by Michael Snyder
American Dream

COLUMN – Why do men and women have a such a hard time relating to each other in a meaningful way in America today? Could our oversexed culture have anything to do with it? In the United States today, we are constantly being bombarded with sexual messages. Just think about it. Did you watch the Super Bowl a few weeks ago? Most of the commercials were about sex on some level, and the “halftime show” featuring Beyonce might as well have been a strip club act. It was utterly shameful. But in America today, all of this is considered to be “normal”.

We literally worship sex, and we can never get enough of it. And of course the results of such a society are predictable. There are 20 million new sexually-transmitted infections in the U.S. each year, we have the highest teen pregnancy rate on the planet, and it is estimated that one out of every four girls in the U.S. is sexually abused before they become adults. This culture of sex is pushed on our children from a very early age, and at this point it would be quite accurate to say that U.S. public schools have become training centers for sexual deviancy. A lot of people focus on “sex education” as the problem, but the truth is that it goes much deeper than that. Sex education only lasts for a few weeks at most.

The much bigger problem is the fact that an obsession with sex literally permeates our schools. If parents could only eavesdrop on the conversations that our teens are having, they would be absolutely horrified. Thanks to endless brainwashing by the mainstream media, our teens are absolutely addicted to a sexual atmosphere. Every form of entertainment that they enjoy is soaked with sexual imagery, and lust and sex are never far from their minds when they relate to members of the opposite sex (or sometimes the same sex).

So should we really be surprised that students are having sex with each other in the hallways of our schools? Should we be surprised that young teachers are taking advantage of our students sexually behind closed doors? We have created a society that is sexually supercharged, and what we are witnessing now are the predictable results of the very foolish decisions that we have made.

The following are 21 signs that U.S. public schools have become training centers for sexual deviancy…

#1 There is a raging epidemic of sexually-transmitted diseases among our young people. According to the latest figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there are 20 million new sexually-transmitted infections in the United States every single year, and Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 account for approximately 50 percent of those new sexually-transmitted infections.

#2 Many of our teens our catching diseases that they can’t even pronounce correctly. There were more than 1.4 million cases of chlamydia reported in the United States in 2011. An astounding 33 percent of those cases involved Americans that were younger than 20 years of age.

#3 At this point, one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

#4 Apparently, all of the propaganda about “safe sex” is not really working very well. According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have an STD say that they still have unprotected sex.

#5 When you take morality out of public life, the results are predictable. In the United States today, approximately 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.

#6 Many of our young people seem to not understand the value of waiting until marriage to become a mother. Amazingly, one out of every five teen girls in the U.S. actually wants to be a teenage mother.

#7 When I was growing up, I don’t remember a single girl being pregnant at my high school. But today all of that has changed.

#8 If you can believe it, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet.

#9 Increasingly, oral sex is being promoted to our young people as a “safer” form of sex. According to shocking research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately two-thirds of all Americans in the 15 to 24 year old age bracket have engaged in oral sex.

#10 Sex “education” has become much more about “indoctrination” in recent years. One recent example of this trend was detailed in the New York Times…

IMAGINE you have a 10- or 11-year-old child, just entering a public middle school. How would you feel if, as part of a class ostensibly about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, he and his classmates were given “risk cards” that graphically named a variety of solitary and mutual sex acts? Or if, in another lesson, he was encouraged to disregard what you told him about sex, and to rely instead on teachers and health clinic staff members?

That prospect would horrify most parents. But such lessons are part of a middle-school curriculum that Dennis M. Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, has recommended for his system’s newly mandated sex-education classes. There is a parental “opt out,” but it is very limited, covering classes on contraception and birth control.

#11 Sexual “experimentation” among our teens is reaching heights never seen before. According to one recent study, sexual contact between teen girls in the United States is now at the highest level ever recorded.

#12 In America today, sex in public school hallways has become a common occurrence.

#13 Would you feel okay about your teenage girl sharing a bathroom with boys? In the state of Massachusetts, boys will now be able to freely use girls restrooms and girls locker rooms if it makes them feel more “comfortable”.

#14 One of the results of our “culture of sex” has been an explosion in the number of babies being born outside of marriage. For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.

#15 Being a single parent is incredibly hard, but more U.S. children are being raised by just one parent than ever before. At this point, more than one out of every four children in the United States is being raised by a single parent.

#16 Thanks to our “sexual revolution”, men and women are having a harder time than ever relating to each other in a meaningful way. Our young people are being taught that marriage is a “burden” and that they should delay it for as long as possible. Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are married.

#17 There is an epidemic of sex between teachers and students in the United States. In fact, for some teachers one student is just simply not enough. For example, a 33-year-old art teacher down in Arizona was charged with having sex with four of her male students.

#18 A former high school English teacher down in Texas has that teacher beat. She has been accused of having sex with five different male students. The most disturbing part of her story is that she is a mother of three children and her husband is serving this country in the U.S. Army.

#19 But a high school teacher down in Georgia has both of them beat. She was recently charged with having sex with seven of her students.

#20 Sometimes even teachers that have been convicted of having sex with a student cannot stop themselves. For example, there was one case where a probation officer found a student that a teacher had been convicted of having sex with previously hiding in her closet…

VENEZUELA: Chávez home to die, speculates opposition

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Hugo Chávez

According to Latin News, nothing more has been heard from President Hugo Chávez since his surprise return to Venezuela early on Feb. 18, fuelling speculation that plans are afoot for him to swear in privately before the supreme court and then step aside, triggering snap elections in which Vice-President Nicolás Maduro would bid to replace him. Senior ministers continue to insist that the president remains in full control of his faculties and continues to run the country, now from a hospital bed in Caracas, rather than Havana, Cuba.

Chávez’s return after two long months in Cuba in almost total silence (because he literally could not talk, it has now transpired), will help restore some stability, even in the absence of any proper details of his medical condition.

The photos released of the president prior to his return evidenced that he is not at all a well man. Officials from the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) were clear that the president’s immediate priorities remained medical, not political. In response to opposition calls for a resolution to what it says is the extra constitutional state of affairs in the country since Chávez’s failure (on Jan. 10) to swear in for the new term to which he was elected in October 2012, the state governor of Anzoátegui, Aristóbulo Istúriz, who sits on the PSUV leadership, said that Chávez 6would swear in “when he is well and healthy”, noting that the PSUV-controlled national assembly had given the president an indefinite period to get better. In a similar vein, Rodrigo Cabezas, a Venezuelan delegate to the Andean Parliament and also on the PSUV leadership, on 19 February stated, “The president has returned to continue his medical treatment, he has a time that is not political. His time now is not political”.

‘Sources’ from the supreme court (TSJ) quoted by the opposition daily El Universal on Feb. 19 made clear that “there has been no change in the exceptional circumstances that motivated the constitutional chamber’s Jan. 9 ruling, thanks to which the head of state and his ministers remain in their functions, despite the fact that the former could not meet the requirement to take office on Jan. 10”.

Nicaragua: More social investments with international support

(Prensa Latina) Nicaragua will carry out new aqueduct and sewer system works in 19 main cities with collaboration from Spain, the European Union and regional financial bodies, the government confirmed today.

Resources from Fondo de Agua (Spain), the EU and the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCEI) and the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) will back the projects, reported Rosario Murillo, a member of the presidential Cabinet.

The works will go from investment studies to construction work to install and extend water supply and sewer service, said Murillo.

According to Director of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID), Juan Lopez-Doriga, this is the most ambitious project ever carried out by AECID with a Latin American government.

El Salvador sets up special anti-gang unit

(Prensa Latina) The presidents of the Central American Integration System (SICA) are holding a summit today, in this capital, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to promote relations and collaboration in Middle America.

Prior to the beginning of his first governmental visit to Costa Rica and Central America, Peña Nieto announced that Mexico would participate in the Infrastructure Fund for Middle America and the Caribbean Countries.

by QMI Agency

Many artificial food dyes that color everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream should be banned because they pose cancer risks, a new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest says.

“These synthetic chemicals do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of foods, but trigger behavior problems in children and, possibly, cancer in anybody,” said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson, co-author of the report, Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks.

Manufacturers worldwide each year use about seven million kilograms of artificial colors in common prepared foods like cookies, candy, pop and ice cream.

The three most widely used food dyes —Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 — are known to be contaminated with carcinogens, the Washington-based health watchdog organization said. Evidence suggests, but does not prove, that other dyes — Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3 and Red 40 — cause cancer in animals, the CSPI report said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration already recognizes Red 3 as a carcinogen, but the Ronald Reagan administration prevented a ban being placed on Red 3, as required by U.S. law in the case of any food additive known to cause cancer.

About 100,000 kg of Red 3 dye are used annually world wide in processing food.

As of Tuesday, European food manufacturers will be required to add a warning on product packaging if the product contains one of six artificial colors linked to cancer and other health issues.

Hair dyes used by millions of women are linked to chemicals that can cause cancer Secondary amines can be found in hair dyes used by millions of Britons Both home coloring kits and salon dye can contain chemicals Could react with smoke and fumes and form highly poisonous chemicals Hair dyes used by millions of women are linked to chemicals that can cause cancer Secondary amines can be found in hair dyes used by millions of Britons. Both home coloring kits and salon dye can contain chemicals. Could react with smoke and fumes and form highly poisonous chemicals

by Fiona Macrae

Hair dyes used by millions of women contain chemicals linked to cancer, British scientists have warned.

They say that both home hair coloring kits and the dyes used at expensive salons pose a potential risk to health.

Writing in a respected scientific journal, they say chemicals in permanent hair dyes can react with tobacco smoke and other pollutants in the air to form one of the most powerful cancer-causing compounds known to man.

With more than a third of women and one in ten men regularly coloring their hair, the researchers say it is ‘imperative’ that the risk to health is quantified.

However, the cosmetics industry has strongly disputed the claim.

The warning comes from scientists at Leedsbased company Green Chemicals who conducted a review of the chemistry surrounding hair dye. They said that all the information was already available and they simply ‘joined the dots’ to make the link with cancer.

They warn that chemicals called secondary amines, which are either found in all permanent hair dyes or are formed in them, can penetrate the skin and stay on the hair for weeks, months or even years after the dye is applied.

Over time, they could react with tobacco smoke and exhaust fumes, to form highly poisonous chemicals called N-nitrosamines. Known to cause cancer, these are banned from use in cosmetics.

But the Leeds reasearchers argue that they can still be generated via a simple chemical reaction.

Hair dye has previously been linked to a range of cancers, including tumors of the breast, bladder, ovaries and brain and leukemia.

There are also concerns that increasing numbers of people are becoming allergic to their contents, sometimes with fatal results.

The sale of home hair dye kits alone is worth an estimated £321million a year and the figure is expected to rise as the population ages.

Professor David Lewis, one of the authors of the study, and an expert in the chemistry of various dyes, said: ‘At this stage, we can’t be sure of the amount of Nnitrosamines produced or the level of risk these compounds pose but it is clear a potential hazard exists.

‘In the interest of consumer safety, it is imperative that a thorough and independent investigation is conducted to establish the levels of toxicity of these compounds and the potential risks.’

A spokesman for Green Chemicals, which is about to launch its own ‘ultra-safe’ range of hair dyes, said that despite numerous studies of the subject the danger posed by the chemicals in hair dye reacting with the air has been missed or ignored until now.

But manufacturers insisted that the possibility of the chemical reaction has been long known.

Dr Emma Meredith, of the Cosmetic, Toiletry & Perfumery Association, said the law forbids using secondary amines in a form that can react in this way.

George Hammer, the owner of Urban Retreat at Harrods, the world’s largest hair and beauty salon, said: ‘Chemical companies have a huge vested interest in keeping this under wraps.’

The warning is set out in the journal Materials.

In 2009 the Mail revealed that women who use hair dyes more than nine times a year have a 60 per cent greater risk of contracting blood cancer. A year later the European Commission banned 22 hair dyes, which put long term users at risk of bladder cancer.

by RT

The Fourth Amendment no longer means what you once thought it did: A new report reveals that the government has shrugged off concerns over the alleged constitutional infringements of its own citizens near international crossings.

An internal review of the US Department of Homeland Security’s procedures regarding the suspicionless search-and-seizure of phones and laptops near the nation’s border has reaffirmed the agency’s ability to bypass Fourth Amendment-protected rights http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/crcl-border-search-impact-assessment_01-29-13_1.pdf.

In a two page executive summary published http://www.dhs.gov/civil-rights-civil-liberties-impact-assessments last month to the official DHS website, the agency explains that a civil rights and civil liberties impact assessment of the office’s little-known power to collect personal electronics near international crossings has passed an auditor’s interpretation of what does and doesn’t violate the US Constitution.

Since 2009, the DHS has been legally permitted to seize and review the contents of personal electronic devices, including mobile phones, portable computers and data discs, even without being able to cite any reasonable suspicion that those articles were involved in a crime.

When the initiative was introduced in August 2009 by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, she defended the policy change. “Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States,” the secretary said, adding, “The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”

In that Aug. 09 announcement, Sec. Napolitano ensured the American public that they had nothing to worry about and that an impact assessment would be conducted within 120 days to eliminate any fears. More than two years later, however, the DHS-led study has only now been released in part, and its findings do little to alleviate the concerns of civil liberty advocates who have held their breath since the early days of the Obama administration, waiting anxiously to hear about the legality of a directive that applies to both Customs and Border Protection agents and officers with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement working under the DHS.

“We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment,” reads the assessment, written by Tamara Kessler of the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” she adds.

Elsewhere in her report, Kessler dismisses concerns that legalized searches that require Americans to submit their electronic devices without reason would scare citizens from exercising their ability to speak and act freely.
“Some critics argue that a heightened level of suspicion should be required before officers search laptop computers in order to avoid chilling First Amendment rights.

However, we conclude that the laptop border searches allowed under the ICE and CBP Directives do not violate travelers’ First Amendment rights,” Tessler insists.

David Kravets, a reporter for Wired’s Danger Room, writes of the review, “The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.”

Commenting on Wired’s report, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Catherine Crump voices concern over how DHS agents can essentially bypass the protections of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search-and-seizure. With few exceptions, the government is not permitted to search the belongings of a person without a reasonable suspicion of a crime. Near the nation’s borders, though, that requirement is removed entirely.

“There should be a reasonable, articulate reason why the search of our electronic devices could lead to evidence of a crime,” Crump tells Wired. “That’s a low threshold.”

Katie Haas of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program adds in a blog post this week, “the reality is that allowing government agents to search through all of a traveler’s data without reasonable suspicion is completely incompatible with our fundamental rights. Those rights, she says, are “implicated when the government can rummage through our computers and cell phones for no reason other than that we happen to have traveled abroad.”

“Suspicionless searches also open the door to profiling based on perceived or actual race, ethnicity, or religion,” Haas adds, “And our First Amendment rights to free speech and free association are inhibited when agents at the border can target us for searches based on our exercise of those rights.”

In response to the stripped-down executive summary posted by DHS, the ACLU’s main office has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the government in hopes of obtaining more information on when and why Americans might lose their Fourth Amendment-protected rights. The ACLU seeks the assessment in its entirety and all data, analyses and records gathered during the course of preparing the report.

Where exactly the government can seize personal items without reason is something that has already been determined, though. Last March, the US Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that legally permitted the use of suspicionless roadblocks not necessarily close to the country’s borders.

Back in 2006, the ACLU determined that roughly two-thirds of the entire US population lives within 100 miles of the country’s border, making approximately 200 million Americans in places like Buffalo, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle subject to warrantless and suspicionless searches.

“It is a classic example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond their proper boundaries – in this case, literally,” ACLU’s Caroline Fredrickson told Wired for an earlier report.

Sec. Napolitano and the DHS have been sued at least once over allegations that the seizure of personal electronic belonging to a US citizen near an international border violated the Constitution of the country. David House, a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, says his laptop and other devices were confiscated without reason while returning to the US from Mexico in November 2010. According to legal filings, House was grilled about his association with Manning, an accused Army whistleblower arrested six months earlier, and WikiLeaks, the website Manning is alleged to have supplied with hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables.