Why Butter Is Better - The Weston A. Price Foundation

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FBI Docs Reveal: "Flynn Was Not Lying Or Did Not Think He Was Lying"

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Authored by Sara Carter via SaraCarter.com,

The Special Counsel’s Office released key documents related to former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Friday. Robert Mueller’s office had until 3 p.m. to get the documents to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who demanded information Wednesday after bombshell information surfaced in a memorandum submitted by Flynn’s attorney’s that led to serious concerns regarding the FBI’s initial questioning of the retired three-star general.

The highly redacted documents included notes from former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe regarding his conversation with Flynn about arranging the interview with the FBI. The initial interview took place at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.

The documents also include the FBI’s  “302” report regarding Flynn’s interview with anti-Trump former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka when they met with him at the White House. It is not, however, the 302 document from the actual January, 2017 interview but an August, 2017 report of Strzok’s recollections of the interview.

Flynn’s attorney’s had noted in their memorandum to the courts that the documents revealed that FBI officials made the decision not to provide Flynn with his Miranda Rights, which would’ve have warned him of penalties for making false statements.

“The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview,” the Flynn memo says.

According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport.”

McCabe, who has since been fired for lying to the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General about leaking information to the media, also asked Flynn not to have his lawyer present during the initial meeting with the FBI agents.

The July 2017 report, however, was the interview with Strzok. It described his interview with Flynn but was not the original Flynn interview.

Apparent discrepancies within the 302 documents are being questioned by may former senior FBI officials, who state that there are stringent policies in place to ensure that the documents are guarded against tampering.

On Thursday, FBI Supervisory Agent Jeff Danik told SaraACarter.com that Sullivan must also request all the communications between the two agents, as well as their supervisors around the August 2017 time-frame in order to get a complete and accurate picture of what transpired. Danik, who is an expert in FBI policy, says it is imperative that Sullivan also request “the workflow chart, which would show one-hundred percent, when the 302s were created when they were sent to a supervisor and who approved them.”

He stressed, “the bureau policy – the absolute FBI policy – is that the notes must be placed in the system in a 1-A file within five days of the interview.” Danik said that the handwritten notes get placed into the FBI Sentinel System, which is the FBI’s main record keeping system. “Anything beyond five business days is a problem, eight months is a disaster,” he added.

In the redacted 302 report Strzok and Pientka said they “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” Information that Flynn was not lying was first published and reported by SaraACarter.com.

Flynn was found guilty by Mueller on one count of lying to the FBI. Supporters of Flynn have questioned Mueller’s tactics in getting the retired three-star general to plead guilty to this one count of lying.

In the report, the two agents describe Flynn as being very open and noted said Flynn “clearly saw the FBI agents as allies.” Flynn is described as discussing a variety of  “subjects.”  The report includes his openness regarding Trump’s “knack for interior design,” the hotels he stayed at during his campaign, as well as other issues.

“Flynn was so talkative, and had so much time for them, that Strzok wondered if the national security adviser did not have more important things to do than have a such a relaxed, non-pertinent discussion with them,” it said.

The documents turned over by Mueller also reveal that other FBI personnel “later argued about the FBI’s decision to interview Flynn.”

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Leaked Memo Touts UK-Funded Firm's Ability To Create "Untraceable" News Sites For "Infowar Campaign"

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The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" has published more explosive documents detailing a UK-based psyop to create a "large-scale information secret service" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" — which has been blamed for everything from Brexit to Trump winning the 2016 US election to this month's anti-Macron "Yellow Vest" protests.

We previously detailed the first trove of documents which were dumped online November 5th to the site Cyberguerilla, revealing the private UK organization with deep government ties, the Integrity Initiative, to be engaged in an aggressive campaign to organize "clusters" of journalists across the West engaged in “counter-propaganda” efforts on social media networks and in media. And now a new trove of leaked Integrity Initiative documents has been dumped online Friday.

"Combatting Russian Disinformation" - Screenshot from a bombshell newly leaked document published Friday and hosted on the Cyberguerilla site.

This week the Integrity Initiative and its founding parent organization, the Institute for Statecraft — which is known for its close relationship with the UK military and defense officials — is at the center of debate in the House of Commons over its anti-Corbyn and anti-Labour smears involving labeling party leader Jeremy Corbyn a “useful idiot” for Moscow, even while the company is a recipient of official Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) funding. 

The early November online leaks of confidential Integrity Initiative documents were the first to reveal the UK government's relationship to the private project devoted to "fighting Russian disinformation". According to The Guardian:

FCO funding of the Integrity Initiative was revealed by a set of stolen documents posted online last month by hackers under the banner of the Anonymous hacktivist collective. The organisation has not disputed their authenticity, but in a statement suggested that Russia was responsible for the hack and that Moscow had used its media channels to amplify its impact.

We noted previously that the work done by the Initiative — which claims it is not affiliated with government bodies, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to memos in the November leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." 

In the Commons earlier, I asked Alan Duncan why taxpayers money had been used by the so-called 'Integrity Initiative' to disseminate political attacks from its Twitter site (1/2). pic.twitter.com/zQNOPeQOMn

— Emily Thornberry (@EmilyThornberry) December 12, 2018

Friday's document dump via "Anonymous" is the third such release, and already some bombshell information has come to light.

The geopolitical blog, Moon of Alabama, was the first to unearth and analyze one of the more interesting among the document trove:

A "strictly confidential" proposal by the French company Lexfo to spread the Integrity Initiative's state-sponsored propaganda through an offensive online influence campaigns for a monthly pay per language of €20-40.000. The proposal also includes an offer for "counter activism" through "negative PR, legal actions, ethical hack back, etc." for €50,000 per month.

The document is marked "Strictly confidential" and lays out a "comprehensive action proposal" which repeatedly invokes Russian state funded media outlets RT and Sputnik as enemy disinformation to be defeated.

The proposal touts the ability of an Integrity Initiative partner — the French cybersecurity firm Lexfo — to create "indirect" and "untraceable" news content, including its ability to conduct "naming and shaming" campaigns targeting "allies" of "Russian disinformation".

Presumably "allies" means any person or entity that happens to align with the Russian viewpoint on any given issue. The shaming campaigns and counter-information operations will be conducted "across hundreds of credible media outlets".

Alarmingly, the document notes that:

 "where we lack platforms to publish our content... we will create news media sites serving our objectives..."

Again, both the contracting cybersecurity firm and the Integrity Initiative's role in literally creating media sites out of thin air for the purpose of "serving our objectives" will remain "untraceable".

As part of the "infowar campaign" teams of media operatives across Europe and the U.S. will "monitor" and edit social media pages as well as Wikipedia entries, according to the leaked document.  

"Hot topics" which especially need to be monitored include the Ukraine conflict and any situation wherein "pro-Western local politicians" could be swayed by "Russian-backed trolls"

The teams will engage in "special operations" which are listed as:

• negative PR
• legal actions
• ethical hack back 

And which populations are to be targeted? The document specifically mentions seeking out a Russian audience alongside Western countries: "This plan should be implemented in every targeted country and language, including Russia."

These "influence operations" come at a price, according to the document. One figure which is floated is a monthly pay per language fee of €20-40.000, making it classic government subsidized mass propaganda (again, the company has been confirmed as receiving FCO funding).

Given that this looks like merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of similar such UK and US funded "combating disinformation" projects conducted in partnership with private entities out there, these initiatives have most likely already been active for years. 

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Baltimore County Spends $147 Million On School Laptops; Four Years Later Test Scores Still Terrible

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Four years ago Baltimore County began a $147 million program to put laptops in the hands of students from first through 12th grade in the hopes that access to technology would transform the way kids learn and boost the lowest standardized test scores in the state, according to a new report cited by the Baltimore Sun's Liz Bowie

Photo via Baltimore Country Public Schools

Alas, the ambitious plan has failed to translate to an increase in achievement - as test scores are generally flat for students in grades three through eight, according to the Sun, which notes that many of those students have had the computers for at least three years. 

An evaluation of the program by Johns Hopkins researchers found that third-grade results at 10 schools that have had laptops longest have shown some increase over four years, but it’s too soon to say if that will continue.

“The impacts of the [laptop program] on student achievement remain encouraging, but still indeterminate given the still relatively short duration of the initiative,” the report said.

Absent across-the-board increases in student achievement, some parents and teachers are questioning whether the computers are worth the investment. -Baltimore Sun

"These devices do not seem to be improving my kids’ school experience," said parent Suzanne Persaud - whose three middle and high school boys have had access to the laptops. The school system is "giving them the hardware," said Persaud, "but not the courses to advance beyond the devices."

Photo via Baltimore Country Public Schools

With the majority of the Baltimore County school board departing this month, it is unclear whether the new board will continue the program amid calls to end the laptop giveaway. Others have suggested not giving every student a laptop. 

New county executive Johnny Olszwecki Jr. says that while he hasn't taken a position on the program, his administration will give it serious consideration. 

"I want to be a data-driven, evidence-based leader here for Baltimore County," said Olszwecki. "Any program that’s not having the intended gains that we’re spending money on we need to re-evaluate. Especially if it’s compromising our ability to meet other priorities."

Overall, Baltimore County students in grades three through eight scored 18th in the state for math and 19th in English, according to a State Department of Education analysis of Maryland’s 24 school districts.

In contrast, Baltimore City — where elementary and middle school students don’t have the same access to technology — saw significant achievement gains last year across nearly all grades and subjects on the state tests, though the percentage of city school students who passed them is still lower than in the county. -Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore County school district has countered critics, saying that the laptop program wasn't solely intended to raise achievement - but rather to allow underpriveleged students access to technology they may not have at home, and whose families can't afford internet service or computers. 

Verletta White, Interim School Superintendent

“It has never been about laptops increasing achievement,” said Interim School Superintendent Verletta White. “You have to take a look at all of the impacts and the levers that impact instruction.”

 School system officials added that teachers may have had too little time to adapt their lesson plans to the new technology. 

A 2016 analysis of 10 studies concluded that giving all students a laptop does not boost math, english, science or writing scores, however the authors from Michigan State and UC Irvine stress that computers alone don't increase academic performance and must be accompanied by lesson plans conducive to the technology. 

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William Blum, US Policy Critic Derided by NYT, Dies at 85

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by Jim Naureckas The New York Times (12/11/18) takes posthumous potshots at a historian who documented the history of US intervention that the Times often leaves out. You know you’ve lived well—well enough to rattle the establishment—when the New York Times smears you in the obituary it runs about you (FAIR.org, 6/20/13). That distinction was […]

The post William Blum, US Policy Critic Derided by NYT, Dies at 85 appeared first on RINF Alternative News & Media, Real Independent News & Film.

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Customs Officers Snooping Through More Travelers' Electronic Devices Than Ever

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US Customs and Border Protection officers are snooping through the contents of more travelers' electronic devices than ever, and don't follow protocol 67% of the time, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog. 

The department's Inspector General found that there were 29,000 devices searched during "secondary" inspections in 2017 out of 397 million travelers, up from 18,400 searches the previous year on 390 million travelers - less than one percent of all people entering the United States. 

During an enhanced secondary inspection, CBP's Office of Field Operations (OFO) can manually review information on a traveler's electronic devices - or they can connect external equipment to copy information for uploading and analysis in CBP's Automated Targeting System (ATS). 

Unfortunately for travelers, the OFO was found to have skirted or ignored standard operating procedures during searches of electronic devices, according to the Inspector General report.

During our review of a sample of border searches of electronic devices conducted between April 2016 and July 2017, we determined that OFO did not always conduct the searches at U.S. ports of entry according to its SOPs. Specifically, because of inadequate supervision to ensure OFO officers properly documented searches, OFO cannot maintain accurate quantitative data or identify and address performance problems related to these searches. In addition, OFO officers did not consistently disconnect electronic devices, specifically cell phones, from networks before searching them because headquarters provided inconsistent guidance to the ports of entry on disabling data connections on electronic devices. OFO also did not adequately manage technology to effectively support search operations and ensure the security of data. -DHS OIG

Without disconnecting from networks before searching them, OFO officers were able to retrieve or access information stored remotely in violation of DHS policy. 

The DHS IG recommended better documentation for searches, more consistent disabling of data connections prior to searches, and the deletion of data fom thumb drives once it is no longer needed, and for the development of a system to evaluate whether their electronic surveillance techniques are working. 

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Google CEO Exposes Shocking "Full Extent" Of Russian Meddling In 2016

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the “full extent” of so-called Russian meddling activity that took place on the platform during all of 2016 was $4,700 spent on some digital advertisements.

"Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian actors in the election two years ago?" Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the search engine's chief executive during Tuesday's hearing.

​"We have - we undertook a very thorough investigation, and, in 2016, we now know that there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising," Pichai responded.

"A total of $4,700?" Nadler asked to confirm.

"That's right," the Google executive replied.

Whenever Russiagate peddlers are confronted w/ the actual facts, it doesn't go so well. Here's @RepJerryNadler asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai about "the full extent" of Russian meddling activity on its platforms in 2016. The answer: Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on ads. pic.twitter.com/MiZaq8HBvS

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 11, 2018

Google employees and executives contributed $1.6 million to 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

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How School Districts Weaponize Child Protection Services Against Uncooperative Parents

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Schooling is adept at rooting out individuality and enforcing compliance. In his book, Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky writes: “In fact, the whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on—because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.”

This filtering process begins very early in a child’s schooling as conformity is rewarded and divergence is punished.

Public Schooling Breeds Obedience

Most of us played this game as schoolchildren. We know the rules. The kids who raise their hands, color in the lines, and obey succeed; the kids who challenge the rules struggle. The problem now is that the rules are extending beyond the classroom. Parents are increasingly required to obey, to conform to a school’s demands even if they believe such orders may not be appropriate for their child.

In my advocacy work with homeschooling families across the country, I frequently hear stories from parents who decided to homeschool their kids because schools were pressuring them to comply with various special education plans, push medications onto their children, or submit to other restrictive procedures they felt were not in their child’s best interest. Even more heartbreaking is the growing trend of school officials to unleash child protective services (CPS) on parents, homeschooling or not, who refuse to give in to a district’s demands.

Weaponizing Child Protective Services

An investigative report by The Hechinger Report and HuffPost released last month revealed that schools are increasingly using child protective services as a “weapon” against parents. It said:

Fed up with what they see as obstinate parents who don’t agree to special education services for their child, or disruptive kids who make learning difficult, schools sometimes use the threat of a child-protection investigation to strong-arm parents into complying with the school’s wishes or transferring their children to a new school. That approach is not only improper, but it can be devastating for families, even if the allegations are ultimately determined to be unfounded.

More troubling, these threats disproportionately target low-income and minority parents. According to the report:

Such families also have fewer resources to fight back. When a family in a wealthy Brooklyn neighborhood learned roughly two years ago that their child’s school had initiated an ACS [New York’s Administration for Children’s Services] investigation against them, they sued the city education department. Parents from lower-income, majority-black and Latino neighborhoods, few of whom can afford that option, say such investigations can be a regular, even expected, part of parenting.

Bullying Proactive Parents

For parents who are unhappy with their child’s school and decide to withdraw their child for homeschooling, threats of child welfare investigations can sometimes turn to actions. In Massachusetts, a mother is reportedly suing the Worcester Public Schools after school officials called the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) on her for alleged “educational neglect,” even though the mother contends that she dutifully filed her homeschooling paperwork for her eight-year-old son mid-year.

Brian Huskie, a public high school teacher and homeschooling father in New York, noted a similar case last year with one of his students. Dissatisfied with the school, the parents decided to remove their daughter from the district, filed the necessary homeschooling paperwork, and were soon visited by child protective services investigating “educational neglect.” Huskie detailed the incident on his blog, writing that the school made a “decision to weaponize CPS against a district family.”

Parents who push back against a district’s recommendations or withdraw their child from school for homeschooling are often trying to ensure their child’s well-being. Questioning various educational interventions and examining alternatives is part of a parent’s job. They should be praised for looking out for their child’s best interest, while schools should be sure that they use social services agencies to investigate serious claims of abuse and neglect—not just district snubs or paperwork quarrels.

If, as Chomsky suggests, many of us have grown acquiescent to power due to our successful schooling, it can be hard to challenge authority. It can be even harder when that authority is strengthened by government force and when we may not have the resources to fight it.

Supporting parents, broadening their education choices, and respecting their decisions are crucial steps in liberating families and curbing government coercion.

--

This article has been republished with permission from Foundation for Economic Education. 

[Image Credit: Flickr-David D CC BY 2.0]

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"We're Approaching A Critical Mass..." - Know Your Rights Or You Will Lose Them

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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose.

The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.

What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people - and those who represent them - about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don't know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

It’s telling that Americans were more able to identify Michael Jackson as the composer of a number of songs than to know that the Bill of Rights was the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that half of native-born Americans couldn’t correctly answer 70% of the civics questions on the U.S. Citizenship test.

Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

For instance, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was recently forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Here’s a classic example of how surreal the landscape has become.

Just in time for Bill of Rights Day on December 15, President Trump issued a proclamation affirming the importance of the Bill of Rights in guarding against government abuses of power.

“The Founding Fathers understood the real threat government can pose to the rights of the people… That is why those first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, among others, protected the right to speak freely, the right to freely worship, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to due process of law. As a part of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, the Bill of Rights has protected our rights effectively against the abuse of government power for 227 years… Since there will always be a temptation for government to abuse its power, we reaffirm our commitment to defend the Bill of Rights and uphold the Constitution.”

Don’t believe it for a second.

The government doesn’t want its abuses checked and it certainly doesn’t want its powers restricted.

For that matter, this is not a president who holds the Constitution in high esteem.

After all, Trump routinely rails against the rights enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, decrying the free speech rights of protesters, denouncing the media (which enjoys freedom of the press) as the enemy of the people, supporting government efforts to seize private property through asset forfeiture and eminent domain, refusing to denounce the use of internment camps to detain American citizens, sneering at due process, and encouraging police officers to use excessive force against suspects.

As law professor Garrett Epps notes:

“Donald Trump ran on a platform of relentless, thoroughgoing rejection of the Constitution itself, and its underlying principle of democratic self-government and individual rights. True, he never endorsed quartering of troops in private homes in time of peace, but aside from that there is hardly a provision of the Bill of Rights or later amendments he did not explicitly promise to override, from First Amendment freedom of the press and of religion to Fourth Amendment freedom from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ to Sixth Amendment right to counsel to Fourteenth Amendment birthright citizenship and Equal Protection and Fifteenth Amendment voting rights.”

To be fair, it’s not all Trump’s fault.

Indeed, we wouldn’t be in this sorry state if it weren’t for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush and the damage their administrations inflicted on the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.

In the so-called named of national security, since 9/11, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.

The Bill of Rights—462 words that represent the most potent and powerful rights ever guaranteed to a group of people officially—became part of the U.S. Constitution on December 15, 1791, because early Americans such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson understood the need to guard against the government’s inclination to abuse its power.

Yet the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants.

Make no mistake: if our individual freedoms have been restricted, it is only so that the government’s powers could be expanded at our expense.

The USA Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

Since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’ve also been subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports and at border crossings. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicine at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

Government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like), etc.: these are merely the weapons of the police state.

The power of the police state is dependent on a populace that meekly obeys without question.

Remember: when it comes to the staggering loss of civil liberties, the Constitution hasn’t changed. Rather, it is the American people who have changed.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

You have no rights unless you exercise them.

Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

“If Americans do not understand the Constitution and the institutions and processes through which we are governed, we cannot rationally evaluate important legislation and the efforts of our elected officials, nor can we preserve the national unity necessary to meaningfully confront the multiple problems we face today,” warns the Brennan Center in its Civic Literacy Report Card. “Rather, every act of government will be measured only by its individual value or cost, without concern for its larger impact. More and more we will ‘want what we want, and [will be] convinced that the system that is stopping us is wrong, flawed, broken or outmoded.’”

Education precedes action.

As the Brennan Center concludes “America, unlike most of the world’s nations, is not a country defined by blood or belief. America is an idea, or a set of ideas, about freedom and opportunity. It is these ideas that bind us together as Americans and have kept us free, strong, and prosperous. But these ideas do not perpetuate themselves. They must be taught and learned anew with each generation.”

There is a movement underway to require that all public-school students pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test—100 basic facts about U.S. history and civics—before receiving their high-school diploma, and that’s a start.

Mind you, it’s only the first of many steps.

If there is to be any hope for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”

People get the government they deserve.

As David Fouse writes for National Review, “A government by the people, for the people, and of the people is only as wise, as just, and as free as the people themselves.”

It’s up to us.

We have the power to make and break the government.

We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen. Do more than grouse and complain.

We must act—and act responsibly.

Get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

In other words, get moving. 

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

Don’t wait for things to get as bad as they are in France, where civil unrest over a government  proposal to raise taxes on gas has turned into violent clashes between protesters and the police.

Whatever you do, please don’t hinge your freedoms on politics.

No election will ever truly alleviate the suffering of the American people.

No matter which party controls Congress or the White House, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—remains largely unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—continue to trudge along a path of misery.

Remember what Noam Chomsky had to say about politics? “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

In other words, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

Don’t buy any of it.

The Constitution is neutral when it comes to politics. What the Constitution is not neutral about, however, is the government’s duty to safeguard the rights of the citizenry.

“We the people” also have a duty that goes far beyond the act of voting: it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized in a speech delivered on December 5, 1955, just four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus: “Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.”

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

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"It's A Fake System" And Von Greyerz Warns "Gold Will Reflect All Of It"

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Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com ,

Financial and precious metals expert Egon von Greyerz (EvG) says don’t expect the global financial situation to get better anytime soon.

EvG says, “You know what the politicians are doing now? Theresa May is my best example. These politicians are just running around posing and acting, but they are not achieving anything, and they are not achieving anything because the world is in a mess..."

"What we are seeing the beginning of is the decline of the western world economy, which means the whole world economy...

There is no use in putting a time period on it, that it’s going to happen this year or next year. The trend is clear. We know that the world economy is in a mess. It’s going to decline, and in my view, it’s going to be a rapid decline...

Gold will reflect all of this, and currencies will be totally debased...

You don’t need a lot, you might only need another few snowflakes to trigger this avalanche. It could come in a month or in three months time because the system is a fake system...

I count $2 quadrillion in money. If you add debt, unfunded liabilities and the risk of derivatives, you come up to $2 quadrillion of debt and liabilities. The global GDP is $70 trillion...So, you are talking about 30 times global GDP.”

What could go wrong? EvG says, “You don’t need much to go wrong. It will happen. They have no remedy anymore..."

"2007 to 2009, I have said many times that was a rehearsal. The real thing is coming now or in the next few years, and no money printing will ever stop it. They will try, but they will fail. This is why you will get the depressionary hyperinflation, and when that fails you get the implosion of the system. All values will shrink to very low numbers, all assets and debts will shrink together. That is the longer term play. It’s not going to be nice for the world. It’s going to be horrible for the world.”

In closing, EvG says, “Because of the artificial control of the system, the cycles becomes ten times or a hundred times bigger than they would have been by natural forces..."

"We have had a hundred years of excesses in the world and artificial wealth creation. Now, in the coming years, we will have a very long period of the opposite. Wealth will disappear. A lot of people will suffer, and, sadly, there will be famine. There will be misery. The world has gone through this before, but this will be bigger than it ever has been. The world will survive this, but there will be a lot of suffering when this implodes...

The fear hasn’t started yet, but it will, and then there will be a rush into gold and silver. Our clients are increasing their positions...

In my view, 25% of total net worth is the minimum (to invest in gold and silver), and, personally, I would not have any major assets in the bank because I don’t think the banking system will survive. If it survives, it will not be in its present form. Stocks, in relation to gold, will go down 90% to 95%. They went down 90% in 1929 to 1932...

There will be the most massive wealth destruction ever.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Egon von Greyerz of GoldSwitzerland.com.

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

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Shocking Data Show 40% Of American College Students Never Graduate

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As we've pointed out time and time again, the notion that going to college guarantees a higher paying job and a better standard of living is a myth ('millennial Congresswoman' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez effectively embodies this myth; she worked as a bartender before launching her upset primary campaign, despite graduating with a degree in economics from Boston University, and has spoken about feeling directionless after graduating with a mountain of student debt).

Generally speaking, data suggests that college graduates earn higher incomes, face lower unemployment and happier and healthier than their peers who don't have a degree. But these general figures mask the fact that millions of degree holders are defaulting on their student loans (one study published in August said 30% of student loans are in their default, or in arrears) and also struggling with underemployment or being stuck working jobs that don't require a college degree. One million Americans default on their student loans every year. And if defaults continue at their current pace, roughly 40% of borrowers will have defaulted by 2023.

With so many flashing red warning signs, the fact that the risks posed by this teetering pile of $1.4 trillion in debt have received only glancing coverage in the financial press is astounding. Coverage of the rising cost of higher education always carefully asserts the old conventional wisdom - that, even with the debt, the underemployment and their resulting stressors (reams of data suggest that American millennials are delaying marriage, family formation and buying a home, largely because of their student loan debt), young Americans are still better off with a degree than without one.

Which is why it was almost refreshing to see the Wall Street Journal publish a story deconstructing these myths. A story that acknowledged - in its opening paragraphs, no less - that "college graduates can end up worse off than people who haven't gone to college at all."

In fact, 32% of college grads (a group that, we imagine, includes a large number of gender studies majors) end up with jobs that don't require a degree 10 years after graduation.

But students who start college, but never finish, are worse off than their peers who earn their degrees (regardless of how long it took to finish). But how many students end up in this predicament? A surprising number, as it turns out. For every 100 students who enroll in university, 40 will never finish. Of these 40, 32 will still need to pay off student loans. Roughly 10 of these 32 - roughly 30% - will eventually default. That's compared with 5 out of 42 graduates who carry loans.

As the chart below shows, students with "some college" struggle with unemployment rates that are nearly as high as students with only a high school degree.

Their earnings potential is also far closer to those with only a high school diploma than students who finish college.

The average student loan burden for Americans has nearly doubled over the past 20 years.

To sum up, while a college degree can bestow higher earning capabilities, students shouldn't enroll without a clear plan for how they're going to make a living post-grad.

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Your Apps Know What You Did Last Night (And They're Not Keeping It Secret)

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Your wife may not know about those little trips to that Thai massage place in the strip-mall, but your smartphone does - and it may be telling any one of at least 75 companies exactly what time you went, how you got there and where you stopped on the way - with staggering precision to within a few yards, according to the New York Times. 

The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.

One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night.

Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing. -NYT

"It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know," said Magrin, whose location data was reviewed by The Times. 

Several of the 75 companies which collect location data receive anonymous - yet extremely precise location data from users who enable location services for such benign purposes as weather, news and mapping software, according to the Times. Several appmakers have claimed to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States alone - around half of the devices in use during 2017.

These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds seeking insights into consumer behavior. It’s a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps. The social network Foursquare remade itself as a location marketing company. Prominent investors in location start-ups include Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder.

...

More than 1,000 popular apps contain location-sharing code from such companies, according to 2018 data from MightySignal, a mobile analysis firm. Google’s Android system was found to have about 1,200 apps with such code, compared with about 200 on Apple’s iOS.

...

To evaluate location-sharing practices, The Times tested 20 apps, most of which had been flagged by researchers and industry insiders as potentially sharing the data. Together, 17 of the apps sent exact latitude and longitude to about 70 businesses. Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS, was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that data described it as “unsolicited” or “inappropriate.” -NYT

"Location information can reveal some of the most intimate details of a person’s life — whether you’ve visited a psychiatrist, whether you went to an A.A. meeting, who you might date," said Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who has proposed bills which would limit the ability of big tech to collect and sell such data. "It’s not right to have consumers kept in the dark about how their data is sold and shared and then leave them unable to do anything about it."

Always watching

Manhattan nurse Elise Lee told the Times she was thoroughly creeped out after she saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room at the hospital where she works. 

“It’s very scary,” said Ms. Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it reviewed. “It feels like someone is following me, personally.”

Initially designed to help local businesses market to mobile phone customers, location-based data collection has morphed into a "data collection and analysis machine," reports the Times. 

Now, retailers are contracting with tracking companies to provide intelligence on their customers and competitors - while financial firms are using the data to make investment decisions. 

For a web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out the path of a hypothetical consumer from home to work to show potential clients how tracking could reveal a person’s preferences. For example, someone may search online for healthy recipes, but GroundTruth can see that the person often eats at fast-food restaurants.

“We look to understand who a person is, based on where they’ve been and where they’re going, in order to influence what they’re going to do next,” Ms. Greenstein said.

Financial firms can use the information to make investment decisions before a company reports earnings — seeing, for example, if more people are working on a factory floor, or going to a retailer’s stores. -NYT

Attorneys are getting in on the tracking game too, as ambulance chasing lawyers can simply purchase emergency room location information according to Long Island advertising firm Tell All Digital, which contracts with a location company to run ad campaigns for personal injury lawyers targeting those who have had unfortunate visits to the hospital. 

"The book ‘1984,’ we’re kind of living it in a lot of ways," said Tell All managing partner Bill Kakis. 

The Weather Channel app - owned by a subsidiary of IBM, told users that sharing their locations would give them "personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts." In fact, the app also analyzes tracking data for hedge funds in a pilot program which was promoted on the company's website, and which IBM says has ended. They are hiding behind the argument that "other uses" of tracking data is discussed in a separate "privacy settings" area of the app. 

The Times found information on advertising in that section, however found no such notification upon a search of the app. 

"Most people don’t know what’s going on," said data broker Emmett Kilduff, whose company Eagle Alpha sells information to financial firms and hedge funds. He said responsibility for complying with regulations governing data collection fall on the companies which collect it. 

Several people in the location business said that it would be relatively simple to figure out individual identities in this kind of data, but that they didn’t do it. Others suggested it would require so much effort that hackers wouldn’t bother.

It “would take an enormous amount of resources,” said Bill Daddi, a spokesman for Cuebiq, which analyzes anonymous location data to help retailers and others, and raised more than $27 million this year from investors including Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq Ventures. Nevertheless, Cuebiq encrypts its information, logs employee queries and sells aggregated analysis, he said. -NYT

In January, we detailed how interactive online fitness tracking app Strava's online "heatmap" of user routes had unwittingly revealed the location, staffing, patrol routes and layout of U.S. and foreign military bases around the world, as discovered international security researcher Nathan Ruser. 

In most urban areas such as major cities such as New York, Strava's map appeared as solid neon lights following just about every road on which one might exercise. 

Remote locations, however, such as deserts in places like Syria and Iraq are almost entirely dark - aside from clandestine locations where military personnel using fitness trackers are stationed.  Personnel in some of the US government's most sensitive facilities have been unwittingly been broadcasting sensitive information up to and including underground tunnels. 

FBI Academy:

NSA Headquarters:

Cross-referencing @mjranum's recent post about using Google Maps to identify CIA "Black" sites in Djibouti, with the #Strava heat-map, appears to offer corroboration https://t.co/PfXDqRIvSS pic.twitter.com/GlxWOoKWcj

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) January 28, 2018

The bottom line

Collecting location data is of course all about following the money. App developers can profit from directly selling harvested data, or by sharing it for location-based ads which command a premium. At half a cent to two cents per user per month, an app with 10 million users can generate as much as $2.4 million per year. 

Smaller companies compete for the rest of the market, including by selling data and analysis to financial institutions. This segment of the industry is small but growing, expected to reach about $250 million a year by 2020, according to the market research firm Opimas. -NYT

Google and Facebook are big players in location-based advertising, according to the Times. The companies say they use the data internally to track whether ads lead to sales at brick-and-mortar stores, while Google says it modifies the data to be "less exact." 

Apple and Google, meanwhile, have taken steps to put a leash on the amount of location data collected. In the most recent version of the Android operating system, for example, apps which are not in use are now limited to collecting locations "a few times an hour" as opposed to continuously. Apple has been requiring apps to justify collecting location details in pop-up messages to notify users. That said, the company's instructions for writing the pop-ups do not require disclosing that the data may be used for advertising purposes. 

After learning that her phone was constantly spying on her, the nurse interviewed by the Times, Elise Lee, immediately limited the data which apps could collect on her - and she warned other operating-room nurses to do the same. 

"I went through all their phones and just told them: ‘You have to turn this off. You have to delete this," Lee said. "Nobody knew."

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The Deathly Insect Dilemma. “It is not Normal for 50%-to-90% of a Species to Drop Dead”

ORIGINAL LINK

By Robert Hunziker

Global Research, December 08, 2018

CounterPunch 7 December 2018

Insect abundance is plummeting with wild abandon, worldwide! Species evolve and go extinct as part of nature’s normal course over thousands and millions of years, but the current rate of devastation is off the charts and downright scary.

Moreover, there is no quick and easy explanation for this sudden emergence of massive loss around the globe. Yet, something is dreadfully horribly wrong. Beyond doubt, it is not normal for 50%-to-90% of a species to drop dead, but that is happening right now from Germany to Australia to Puerto Rico’s tropical rainforest.

Scientists are rattled. The world is largely unaware of the implications because it is all so new. It goes without saying that the risk of loss of insects spells loss of ecosystems necessary for very important stuff, like food production.

Farmland birds that depend upon a diet of insects in Europe have disappeared by >50% in just three decades. French farmland partridge flocks have crashed by 80%. Nightingale abundance is down by almost 80%. Turtledoves are down nearly 80%.

In Denmark (1) owls, (2) Eurasian hobbies, and (3) Bee-eaters, which subsist on large insects like beetles and dragonflies, have abruptly disappeared. Poof, gone!

Krefeld Entomological Society (est. 1905) in Germany trapped insect samples in 63 nature preserves in Europe representing nearly 17,000 sampling days (equivalent to 46.5 years). Krefeld consistently found massive declines in every kind of habitat they sampled. Up to 80% wipeouts.

As for one example, Krefeld data for hoverflies, a pollinator often mistaken for a bee, registered 17,291 hoverflies from 143 species trapped in a reserve in 1989. Twenty-five years later at the same location, 2,737 individuals from 104 species or down 84%. (Source: Gretchen Vogel, Where Have All The Insects Gone? Science Magazine, May 10, 2017)

A shortage of insect pollinators in the Maoxian Valley in China has forced farmers to hire human workers at $19 per worker/per day to replace bees. Each worker pollinates 5-to-10 apple trees by hand per day.

Jack Hasenpusch of Australian Insect Farms, which collects swarms of insects, says:

 “I’ve been wondering for the last few years why some of the insects have been dropping off … This year has really taken the cake with the lack of insects, it’s left me dumbfounded, I can’t figure out what’s going on.” (Source: Mark Rigby, Insect Population Decline Leaves Australian Scientists Scratching For Solutions, ABC Far North, Feb. 23, 2018)

According to entomologist Dr. Cameron Webb / University of Sydney, researchers around the world widely acknowledge the problem of insect decline but are at a loss to explain the causes.

Functional Extinctions

Today’s Sixth Extinction is so prevalent that scientists prefer to designate species loss as “functional extinctions,” which means functionally extinct animals and plants are still present but no longer prevalent enough to affect an ecosystem. Not only, seed dispersal and predation and pollination and other ecological functions are also lost.

‘Decimated’: Germany’s Birds Disappear as Insect Abundance Plummets 76%

“More than three-quarters of the world’s food crops rely at least in part on pollination by insects and other animals,” (Source: Pollinators Vital to Our Food Supply Under Threat, FAO/UN).

But, already some insect populations have dropped by as much as 90%, e.g., (1) the Monarch butterfly in North America and (2) the great yellow bumblebee in Europe.

One of the biggest drivers of decline is loss of wild flowers. Here’s the problem: Low-intensity farming of small fields lined with weeds and flowers (think: “American Gothic” by Grant Wood circa 1930) have been overrun by vast industrial crop monocultures with fields stretching to the distant horizon with not a weed or a flower in sight, which paradoxically serves as evidence that the overused maxim “the good ole days” shows true grit.

Additionally, herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup) allow industrial farming to grow perfect monocultures of crops, as everything else is wiped out. But, where does the glyphosate ultimately go? Breakfast anyone?

The world is rapidly filling up to its brim with insecticides that are toxic to pollinators. For example, neonicotinoids (agricultural insecticides) are meant to kill specific insect pests but invariably get into plant tissue and nectar and pollen and kills insects carte blanche, across the board. Thus, ironically, farmland ecosystems are poisoned by industrial farming practices.

Neonicotinoids are a divisive issue worldwide:

“The European Union today expanded a controversial ban of neonicotinoid pesticides, based on the threat they pose to pollinators. The decision pleased environmental groups and was greeted with trepidation by farming associations, which fear economic harm.” (Source: European Union Expands Ban of Three Neonicotinoid Pesticides, Science Magazine, April 27, 2018)

As of August 2018, the EPA has scheduled “planned completion” of a “Review of Neonicotinoid Pesticides” for sometime in 2019. A coalition of food safety and environmental groups delivered 219,210 public comments to EPA earlier in the year, urging the agency ban neonicotinoid pesticides, which they view as a leading cause of pollinator decline. Additionally, more than 4.4 million Avaaz members have called for a ban on neonics (Avaaz, est. 2007, is one of the world’s largest most powerful online activist networks).

“People from around the country have made it clear: The EPA must act now to save our pollinators. No matter what Scott Pruitt’s industry friends say, this is a problem we can’t ignore. The health of our food system depends on it,” said U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). (Source: Environment America, News Release, 219,210 Americans Call on EPA to Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides, April 21, 2018).

“Neonics are 5,000 to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT,” according to Jean-Marc Bonmatinof of The National Centre for Scientific Research in France,” Ibid.

Rachel Carson (Silent Spring, 1962) would be horrified. As far back as the 60s she warned about indiscriminate use of pesticides and accused the chemical industry of disinformation, and she scolded public officials for accepting the chemical industry’s claims; ultimately, her efforts led to a nationwide ban on DDT and inspiration for creation of the EPA. (The ban on DDT saved America’s national bird since 1782, the bald eagle.)

Similar to concerns about use of synthetic pesticides, sensitivity of insects to global warming has only recently been exposed in new studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showing alarming losses of insects in pristine tropical rainforests over a multi-decade study that has rocked the science world.

Over that same 40-year time period, the average high temperature in the rainforest increased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Which negatively impacts insects because after a certain thermal threshold insects will no longer lay eggs, and their internal chemistry breaks down.

“Without insects and other land-based arthropods, EO Wilson, the renowned Harvard entomologist, and inventor of sociobiology, estimates that humanity would last all of a few months,” Ibid.

Well then, the number of insects still out there qualifies as one of the most puzzling questions of the 21st century.

Postscript: “Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day.” (Source: The Extinction Crisis, Center for Biological Diversity, biologicaldiversity.org) Whew!

*

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Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Featured image is from Ryan McGuire | CC BY 2.0

The original source of this article is CounterPunch

Copyright © Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch, 2018

 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-deathly-insect-dilemma-it-is-not-normal-for-50-to-90-of-a-species-to-drop-dead/5662215

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