Thread: BASIC LIST / SUGGESTED ITEMS FOR LONG TERM SURVIVAL

Video: Militarys Robotic Pack Mule Battles the Mud http://wired.contextly.com/redirect/?id=O1Enc3auSS

Army Terminators Walk Like Men http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05 ... ike-a-man/

Darpas Cheetah-Bot Designed to Chase Human Prey http://wired.contextly.com/redirect/?id=NZtcrdXSzQ

Darpa: Fuse Nerves With Robot Limbs, Make Prosthetics Feel Real http://wired.contextly.com/redirect/?id=16Mv6nou6B

Pentagon: Give our Robot Spy Birds Life-Like Legs http://wired.contextly.com/redirect/?id=D6bhlpcH

Running Robot Breaks Speed Records (Now All It Needs Is a Head)
Video: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/running-robot/

Snake-Bot Evolves into Shorter, Smarter Worm-Bot

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... JnQL7mjspg



http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11 ... -worm-bot/

Video: Bio-Bots Slither, Creep, and Waddle Ahead http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/11/video-bio-bots/

New Video: Robotic Pack Mules Leaps Into Action http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/v ... tic-p.html

Drone Dogs Big Walk http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/g ... four-.html

Area 51s Robotic Spy Bird http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/i ... .html#more

Video: Dragonfly Drones in Flight http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/d ... uav-v.html

Insect Drones "Spotted" on U.S. Streets http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/i ... nes-s.html

Beamed Power for Dragonfly Spies http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/b ... er-fo.html

DARPAs Sex Slave Insects http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/d ... -slav.html

Robo Fly, Built to Spy http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/h ... netar.html

Robo-Critter for River War http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/m ... stake.html

Military Cyborg Menagerie http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/t ... _flyi.html

Cyborg Flying Rats Invade China http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/c ... ing_r.html

Cyborg Pigeons Revealed! http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/c ... eons_.html

Bug Eyes, Bat Ears for Mini-Drones http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/b ... _for_.html

DARPA

http://www.darpa.mil/

DARPA HYPERSONIC VEHICLE ADVANCES TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

August 11, 2011

HTV-2 collects unique data during several phases of second flight

Today, DARPA attempted to fly the fastest aircraft ever built. The Agency’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is designed to fly anywhere in the world in less than 60 minutes. This capability requires an aircraft that can fly at 13,000 mph, while experiencing temperatures in excess of 3500F. The second test flight began with launch at 0745 Pacific Time. The Minotaur IV vehicle successfully inserted the aircraft into the desired trajectory. Separation of the vehicle was confirmed by rocket cam and the aircraft transitioned to Mach 20 aerodynamic flight. This transition represents a critical knowledge and control point in maneuvering atmospheric hypersonic flight. More than nine minutes of data was collected before an anomaly caused loss of signal. Initial indications are that the aircraft impacted the Pacific Ocean along the planned flight path.

“Here’s what we know,” said Air Force Maj Chris Schulz, USAF, Ph.D., DARPA HTV-2 program manager and PhD in aerospace engineering. “We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It’s vexing; I’m confident there is a solution. We have to find it.”

“Prior to flight, the technical team completed the most sophisticated simulations and extensive wind tunnel tests possible. But these ground tests have not yielded the necessary knowledge. Filling the gaps in our understanding of hypersonic flight in this demanding regime requires that we be willing to fly,” said DARPA Director Regina Dugan. “In the April 2010 test, we obtained four times the amount of data previously available at these speeds. Today more than 20 air, land, sea and space data collection systems were operational. We’ll learn. We’ll try again. That’s what it takes.”

According to Schulz, three technical challenges exist within this HTV-2 flight regime. They are categorized as aerodynamic; aerothermal; and guidance, navigation and control. And each phase of flight introduces unique obstacles within these areas.

“To address these obstacles, DARPA has assembled a team of experts that will analyze the flight data collected during today’s test flight, expanding our technical understanding of this incredibly harsh flight regime,” explained Schulz. “As today’s flight indicates, high-Mach flight in the atmosphere is virtually uncharted territory. ”

In the coming weeks, the assembled independent Engineering Review Board will review and analyze the data collected. This data will inform policy, acquisition and operational decisions for future Conventional Prompt Global Strike programs—the goal of which, ultimately, is to have the capability to reach anywhere in the world in less than one hour.

http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Rele...KNOWLEDGE.aspx

Are the raw milk raids to distract from something far more deadly to farming?

Posted on August 17, 2011
17 Comments
By William Davis

People have been saying that the FDA goofed because their attacks on Rawesome and California’s cease and desist orders for goat herders have galvanized public attention to the issue of raw milk and safe food. But when corporate media gives time to grass roots anti-corporate issues, there is usually a purpose.

Just as the New York Times and other corporate outlets appeared to be muck raking about industrial agriculture with all their stories on the terrible, contaminated conditions there as the food safety bills were on the table in Congress, it was not to ensure the small farmers became a greater source of food but to create sense of public outrage in order to push through a devastating corporate bill.

Not once did the NY Times publish articles on how the bills threatened farmers, though it was blatant that they did, or on how corrupt the FDA was, or about the fact that a Monsanto lawyer and VP was put in charge of all food and farms. And now that the Food Safety Modernization Act has passed and that same Monsanto person is ordering raids against safe food across the country, the NY Times is also silent.

So, if there is big media attention on FDA raids now, one is compelled to wonder what are they pulling farming, food and health advocates’ attention from?

A good guess is the gargantuan thing the USDA is doing to farmers and ranchers and anyone with so much as a chicken. Jim Hightower, former agricultural commissioner in Texas back when such people actually cared about farmers, has called the USDA plan “lunatic.”

The USDA program was once called NAIS (the National Animal Identification System) but was so detested by farmers and ranchers that the government had to back off. They did, momentarily, since 90% of the farmers at Vilsack’s listening sessions were vehemently opposed. The USDA promised to take that into consideration.

They did. They changed the name to “traceability,” hoping to slip it through now, hoping farmers are worn out from the last go-round, hoping the public won’t notice, and perhaps hoping the raw milk raids will keep farmers, and the public who strongly supports them, occupied.

NAIS, or traceability, had been promised as voluntary but the USDA is bringing it back as mandatory. It had been promised to ranchers that their brands would serve as identification but the USDA flat out lied about that.

“USDA did not have to attack our industry’s hot-iron brand or add younger cattle to the proposed rule in order to improve animal disease traceability in the United States, but we believe it has chosen to do so to appease the World Trade Organization and other international tribunals,” said R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard recently.

Hightower’s article makes clear that this animal ID plan to track down deadly animal diseases is not about diseases at all. Neither is the USDA’s decision to locate a germ lab in Tornado Alley over the objections of ranchers and scientists who say it can cause a leak and set off diseases, or in trying to bring in cattle from Brazil where a disease is active now, once again over the objections of ranchers working to keep their animals healthy.

So what is this USDA program that is rousing all this resistance and all this lying on the USDA’s part? Hightower says it is a system that “would compel all owners of [farm] animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every ‘event’ in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance.”

Whoa. It does so many, many objectionable things, one almost naturally skips right over the far and away most poisonous part. Putting aside the onerousness and impossibility of logging and reporting all events and movement of animals and the huge fines, the real kicker is this: it would “compel all owners of [farm] animals register their premises….”

Mr. Hightower is mistaken, however, that the information would be put “in a federal database.” It would be into a privately-owned corporate database, out of reach of a public records request. Farmers raise this central question in a highly informative article called The Amish and the bailout?

A few urban folk may still picture farmers as hay-chewing rednecks, but clearly they were thinking hard as they chewed because they appear to have been sharp as pitchforks at sniffing out what may be the largest government trickery in US history.

What, farmers ask, are “premises?” It is not an international term? And with premises, is a person merely a stakeholder in land, not an owner? Is this, farmers inquired of the USDA, different from “property” which is a constitutional term in which one owns one’s land? And in signing onto premises, wouldn’t farmers be signing their land onto an international contract and in the process be losing their property rights as landowners but become mere stake holders?

And for whom would they be holding the stake?

Some think a good guess might be the IMF, the Fed, the World Bank, or even the Chinese. George Soros has been buying up farmland across the midwest at low prices after the floods. He is also selling gold and buying farmland. Land is where it’s at.

Do the bankers who took our homes, our jobs, our manufacturing, our economy, now want the land itself?

Sometime back, a man named Wayne Hage suggested that our land is collateral on the national debt.
Is that correct? Does President Obama’s Executive Order 13575 further these aims?

Is the USDA forcing our farmers and ranchers (and any of us with a chicken) into international contracts in readiness for a government default? Funny how that sounds remarkably like the Rockefellers’ (bankers) UN Agenda 21. No property rights and no people on the land at all. Have the bankers and corporations created the debt which pushed us into debt in the first place, set the country up for a default in order to take over our land?

The right to choose our food is a fundamental human right and people are now realizing it’s at risk, but there can be no food and thus no rights at all, without the land.

Stopping premises ID comes first. It’s everything.

Ignore the occasional misplaced concern about pesticides and golf courses, and remember that these conservatives saw the fundamental threat of UN Agenda 21 long ago, so even if they drop the dart a few times, they get the bulls-eye when they throw. This video on UN Agenda 21 shows what is planned with land and property rights for everyone.

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/201...ly-to-farming/

FDA TO SUPPLEMENTS: DROP DEAD

By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of Tyranny" and "Global Censorship of Health Information"
August 22, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

The FDA is aggressively reducing the size and scope of the dietary supplement industry, culling from its ranks many small, innovative producers to pave the way for an ultimate assumption of market control over basic vitamins and minerals by pharmaceutical companies. For decades the FDA employed direct, blunt tactics to force supplements off the market or make them available only by prescription, ranging from efforts to declare nutrients above certain dose levels unlawful to sell except as drugs to efforts to define dietary supplements as unapproved food additives (on the ridiculous theory that a gel cap is a food and the nutrients within in it are food additives). Those efforts failed miserably because they appeared to the public transparent attempts to take their supplements away. The current FDA approach to remove supplements from the market does not offend public sentiment because it proceeds under the guise of safety without ever having to prove a product actually unsafe. That approach is causing the supplement company carcasses to form heaps along the regulatory road.

Unwisely, major dietary supplement companies, through their trade association the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) (since renamed Natural Products Association (NPA)), drafted a lengthy document calling for FDA to adopt rules mandating process controls over every aspect of dietary supplement manufacture, holding, and distribution, the so-called current Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines. Misunderstanding the relative strength of the dietary supplement lobby at the FDA and the amount of power conveyed to FDA through the proposal, many leading supplement makers thought the new regulations would force small firms out of the market, achieving an anti-competitive goal. They failed to appreciate that the primary regulate at the FDA, and the one that has the agency as its captive, is the drug industry. Consequently, FDA with pleasure adopted the cGMPs but proceeded to enforce them in ways that are enormously costly, adversely affecting all companies, big and small, in the industry, to the great benefit of those, like the pharmaceutical companies, that rely on economies of scope and scale in standardized mass manufacture of drug and supplement products that already satisfy these same kinds of regulations. When fully implemented, the GMPs are estimated by the FDA itself to result in a reduction of some 25% of the companies in the dietary supplement industry. An economic assessment my firm had commissioned of the impact yielded a higher estimate, some 30% of supplement companies.

In addition, under Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, FDA has selectively changed its enforcement priorities and policies to be far more aggressive, protecting the agency’s favored regulatee, the drug industry, from all but nominal actions while slamming supplement companies even for minor infractions of the rules. During the Bush Administration, the FDA required its district offices to obtain approval from the FDA Chief Counsel’s office before initiating an enforcement action against a company. Commissioner Hamburg eliminated that requirement, enabling district offices to proceed as desired against supplement companies. Indeed, she stepped up enforcement, investigating far more companies and issuing far more warning letters than her predecessors. She also approved agency reliance on draconian consent decrees (forcing those accused of wrong-doing to face criminal charges or agree to a multi-year system of FDA oversight that forces the accused to hire outside counsel beholden to the FDA to review all company labels and labeling and report to the FDA and permits random agency inspections at the company’s expense, among other costly strictures).

Adding to those changes, the Food Safety Modernization Act invites FDA to hire some 30,000 new investigators, forces all food companies to register with the FDA for the first time in American history, and compels companies to pay the cost of all reinspections of food facilities with the proceeds going to pay for additional inspections.

While all of those measures would appear enough to force out of existence a significant number of supplement companies, FDA just recently added yet another weapon to its arsenal against supplements: the New Dietary Ingredient guidance. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, a New Dietary Ingredient is presumed adulterated and unlawful to sell unless (1) it is a dietary ingredient in food that has not been chemically altered or (2) it has been the subject of a petition to FDA and the agency registers no objection to its entry into the market. In its guidance, FDA has vastly expanded the definition of chemical alteration, so that far more ingredients must be the subject of advance FDA approval to be lawful to market.

As counsel to the Alliance for Natural Health—USA, my firm commissioned Dr. Joanna Shepherd Bailey, professor of law and economics at Emory University, an expert in assessing the impact of regulation, to determine the impact of the FDA’s New Dietary Ingredient guidance. She determined that if fully implemented by supplement companies, the guidance would cause approximately 50% of dietary supplements currently on the market to be unlawful to sell. The guidance would cause over 100,000 people in the industry to lose their jobs. Revenue losses would be in the billions.

When we examine the history of law, policy, and enforcement under President Obama’s FDA, we see aggressive regulatory enforcement that is having the effect of destroying businesses, sacrificing jobs, and denying consumers access to health enhancing nutrients. The beneficiaries of the FDA’s supplement wrecking ball are the large pharmaceutical companies who, like Cheshire cats, sit on the fence, eyeing the developments with smiles, waiting to pounce and fill the void once the supplement companies have been sufficiently culled by big pharma’s help mate.

© 2011 Jonathan W. Emord - All Rights Reserved

Jonathan W. Emord is an attorney who practices constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies. Congressman Ron Paul calls Jonathan “a hero of the health freedom revolution” and says “all freedom-loving Americans are in [his] debt . . . for his courtroom [victories] on behalf of health freedom.” He has defeated the FDA in federal court a remarkable eight times, six on First Amendment grounds, and is the author of Amazon bestsellers The Rise of Tyranny, and Global Censorship of Health Information. He is also the American Justice columnist for U.S.A. Today Magazine. For more info visit Emord.com.

Website: Emord.com


E-Mail: jwemord@gmail.com


http://newswithviews.com/Emord/jonathan206.htm

Convince Reluctant Loved Ones To Prepare

August 22, 2011 by David Morris

Encourage your loved one to purchase nonperishable food items to save for a rainy day.

Once you realize how important and urgent it is to prepare your family for disasters, getting loved ones on board can be one of the most frustrating and heartrending parts of the process. Whether it is getting someone in your own house to “see the light” or getting a friend or loved one to take threats seriously, this can cause almost as much stress as the disasters you’re trying to prepare for.

I’ve got a couple of approaches that I want to share with you today that will help you with people who have investments or see the wisdom in saving.

I was listening to Dave Ramsey’s financial radio show on the way home earlier this week, as I often do. He was suggesting, as usual, that someone needed to follow his steps to financial peace.

The first step that he suggests is to get a $1,000 emergency fund. Interestingly enough, the reason for doing this is “for those unexpected events in life that you can’t plan for… It’s not a matter of if these events will happen; it’s simply a matter of when they will happen.”

The second step is to pay off all debts except the house.

And the third step is to build up three to six months of savings to serve as an emergency fund.

I can’t remember ever talking to anyone who thought that having an emergency fund was a bad idea. Even people who are dead set against preparedness or even simple food storage will agree that having a rainy day fund is a smart idea.

I’d venture to say that every adult has either benefited from having an emergency fund or wished that they had one at some point in his life. I’ve experienced both of those situations, and I can tell you that when you find yourself in “emergency” mode, you will always wish you had more in your emergency fund than you do.

Most people stop with the thought that an emergency fund is a good thing. But if you peel this onion back a little bit, it opens up a whole new way of looking at emergency funds/rainy day funds and preparedness and will give you a solid foundation for talking about preparedness with someone who believes in having an emergency fund.

Let’s start by looking at the kinds of expenses that people think they’ll use their emergency funds for. In many cases, it’s for a car repair or medical expenses. But in today’s environment of high unemployment, people generally accept the fact that they might be using their emergency fund to pay for basic necessities like food, shelter, fire, water and possibly fuel for transportation after losing their job(s).

Forget about the fact that there may be a regional disaster; people lose jobs every day and experience their own personal emergencies. Unemployment rates are on the news almost every day. And if you know more than 10 people, chances are very high that you know someone who’s lost his job in the past year or two. The loss of a job is much more realistic and easier for the general public to accept than the possibility of a failure of the electrical grid, rioting, fuel or food shortages, or any other major disaster that could cause a breakdown in civil order.

So, if you’re talking with someone who has an emergency fund set aside for a rainy day, ask him if he found himself in a situation in which he needed to use it, if some of that money would go to buy food.

This makes sense for a few reasons, namely:

1. If he simply buys larger quantities of the items he currently eats, there’s a good chance he will save money. If he has three to six months of expenses set aside, then he is already planning on spending a portion of that money on food. There is no additional expense to holding some of his emergency fund in food rather than dollars.
2. If the disaster that causes him to tap into his emergency fund causes a breakdown in the supply chain for stores, he will be able to eat his emergency fund if some of it is in food rather than dollars.
3. If he is keeping his emergency fund in the bank and there is an emergency that affects the banking system, he is stuck. If he converts some of his emergency fund from dollars to food, then he will still be able to feed himself.
4. This is one of the most important points: food inflation. If you convert some of your emergency funds to food right now, you could get significantly more for your money than if you wait until an emergency happens. Food prices might go down; but droughts in China, bad U.S. money policies causing a weaker dollar and wasting farmland and corn to produce ethanol will all serve to keep food prices high and possibly push them higher.

You might need to actually pull out a pad of paper and write out some numbers on this. Let’s say that the person you’re talking with has $3,000 in his emergency fund. Ask him how much of that he would be willing to spend on food in an emergency. Let’s say it’s 20 percent, or $600. It may be more or less, but let’s use $600.

Whatever number he comes up with, ask him if there’s any reason why he wouldn’t want to go ahead and buy $600 of nonperishable foods before the prices go up.

If the light clicks with food, you can use the same line of reasoning to get him to keep extra fuel for his car, grill and heating system on hand, as well as any other necessities. This isn’t a complete survival plan, but it is a good, solid baby step.
Preparedness as Asset Allocation and Diversification

Asset allocation and portfolio diversification are strategies financial planners have been pushing for years to try to protect their clients from market risk. One oversimplified way of looking at it is that someone in his 20s who’s saving for retirement can stick all of his money in high-risk investments that have the potential for high rewards. As you get older and have less time to recover from any losses in your retirement account, you allocate a bigger and bigger percentage of your retirement money to conservative investments.

I recently talked with a gentleman who sells ranches and ranchettes who uses this exact strategy to sell properties. He’ll ask people how much of their retirement they have in very conservative investments that aren’t making them any money. When they give him a number, he figures out how big of a ranch or ranchette they could buy and stock with the same money in case TSHTF. Normally, they are people who have car insurance, homeowners insurance, health insurance, life insurance and sometimes long-term care insurance. This is simply a way of converting money that isn’t doing anything for them into SHTF insurance.

If you or a loved one has a big nest egg, this may be an approach you can take to talk with them about preparedness that will ring true with them.
If you aren’t at the stage in life at which you have money to go out and buy land, but you are saving for retirement and some of your money is going into very conservative investments, you might want to take some time and look at food storage and preparedness items as a great way to diversify your savings.

Are you a financial planner or stock broker and a prepper? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this approach. Have you used this approach to get to where you are today? Have you used this approach to get loved ones to buy into preparedness? Please share your experiences below. Do you have other strategies that you’ve used successfully to get loved ones on board with preparedness? Please share them below.

http://www.personalliberty.com/survi...es-to-prepare/

Recession Leads To Significant Decline In Childrens Economic Well-Being

August 22, 2011 by Marcy Bonebright

According to a new report, the child poverty rate in America increased by 18 percent between 2000 and 2009.

According to a new report, the child poverty rate in America increased by 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, which is essentially a return to the same level as the 1990s. This shows a significant decline in economic well-being for low-income children and families.

Released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in its annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, the report tracked 10 measures of child well-being, and found evidence of the recession’s impact on children — 11 percent of children had at least one unemployed parent, and 4 percent have been affected by foreclosure since 2007.

According to a press release, three areas of child well-being have worsened: the percentage of babies born with low birth-weight, the child poverty rate and the percentage of children living in single-parent families.

“In 2009, 42 percent of our nation’s children, or 31 million, lived in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty line or $43,512/year for a family of four, a minimum needed for most families to make ends meet,” said Laura Speer, associate director for Policy Reform and Data at the Foundation.

“The recent recession has wiped out many of the economic gains for children that occurred in the late 1990s. Nearly 8 million children lived with at least one parent who was actively seeking employment but was unemployed in 2010. This is double the number in 2007, just three years earlier. The news about the number of children who were affected by foreclosure in the United States is also very troubling because these economic challenges greatly hinder the well-being of families and the nation.”

However, according to the report, some areas have improved: the infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, teen birth rate and the percentage of teens not in school and not high school graduates.

http://www.personalliberty.com/news/...l-being-38888/

FDA: Would ban all nutritional and supplemental ingredients

Obama Attacks Nutrition

Alan Caruba Monday, August 22, 2011

While watching a television commercial for some prescription medication, have you ever wondered why something it states may kill you or cause serious side effects ever was permitted to be marketed to the public?

For decades I have taken a full range of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements every morning. I don’t get head colds or any unwanted side affects. In my seventh decade, I enjoy exceptional good health. An annual physical check up is always the same. I am fine.

Millions of Americans benefit from a daily regimen of vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements. Athletes use whey protein powders. Body builders take amino acids. Others augment food products that lack sufficient nutritional value. Their health and wellness is now threatened by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Banning Health!

On the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, the FDA published a 47-page document, that would ban all nutritional and supplemental ingredients by requiring them to file documentation involving multi-million-dollar testing and the regulations would be retroactive to 1994!

This will destroy the manufacturers of these products because most are small companies that could not afford such costs. It’s not like there is a vast body of information that demonstrates any threat to health from vitamins and minerals. Quite the contrary. There is ample information on their benefits. There are libraries filled with books devoted to this.

Who would benefit from such regulation of the natural supplement industry? Big Pharma. The same pharmaceutical companies that have a long record of putting forth FDA-approved medications that later prove to be lethal are looking to use the regulatory powers of FDA to literally increase levels of illness.
In the same way Obamacare has been demonstrated to not only be unconstitutional, but also a threat to the health of millions—especially senior citizens—this callous administration now threatens to remove from the shelves of stores that sell nutritional supplements, from pharmacies, and from supermarkets and other outlets, the vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements on which millions depend for wellness.

This constitutes a criminal conspiracy and Congress, which has ceded its law-making authority to the FDA, must hear from everyone in order to stop this assault on everyone’s health.

Frank Murray, the former editor of Better Nutrition, Great Life, and Let’s Live, is the author and co-author of fifty books on health and nutrition. They include Natural Supplements for Diabetes, Health Benefits Derived from Sweet Orange, and 100 Super Supplements for a Longer Life. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

One of Murray’s books, Sunshine and Vitamin D, notes that “With the hundreds of clinical trials published on Vitamin D in recent years—I read one study with 132 references—it is obvious that the ‘sunshine vitamin’ no longer has to play second fiddle to the other vitamins.” The same can be said for vitamins A, B, C, and E. All have amply demonstrated their value. Add to them, zink, potassium, selenium, and other mineral supplements. All those prostate advertisements are about herbal supplements!

The Obama administration that has made obesity its pet project is also famous for photos of the President eating every kind of fast food. It is rank hypocrisy, but the proposed FDA ban is literally life threatening.

Write, email, and fax your Representative and Senator to ensure that Congress intervenes with the FDA in the same fashion it is struggling to protect us against an out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency. In particular, contact the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.

Your life and the lives of your loved ones literally depend on stopping this attack on real nutrition.

Americans are losing the freedom they take for granted as Big Government intrudes on every personal choice they make. The Obama administration has demonstrated its total indifference to America’s senior citizens’ access to affordable medical care and now all Americans’ ability to access nutritional supplements.

You are being “protected” into an early grave!

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39686

FDA PROPAGANDA ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY THE DIETARY SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY

By Byron J. Richards, CCN
August 23, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

It is not surprising that FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg would use blatant and deceptive propaganda to attack the dietary supplement industry. As a self-proclaimed “zealot for the advancement of regulatory science,” Hamburg would like the consumer public to believe the earth is flat—and that dietary supplements cannot prevent and help treat disease. She is well-educated in science, especially neuropharmacology and the new genomic science, thus it poses a dilemma for her when study after study demonstrates the power of dietary supplement ingredients. These studies show that dietary supplement ingredients influence the human genome in ways that prevent disease as well as offer practical solutions to help treat most common, age-related diseases that afflict millions of Americans. Such diseases include type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many resistant forms of cancer.

Instead of embracing the nutritional gene science and ushering in a new generation of health, happiness, and wellbeing for Americans, Hamburg has chosen a return to yesteryear, a not-so healthy, happy time. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is doing everything in its power to prevent the truth from being told. Logically, we ask, what are her motives? One of them is clear—facilitating pharmaceutical takeover of many ingredients sold by the dietary supplement industry.

For as long as a hundred years, FDA management has been in a constant revolving door with high-paying Big Pharma jobs and the large agribusiness/food companies it is supposed to be regulating. This corrupt corporate culture pays lip service to actual safety issues while it uses the FDA as a vehicle to secure profits and wipe out competition. It is a flagrant abuse of regulatory power.

The FDA’s “public health” battle front is invariably against those who offer any alternative to the elite “FDA profit club.” In modern times this includes the dietary supplement industry, family/organic farms, and health professionals engaged in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Indeed, the dietary supplement industry in the United States is booming, with sales of $28 billion in year 2010. When you add in the natural/organic food industry and functional foods, that figure hits $117 billion.

The aging, baby boomer population is better educated than previous generations. While they listen to what the FDA and their doctors have to say, they are far more likely to ask questions and plot their own self-determined course of action. Use of CAM in the U.S. now involves 41.8 percent of adults, and that number rises to 61.4 percent for those struggling with health problems. As you can see, profits from failed and dangerous remedies sanctioned by the FDA and its crony alliances are rapidly diminishing. Big Pharma companies are desperate to get their hands on nutrients to help replace their plunging profits from expiring patents and a skimpy new drug pipeline.

The current battle in this ongoing saga centers on the FDA’s newly proposed regulations. The new regulations, known as “Draft Guidance for Industry: Dietary Supplements: New Dietary Ingredient Notifications and Related Issues,” were proposed on July 1, 2011. These regulations attempt to redefine which supplements can be on the market and potentially remove many of the best nutrients. Regarding their overall effect, these proposed regulations will cause many small and medium-sized American businesses to close and/or incur significant financial loss. Some large companies may survive, but with drastically reduced product offerings.

Big Pharma companies would be able to cherry pick numerous nutrient ingredients they desire. And most unfortunately, these proposed regulations will limit consumer access to affordable dietary supplements and dietary supplements in general. This is a diabolical regulatory proposal, falsely presented as a “needed” public health safety measure when, in fact, no such definable public health problem can be identified by the FDA that would otherwise be remedied by these regulations. The FDA’s illegal actions will be fought in court every step of the way.

I have explained the key points of this issue in two previous articles, “Senator Durbin & the FDA Viciously Attack Dietary Supplements” and “The FDA’s Scheme to Reclassify Nutrients as Drugs.”

The FDA’s Propaganda Toolbox

Propaganda is the intentional dissemination of false information to support or justify the self-serving actions of the individual or group. A central strategy of effective propaganda is something called the “Big Lie,” which if repeated often enough, people believe it to be true. In the case of dietary supplements, the “Big Lie” is the safety issue.

The American dietary supplement industry makes the safest products for human consumption in America or anywhere in the world—far safer than the food supply or FDA-approved drugs. This stellar safety record is now proven by the FDA’s own database of adverse event reporting for dietary supplements. It is an open and shut case; dietary supplements are the safest products consumers ingest. Thus, whether the propaganda attack against dietary supplements is coming directly from Hamburg, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), or the behind-the-scenes, Big Pharma masterminds, the “Big Safety Lie” is invariably the justification for their actions

Understanding the FDA’s NDI Propaganda

Effective propaganda always contains a half-truth or out-of-context truth, serving as the “credibility” for the propaganda. In other words, for her to launch a destructive NDI campaign against the dietary supplement industry, she needed an excuse. She found that excuse in a small group of criminals who were spiking products with drugs and selling them as dietary supplements. The FDA identified the problem and shut down this handful of operations. Such work by the FDA is obviously supported by the entire dietary supplement industry, as 99.9 percent of companies would never make such illegal products.

It is important for consumers to understand two points. This was not an industry-wide problem; it was isolated to a tiny number of bad actors. The FDA already has the power and authority to take action in these circumstances. They do not need any new regulations to perform the job that is expected of them.

The FDA, however, has taken this out-of-context issue and trumpeted it up to wage war against the entire dietary supplement industry. It has done so in a manner that is a flagrant and unconstitutional abuse of regulatory power.

Hamburg’s NDI propaganda campaign began on October 22, 2009 when she sent FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein to a supplement trade meeting to deliver a speech, telling the industry that the FDA would be using newly concocted NDI regulations for the entire industry to address this out-of-context issue, even though he freely admits that “this will not solve the problem of undeclared ingredients [meaning products tainted with drug substances].”

This convoluted attack on the supplement industry continued with a hostile and threatening letter sent by Hamburg on December 15, 2010. Echoing the same “safety” propaganda used by Sharfstein, she broadens her attack to include the 99.9 percent of safe products already on the market. She uses phrasing such as “other compounds…that do not qualify as dietary ingredients” [in her twisted opinion, for example, her ridiculous new definition for new dietary ingredients or NDIs], “deceptively labeled ingredients” [meaning the FDA’s suppression of commercial free speech when companies explain the science of how their products are effective], and “new chemical ingredients” [her code word for NDIs]. This is an aggressive, over-reaching attack on the entire dietary supplement industry, and it is unwarranted.

And then she uses the famous propaganda ploy of instilling fear by threatening the owners of dietary supplement companies with criminal prosecution if they do not do as she says. She declares, “Responsible individuals and companies should be aware that the government may initiate criminal investigations to hold accountable those who violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) [the dubious 1938 law that allows the FDA undue power to harass]… Responsible individuals, even if the individual did not participate in, encourage, or have personal knowledge of the violation, can be criminally prosecuted.” She actually has the audacity to threaten criminal prosecution for doing nothing wrong at all. What kind of a tyrant is she?

On July 1, 2011 the FDA actually issued its proposed new NDI regulations. In justifying the “need” for these regulations, the FDA states, “There are an estimated 55,600 dietary supplement products on the market, and FDA has received approximately 700 NDI notifications since we began reviewing NDI notifications approximately 16 years ago.

Additionally, the Institute of Medicine has estimated that 1,000 new dietary supplements are introduced to the market each year. These figures, coupled with recent concern by both the agency and industry regarding the presence of undeclared active ingredients in products marketed as dietary supplements, highlight the necessity for marketers of dietary supplements to submit NDI notifications as an important preventive control to ensure that the consumer is not exposed to potential unnecessary public health risks in the form of new ingredients with unknown safety profiles.”

In actuality, the reason there are so few NDI applications in comparison to the number of products on the market is because nobody, including the FDA for the past 17 years, has ever decided to interpret the 1994 DHSEA law to mean most products need an NDI approval. The FDA is now trying to create new law through regulatory interpretation in a manner that far surpasses its authority. Their interpretation is in direct conflict with the intent of the 1994 DSHEA law, concocting an unconstitutional regulatory framework.

Furthermore, making all companies spend tens of thousands, even millions, to comply with drug-like approval of ingredients that have been on the market for the past 17 years with a proven track record of safety will in no way stop anyone intentionally spiking products with drugs, which the FDA previously and openly admitted and already has the regulatory power needed to address any such problem. In other words, the premise for the need for these new regulations is based on bald-faced lies. The reasons the FDA is offering for needing new NDI regulations are pure propaganda. The actual reasons are financially and politically motivated.

The Iron Fist of FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg

On May 26, 2011, Hamburg was indoctrinating a group of aspiring public health students at Columbia University when she relayed her experiences dealing with the supplement industry during the H1N1 flu scare. She announces, “It was a little bit like playing Whac-A-Mole…you would shut down one and it would pop up somewhere else.”

And Hamburg is not just playing a game of hitting a mole over the head with a mallet, she is using Gestapo-style raids with armed U.S. Marshals against American companies—companies that have done no wrong, other than try to inform the public of the benefits of how nutrition can help them with their health.

On June 7, 2011, this was the fate suffered by a long-time, reputable manufacturer of acidophilus products, UAS Laboratories. It is very important for the public to understand that UAS Laboratories is a helpful and responsible America company—a small family business that over decades of very hard work has been able to help many people improve their quality of health.

Also in June, the FDA used federal force against an American company, Wyldewood Cellars, to seize an elderberry fruit juice based, again, on opinions and disagreements, and no evidence of any harm or threat to the public health.

Dietary supplement companies are not alone, as the FDA wrath has also spread to makers of natural foods with a special interest in raw milk. In May of this year, the FDA terrorized Amish dairy farmer, Dan Allgyer. And recently, they have been involved with a highly-publicized, federal-armed raid on Rawesome Foods in California, dumping milk down the drain.Let’s delve deeper. The Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (overseen by the Justice Department), through its gun-running fiasco known as “Fast and Furious,” has provided advanced weapons to Mexican drug cartels which has resulted in the loss of American life. All the while, the Obama administration’s FDA is busy using federal police force to terrorize supplement companies and steal their products, seize fruit juice, and pour their milk down the drain. Something is inherently wrong.

It is odd that Hamburg demonstrates such a hostile and aggressive—seemingly, even violent personality. After all, her elite psychiatrist father, David Hamburg, spent a great portion of his life trying to prevent aggression and violence in children so they would not grow up with such undesirable personality traits, in part hoping to prevent the next Hitler from emerging on the world scene. David Hamburg has also been a proponent of eugenics in this context, as he states in a speech as head of the National Institutes of Health, “The adverse effects of exceedingly rapid population growth are not only those affecting health, but also education, economic development, resource depletion, pollution, conflict and violence.” One might ask, where did he go wrong with his own daughter?

Furthermore, FDA “public health” campaigns are typically more about the hidden agenda than any real public health concern. For example, under Hamburg, the FDA has now taken on the “public health” initiative aimed at reducing the future population of U.S. children, embracing and acting on the political belief that an unwanted pregnancy (which by their estimates accounts for 46 percent of current pregnancies in our country) is a newly defined health condition. Taxpayers are slated to foot the massive bill for this public health agenda and will also get roped into paying for the same services in poorer, developing countries around the globe. The FDA will regulate who should live and who should not be born, all under the cover of public health propaganda.

A Brief Lesson in Health Regulatory History

Once upon a time there was a freedom-loving country whose scientists, engineers, and inventors were the envy of all other countries. A prosperous economy was built even though the country had scarce natural resources. It was powered by human ingenuity and free market competition, innovation that extended to the field of medicine. Doctors worked side by side with all manner of alternative and complementary health practitioners in a system of health that came to be known as the “freedom to cure.”

Along came a nasty war and that country lost its way. Defeated, its prosperous people were left in economic ruin. Out of the ashes of despair a “Pied Piper” emerged with a new plan, galvanizing large portions of the population to share a vision of a new world and restored prosperity. The good scientists, engineers, and inventors ran for cover.

This “Pied Piper” didn’t want a free people; he wanted a herd of followers. He wanted to control the health and mental health of a nation. Health freedom stood in his way. Natural health options were obliterated. He knew that if you could control the health of a nation, you could control the free will of that nation. An obsession with mind control followed, all in the name of the public health. Those with other thoughts and opinions lived in fear for their lives. Over the period of a few short decades the true freedom of an entire people vanished into thin air.

Yes, this is the history of Germany leading up to WWII, relying on the Gestapo’s use of fear, intimidation, and violence against its citizens to keep them in line.

More than a half century later the German people have never reclaimed their health freedom. Access to dietary supplements in Germany, and all of Europe for that matter, became a sinister regulatory joke—a joke that is not so funny, as the regulations are at the expense of their citizens’ health and wellbeing. This is the path that “regulatory science” has to offer, all in the name of “safety” and supposed support for the public health. The handwriting for health freedom in America is on the wall.

Freedom-loving Americans cannot afford to follow in the footsteps of German history. Unlike the Germans, we do have our rights granted by the U.S. Constitution. We must fight at every opportunity to see that those rights are preserved, and in so doing our freedoms, including our right to be healthy based on our own choices and preferences.

Take Action

Senator Orin Hatch (R-Ut), one of the original authors of the 1994 DHSEA legislation, is now providing wise leadership to the dietary supplement industry in the face of flagrantly illegal activity by the FDA, helping to organize industry leaders and companies. He is telling the industry to first file comments to the FDA until the October 3, 2011 comment period closes, then get ready to do battle in court with help from Congressional oversight of the FDA.

Additionally, the efforts of those in the industry must be widely supported by consumers for this course of action to be effective. If you value your access to a wide range of dietary supplements at affordable prices, do not just follow the herd. Rather, stand and be heard. Go to our TAKE ACTION page, file comments of protest with the FDA and let your Senators and Congresspersons know you will not tolerate what the FDA is doing. Spread the word and pass this and my previous articles on to anyone who values their access to dietary supplements, so they too can make their voices heard.

While there are some of us in the dietary supplement industry that will stand on principle and fight for what is right, there are many companies that need some friendly consumer encouragement to keep you as a customer of their products. Please bring this information to the attention of dietary supplement companies and health food stores where you purchase products. Ask them what they are doing to preserve their customers’ rights to a wide range of dietary supplements at affordable prices.

On September 8th 2011, once Congress has finished their summer vacation, grassroots organizations across America will launch a consumer protest campaign to the FDA and Congress, prior to the October 3rd deadline for public comments on the proposed NDI regulations. The FDA is listening and trying to gauge the strength of the opposition. Again, let your voice be heard and preserve the natural health options for yourself, your family, and the future generations of Americans.

TAKE ACTION NOW and AGAIN on September 8th.

© 2011 Wellness Resources, Inc. - All Rights Reserved

Byron J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned nutrition expert, and founder of Wellness Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and health-damaging failures of the sickness industry.

His 25 years of clinical experience from the front lines of nutrition have made him a popular radio guest who callers find impossible to stump. He has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional supplement formulas with a focus on thyroid nutrition, healthy weight loss supplements, cardiovascular nutrition, and stress management.

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E-mail: byron@truthinwellness.com

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