­por David Bacon

New America Media

Angel Hernández, Isabel Solorio and Jesús Medina, residents of Lanare, have discovered dangerous concentrations of Arsenic in their water supply. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)

Note from the editor: Here we present the first of a two-part series about contaminated water in the community of Lanare.

When Mary Broad moved to Lanare in 1955, there were only four other families still living in this tiny, unincorporated community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, halfway between old Highway 99 and Interstate 5 on the cracked blacktop of Mt. McKinley Avenue.

It wasn’t always this way. Lanare used to be a company town, taking its name from rancher and speculator LA Nares, one of the last of a string of speculators from the east who became owners of the old Spanish land grants – in his case, the Rancho Laguna de Tache. From ­1912 to 1925 the town had a post office and a station on the Laton and Western Railway.

Lanare and its neighbors drew their water and life from the Kings River. The next town up the road even changed its name from Liberty Settlement to Riverdale to advertise its proximity. But through the first half of the 1900s, farmers tapped the Kings in the Sierras to the east, to irrigate the San Joaquin Valley’s vineyards, orchards and cotton fields. Instead of flowing into the valley past Lanare and Riverdale, in most years the stretch below the mountains became a dry riverbed. Eventually Tulare Lake, the river’s terminus, itself was drained for farmland and disappeared.

So, almost, did Lanare. Its people left, and only a few families remained. But in California’s housing crunch of the last few decades, Lanare began to grow again. For farm laborers, truck drivers and poor rural working families, living in Lanare was cheaper than urban Fresno fifty miles away.

But for these new residents, the dry riverbed and a century of using its water for irrigation have spelled bad news. Today Lanare’s water comes from a well. And in this low-lying area of the San Joaquin Valley, chemicals have become concentrated in the water table. It was no surprise, therefore, that residents discovered their water had high levels of arsenic, a poison. Since then, their effort to find water they can drink has been a search for the life of their town itself.

By 2000 Lanare had 540 residents. A decade later, 589. People mostly moved into trailers. Because most are farm workers in the surrounding fields, a third live under the poverty line, with half the men making less than $22,000 per year, and half the women less than $16,000.

Today Lanare is one of the many unincorporated communities in rural California that lack the most basic services, like drinking water, sewers, and even sidewalks and streetlights. According to Policy Link, a foundation promoting economic and social equity, “Throughout the United States, millions of people live outside of central cities on pockets of unincorporated land. Predominantly African-American and Latino, and frequently low-income, these communities … have been excluded from city borders.”

Three years ago, Policy Link partnered with California Rural Legal Assistance to create the Community Equity Initiative, to find answers to the critical situation of Lanare residents and others like them. The San Joaquin Valley alone is home to more than 220 unincorporated communities, with an estimated population of almost half a million.

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/08/dying-for-a-glass-of-clean-water-in-cas-san-joaquin-valley.php.

by the staff of El Reportero

Note of the editor: Here we present the fourth and last part of a series with which we have enjoyed the benefits of a surprising ingredient, oregano.

Wild oregano oil is a powerful antibiotic and fungicide. When we eliminate these pathogens, they release toxins in the blood torrent that cause the person to feel tired or get the symptoms of a cold or, in unusual cases, of skin irritation. This is a sign that the body is detoxifying and it is known as a healing crisis or Herxheimer reaction.

This uncomfortable sensation can be avoided by drinking 8 to 12 glasses of spring water a day to help to purge the toxins from the blood.

Most people feel better immediately when they start to take oregano oil; however, if there is any of the abovementioned symptoms, reduce the intake of oregano oil and drink a lot of spring water.

Once these symptoms have disappeared, you can increase the dose of oregano oil. Some people will need a lower dose; others will need to double or triple of the recommended dose. If necessary, distribute the extra dose along the day, instead of taking everything at once. For example, take 3 drops 10 times a day instead of 10 drops 3 times a day. Listen to your body, as it is the best judge.

Use known infusions: Infusions, also known as tisanes, are prepared with one small spoonful per cup and dried mashed flowers. Drink three cups a day, before or after meals. Moreover, you can use honey as a sweetener. This is useful to appease period cramps or against the cough and it is recommended that in this latter case, infusions are complemented with steam.

In addition, oregano wine can also relieve cough. This is prepared by macerating 250 grams of the plant in 1 liter of white wine for 9 days. Later, it has to be filtered and you should drink one glass after meals.

Asthma: Infusions relieve asthma, cold and b­reathing problems .

Laryngitis and tonsillitis: These are relieved by gargling with infusions. Add two small spoonfuls of mashed herb to a half liter of boiling water. Cover and let it stand for 15 minutes. Reheat before gargling 3 or 4 times a day.

Digestive. It contributes to eliminate intestinal gases, it is a biliary stimulant and works as a stomach tonic. Take one infusion of dried leaves and flowers of 12 grams per liter and a cup after every meal. Muscle pain, stiff neck and lumbago. It must be applied externally in poultice or in frictions on the skin.

Preparation: cut, mash and heat up the fresh plant in a pan. Cover in a hot cloth and keep it the longer the better in the affected area (repeat as many times as necessary).

Rheumatism: when combining oregano with rosemary and thyme you get a type of oil that is recommended. Its preparation consists of macerating a mixture of equal parts of each plant in one liter of olive oil. Then, it is exposed to the sun or left in a warm place during seven days.

por Kurt Nimmo

­Infowars.com

Greg Palast

According to Euronews, the riots now taking place in Chile are related to a demand for “free education.” Education, however, is only one of a number of demands made by workers as they participate in a 48-hour national strike. Chilean unions demand that tax reform be imposed on transnational corporations, international consortia, and the wealthy elite to address social problems caused by decades of globalism. They also want to change the country’s social security system that has left millions of elderly people and pensioners impoverished. For details, see Six reasons for Chile’s nationwide strike.

As journalist Greg Palast noted in 2006, Pinochet was credited with the “Miracle of Chile” that was “just another fairy tale.” In fact, the CIA’s neoliberal agenda resulted in widespread unemployment and an increase in poverty. Pinochet and the CIA “abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus,” Palast writes.

The so-called “Miracle of Chile” was in fact a neoliberal experiment that would be applied elsewhere in South America.

“In 1998, the international finance Gang of Four – the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Settlements – offered a $41.5 billion line of credit to Brazil. But before the agencies handed the drowning nation a life preserver, they demanded Brazil commit to swallow the economic medicine that nearly killed Chile. You know the list: fire-sale privatizations, flexible labor markets (i.e. union demolition) and deficit reduction through savage cuts in government services and social security,” Palast writes.

The marches and scattered riots taking place in Santiago and elsewhere in Chile are a response to the neoliberal agenda imposed on the country regardless of the will of the people.

The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves,” said Henry Kissinger following the CIA coup. I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.” ­http://www.infowars.com/newsletter/.

by Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com

Aug. 22, 2011 — The Financial Times has featured an editorial penned by Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass titled, Libya now Needs boots on the ground, 2011where the arch globalist states that Libya’s rebels are in no way capable of rebuilding Libya properly and will require an “international force” to maintain order.

Haass breathtakingly admits that the NATO intervention to “protect civilians” was in fact a political intervention designed to bring about regime change.

With NATO leading the offensive against Tripoli, a relatively calm city until now, the alleged cause of “protecting civilians” rings hollower than ever.

Haass goes on to explain that NATO’s “success” is what requires this international assistance in the predictable form of an occupation force to deal with looting, “die-hard regime supporters,” and tribal war. Haass also implores Obama to reconsider his decision to rule out American boots on the ground and to do so quickly.

Of course, NATO didn’t just spend the last 5 months conducting 7,000+ airstrikes on Libya to “protect civilians” and then ride off into the sunset.

This was a war of conquest from the very beginning, with globalists openly declaring it would determine the “primacy of international law” over the nation-state.

In fact, the initial uprising itself was gestated in Washington and London where opposition leaders were provided resources and safe-havens to conduct their sedition, with globalist stooges like Ibrahim Sahad literally sitting in front of the White House calling for NATO to bomb his homeland.

NATO, its members, particularly the U.S., U.K., and France, and the globalist corporate-financiers behind them, fully intend to rebuild Libya according to their own aspirations shoehorned into a national consensus imposed upon the Libyan people under the guise of “democracy” and “civil society.” We are watching a modern empire expand its boundaries into yet another sovereign nation.

Readers may remember an April 2011 article titled Libyan rebels fighting the globalists’ war with the ever increasingly appropriate subtitle, How the devil pays.

In it a caption attempts to sum up Libya’s future by stating, “if these rebels really think the West is going to hand them Libya and its riches, they have anotherthing coming. The Neo-Con arm of the globalist agenda is already seeding the ground to deal with “extremists” coming to power after the “Arab Spring” runs its course. That means Libya’s oil & future will be left in the hands of NATO troops, not the Libyan people.”

The article continues: “While the dichotomy of Western politics is merely for public consumption, what each camp states publicly can be put together as a composite giving us a clearer picture of the overall globalist agenda. Neo-Conservative war monger Daniel Pipes, a PNAC signatory, CFR member, and co-conspirator in many of the darkest chapters of recent American history, was recently sharing his “doubts” over the final result of the “Arab Spring.” He believes that ultimately extremists will prevail in many cases and only complicate US relations with certain countries.

Of course, Pipes most likely didn’t miss the memo and is fully aware that the “Arab Spring” is a US funded gambit, one his fellow “Neo-Cons” lining the National Endowment for Democracy and the fraudulent Freedom House are admittedly involved in.

At the very least, he must have picked up the New York Times and read as much. So what exactly is Pipes trying to tell us? He is saying that as soon as the Libyan rebels secure Libya, or the Muslim Brotherhood takes hold of Syria, or Yemen, or wins out in a co-opted counterrevolution against International Crisis Group stooge Mohamed ElBaradei in Egypt, the blinders Western propagandists seem to be wearing will suddenly drop and point out that indeed the globalists have installed extremists “by accident.”

To rectify this, Libyan rebels will be betrayed just as quickly as Qaddafi was. They will be removed from power, and replaced by Western stooges protected by NATO ground troops, conveniently already being put on the ground in Libya, and will stay there permanently. The globalist “Neo-Con” think tank Foreign Policy Initiative has stated, “The best way to reduce the potential dangers posed by extremist infiltration is for the United States and its allies to remain engaged in Libya.”

This engagement most likely will take the shape of the other unending “engagements” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the years of cross-border raids into ­Pakistan. The oil money that once built water ways, public housing, and farms from Benghazi to Tripoli, will be funneled directly out of the country and into the corporate-financier’s accounts. The corporate-financier oligarchs will have taken yet another nation-state down with the help of its own gullible population, and for their gullibility, they will pay for the rest of their lives, as will their children and their children’s children.