with this litany of unlawful and unconstitutional behavior, he replied by claiming that his spies have saved the U.S. from 54 terrorist plots. He pleaded with lawmakers not to strip him of the power to spy or of the billions they have given him to spend on spying, lest another 9/11 plot befall us.

Many Americans were willing to make this trade: spy on 330,000,000 Americans in order to stop 54 plots. But the government lacks the moral and constitutional power to compel this trade, because the right to privacy is a personal, individual and inalienable right, and so it cannot lawfully be taken away by majority vote (which never happened) or by secret fiat (which did happen). The government also lacks the authority to spy without legal constraint on anyone it wishes, because that violates the Constitution and fundamentally changes our open and free society. All-hearing ears and all-seeing eyes and unconstrained power exercised in secret are a toxic mix destined to destroy personal freedom.

Now we know that Alexander has lied yet again to a congressional committee. He recently acknowledged that the number of plots foiled is not the stated-under-oath 54, but is either two or three. He won’t say which two or three or how spying on every American was the only lawful or constitutional way to uncover these plots. He also won’t say why he originally said 54, instead of two or three; but he did say last week that he will retire next spring.

This is maddening. The government breaks the law it has been hired to enforce and violates the Constitution its agents have sworn to uphold; it gets caught and lies about it; and no one in government is punished or changes his behavior.

Then we realize that the so-called court that authorized all of this is not a court at all. Federal judges may only exercise the judicial function when they are addressing cases or controversies; and their opinions only have the force of law when they emanate from that context. But when federal judges serve an essentially clerical function, they are not serving as judges, their opinions are self-serving and legally useless, and their apparent imprimatur upon spying gives it no moral or legal legitimacy.

All of this — which is essentially undisputed — leads me to the question: Where is the outrage? I think the government has succeeded in so terrifying us at the prospect of another 9/11 that we are afraid to be outraged at the government when it claims to be protecting us, no matter what it does. C.S. Lewis once remarked that the greatest trick the devil has pulled off is convincing us that he does not exist.

The government’s greatest trick has been persuading us to surrender our freedoms. Will we ever get them back? The answer to that depends upon the fidelity to freedom of those in whose hands we have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping. At present, those hands are soiled with the filth of totalitarianism and preoccupied with the grasp of power. And they seem to be getting dirtier and their grip tighter every day.