The Osama bin Laden Myth

If you need a scapegoat, blame an Arab and then make such war on them as to last many decades until there is nothing left worth fighting for. This is our future. By electing the same types of people for every election cycle, we've doomed our future and our children's lives to perpetual death and destruction. There are days when I wish to a god I don't believe in that the Mayans were right. Wipe the slate clean, see what other species can evolve to fuck everything up in a couple million years.--jef

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November 26, 2012 |Paul C Roberts

The interview below with Osama bin Laden was conducted by the Karachi, Pakistan, daily newspaper, Ummat and published on September 28, 2001, 17 days after the alleged, but unsubstantiated, al Qaeda attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center twin towers and Pentagon. The interview was sensational. The alleged “mastermind” of 9/11 said that he and al Qaeda had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s World Monitoring Service had the interview translated into English and made public on September 29, 2001.

Osama bin Laden’s sensational denial was not reported by the US print and TV media. It was not investigated by the executive branch. No one in the US Congress called attention to bin Laden’s refusal of responsibility for the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on a superpower.

To check my memory of the lack of coverage, I googled “Osama bin Laden’s interview denying responsibility for 9/11.” Some Internet sites reproduced the interview, but the only mainstream news source that I found was a 1 minute YouTube video from CNN in which the anchor, after quoting an al Jazeera report of bin Laden’s denial, concludes that “we can all weigh that in the scale of credibility and come to our own conclusions.” In other words, bin Laden had already been demonized, and his denial was not credible.

The sensational news was unfit for US citizens and was withheld from them by the american “free press,” a press free to lie for the government but not to tell the truth.

Obviously, if bin Laden had outwitted not only the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of Washington’s NATO puppet states, Israel’s Mossad, and in addition the National Security Council, NORAD, US air traffic control, and airport security four times on the same morning, it would be the greatest feat in world history, a movement building feat that would have made al Qaeda the most successful anti-imperialist organization in human history, an extraordinary victory over “the great satan” that would have brought millions of new recruits into al Qaeda’s ranks. Yet the alleged “mastermind” denied all responsibility.

I remember decades ago when a terrorist attack occurred in Europe, whether real or an Operation Gladio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio false flag attack, innumerable organizations would claim credit. Perhaps this was the CIA’s way of diverting attention from itself, but it illustrates that every intelligence service understands the value to an organization of claiming credit for a successful attack.Although bin Laden denied responsibility, in 2011 some al Qaeda leaders, realizing the prestige value of the 9/11 attack, claimed credit for the attack and criticized Iranian President Ahmadinejad for questioning the official US story.

Although only a few Americans are aware of the September 28, 2001 interview in which bin Laden states his non-involvement with the 9/11 attacks, many Americans have seen post-2001 videos in which a person alleged to be bin Laden takes credit for the attacks. There are two problems with these videos. Experts have examined them and found them to be fakes, and all of the videos appeared after bin Laden was reported by the Pakistan Observer, the Egyptian press, and Fox News to have died in mid-December, 2001, from lung disease. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html See also http://www.legitgov.org/News-Bin-Ladens-Death-and-Funeral-December-2001

Bin Laden also suffered from kidney disease. According to a CBS news report on January 28, 2002, Osama bin Laden was hospitalized for dialysis treatment in the Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi on September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11. http://www.globalresearch.ca/where-was-osama-on-september-11-2001/3194

Obviously, a man suffering from terminal lung and kidney disease did not survive for another decade to be murdered by a US Navy SEAL team in Abbottabad. A Pakistani TV interview with the neighbor of the alleged “bin Laden compound” exposed the assassination hoax. This sensational interview also went unreported by america’s “free press.” I had the interview translated, and it is available here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/pakistan-tv-report-contradicts-us-claim-of-bin-laden-s-death/25915 See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13329078

Shortly after the alleged assassination 30 members of the SEAL unit died in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan, and now we learn that not a single one of the thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, witnessed bin Laden’s alleged burial at sea from that ship. The press reports with a straight face that for unexplained reasons it was kept secret from the ship’s sailors. This is supposed to be the explanation of the sailors’ emails reporting to family and friends that they witnessed no burial at sea. Some speculate that the SEALs were bumped off before their questions to one another, “Were you on that raid?,” reached outside the unit. Apparently, it doesn’t strike the media or the public as strange that the US government captured and killed the terror mastermind without interrogating him and without keeping any evidence or presenting any witnesses to support the assassination claim.

Adolf Hitler claimed that communists burned down the Reichstag and that Polish troops had crossed the frontier and attacked Germany. With 9/11 americans experienced Washington’s version of these grand lies. An omniscient bin Laden dying from terminal illnesses in distant Afghanistan defeated the American National Security State and drove his attack through the walls of the Pentagon itself, requiring for our defense a “war on terror” that destroyed US civil liberties and financially ruined the country in order to prevent the triumph of a man who died of natural causes in December 2001.

On May 9, 2011, Professor Michel Chossudovsky republished the September 28, 2001, Osama bin Laden interview in Global Research.

Interview with Osama bin Laden. Osama Denies his Involvement in 9/11
By Global Research
Global Research, May 09, 2011
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/interview-with-osama-bin-laden-denies-his-involvement-in-9-11/24697

Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin Laden’s interview with Ummat, a Pakistani daily, published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. It was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001.

The authenticity of this interview, which is available in recognized electronic news archives, is confirmed. 

Osama bin Laden categorically denies his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Bin Laden’s statements in this interview are markedly different from those made in the alleged Osama video tapes.

In this interview, Osama bin Laden exhibits an understanding of US foreign policy. He expresses his views regarding the loss of life on 9/11. He also makes statements as to who, in his opinion, might be the likely perpetrator of the September 11 attacks.

This is an important text which has not been brought to the attention of Western public opinion.

We have highlighted key sections of this interview. It is our hope that the text of this interview, published barely a week before the onset of the war on Afghanistan, will contribute to a better understanding of the history of Al Qaeda, the role of Osama bin Laden and the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 9, 2011

Full text of September 2001 Pakistani paper’s “exclusive” interview with Usamah Bin-Ladin

Ummat (in Urdu), Karachi, 28 September 2001, pp. 1 and 7. http://ummatpublication.com/2012/11/25/

Ummat’s introduction

Kabul: Prominent Arab mojahed holy warrior Usamah Bin-Ladin has said that he or his al-Qa’idah group has nothing to do with the 11 September suicidal attacks in Washington and New York. He said the US government should find the attackers within the country. In an exclusive interview with daily “Ummat”, he said these attacks could be the act of those who are part of the American system and are rebelling against it and working for some other system. Or, Usamah said, this could be the act of those who want to make the current century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Or, the American Jews, who are opposed to President Bush ever since the Florida elections, might be the masterminds of this act. There is also a great possibility of the involvement of US intelligence agencies, which need billions of dollars worth of funds every year. He said there is a government within the government in the United States.

The secret agencies, he said, should be asked as to who are behind the attacks. Usamah said support for attack on Afghanistan was a matter of need for some Muslim countries and compulsion for others. However, he said, he was thankful to the courageous people of Pakistan who erected a bulwark before the wrong forces. He added that the Islamic world was attaching great expectations with Pakistan and, in time of need, “we will protect this bulwark by sacrificing of lives”.

Following is the interview in full detail:

Ummat: You have been accused of involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington. What do you want to say about this? If you are not involved, who might be?

Usamah [Osama bin Laden]: In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. Praise be to Allah, Who is the creator of the whole universe and Who made the earth as an abode for peace, for the whole mankind. Allah is the Sustainer, who sent Prophet Muhammad for our guidance. I am thankful to the Ummat Group of Publications, which gave me the opportunity to convey my viewpoint to the people, particularly the valiant and true Muslim people of Pakistan who refused to believe in lie of the demon.

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.

Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.

There is also a warning for those Muslim countries, which witnessed all these as a silent spectator. What had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya, and Bosnia?

Only one conclusion could be derived from the indifference of the United States and the West to these acts of terror and the patronage of the tyrants by these powers that America is an anti-Islamic power and it is patronizing the anti-Islamic forces. Its friendship with the Muslim countries is just a show, rather deceit. By enticing or intimidating these countries, the United States is forcing them to play a role of its choice. Put a glance all around and you will see that the slaves of the United States are either rulers or enemies of Muslims.

The US has no friends, nor does it want to keep any because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others. Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates.

However, our case is different. We have pledged slavery to God Almighty alone and after this pledge there is no possibility to become the slave of someone else. If we do that, it will be disregardful to both our Sustainer and his fellow beings. Most of the world nations upholding their freedom are the religious ones, which are the enemies of United States, or the latter itself considers them as its enemies. Or the countries, which do not agree to become its slaves, such as China, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Syria, and the former Russia as received.

Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.


According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US government has stated. But the Bush administration does not want the panic to spread. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the US itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.

Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger.

They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of 40bn dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance.

Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other US president, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.

Ummat: A number of world countries have joined the call of the United States for launching an attack on Afghanistan. These also include a number of Muslim countries. Will Al-Qa’idah declare a jihad against these countries as well?

Usamah: I must say that my duty is just to awaken the Muslims; to tell them as to what is good for them and what is not. What does Islam says and what the enemies of Islam want?

Al-Qa’idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa’idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad.

We are in favour of armed jihad only against those infidel countries, which are killing innocent Muslim men, women, and children just because they are Muslims. Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan. The orders of Islamic shari’ah jurisprudence for such individuals, organizations, and countries are clear and all the scholars of the Muslim brotherhood are unanimous on them. We will do the same, which is being ordered by the Amir ol-Momenin the commander of the faithful Mola Omar and the Islamic scholars. The hearts of the people of Muslim countries are beating with the call of jihad. We are grateful to them.

Ummat: The losses caused in the attacks in New York and Washington have proved that giving an economic blow to the US is not too difficult. US experts admit that a few more such attacks can bring down the American economy. Why is al-Qa’idah not targeting their economic pillars?

Usamah: I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom. This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the US is not uttering a single word.

Ummat: Why is harm not caused to the enemies of Islam through other means, apart from the armed struggle? For instance, inciting the Muslims to boycott Western products, banks, shipping lines, and TV channels.

Usamah: The first thing is that Western products could only be boycotted when the Muslim fraternity is fully awakened and organized. Secondly, the Muslim companies should become self-sufficient in producing goods equal to the products of Western companies. Economic boycott of the West is not possible unless economic self-sufficiency is attained and substitute products are brought out. You see that wealth is scattered all across the Muslim world but not a single TV channel has been acquired which can preach Islamic injunctions according to modern requirements and attain an international influence. Muslim traders and philanthropists should make it a point that if the weapon of public opinion is to be used, it is to be kept in the hand. Today’s world is of public opinion and the fates of nations are determined through its pressure. Once the tools for building public opinion are obtained, everything that you asked for can be done.

Ummat: The entire propaganda about your struggle has so far been made by the Western media. But no information is being received from your sources about the network of Al-Qa’idah and its jihadi successes. Would you comment?

Usamah: In fact, the Western media is left with nothing else. It has no other theme to survive for a long time. Then we have many other things to do. The struggle for jihad and the successes are for the sake of Allah and not to annoy His bondsmen. Our silence is our real propaganda. Rejections, explanations, or corrigendum only waste your time and through them, the enemy wants you to engage in things which are not of use to you. These things are pulling you away from your cause.

The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.

Ummat: What will the impact of the freeze of al-Qa’idah accounts by the US?

Usamah: God opens up ways for those who work for Him. Freezing of accounts will not make any difference for Al-Qa’idah or other jihad groups. With the grace of Allah, al-Qa’idah has more than three such alternative financial systems, which are all separate and totally independent from each other. This system is operating under the patronage of those who love jihad. What to say of the United States, even the combined world cannot budge these people from their path.

These people are not in hundreds but in thousands and millions. Al-Qa’idah comprises of such modern educated youths who are aware of the cracks inside the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their hands. These are the very flaws of the Western fiscal system, which are becoming a noose for it and this system could not recuperate in spite of the passage of so many days.

Ummat: Are there other safe areas other than Afghanistan, where you can continue jihad?

Usamah: There are areas in all parts of the world where strong jihadi forces are present, from Indonesia to Algeria, from Kabul to Chechnya, from Bosnia to Sudan, and from Burma to Kashmir. Then it is not the problem of my person. I am helpless fellowman of God, constantly in the fear of my accountability before God. It is not the question of Usamah but of Islam and, in Islam too, of jihad. Thanks to God, those waging a jihad can walk today with their heads raised. Jihad was still present when there was no Usamah and it will remain as such even when Usamah is no longer there. Allah opens up ways and creates loves in the hearts of people for those who walk on the path of Allah with their lives, property, and children. Believe it, through jihad, a man gets everything he desires. And the biggest desire of a Muslim is the after life. Martyrdom is the shortest way of attaining an eternal life.

Ummat: What do you say about the Pakistan government policy on Afghanistan attack?

Usamah: We are thankful to the Momin and valiant people of Pakistan who erected a blockade in front of the wrong forces and stood in the first file of battle. Pakistan is a great hope for the Islamic brotherhood. Its people are awakened, organized, and rich in the spirit of faith. They backed Afghanistan in its war against the Soviet Union and extended every help to the mojahedin and the Afghan people. Then these are very Pakistanis who are standing shoulder by shoulder with the Taleban. If such people emerge in just two countries, the domination of the West will diminish in a matter of days. Our hearts beat with Pakistan and, God forbid, if a difficult time comes we will protect it with our blood. Pakistan is sacred for us like a place of worship. We are the people of jihad and fighting for the defence of Pakistan is the best of all jihads to us. It does not matter for us as to who rules Pakistan. The important thing is that the spirit of jihad is alive and stronger in the hearts of the Pakistani people.

The Alcohol Industry's Plan to Give America a Giant Drinking Problem

Industry giants are threatening to swallow up America's carefully regulated alcohol industry, and remake America in the image of booze-soaked Britain.
By Tim Heffernan
November 24, 2012 | Washington Monthly


England has a drinking problem. Since 1990, teenage alcohol consumption has doubled. Since World War II, alcohol intake for the population as a whole has doubled, with a third of that increase occurring since just 1995. The United Kingdom has very high rates of binge and heavy drinking, with the average Brit consuming the equivalent of nearly ten liters of pure ethanol per year.

It’s apparent in their hospitals, where since the 1970s rates of cirrhosis and other liver diseases among the middle-aged have increased by eightfold for men and sevenfold for women. And it’s apparent in their streets, where the carousing, violent “lager lout” is as much a symbol of modern Britain as Adele, Andy Murray, and the London Eye. Busting a bottle across someone’s face in a bar is a bona fide cultural phenomenon—so notorious that it has its own slang term, “glassing,” and so common that at one point the Manchester police called for bottles and beer mugs to be replaced with more shatter-resistant material. In every detail but the style of dress, the alleys of London on a typical Saturday night look like the scenes in William Hogarth’s famous pro-temperance print Gin Lane. It was released in 1751.

The United States, although no stranger to alcohol abuse problems, is in comparatively better shape. A third of the country does not drink, and teenage drinking is at a historic low. The rate of alcohol use among seniors in high school has fallen 25 percentage points since 1980. Glassing is something that happens in movies, not at the corner bar.

Why has the United States, so similar to Great Britain in everything from language to pop culture trends, managed to avoid the huge spike of alcohol abuse that has gripped the UK? The reasons are many, but one stands out above all: the market in Great Britain is rigged to foster excessive alcohol consumption in ways it is not in the United States—at least not yet.

Monopolistic enterprises control the flow of drink in England at every step—starting with the breweries and distilleries where it’s produced and down the channels through which it reaches consumers in pubs and supermarkets. These vertically integrated monopolies are very “efficient” in the economist’s sense, in that they do a very good job of minimizing the price and thereby maximizing the consumption of alcohol.

The United States, too, has seen vast consolidation of its alcohol industry, but as of yet, not the kind of complete vertical integration seen in the UK. One big reason is a little-known legacy of our experience with Prohibition. From civics class, you may remember that the 21st Amendment to the Constitution formally ended Prohibition in 1933. But while the amendment made it once again legal to sell and produce alcohol, it also contained a measure designed to ensure that America would never again have the horrible drinking problem it had before, which led to the passage of Prohibition in the first place.

Specifically, the 21st Amendment grants state and local governments express power to regulate liquor sales within their own borders. Thus, the existence of dry counties and blue laws; of states where liquor is only retailed in government-run stores, as in New Hampshire; and of states like Arkansas where you can buy booze in drive-through liquor marts. More significantly, state and local regulation also extends to the wholesale distribution of liquor, creating a further barrier to the kind of vertical monopolies that dominated the United States before Prohibition and are now wreaking havoc in Britain.

Since the repeal of Prohibition, such constraints on vertical integration in the liquor business have also been backed by federal law, which, as it’s interpreted by most states, requires that the alcohol industry be organized according to the so-called three-tier system. The idea is that brewers and distillers, the first tier, have to distribute their product through independent wholesalers, the second tier. And wholesalers, in turn, have to sell only to retailers, the third tier, and not directly to the public. By deliberately hindering economies of scale and protecting middlemen in the booze business, America’s system of regulation was designed to be willfully inefficient, thereby making the cost of producing, distributing, and retailing alcohol higher than it would otherwise be and checking the political power of the industry.

When these laws were passed, America was a century closer to its English roots, and lawmakers remembered very clearly the effects that a vertically integrated alcohol industry had on pre-Prohibition America (and that it still has in the UK today). In the 1920s, Americans had learned the hard way that flat out banning drinking empowered the likes of Al Capone and was, on balance, unworkable. But it made no sense either to go back to the world of pre-Prohibition America, in which big, politically powerful liquor producers owned their own saloons and were therefore free to pour cheap booze into communities coast to coast, sweetening the doses with enticements ranging from rebates on drinks to cash loans, and frequently tolerating in-bar gambling and prostitution.

And so, for eighty years, the kind of vertical integration seen in pre-Prohibition America has not existed in the U.S. But now, that’s beginning to change. The careful balance that has governed liquor laws in the U.S. since the repeal of Prohibition is under assault in ways few Americans are remotely aware of. Over the last few years, two giant companies—Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, which together control 80 percent of beer sales in the United States—have been working, along with giant retailers, led by Costco, to undermine the existing system in the name of efficiency and low prices. If they succeed, America’s alcohol market will begin to look a lot more like England’s: a vertically integrated pipeline for cheap drink, flooding the gutters of our own Gin Lane.

Amoment’s thought makes it obvious that alcohol is different from, say, apples. Apples don’t form addicts. Apples don’t foster disease. Society doesn’t bear the cost of excessive apple consumption. Society does bear the cost of alcoholism, drink-related illness, and drunken violence and crime. The fact that alcohol is habit forming and life threatening among a substantial share of those who use it (and kills or damages the lives of many who don’t) means that a market for it inevitably imposes steep costs on society.

It was the recognition of this plain truth that led post-Prohibition America to regulate the alcohol market as a rancher might fetter a horse—letting it roam freely within certain confines, neither as far nor as fast as it might choose.

The UK, by contrast, spent most of the last eighty years fussing with the barn door while the beast ran wild. It made sure that every pub closed at the appointed hour, that every glass of ale contained a full Queen’s pint, that every dram of whiskey was doled out in increments precise to the milliliter—and simultaneously allowed the industry to adopt virtually any tactic that could get more young people to start drinking and keep at it throughout their lives. It is no coincidence that one of the first major studies to prompt a shift in Britain’s approach to liquor regulation, published in 2003, is titled Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity.

The UK’s modern drinking problem started appearing in the years following World War II. Some of the developments were natural. Peace reigned; people wanted to have fun again; there was an understandable push toward relaxing wartime restrictions and loosening puritan attitudes left over from the more temperance-minded prewar years.

But other changes were happening that deserved, but did not get, a dose of caution. As the nation shifted to a service and banking economy, and from agricultural and industrial towns to modern cities and suburbs, social life moved from pubs to private homes and shopping moved from the local grocer, butcher, and fishmonger to the all-in-one supermarket. In the 1960s, loosened regulations led to a boom in the off-license sale of alcohol—that is, store-based sale for private consumption, as opposed to on-license sale in public drinking establishments. But whereas pubs were required to meet certain responsibilities (such as refusing to serve the inebriated), and had their hours of operation strictly regulated (for example, having to close their doors temporarily in the afternoon, to prevent all-day drinking), few limits were placed on off-licenses.

Supermarkets, in particular, profited from the new regime. They were free to stock wine, beer, and liquor alongside other consumables, making alcohol as convenient to purchase as marmalade. They were free, also, to offer discounts on bulk sales, and to use alcoholic beverages as so-called loss leaders, selling them below cost to lure customers into their stores and recouping the losses through increased overall sales. Very quickly, cheap booze became little more than a force multiplier for groceries.

When the supermarkets themselves subsequently underwent a wave of consolidation, the multiplier only increased. Four major chains—Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, and Morrisons—now enjoy near-total dominance in the UK, and their vast purchasing power lets them cut alcohol prices even further. Relative to disposable income, alcohol today costs 40 percent less than it did in 1980. The country is awash in a river of cheap drink, available on seemingly every corner.

Part of the problem, too, was that Britain’s “tied houses”—drinking establishments that are owned by liquor producers—have remained, in one form or another, a dominant part of the country’s drinking landscape. From the time brewing industrialized in the late 1700s, brewers were permitted to operate their own pubs, which they owned outright or whose owners signed exclusive retail agreements with them in exchange for inventory discounts, no-interest loans, and other assistance. The result of this system, which also existed in the U.S. before Prohibition, was a glut of pubs, since each brewer needed its own tied house in a given neighborhood, and a race to the bottom ensued, with each pub competing to offer lower prices and lure customers in with extras like gambling and prostitutes. The problem of this beer-fueled mayhem—of the lager louts smashing up storefronts, beating up foreigners, and glassing one another—became so acute in the 1980s that Parliament finally acted to break up the tied houses, passing legislation in 1991 known as the Beer Orders.

But intense industry lobbying quickly watered down these reforms, and the result was a bitter farce. In the end, brewers were allowed to keep many of their tied houses, and wound up effectively controlling the rest through exclusive retail agreements and other corporate maneuvers. Some brewers simply split in two, with one side retaining the brewing operations and the other responsible for sales. Many other brewers instead sold off their brewing operations and repurposed themselves as giant landlords-cum-barkeepers, while continuing to enjoy exclusive—and lucrative—relations with their former partners. The Beer Orders thus had the unintended consequence of actually catalyzing comprehensive conglomeration and vertical integration, as a handful of giant firms snapped up thousands of independent pubs. This “rationalization” of the industry delivered economies of scale previously unknown, and soon drinkers in England found that booze was even easier to come by than it had been before. Far from vanquished, the lager lout had entered his heyday.

In the United States, the problem so far has not been one of vertical integration like that found in the UK. Here, the story so far has been mostly about horizontal integration—of one brewer buying another.

To be sure, the typical American beer drinker might have a hard time realizing the extent of horizontal consolidation that has already occurred. The shelves of your average gas-station convenience store offer not just Bud and Busch and Miller and Coors but Stella and Hoegaarden and Shock Top and Rolling Rock. At any decent grocery, Kirin of Japan sits beside Boddingtons of Ireland, Peroni of Italy beside Pilsner Urquell of the Czech Republic. Basses shadow Red Hooks in the lea of Goose Islands. Blue Moon shines down on it all.

But all is not as it appears. Two giant companies— Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors—own, bankroll, produce, control, or have distribution rights to all of these brands and hundreds more. The truly independent brewers in the nation—there are about 2,000 of them, from tiny local outfits to national brands like Samuel Adams—account for just 6 percent of the market.

Almost all the rest belongs to Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, which now together capture nearly 80 percent of beer sales in this country. Smaller conglomerates including Pabst, Heineken, and Diageo (owner of Guinness) take up much of the remainder, but even this doesn’t capture how consolidated the market has become. Pabst, for example, does not brew its own beer: that process is contracted out to Miller.

The market forces that eventually led to this massive consolidation among American brewers took root in the mid-1970s with the passage of the Consumer Goods Pricing Act of 1975, which made it illegal for producers to set minimum prices for their goods at retail. This was ostensibly “pro-consumer” legislation: the practice of allowing producers to set their own prices limited certain types of price competition, and so could be viewed as “hurting” consumers in an economic sense. But, of course, in this case we’re talking about consumers of alcohol and not apples, and when it comes to alcohol, cheaper is not necessarily better.

No longer required to set across-the-board prices for their goods, breweries learned that they could manipulate the much smaller wholesalers to extract more favorable terms, brand support, and profit by offering lower prices to those that did their bidding. The threat of higher prices could be used to force a wholesaler to drop competing brands. Conversely, lower prices might be offered to a wholesaler who promised to push a given brand more forcefully. This ability to use pricing to “discriminate” among wholesalers gave producers another valuable return: detailed knowledge of their wholesalers’ acceptable margins. That could be used to extract profit right up to the maximum feasible limit.

Something of a countertrend to consolidation seemed to appear in the 1980s, which saw a boom in small independent craft brewers. Examples include the founding (among others) of such well-known brands as Sierra Nevada (1980), Sam Adams (1984), and Harpoon (1986). Smaller brands and brewpubs added to the mix. But few of these brewers succeeded in gaining significant market share, or even in maintaining their independence. Since big brewers had been freed up to use price discrimination to reward and punish wholesalers, they could passively pressure wholesalers into keeping competitors—particularly small, independent brewers—off the market. Meanwhile, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Justice Department cut back sharply on enforcement of U.S. antitrust law, setting in motion an unparalleled period of consolidation across virtually all American industries, including the beer industry.

In 1980, forty-eight breweries served the fifty states, and the largest of them had only a quarter of the market. Today, again, the market is overwhelmingly dominated by two: Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors.

Here’s how it went down:

Stroh Brewery Company, founded in 1850, entered the 1980s as the eighth-largest brewery in the nation. But after a sleepy first 130 years, during which it marketed a single brand, director Peter Stroh had come to recognize that “it’s either grow or go.” Released from antitrust constraints by the new Reagan regime, grow they would. In 1981, Stroh bought Schaefer, a big New York regional, and moved to seventh. Two years later, Stroh took over Schlitz, leaping and to fourth place. By the mid-’90s, the company had also swallowed up Augsburger and G. Heileman, then the fifth-largest brewer in America.
Coors, famously secretive in its business dealings, began the Reagan era as the fourth-largest brewer in America, with a reputation for high quality and an almost chic image in the vast East Coast market as a great beer you could only buy west of the Mississippi. Then, in 1981, Coors crossed the river, crashed through the East Coast, and hurdled across the Atlantic. In 1994, Coors purchased El Aguila in Spain and founded Jinro-Coors in South Korea. And in 1997, Molson, Foster’s, and Coors partnered to bring the Silver Bullet to Canada for the first time. Coors was now number three.

Miller entered the 1980s riding the tremendous success of its innovative Miller Lite brand. Already the second-largest brewer in America, the company set its sights on expanding, purchasing Jacob Leinenkugel in 1988, and in 1992 bought distribution rights to 20 percent of Canada’s Molson. Distribution rights to Foster’s and several other top imports followed later in the decade. With a market share of 21 percent, Miller had solidified its position as number two.

Anheuser-Busch, like Coors, was run by a family famous for its intensely private control of its business. The company entered the Reagan era as the number one brewer in America, and spent the next decade consolidating that position by leveraging its size, mostly via internal brand diversification, and by aggressively expanding its presence abroad. As the 1990s drew to a close, Anheuser-Busch remained by far the top brewer in the United States, with nearly 50 percent of the market, and one of the biggest brewers in the world. It is a testament to the size of the global beer market that even those eye-popping mergers left vast opportunities for other companies to play the same game. Three are of interest here:

In 1987, two of Belgium’s leading brewers, Artois and Piedboeuf, joined together as Interbrew. For fifteen years they quietly ate up dozens of other brands, and by 2001 they were the second-largest brewer on the planet.

In 1999, Brazil’s two largest brewers, Antarctica and Brahma, joined forces as AmBev, instantly dominating that country’s market and moving quickly to buy up smaller brands throughout South America.

And during the 1990s, South African Breweries, virtual monopolists at home with 98 percent of market, moved decisively into eastern Europe, Russia, India, and China, establishing a formidable position on three continents.

So the 1990s drew to a close with four major players in America and three abroad—seven giant brewing conglomerates for six billion people. The contest to own the world’s beer market had entered its endgame.

In 1999, Stroh was split up and sold off.

Six left.

In 2002, South African Breweries bought Miller, creating SABMiller.

Five left.

In 2004, Interbrew and AmBev merged, forming InBev.

Four.

In 2005, Coors and Molson merged to form Molson Coors.

Three.

In 2007, Molson Coors and SABMiller created the joint venture MillerCoors to produce and distribute their products in the United States as a single entity.

Two and a half.

And in 2008, in a blockbuster $52 billion deal, InBev bought Anheuser-Busch to form Anheuser-Busch InBev. At the stroke of a pen, half the U.S. beer industry came under the control of an even more powerful firm—one with a huge inventory of international brands ready to ride Budweiser’s coattails into the American market. Then, in June 2012, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced plans to pay $20 billion to acquire the 50 percent of Grupo Modelo that it does not already own.

Two.

And soon one?

Industry analysis have recently floated the idea that Anheuser-Busch InBev might purchase MillerCoors. But even in the lax antitrust environment that currently prevails, it is almost impossible to imagine a single company being allowed to control—overtly—80 percent or more of the domestic beer market. This means both Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors have, for all intents, reached the limit of their horizontal expansion. As in the UK, the only direction to go now is vertical, with the first target being the wholesalers—the second tier of the three-tier system.

Prior to the 2008 takeover, Anheuser-Busch generally accepted the regulatory regime that had governed the U.S. alcohol industry since the repeal of Prohibition. It didn’t attack the independent wholesalers in control of its supply chain, and generally treated them well. “Tough but fair” is a phrase used by several wholesale-business sources to describe their dealings with the Busch family dynasty. Everyone was making money; there was no need to rock the boat.

All that changed quickly after Anheuser-Busch lost its independence. The executives from InBev who took over the company did things quite differently. During the negotiations to buy Anheuser-Busch, InBev made it clear that the Busch family would have to go, and at the old headquarters in St. Louis other changes soon followed. Executive offices were literally torn out and replaced by an open floor with matching desks. The private-jet fleet was put on the block. Company cars disappeared. So did 1,400 jobs, retiree life insurance, and contributions to the employee pension plan. Managerial pay was reduced to equal or less than the average for similar jobs in other industries, with bonuses tied strictly to performance. Salaried workers lost little perks like free beer every month, and hundreds of staff BlackBerrys were recalled. Cost cutting was the new imperative.

Then, after eliminating everything it could at home, the new regime turned to squeezing more out of its increasingly nervous partners, the wholesalers. And, today, with only one remaining real competitor, MillerCoors, the pressure it can put on its wholesalers is extraordinary. A wholesaler who loses its account with either company loses one of its two largest customers, and cannot offer his retail clients the name-brand beers that form the backbone of the market. The Big Two in effect have a captive system by which to bring their goods to market.

Here’s how it works in practice. In 2011, Anheuser-Busch InBev (“A-B”) sent out a Wholesaler Family Consolidation Guide to each of its contractors. The language is blunt:

Do you share the same vision as A-B on issues of importance to the industry, including support on legislation that can affect our competitive position? …

Are you selling competitive products in a fellow A-B wholesaler’s territory?

The introduction to the guide begins:

We ask all wholesalers to use the guide’s self assessment tool to objectively consider their capabilities and goals. Wholesalers who aspire to be an Anchor Wholesaler can identify any gaps they have in these qualities and build a plan to address them. Some wholesalers might remain committed to their current market, but realize further acquisitions are not right for their business. Others might decide now is the best time to consider whether a sale is in their best interest.

There are many aspects of an aligned wholesaler, and an explicit focus on our portfolio of brands is paramount. Those who are aligned with us only acquire brands that compete in segments underserved by our current portfolio and that bring incremental sales, not brands that have a negative impact on the A-B portfolio.

The guide emphasizes the last point: an aligned wholesaler is one who “shares the company’s long-term vision for how to operate successfully and grow business in conjunction with Anheuser-Busch InBev’s strategy.” So distributors are caught in an impossible bind: they either do the brewer’s bidding, including selling their businesses to favored “Anchor Wholesalers,” or they lose Anheuser-Busch InBev as a client.

And if the wholesalers try to push back? Anheuser-Busch InBev will get rough. In Arkansas, to take a prime example, a state inquiry revealed that the company was charging as much as $5 more per case (a huge margin against the average price of around $15) to some wholesalers, an obvious effort to run them out of business. In addition, through a second practice called reachback pricing, the company retroactively reset the value of its wholesale contracts once its wholesaler’s retail terms were known. The technique allowed it to reduce wholesalers’ profit margins. And when the state legislature took up a bill to make these practices illegal, Anheuser-Busch InBev filed a letter of protest “on behalf” of its wholesalers, in effect forcing those who disagreed with its practices to identify themselves if they chose to give the motion their public support.

Anheuser-Busch InBev’s efforts failed in this instance; the bill passed. But the door is open for similar behavior in other states. All that’s required is to get their legislatures to fall for familiar Chamber of Commerce arguments about regulation “hurting” businesses and consumers. Moreover, in some big states (notably California and New York, home to almost one in five Americans) brewers have already succeeded in finding loopholes that allow them to own wholesalers directly, giving them the chance to make vertical integration cut-and-dried rather than just a matter of strong-arm business practices. And given other trends toward consolidation at the retail level of American economy, there is, as we’ll see, every indication they will do just that.

For a long time, brewers weren’t interested in distribution, because distribution was a challenging, tight-margin enterprise. Those who did it had to manage hundreds or thousands of accounts, maintain a fleet of delivery trucks, store products in expensively refrigerated warehouses, get new stock onto shelves and remove the expired stuff daily (usually eating the cost as they did so), and, in some cases, maintain the taps at their contracted bars and restaurants. In short, they ran a very complex show. But with the emergence of national chain retail stores, much of the complexity and cost of distribution has been eliminated.

Just as England’s four major supermarkets now dominate alcohol sales there, so major all-in-one box stores, like Walmart and Costco, now dominate beer sales in the U.S. And these stores typically manage their own logistics, gathering inventory at centralized distribution centers and stocking all their shelves in a region from there. So it would be no big task for Anheuser-Busch InBev to run a fleet of trucks from its breweries to the big-box distribution centers—and that is precisely the plan. Anheuser-Busch InBev’s CEO Carlos Brito openly declared it to investment analysts from UBS in 2009, saying that the company was aiming at making 50 percent of its sales directly to retailers. (Aware that at least some people believe that this would or should be illegal under federal law, spokespeople quickly claimed that his statement was being misinterpreted.)

But to Anheuser-Busch InBev, as well as to MillerCoors, achieving de facto if not actual vertical integration is too tempting a goal to give up. Such control allows for the elimination, in literal, physical terms, of almost all competing brands on store shelves. And if eliminating middlemen leads to greater “efficiencies” and therefore lower costs, both companies can build the market for alcoholic beverages by manipulating prices and more aggressively marketing to consumers—which is exactly what happened, with obviously disastrous effects, in the UK.

And so the onslaught continues, by direct and indirect means, with few Americans having even the vaguest idea of what’s going on. In Ohio, for example, MillerCoors tried unsuccessfully to negate the contracts that its component companies, SABMiller and Coors, had already signed with distributors, with the goal of forcing them to renegotiate terms with the more powerful merged venture. In California, the state attorney general declared MillerCoors’s efforts at wholesaler exclusivity a violation of state law. In Illinois, Anheuser-Busch InBev stands accused by the state’s distributors of holding an illegal interest in a top Chicago-area wholesaler. If Anheuser-Busch InBev wins the case, now being heard by the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, the company may be emboldened to argue for similar rights in other states. (On October 31, after this article went to press, the Commission ruled in favor of Anheuser-Busch InBev, effectively permitting beer makers to self-distribute in Illinois.)

In fact, by exploiting existing weaknesses in some states’ commerce laws, Anheuser-Busch InBev owns fourteen distributorships in ten states (New York and California, as mentioned above, plus New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Colorado, Oregon, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Hawaii) and is part owner of two more. The biggest beer producer in America, Anheuser-Busch InBev is now by volume the biggest beer distributor, too.

At times, the Big Two don’t even have to lead the fight. Costco spent $22 million last year in a successful ballot initiative campaign that allows them to stock their shelves directly from wholesale warehouses, effectively eliminating the protective inefficiencies of the second-tier distribution system. Such mutually beneficial efforts by big-box stores and the Big Two are no surprise: they all work on a high-volume, low-margin profit model. And though three-tier laws prohibit direct collaboration between them, it’s also no accident that in a March interview with the trade publication Beer Business Daily, Anheuser-Busch InBev Vice President Dave Almeida described in perfect detail how retailers can maximize their profits by replacing craft brews with “premium” beer—its term for its mass-produced light lager. Synergy: it’s coming to a store near you.

Horizontal integration of alcohol production. Vertical integration of distribution and retail. Loosened local regulations. National chain stores. Streamlined marketing. Volume pricing. Alcohol as an ordinary commodity. America resembles Britain more and more each passing day. How do you like them apples?

In recent years, the UK has started to reverse course as it struggles with its epidemic of alcoholism. After ten years of study and against vehement industry protest, a conservative, Tory-led Parliament now appears serious about passing reforms aimed at weakening vertical monopolies in the British alcohol industry and forcing the cost of drinking upward through minimum-price laws. Eighty years late, Great Britain is recognizing the hard-learned lesson that our forebears enshrined in the 21st Amendment: that alcohol truly is no ordinary commodity, and must be handled with care. We would do well to recall that wisdom ourselves.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Linked to Autism

By Anna Hunt, BLN

A recent study published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics reveals that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is a highly-processed chemical sweetener used in many processed foods and beverages, has been identified as a major factor in the rise of autism in the United States.

The rise of autism spectrum disorders in the United States has been staggering.

“The number of children ages 6 to 21 in the United States receiving special education services under the autism disability category increased 91% between 2005 to 2010 while the number of children receiving special education services overall declined by 5%.” – Dufault et al. Clinical Epigenetics, 2012

The ingestion of heavy metals, such as mercury (Hg), into the body is having a profound effect on the neurodevelopment of children. HFCS is not only exposing children’s bodies to mercury, but it is also responsible for inhibiting the elimination of toxins and heavy metals due to how it depletes the body of the natural mineral zinc.

“…the HFCS characteristics most likely contributing to autism include the zinc depleting effect that comes from consuming HFCS and certain food colors found in processed foods, and the additional Hg exposure that may occur from the low Hg concentrations sometimes found in HFCS as a result of the manufacturing process [4,17].” – Dufault et al. Clinical Epigenetics, 2012

FIGURE 1. The consumption of HFCS has increased substantially in the US over the 1980’s and 90’s.

(Source: http://www.clinicalepigeneticsjournal.com/content/4/1/6/figure/F3)

The study concludes:

“Consumption of HFCS may lead to mineral imbalances, including Zn [Zinc], Ca [Calcium] and P [Phosphorus] loss and Cu [Copper] gain and is a potential source of inorganic mercury exposure. These mineral imbalances create multiple pathways for oxidative stress in the brain from exposure to OP [organophosphate] pesticides and heavy metals, such as Pb [Lead] or Hg [Mercury].” - Dufault et al. Clinical Epigenetics, 2012

As health authorities and the FDA continue to pay little attention to ingredients such as HFCS, it is up to us to educate ourselves, other parents and our children. The importance of eating organic, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables, as well as whole foods rich in vitamins, minerals and nutrients such as Omega-3 Fatty acids, while eliminating processed foods from our diets, has never been more clear as public health epidemics skyrocket.

The study also identified the presence of mercury in vaccines and the overuse of agricultural pesticides, as potential causal factors for the increase in the rise of Autism in the United States.

Sources: http://www.clinicalepigeneticsjournal.com/content/pdf/1868-7083-4-6.pdf

Battle Looms with the UN Over Pot Legalization

November 21, 2012

Source: Michael Krieger

A couple of weeks ago, following Colorado and Washington’s historic vote to become the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use, a piece titled Colorado Legalizes Marijuana: Your Move Eric Holder subsequently went viral.  Now the most useless and corrupt organization on the planet has weighed in – the United Nations.

The head of the UN drug watchdog (the International Narcotics Control Board or INCB), Raymond Yans, has come out in a press release essentially instructing the Attorney General of the United States to enforce Federal Prohibition of pot against the rights of the states to implement a law that is not only Constitutional, but a perfect example of a free people deciding what they want for themselves.

Perhaps that is why the United Nations is so panicky about the legislation in Colorado and Washington.  The organization consists of a bunch of global government-craving, control-freak bureaucrats, and as such some welcome this battle as an opportunity to marginalize it further and expose them for the undemocratic creeps they really are.  Anyone remember the massive corruption within the UN’s Oil for Food Program?  Who would let these creeps decide what every citizen in every corner of the planet can put into their own bodies.

From the UN press release:

VIENNA, 15 November (UN Information Service) – The President of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), Raymond Yans, has voiced grave concern about the outcome of recent referenda in the United States of America that would allow the non-medical use of cannabis by adults in the states of Colorado and Washington, and in some cities in the states of Michigan and Vermont. Mr. Yans stated that “these developments are in violation of the international drug control treaties, and pose a great threat to public health and the well-being of society far beyond those states”.

He went on to further state that for the international drug control system to function effectively, to achieve its aim of ensuring availability of drugs for medical purposes while preventing their abuse, the conventions must be universally adhered to and implemented by all States. In this regard, Mr. Yans stressed that national laws, policies and practices in drug abuse prevention and control should be fully aligned with the conventions.

The INCB President requested the Government of the United States to take the necessary measures to ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties within the entire territory of the United States, in order to protect the health and well-being of its citizens.

The full press release is here.  It’s one page, I suggest you read it.  Such an intense concentration of hyperbole, panic and propaganda could only be created by the United Nations.

Are the Feds Preparing for a Civil War? Infographic

Visualizing the World's Wealthiest Humans

Source: As the World Earns

Brown Friday: Why do people poop in retail stores?

By David Ferguson - RAW Story
Friday, November 23, 2012

Unless you’ve worked in retail, you’ve probably never heard of it. If you have worked in retail, then you know that sometimes, if you will, shit gets real. For some unfathomable reason, people poop in retail clothing stores, particularly in fitting rooms and inside the circular clothing racks called “rounders,” but other times they’ll just do it in a corner or, perversely, on the floor right next to the toilet.

As a former employee of Gap, Inc. and Borders Books, this reporter can confirm that the phenomenon exists. With depressing frequency, often during the busiest and most hectic times of the year — Black Friday weekend and the weeks before Christmas — sales employees or managers will open a fitting room door, or brush aside a pile of clothes to find that some shopper, large or small, has defecated and left the results behind.

Amanda Atkinson of Athens, Georgia worked in retail for nine holiday seasons as an Old Navy sales associate. She found messes in fitting rooms and in the store’s public restrooms, some of which were truly staggering.

“Obviously you had the ones in the bathroom,” she said, where people would miss the toilet entirely, clog the toilets and walk away, “or they would go out of their way to smear their poop on the walls.”

The worst thing she said she encountered was on the Saturday night of one Black Friday weekend. “There were clothes on the ground everywhere” in one of the store’s “Clearance” areas. Hundreds, if not thousands of shoppers had come through, many trying on items right in the section and then just flinging them to the floor.

“There was a pile of clothes that, like, three people could have slept on, it was so big,” she said. As she dug deeper into the pile, the first thing that hit her was the smell.

“Somebody had gone out of their way to stuff into the very center of the pile, not the bottom, mind you, but the dead center of the pile, a shitty diaper,” she said. “To the point that we couldn’t do anything with the clothes, we had to throw it all out. We couldn’t even go through the clothes and see what we were throwing out because it was just too much of a biohazard. We just threw it all in trash bags and took it outside.”

Alison, who works at an independent bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky, declined to give her last name, but told of an event that occurred in her store, recently, in which an older gentleman “who bought no fewer than ten copies of Shit My Dad Says — and not at the same time,” disappeared into the store bathroom, then departed without her knowing.

“So about ten minutes later, I go back there to check things out,” she said, “Bathroom’s empty, but there’s an odor, for sure. I walk in and I look in the toilet, and it’s completely clean.”

Then, she looked down.

“And all of a sudden I realized there was shit all over the floor. Not only did the guy shit on the floor, but he stepped in it and tracked it through as he left,” she said.

She and her manager tackled the mess. They haven’t seen the customer since.

Raw Story contacted psychologist Jeanne Dugas to find out if perhaps this phenomenon is among the panoply of recognized human fetishes, if maybe the desire to shit undetected in a public place is akin to the thrill that some people get from having sex in a location where they might get caught. In fact, it was the first time she had ever heard of the practice.

“They do what?” she asked. “Really?”

When asked if there might be a particular psychological motivation involved, Dugas replied, “I tell you, I’m at a loss. A, I’ve never heard of that before and B, Holy cow!”

She said that the most charitable explanation she could offer would be that they were unable to make it to the rest room in time to get back for a particular sale item, or maybe they just weren’t up to the fight through the throng of holiday shoppers. To her, however, the acts sound more like aggression.

“I mean, it is, literally, ‘dumping’ on the store,” she said.

“Really, though?” she asked, still grappling with the notion. “People really do that? It’s, like, a thing?”

Indeed it is, and for thousands of retail workers across the country and perhaps around the world, it’s just one more element of the abiding joy that is the holiday sales season. If it’s not the top of the list, then it’s certainly there at Number 2.

++++

Ah, humanity...what a wonder you are...

Grand Theft Wall Street

What You Should Know About the FHA Bailout

by MIKE WHITNEY

 

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) needs a bailout, but don’t expect the media to tell you why. Instead, they’ll give you some baloney about how the agency was used to “stabilize the housing market” following the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September of ’08. While there’s some truth to this, it misses the larger point, which is that FHA was used to generate as many toxic mortgages as possible to keep the money flowing into the big Wall Street banks and to prevent housing prices from plunging even further leaving bank balance sheets deeper in the red. That’s what really happened; the FHA was looted to save the banks. It’s another example of grand theft Wall Street. Now take a look at this from Bussinessweek:

“The agency’s financial report last year projected that loans issued before 2009 would result in $26 billion in losses, $14 billion of that from a subset of loans in which sellers were allowed to cover the down payment on behalf of the buyer, often by inflating the price of the house. Congress banned seller-funded down payment loans beginning in 2009.

Still, the risk of many of those mortgages has been transferred to the agency’s more recent books of business because they have been refinanced under FHA’s streamline program, which waives many underwriting requirements to enable borrowers to take advantage of low interest rates. More than 17 percent of all FHA loans were delinquent in September.” (“FHA Said to Set Stage for Treasury Draw as Losses Mount”, Businessweek)

$26 billion here, $26 billion there; pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Explain to me why would anyone in their right mind would allow the seller to pay the down payment? A down payment is intended to prove that the loan applicant is capable of saving money which is a traditional way of determining creditworthiness. Letting the seller put up the down-payment turns the entire process on its head. It’s completely self defeating. It just shows the extent to which the FHA was bending the rules to prop up housing prices to accommodate their Wall Street overlords.

And did you catch that bit about “More than 17 percent of all FHA loans being delinquent in September?” That’s just more proof of fraud, isn’t it? Typically, banks only see delinquency rates of about 1 or 2 percent. The only way you get 17 percent delinquency rate is you’re grabbing people off the streets and signing them up for 30-year loans without checking their credit history. It’s such an obvious scam, it’s laughable. I assure you, even a cursory investigation of loan applications during this period would expose widespread fraud in the mortgage origination process. But, of course, we don’t do criminal investigations anymore because –as Mr Obama says, “I want to look forward, not backward.”

Of course no one in the media would dare to suggest that the FHA was involved in a vast criminal conspiracy to rip off taxpayers. Heaven forbid! But that’s what it amounts to when you issue mortgages to people who YOU KNOW will never be able to repay the debt. It’s premeditated robbery. The FHA was allowing the banks to report record profits and take hefty bonuses on loans that they knew would eventually blow up and be charged to taxpayers. The media calls that “stabilizing the housing market”. I call it raping the public.

Is that too harsh? Maybe there are some skeptics reading this who think that the folks who were in charge at the time (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke) were doing the best they could under very difficult circumstances? Maybe they think that using FHA to guarantee junk mortgages was the only way to keep the ailing housing market on life support, after all, the country was in the throes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, wasn’t it?

Sure, it was, but that’s what makes the FHA swindle so grotesque, because even in the middle of an economic meltdown, the people in charge only pursued the policies that further enriched their thieving friends. In order to prove that point, we only need to browse the archive at Bussinessweek, where a 2008 article titled “FHA-Backed Loans: The New Subprime”, lays out the basic facts in black and white. Here’s an excerpt:

“The same people whose reckless practices triggered the global financial crisis are onto a similar scheme that could cost taxpayers tons more.

As if they haven’t done enough damage. Thousands of subprime mortgage lenders and brokers—many of them the very sorts of firms that helped create the current financial crisis—are going strong. Their new strategy: taking advantage of a long-standing federal program designed to encourage homeownership by insuring mortgages for buyers of modest means.

You read that correctly. Some of the same people who propelled us toward the housing market calamity are now seeking to profit by exploiting billions in federally insured mortgages. Washington, meanwhile, has vastly expanded the availability of such taxpayer-backed loans as part of the emergency campaign to rescue the country’s swooning economy.

For generations, these loans, backed by the Federal Housing Administration, have offered working-class families a legitimate means to purchase their own homes. But now there’s a severe danger that aggressive lenders and brokers schooled in the rash ways of the subprime industry will overwhelm the FHA with loans for people unlikely to make their payments. Exacerbating matters, FHA officials seem oblivious to what’s happening—or incapable of stopping it. They’re giving mortgage firms licenses to dole out 100%-insured loans despite lender records blotted by state sanctions, bankruptcy filings, civil lawsuits, and even criminal convictions.

As a result, the nation could soon suffer a fresh wave of defaults and foreclosures, with Washington obliged to respond with yet another gargantuan bailout. Inside Mortgage Finance, a research and newsletter firm in Bethesda, Md., estimates that over the next five years fresh loans backed by the FHA that go sour will cost taxpayers $100 billion or more. That’s on top of the $700 billion financial-system rescue Congress has already approved. Gary E. Lacefield, a former federal mortgage investigator who now runs Risk Mitigation Group, a consultancy in Arlington, Tex., predicts: “Within the next 12 to 18 months, there is going to be FHA-insurance Armageddon.” (“FHA-Backed Loans: The New Subprime”, Businessweek)

How do you like that? And that was written back in November 2008, so a lot of people knew what was going on even then. Our point is that the FHA was NOT used to “stabilize the housing market”, that’s complete industry-fabricated PR hogwash. It was used to turbo-charge asset prices and to shovel more money to crooked bankers. Here’s more on the story from CNBC’s Realty Check:

“The FHA losses stem from business it did between 2007 and 2009, when the rest of the mortgage market retreated dramatically. $70 billion in claims are attributable to just those three years when seller-funded downpayment assistance was still allowed. That was prohibited in 2009.

The FHA, which requires just 3.5 percent down payment on a loan and which had lower relative credit score requirements, went from just 2 percent of the market during the height of the housing boom to nearly 40 percent at the height of the crash, insuring $330 billion worth of mortgages in 2009 alone.” (“To Stem Losses, FHA Mortgages Get More Expensive”, CNBC)

Same old, same old, right? The FHA rubber stamped hundreds of billions in mortgages even though they knew the underwriting was shoddy and that the losses would eventually be dumped on Uncle Sam. And who was the primary regulator when all this hanky panky was going on?

Why, none other than Ben Bernanke. The very same Ben Bernanke who just last week said we need to loosen lending standards so the banks can issue more bad loans. It’s true. Check out this clip from a speech that the Fed chairman gave last week in Atlanta:

“It seems likely at this point that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and that overly tight lending standards may now be preventing creditworthy borrowers from buying homes, thereby slowing the revival in housing and impeding the economic recovery…” (“Challenges in Housing and Mortgage Markets”, Federal Reserve)

Sure, let’s return the Golden Era of Crappy Lending circa 2006. Let’s get those subprime boiler rooms up-and-running again so we can blow the system to Kingdom Come one more time. Can you believe this man is still Fed chairman?

Congress should ignore Bernanke’s blabbering and standardize mortgage applications requiring 10 percent down, proof of employment, and minimum 620 credit scores. These should be the ironclad rules of lending from which the banks may not veer one iota from or face criminal penalties and a revoking of their license. Enough of the bubbles, already!

According to a recent audit, the FHA has a $16.3 billion deficit, which doesn’t sound too bad considering that agency has grown by 30 percent since 2009 and presently insures $1.1 trillion in mortgages. But then if you read the fine-print, you discover that–just this year–the agency “introduced the claim-type prediction model to separate REO claims and pre-foreclosure claims”.

What does that mean? It means they’re fudging the numbers to make things look rosier than they really are. The fact is, this is just Phase 1 of multi-phase bailout that could run into hundreds of billions of dollars, mainly because the FHA is STILL slapping its seal of approval on high-risk loans. Just get a load of this clip from The Atlantic:

“Today, the agency is still targeting low-income borrowers, pushing them into mortgages with ruinous consequences. For example, in the first quarter of FY 2012, an estimated 40 percent of FHA’s business consists of loans with either one or two subprime attributes — a FICO score below 660 or a debt ratio greater than or equal to 50 percent. These subprime loans are overwhelmingly risk layered with a loan to value ratio (excluding financed mortgage insurance premium) of equal to or greater than 95 percent and a loan term of 30 years.

As these delinquencies from 2008-2010 turn into foreclosures — a kind of post-bubble second wave — they’ll put downward price pressure on already-battered neighborhoods, and the nascent housing recovery could quickly reverse course, dragging the economy.” (“The Next Housing Bailout? Big Trouble Brewing at the FHA”, The Atlantic)

Can you see what’s going on here? The banks can’t make money by lending because too many people are still broke from the housing bubble and aren’t interested in borrowing more money. So they’ve focused on weasaling the government instead, using their agents inside the system to pull the right levers so more public money is diverted to Wall Street. And it’s all done via bad loans, that’s the strategy in a nutshell. Once they get the government to underwrite their garbage mortgages, they crank out as much funny money (credit) as possible and dump the bill on John Q. Public. So far, the plan has worked like a charm, and it will probably continue to work for some time to come. After all, who’s going to stop them? Obama?

Don’t make me laugh.

funny pictures

The Lousiest Recovery of All Time--If It Can Really Be Called a Recovery at All

Global Depression Enters Year Five

by MIKE WHITNEY

 

Is this the lousiest recovery of all time?

Check it out: The number of people currently on food stamps in the US is at a record-high of 47.1 million. That’s more than twice as many recipients than in 2007 when the crisis began. And the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has skyrocketed, too. It’s gone from 12.3 percent in 2006 to 16.1 percent today. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in America are now living below the poverty line. In other words, if you’re poor in America your numbers are growing and things are getting worse. Some recovery, eh?

And it’s not just the poor who are hurting either. The middle class is getting clobbered, too.

Unemployment is still way too high (U3 7.9%, U6 14.3%) and, according to the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, middle income families have seen nearly 40 percent of their net worth go up in smoke since 2007. The bulk of the losses are attributable to the giant housing bust of ’07 which wiped out $8 trillion in home equity leaving the majority of baby boomers unprepared for retirement. It’s a desperate situation that no one seems to want to talk about, but the reality is that millions of people are going to have to figure out how to scrape by on next-to-nothing or work until they’re too senile to punch a clock. As far as these folks are concerned, the recovery is just a big joke.

So who’s really benefited from the so called recovery?

Well, that’s a no brainer: Wall Street and the 1 percenters, that’s who. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has pumped enough uber-cheap money into financial markets to fill a small ocean, all with the clear intention of keeping stocks bubbly so his fatcat speculator friends can cream the system and take home even bigger bonus checks. The Fed’s quantitative easing program has sent stocks into the stratosphere, in fact, all three major US indices have more than doubled since the program was first launched in 2008. There’s only one drawback; it doesn’t do jack for the real economy. Oh, and another thing, its effect on stocks is only temporary, the equivalent of a sugar rush. Check out this post by Charles Biderman at TrimTabs and you’ll see what I mean:

“On September 14 the day of the most recent Fed easing, the S&P 500 peaked at 1466. And ever since then stocks have been selling off and opened today down about 6%.

On previous videos I predicted that the current QE would have very little impact on both the stock market and the economy. And that is what happened. Why did I predict that? Short term interest rates are already at zero and it has been five months now since mortgage rates reached current record low levels. So yes, as a result of Operation Twist after tax income rose to a $300 billion in annualized growth this past June through September. That was up from a $200 billion growth rate over the first five months of 2012. Since October, after tax income – remember this is a before inflation number – has dropped back to a $200 billion growth rate. In other words, the Fed this year will in essence print half a trillion dollars that will not improve after tax income nor help stock prices grow……

So the US economy is currently barely growing despite huge amounts of deficit spending and money printing.” (“Bernanke Put Dead and Very Little Chance Stocks Avoid Year End Sell Off”, Trim Tabs Money Blog)

This is Bernanke’s worst nightmare. Stocks are looking wobbly and his nutcase monetary theories are no longer working. But rather than change directions and admit his error, Bernanke has decided to double-down and throw the printing presses into high-gear. But how can he do that, you may wonder, after all, hasn’t the Fed already committed to purchasing $40 billion mortgage-backed securities per month for “as long as it takes” (QEternity) to lift GDP rises and reduce unemployment?

Yes, he has, but that doesn’t mean the Moneymaker in Chief doesn’t have more arrows in his quiver. He does. Here’s the story from Bloomberg:

“The Federal Reserve is embarking on the next step in Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s journey toward greater transparency — tying its outlook for borrowing costs to measures of employment and inflation.

Policy makers “generally favored the use of economic variables” to provide guidance on the when they are likely to approve their first interest-rate increase since 2008, according to minutes of their Oct. 23-24 meeting released yesterday. Such measures might replace or supplement a calendar date, currently set at mid-2015.

A number of officials also said the Fed may need to expand its monthly purchases of bonds next year after the expiration of a program to extend the maturities of assets on its balance sheet, known as Operation Twist. The discussion indicates that Fed officials judge the economy still needs record stimulus to reduce an unemployment rate stuck near 8 percent.” (“Fed Moves Toward Tying Interest-Rate Decisions to Economic Data”, Bloomberg)

So what does it all mean? It means that Bernanke and his Merry Pranksters are ratcheting it up to the next level. It means they’re going to keep flooding the financial markets with liquidity until the jobless rate comes down. It doesn’t matter that QE hasn’t moved the dial on unemployment at all or that the Fed has already expanded its balance sheet by $2.5 trillion and that no one has any idea of how Bernanke is going get rid of his stockpile of junk assets without sending the markets into an Armageddon death-spiral. None of that matters. They’re just going to put their foot on the gas and let ‘er rip! Doesn’t that sound a tad reckless?
Here’s an excerpt from the FOMC statement on September 13 that helps to connect the dots:

“If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.”

In short: “We’re not done yet, guys, not by a long-shot.”

This is supply side arrogance in the extreme. Bernanke continues to believe that the entire economy can be effectively run by moving levers at the Central Bank. He thinks that if you plop enough money into the top of the system, (financial markets) it will eventually dribble downwards to the worker bees. Fat chance. It hasn’t happened yet, but not from want of trying.
Bernanke is right about one thing though, inflation expectations are beginning to fade which means that disinflation or outright deflation are a growing threat to the economy. Take a look at this blurb from The Economist:

“….since mid-October, there has been an unmistakable reversal in the inflation-expectations trend. Based on 5-year breakevens, all of the September spurt has been erased. And 2-year breakevens are back at July levels. Given my optimism over the Fed’s September moves and the apparent strength of underlying fundamentals in the economy, I would like to disregard this trend, but one should be very reluctant to abandon guideposts that have served one well just because they’ve moved in an inconvenient way.” (“Monetarypolicy—Is there a problem?”, The Economist)

This is why Bernanke is wheeling out the heavy artillery, because QE3 hasn’t boosted spending or borrowing at all. Business investment is still in the doldrums and earnings have hit the skids in a big way. So where are all the green shoots? The only difference between 2008 and today is a steroid-inflated stock market and a few more multi-billionaire 1 percenters. Everything else is about the same, only worse.

If Bernanke was serious about fixing the economy, he’d stop all the monetary chicanery and let stocks nosedive by a couple thousand points. That would wake up Congress and force them to do their damn job. Zero rates and boatloads of liquidity just aren’t doing the trick, anyone can see that. In fact, all the hocus pocus and crackpot “accomodative” policies are just making people nervous and adding to the uncertainty. It’s time to get back to basics, fiscal stimulus.

Bernanke should follow the advice of Nomura’s chief economist Richard Koo. Koo has done extensive research on Japan’s 20 year running-battle with deflation and explained in excruciating detail what needs to be done to emerge from, what he calls, a balance sheet recession. Here’s a sample of his work:

“The most important lesson of the last 20 years in Japan and of the last four years in western economies is that monetary policy is ineffective when there is no private demand for funds…

“In Japan, there has been little or no private loan demand since 1995, when the BOJ brought interest rates down to near-zero levels. And neither the economy nor asset prices have recovered, even though, as BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa has noted, the BOJ embarked on quantitative easing fully eight years before its counterparts in Europe and the U.S…..

When businesses and households not only stop borrowing money but start to work off their debt, the resulting absence of borrowers effectively traps central bank-supplied liquidity in the financial system, and as a consequence the funds neither stimulate the economy nor spark inflation……”

Sound familiar? And here’s more from the Financial Times via Economist’s View:

“Today, the US private sector is saving a staggering 8 per cent of gross domestic product – at zero interest rates, when households and businesses would ordinarily be borrowing and spending money. … This is the result of the bursting of debt-financed housing bubbles, which left the private sector with huge debt overhangs … giving it no choice but to pay down debt or increase savings, even at zero interest rates.

However, if someone is saving money or paying down debt, someone else must be borrowing and spending that money to keep the economy going. … With monetary policy largely ineffective and the private sector forced to repair its balance sheet, the only way to avoid a deflationary spiral is for the government to borrow and spend the unborrowed savings in the private sector….

The challenge now is to maintain fiscal stimuli until private sector deleveraging is completed.” (“Explain the disease to help US citizens”, Richard Koo, Financial Times)

Bernanke’s smart enough to know that more-of-the-same (QE) won’t get the economy back on track. He knows that Koo is right. But that doesn’t mean there will be a change in policy. There won’t be, mainly because QE reinforces the caste system where all the goodies go to the silk-stocking hotshots at the top and everyone else gets table scraps. It’s just plain old class warfare. And, guess what: their class is winning.

Obama’s Biggest Environmental ‘Victory’ Was A Huge Win for Frackers

He's a Big Gas Man

by Joshua Frank

 

Greenhouse gas emissions are hot news these days — especially in the lead up to an election when candidates, at least those who claim to believe in climate science, vow to do something about the biggest environmental crisis facing our little blue planet: climate change.

In early March of this year, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Obama vowed to end $4 billion in Big Oil and Gas subsidies. “You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people,” Obama said to an applauding audience. “You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century, or you can place your bets on a clean-energy future.”

That sounds dandy, but ending subsidies to polluters is only half the battle, and Obama’s idea of a “clean-energy future” is tenuous at best. In an attempt to round up the green vote, which he successfully accomplished, President Obama trumpeted his half-hearted attempt to put the breaks on climate change by tapping energy sources here at home and regulating the industry that’s doing most of the damage. Only days after the president announced he was looking to fast-track the southern portion of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, his administration released the first-ever federal standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.

In what’s now become typical Obama fashion, the move was meant to appease environmental critics while at the same time ensure the fossil fuel industry that the so-called New Source Performance Standard would not actually hurt its bottom lines.

Here’s why: the EPA rule would only impact new coal-fired power plants, but only those that break ground in later next year. In all, 15 proposed coal plants in 10 states could be potentially impacted by the rule, even though most are already hung up in court battles. As such, no coal-fired power plants in the United States have broke ground over the past three years and tenacious environmentalists have seen far more victories than defeats when it comes to battling King Coal.

The new greenhouse rule will require fossil fuel-fired electricity generating units to restrict their emissions to 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour of electricity produced; a strict standard to be sure, but one that doesn’t come without caveats. All old power plants, some well over 50 years in age, will be exempt entirely from Obama’s greenhouse rule when it comes into effect, despite the fact that these archaic facilities alone account for over 40 percent of carbon emissions in the country. In a nutshell, the biggest coal polluters are being let off the hook altogether.

Five years ago a staggering 151 new coal plants were slated for construction, but with one of the greatest environmental achievements in our history, grassroots activists across the country stopped their development.

Obama is still riding on the coat-tails of these victories, but what’s underlying the greenhouse gas rule is a bit more sinister. As concerns about the impacts of fracking continue to grow, the power plants that burn natural gas extracted through this process of pumping a mix of water, chemicals and sand deep into the earth’s crust, won’t be covered by the rule. Generally, natural gas plants produce less than 900 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. Indeed the limit set by the EPA was not arbitrary; it directly aids and abets the natural gas industry. Obama knows quite well that natural gas is poised to be the fossil fuel of the future and his administration and the EPA are not going to stand in the way of the big boom.

This isn’t to say the effect of natural gas on climate change is benign — far from it. While still producing a large amount of carbon emissions (albeit less than coal), natural gas also spews a whole bunch of methane (natural gas is methane), which is far more potent than CO2 when it comes to the immediate warming of our planet. In fact, it is estimated that methane gas has a global warming potential 25 times that of CO2 (averaged over 100 years). So, in absolute terms, natural gas does contribute substantially to greenhouse gas emissions, and with more production in the works, this contribution is going to grow a lot more in the years to come.

The EPA certainly understands methane is a big contributor to global warming. In an analysis released last year the agency doubled its earlier estimate for the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas wells and pipelines. This leaking is so extensive that it is equal to the annual emissions from over 35 million automobiles. In addition, the EPA reported that the levels of methane release during the fracking of shale gas were actually 9,000 times higher than previously thought.

Methane, unfortunately, is not covered by Obama’s proposed greenhouse gas rule. Perhaps that’s because Obama supports the expansion of natural gas exploration as well as the notion of “safe” fracking — an oxymoron akin to “clean” coal.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” said President Obama in his last State of the Union address. “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy … it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock.”

The process Obama is touting is the fracking of natural gas and oil from underground geological formations, like the Marcellus Shale on the East Coast. The procedure has been documented in a draft report by the EPA as causing groundwater pollution in Wyoming, yet fracking remains exempt from the Clean Water Act.

As coal becomes a relic of the past in the U.S., natural gas, with fracking as its main source of extraction, is being set up as the fossil fuel of the future, thanks in large part to Obama’s embrace and the EPA’s blind eye. In 2008 the Obama campaign amassed $884,000 from the oil and gas industry. In 2012 that number topped $2 million.

Often seen as a “bridge fuel” from coal toward renewables, natural gas has not come under the same scrutiny as other fossil fuels. Instead natural gas has been seen as a safer, cleaner burning fuel — an improvement over dirty coal. Hence why the EPA continues to punt on proposing regulations on the industry, as it did for a second at the beginning of last April when it delayed the release of rules for the oil and gas industry. If the EPA caves to the natural gas industry, as it will likely continue to do, the majority of existing fracking wells will be exempt from regulation.

Yet, even if fracking wells begin to receive the regulatory oversight they so gravely deserve, the burning of natural gas is not about to come under intensified scrutiny any time soon. On the contrary, as long as the EPA’s attention remains on curbing coal’s carbon footprint, the natural gas industry is sure to benefit and more methane is sure to seep from the depths of Earth. A recent study by tech billionaire Nathan Myhrvold and climate scientist Ken Caldeira argues that shifting to natural gas “cannot substantially reduce the climate risk in the next 100 years.”

Those fighting the frackers ought to expand their focus from fracking’s immediate dangers, which are very real, to natural gas’ long-term impacts on climate change. Even if fracking were to one day be outlawed, as long as natural gas continues to be burned the planet will continue to heat up. In short, natural gas is not a bridge to renewable energy; it’s a bridge to an even more toxic planet.

Armyworms Develop Resistance to Genetically Modified Corn

 Uh oh...
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By Aviva Shen on Nov 19, 2012 Think Progress

 A second species of worm has evolved to withstand pesticides in genetically modified crops, the latest escalation of the natural arms race spurred on by GMOs.  “Armyworms” — so called because their infestation of fields resembles a military onslaught — were able to eat DuPont-Dow corn containing a pesticide protein without adverse effects, according to a field trial conducted in Florida this year.

Rootworms in the Midwest have already developed resistance to a different GM corn produced by Monsanto the devil. This latest breed of armyworms adds to the mounting evidence that insects are following the evolutionary path of “super weeds,” which are now immune to herbicides in GMO crops and present a serious problem for farmers.

Monsanto the devil and DuPont marketed their products as a way to reduce toxic chemical use on plants. These new findings contradict that claim, as these superweeds and superworms force farmers to deploy even heavier doses of potent chemicals — as much as 527 million pounds of herbicides alone since 1996. Bloomberg reports:

“This is most likely field resistance,” Fangneng Huang, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America. [...] Concern that the insecticides are failing is prompting farmers to apply more chemicals, unwinding the primary environmental benefit of pest-fighting crops, Michael Gray, an entomologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana, said in a Nov. 14 presentation at the conference.

Monsanto and DuPont led a multi-million dollar campaign against California’s GMO labeling proposition, helping to ensure its defeat earlier this month. California is the 21st state that has tried and failed to pass GMO labeling legislation within the past year.