The REAL Cause of the Global Obesity Epidemic. Are Toxic Chemicals Making Us Fat?

Source: Washington's Blog

World Wide Obesity Epidemic

Some 68% of all Americans are overweight, and obesity has almost doubled in the last couple of decades worldwide. As International Business Tribune reports:

Studies conducted jointly by researchers at Imperial College London and Harvard University, published in the medical journal The Lancet, show that obesity worldwide almost doubled in the decades between 1980 and 2008.

***
68 per cent of Americans were found to be overweight while close to 34 percent were obese.

Sure, people are eating too much and exercising too little (this post is not meant as an excuse for lack of discipline and poor choices). The processed foods and refined flours and sugars don’t help. And additives like high fructose corn syrup – which are added to many processed foods – are stuffing us with empty calories.

But given that there is an epidemic of obesity even in 6 month old infants (see below), there is clearly something else going on as well.

Are Toxic Chemicals Making Us Fat?

The toxins all around us might be making us fat.
As the Washington Post reported in 2007:

Several recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.

The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals’ sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity — a process scientists call adipogenesis.

The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.

FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil

Source: Washington's Blog

Yes, Obama Claims Power to Kill Americans on U.S. Soil

Fox News reports:

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “[criteria] for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.

***

“I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not,” Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting, Graves followed up asking whether “from a historical perspective,” the federal government has “the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas.”

“I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice,” Mueller replied.

Indeed, Holder’s Monday speech at Northwestern University seemed to leave the door open.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley writes:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

***

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

VIDEO: 9/11 Commissioner and Co-Chair of 9/11 Inquiry Say in Sworn Declarations that Saudi Government Linked to 9/11

Source: Washington's Blog

Two Senators with Access to Classified Information Say Saudi Government Backed 9/11 Attack

Two former senators – one a 9/11 Commissioner, the other the co-chair of the joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11 – state in sworn declarations that the Saudi government backed the 9/11 attack.

The New York Times reports:

For more than a decade, questions have lingered about the possible role of the Saudi government in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, even as the royal kingdom has made itself a crucial counterterrorism partner in the eyes of American diplomats.

Now, in sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the Saudis’ activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the terrorist attacks.

“I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Mr. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks.

As we noted last year:

The Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, previously stated that an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House (confirmed here).

Today, Graham called for a new 9/11 investigation. As Raw Story notes:

Why Everyone Should Occupy US Corporate Media: They Lie

Source: Washington's Blog

“We denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”  – Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties: The Extremes of Good and Evil,  44 BCE, translated by H. Rackham (1914).

This is part 4 of the following 4-part series:

Part 1: Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains 
Part 2: How a government teacher easily proves Occupy’s claim of US War Crimes
Part 3: How an economics teacher presents Occupy’s economic argument, victory
Part 4: Why everyone should Occupy US 1% corporate media: they lie (you’re reading it)
Important history that makes crimes in the present easy to see and understand:
Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series)

Parts 2 and 3 of this series explains, documents, and proves that US “leadership” in politics, economics, and corporate media engage in War Crimes and looting in the trillions. Their respective criminal roles are policy, money (fake money as credit/debt, actually), and propaganda (easily provable lies of commission and omission).

They’re complicit in criminal acts that annually kill millions, harm billions, and transfer trillions from the 99% to the 1% (a fraction of the 1% actually).

Governments Worldwide Raise Acceptable Radiation Levels Based Upon Politics … Not Science

Source: Washington's Blog

 

Instead of Protecting People, Governments Cover Up by Raising “Safe” Radiation Levels 

 

American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation.

Neither American nor Canadian authorities are testing fish for radioactivity.

Does that mean that we don’t have to worry about radiation from Fukushima?

It is a little hard to know, given that what is deemed a “safe level” of radiation is determined by politics … rather than science. For example, current safety standards are based on the ridiculous assumption that everyone exposed is a healthy man in his 20s – and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body.

And one of the main advisors to the Japanese government on Fukushima announced:

If you smile, the radiation will not affect you.

(Here’s the video.)

In the real world, however, even low doses of radiation can cause cancer. Moreover, small particles of radiation – called “internal emitters” – which get inside the body are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation. See this and this. And radiation affects small children much more than full-grown adults.

Indeed, instead of doing much to try to protect their citizens from Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. and the EU all just raised the radiation levels they deem “safe”.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that high-level friends in the State Department told him that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food not being tested for radioactive materials.

Fukushima Cover Up Unravels: "The Government Can No Longer Pull the Wool Over the Public's Eyes"

Source: Washington's Blog

Too Much Radiation to Cover Up..

As I’ve pointed out since day one, the Japanese government and Tepco have covered up the extent of the radiation released by Fukushima and its health effects on the Japanese and others. See this and this.

The New York Times notes:

The government inspectors declared Onami’s rice safe for consumption after testing just two of its 154 rice farms.

Then … more than a dozen [farmers] found unsafe levels of cesium. An ensuing panic forced the Japanese government to intervene, with promises to test more than 25,000 rice farms in eastern Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located.

***

The repeated failures have done more than raise concerns that some Japanese may have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in their food, as regrettable as that is. They have also had a corrosive effect on public confidence in the food-monitoring efforts, with a growing segment of the public and even many experts coming to believe that officials have understated or even covered up the true extent of the public health risk in order to limit both the economic damage and the size of potential compensation payments.

Critics say … the government can no longer pull the wool over the public’s eyes, as they contend it has done routinely in the past.

“Since the accident, the government has tried to continue its business-as-usual approach of understating the severity of the accident and insisting that it knows best,” said Mitsuhiro Fukao, an economics professor at Keio University in Tokyo who has written about the loss of trust in government. “But the people are learning from the blogs, Twitter and Facebook that the government’s food-monitoring system is simply not credible.”

The U.S. Government Funded the Iranian Terrorist Group Which “Found” The Documents Upon Which the Warmongers Are Relying

Source: Washington's Blog

Smoking Gun Documents On Iran “Found” By US-Backed Terror Group

 

The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.)

The IAEA report being trumpted as a casus belli contains no new information, but is based on a re-hashing of old, debunked claims stemming from “laptop documents”.

State Department cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the new IAEA head was heavily backed by the U.S., based upon his promises of fealty to the U.S. Indeed, as we’ve seen in the nuclear energy arena, the IAEA is not a neutral, fact-based organization, but a wholly-captured, political agency.

But where did the documents come from originally?
As Gareth Porter noted in 2008:

The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

Interestingly, the Bush Administration – and especially Dick Cheney – helped to fund the MEK (see confirming articles here and here).

And the New York Times, Washington Post and others are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former national security adviser Fran Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey are supporting the MEK as well.

Dr. King Family’s Civil Trial Verdict: US Government Assassinated Martin

Source: Washington's Blog

“What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon.”  - Napoleon Bonaparte [69]

The following is from : Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series)

Dr. Martin Luther King’s family and his personal friend and attorney, William F. Pepper, won a civil trial that found US government agencies guilty in the wrongful death of Martin Luther King. The 1999 trial, King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators, [70] is the only trial ever conducted on the assassination of Dr. King.

The King family’s attempts for a criminal trial were denied, as suspect James Ray’s recant of what he claimed was a false confession was denied. Mr. Ray said that his government-appointed attorney told him to sign a confession in order to receive a trial. When Mr. Ray discovered that his signature meant no trial, his and the King family’s subsequent requests were denied.

The US government also denied the King family’s requests for independent investigation of the assassination.

Therefore, and importantly, the US government has never presented any evidence subject to challenge that substantiates their claim that Mr. Ray assassinated Dr. King.

US corporate media did not cover the trial, interview the King family, and textbooks omit this information. Journalist and author, James Douglass: [71]

“I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?” ”

For comparison, please consider the media coverage of O.J. Simpson’s trials: [72]

“Media coverage of the Simpson trial, which began in January 1995, was unlike any other. Over two thousand reporters covered the trial, and 80 miles of cable was required to allow nineteen television stations to cover the trial live to 91 percent of the American viewing audience. When the verdict was finally read on October 3, 1995, some 142 million people listened or watched. It seemed the nation stood still, divided along racial lines as to the defendant’s guilt or innocence. During and after the trial, over eighty books were published about the event by most everyone involved in the Simpson case.”

The overwhelming evidence of government complicity introduced and agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes the 111th Military Intelligence Group were sent to Dr. King’s location, and that the usual police protection was pulled away just before the assassination. Military Intelligence set-up photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony. 20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day. Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have hid a sniper team. Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.

The King family believes the government’s motivation to murder Dr. King was to prevent his imminent camp-in at Washington, D.C. until the Vietnam War was ended and those resources directed to end poverty and invest in US hard and soft infrastructure.

The Federal Reserve Is Secretly Bailing Out Europe

Source: Washington's Blog

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke told Congress that the Fed would not bail out Europe.

But he might have been less than forthcoming.

Former Vice President of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, Gerald ODriscoll, says that the Fed is secretly bailing out Europe:

O’Driscoll wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is engaged in a bailout of European banks. Surprisingly, its operation is largely unnoticed here.

The Fed is using what is termed a “temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement” with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan.

Simply put, the Fed trades or “swaps” dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing. 

***

The two central banks are engaging in this roundabout procedure because each needs a fig leaf. The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

In Modern America, Questioning War is Considered Terrorism

Source: Washington's Blog

I noted last year:

According to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General (via AP), the FBI spied on an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh sponsored by a nonviolent anti-war and anti-discrimination group, pretending it was preventing terrorism:

The FBI gave inaccurate information to Congress and the public when it claimed a possible terrorism link to justify surveilling an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Monday in a report on the bureau’s scrutiny of domestic activist groups.

Inspector General Glenn Fine said the FBI had no reason to expect that anyone of interest in a terrorism investigation would be present at the 2002 event sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, a nonviolent anti-war and anti-discrimination group.

The surveillance was “an ill-conceived project on a slow work day,” the IG stated in a study of several FBI domestic terrorism probes of people affiliated with organizations such as Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker.

Earlier, in statements to Congress and in a press release, the FBI had described the surveillance as related to a terrorism investigation.

***

The FBI has broad definitions that enable it to classify matters as domestic terrorism that actually are trespassing or vandalism, the inspector general said.

Regarding the Pittsburgh rally, controversy erupted in 2006 over whether the FBI had spied on protesters at the event several years earlier because of their anti-war views.

Promoters of peace in Maryland, Minneapolis, Chicago and elsewhere were also considered potential terrorists, as was an individual Quaker peace activist.

The Inspector General’s report confirms that – at least in some instances – anti-war views were specifically targeted:

The report concluded that, while the FBI probes were not generally predicated simply on the views of the targets, at least one FBI field office was focused on a group “as a result of its anti-war views.” It also found that “FBI agents and supervisors sometimes provided the [Office of the Inspector General] with speculative, after-the-fact rationalizations for their prior decisions to open investigations that we did not find persuasive.”

In addition, anti-war websites like AntiWar.com are listed on various terrorist watchlists: see number 16 here, and number 37 here.
AntiWar’s sin? It is (according to the watchlists):

Neocons Planned Regime Change Throughout the Middle East and North Africa 20 Years Ago

Source: Washington's Blog

Iraq ☑ Libya ☑ … Syria ☐ Lebanon ☐ Somalia ☐ Sudan ☐ Iran ☐

I’ve repeatedly documented that the Neocons planned regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria and a host of other countries right after 9/11 … if not before.

And that Obama is implementing these same plans – just with a “kindler, gentler” face.
Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the governments in ... Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya … with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ‘em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz … put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:

As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

***

The neocon end as Clark reported them — regime change in those seven countries — seems as vibrant as ever. It’s just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries.

Note: The so-called “war on terror” has also weakened our national security and created many more terrorists than it has killed, imprisoned or otherwise stopped.  It is also destroying our economy.

Curling Up In a Ball to Avoid Police Violence May Be Considered “Active Resistance”

Source: Washington's Blog

In a Police State Like Modern America, Even Peaceful Resistance Is Considered Violence and Cause for Even More Brutality.

As I’ve repeatedly documented, passive resistance is considered “violence” and aggression in today’s militarized police state.

For example, protesters peacefully linking arms is considered “violence” by the UC Berkeley police. And failing to get on the ground is grounds to beat a peaceful war hero so bad that his spleen is ruptured (and then denying him medical treatment for 18 hours).

Of course pregnant women, old ladies, judges, legal observers (and see this), reporters , veterans and skinny students are all scary and violent enemies who need to be beaten into submission.

And as AP reports today – in relation to the pepper spraying of peaceful UC Davis students:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said … After reviewing the video [of the pepper spraying of UC Davis students] he observed at least two cases of “active resistance” from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said.

So in today’s “standard” police state procedure, curling into a ball to avoid violence from police is considered “active resistance” which warrants more force, including baton strikes?

The real problem, of course, is that the criminal class that defrauded our country out of prosperity is now sending in the mercenaries to keep the peasants in line. See this, this and this.

Japanese Debris to Start Hitting Western U.S. and Canada THIS WEEK

Source: Washington's Blog

Japanese Debris to Hit Western U.S. and Canada

I noted in June that debris from carried out to sea in the Japanese tsunami would hit the Western U.S. and Canada within a year or so, and that nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen urged us to demand testing of radioactivity from the American government.

It turns out that scientists underestimated the speed with which the debris would reach the Western coast of North America.

As Canada’s National Post reports today:

The largest items swept out to sea following the Japanese tsunami in March could arrive on the B.C. coastline within days, oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer predicted on Wednesday.

The main part of the 20-million-ton debris field, equivalent in size to the state of California, isn’t expected until about 2014, but houses, fishboats and even small freighters could already be close to Canadian shores, Mr. Ebbesmeyer said.

***

“We just finished running a simulation with a drifter, a buoy that got lost in the area of the tsunami, and we find that the first of the debris would be here now,” Mr. Ebbesmeyer said.

Beachcombers along the west coast of B.C. should be on the lookout and report any unusual finds, he said.

Mr. Ebbesmeyer is a Seattle-based oceanographer, educated at the University of Washington, who tracks flotsam using computer models. He has consulted for multinational firms, working on projects such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Major Wars and Suppression of American Freedoms Planned BEFORE 9/11

Source: Washington's Blog

Iran War Threats, Militarization of American Police and Spying on Americans All Started BEFORE 9/11.
  

Many things which we’ve been told have only happened recently actually started a long time ago. 

For example, the mainstream media claims that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon. But the Christian Science Monitor notes that the U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability. 

And the decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11.

As another example, journalists from across the spectrum have documented the militarization of police forces in the United States, including, CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, and the Cato Institute.

Indeed, police shooting peaceful “occupy” protesters with rubber bullets, tear gas and other projectiles and brutally beating them has brought this issue to the attention of the American public. See this, this and this.

But the militarization of police started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s. As Radley Balko testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime:

Police Fire Tear Gas, Flashbang Grenades and Rubber Bullets at Peaceful Protesters

Source: Global Research.ca
Washington's Blog

This is not Egypt, Greece or Italy … this is America:





The injured gentlemen is Veterans for Peace member Scott Olsen, allegedly shot with a rubber bullet.

This is another gentlemen allegedly shot in the face with a rubber bullet (his injury is above his right eye, while the injury to Scott Olsen appears to be on the left side of his face):

And a policeman threw a flash grenade into a crowd trying to help an injured protester:

Some are calling this the “new Kent State”.
And protesters from Tahrir Square, Egypt, say this is what it looked like there.