How do you take your money out of the bank before Jade Helm ushers in Martial Law?

© www.cryptlib.com
Who holds the key to YOUR money?

    

As Jade Helm forces are preparing to tighten the martial law noose around our collective necks, most Americans are on the verge of losing everything. [...]

With each passing day, as martial law draws near, your opportunity to get your money out of the bank is growing far less likely with each day you delay in taking your money out of the bank. This is the single most requested topic that people have asked me to comment on.

A Partial Awakening of the American People

Many of the citizens of our country are finally awakening to the unfolding tyranny. Yesterday, I received 37 emails from readers that in some form were asking me what they should do with their money because their investigations and observations agreed with mine in that the United States is headed towards an economic meltdown followed by martial law.

Take the Bulk of Your Money Out of the Bank

As the country races toward martial law and financial collapse, here are several major reasons to take the majority of your money out of the bank while leaving just enough in the bank to conduct business and to pay your bills.

Common Sense Dictates Taking Your Money Out of the Bank

Would you work for 50% over the next five years in order to keep your job? For most, the answer is a resounding, NO! Well, if you keep the majority of your money in the bank, that is precisely what you are doing.

If we take the word of the government that inflation is only about 5%, coupled with the fact that your savings account only pays a quarter of a percent in interest, it is foolish to leave your money in the bank. Ten thousand dollars in your bank account, today, will lose over half its value in less than five years. And in reality, most of you should be aware that inflation is closer to 12-14% because the government does not count the price of food and gas into their inflation figures, as if we do not have to eat or drive to work.

There are number of factors which lead to inflation, most of which end up putting money in the hands of the interlocked banking, oil and defense industry interests. When one understands what a mistake it was to abandon the gold standard and take on unlimited debt so that the aforementioned special interests could receive sweetheart deals courtesy of the U.S. government, one then understands that by putting most of your money into the bank, you are investing in your financial demise.

The Unsound American Economy Will Lead to a Banking Collapse

Presently, the United States has an $18 trillion dollar deficit, a $240 trillion dollar unfunded liability and credit swap derivatives debt in excess of $1 quadrillion dollars. The only backing that the U.S. dollar enjoys is the Petrodollar and that practice is being eroded by the Russian and Chinese led charge away from the dollar and into gold. There will soon come a tipping point where the American economy will die a sudden and violent collapse as the currency hyper-inflates.

It is far more likely that an economic collapse will be contrived instead of following the natural path listed above because the timing and severity could be controlled by the banksters.

When the Collapse Comes, You Will Not Get Your Money Out of the Bank

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that when you put money into the bank, you have transferred ownership of that money to the bank. This ruling represents government sponsored theft in the highest order, yet most of us are unaware that this happened.

As previously reported, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on November 10, 2014, ran a joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank (e.g. Bank of America) with operations in both countries that has landed itself in trouble. Also taking part in the "bank failure drill," which included a cyber attack upon several banks, was Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and the heads of a large number of other regulators, in a meeting hosted by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Also, as previously reported, on the morning of November 16, 2014, the G20 fulfilled the mandates of anew investment program. This new program creates a whole new paradigm and set of rules whereby banks will no longer recognize your deposits as money. Russell Napier is declaring November 16th as "the day money died."This declaration by the G20 declared your bank account to not be money and therefore, the FDIC does not technically insure your money because it is not money in the eyes of the government.

In April of 2013, the banksters began to seriously manipulate the price of gold as evidenced by the actions of "Goldman Sachs who told their clients earlier that they recommend initiating a short COMEX gold position." After investors were duped into panic selling, the banksters bought up massive sums of gold. The banksters were buying gold while getting out the American Stock Market and the megabanks. Why? Because the dollar is going to collapse and the banksters are seeking safe havens for their wealth. This move should have been a huge red flag for all bank depositors.

When Taking Your Money Out of the Bank, Be Cautious!

George Soros won't go to prison for taking his money out of the bank, but you could, if you are not very careful.

In a clear escalation in the ongoing war on U.S. citizens, the Justice Department has recommended that bank employees snitch on customers attempting to withdraw more than $5,000. The banks and the Justice Department knows what is coming and they are going to keep you from withdrawing as little of your money as possible.

Under present laws, it is permissible to withdraw $5,000. However, with the recent Justice Department dictatorial decree, if you do withdraw that much money, you find two cops sitting in your driveway waiting for you. And with the Civilian Asset Forfeiture laws in place, it is not likely that the recently withdrawn money will ever see the inside of your home.

It is mind boggling regarding how few people are preparing to act to preserve what assets they have remaining by removing their money from the bank. Because you have put your money in the bank, you no longer own your money. Taking what was your money out of the bank is no longer a matter of walking up to your friendly teller with a withdrawal slip and the teller cheerfully honors your request and you calmly exit the bank with your money in tow. In fact, your teller is trained to look for certain indicators in any cash withdrawal of any significance.

As you move to withdraw the bulk of your money, there are three federal banking laws that you should be cognizant of: Cash Transaction Report (CTR), a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) and structuring.

CTRs

Federal law requires that the bank file a report based upon any withdrawal or deposit of $10,000 or more on any single given day. The law was designed to put a damper on money laundering, sophisticated counterfeiting and other federal crimes. To remain in compliance with the law, financial institutions must obtain personal identification, information about the transaction and the social security number of the person conducting the transaction.

Technically, there is no federal law prohibiting the use of large amounts of cash. However, a CTR must be filed in ALL cases of cash transaction regardless of the reason underlying the transaction.

Before proceeding with the planed withdrawal of your money, I would strongly suggest that you read the following federal guidelines as it relates to CTRs as produced by the The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). All the federal regulations contained in this article are elucidated in this series of federal reports.

Structuring and SAR

There will undoubtedly be some geniuses whose math ability will tell them that all they have to do is to withdraw $9,999.99 and the bank and its protector, the federal government, will be none the wiser. It is not quite that simple. Here are a few examples of structuring violations that one should be aware of:

1. Joe has obtained $15,000 in cash from selling his truck. He knows that if he deposits $15,000 in cash, his financial institution will be required to file a CTR. Instead he deposits $7,500 in cash in the morning with one financial institution employee and comes back to the financial institution later in the day to another employee to deposit the remaining $7,500, hoping to evade the CTR reporting requirement. Joe should have used multiple accounts to conduct this transaction.

2. Sally needs $16,000 in cash to pay for supplies for her arts and crafts business. Sally cashes an $8,000 personal check at a financial institution on a Monday. She subsequently cashes another $8,000 personal check at the bank the following day. Sally is careful to have cashed the two checks on different days and structured the transactions in an attempt to evade the CTR reporting requirement. Sally should have made irregular deposits on staggered days.

3. A married couple, John and Jane, sell a vehicle for $12,000 in cash. To evade the CTR reporting requirement, John and Jane structure their transactions using different accounts. John deposits $8,000 of that money into his and Jane's joint account in the morning. Later that day, Jane deposits $1,500 into the joint account, then $2,500 into her sister's account, which is later transferred to John and Jane's joint account at the same bank. Again, John and Jane should have used multiple banks.

The aggregate total of the three transactions totals more than the $10,000 threshold, therefore, a SAR would be filed by the bank and you would be the subject of a federal investigation as all three of the above cases clearly violate the federal banking laws related to structuring. It is a federal crime to break up transactions into smaller amounts for the purpose of evading the CTR reporting requirement. In these instances, the bank is required to file a SAR which serves to notify the federal government of an individual's attempt to structure deposits or withdrawals by circumventing the $10,000 reporting requirement.

Structuring transactions to prevent a CTR from being reported can result in imprisonment for not more than five years and/or a fine of up to $250,000. If structuring involves more than $100,000 in a twelve month period or is performed while violating another law of the federal government, the penalty is doubled.

Enforcement

Much like the enforcement of our tax laws, the federal government's enforcement of its banking laws as it relates to CTRs, SARs and subsequent structuring is quite draconian. Civilian asset forfeiture laws come into play. The government can seize your bank accounts while it determines if a crime has been committed. The government can literally seize your assets in perpetuity without an order of the court. Of course, you could try and sue but you will be up against the deep pockets of the federal government and the case could take years. By the time your case is decided, the financial banking crisis that you are so desperately trying to avoid by withdrawing your money, could be over. So, proceed with caution.

Withdrawing Your Money From the Bank

The best way to avoid getting your money caught in the bank in the midst of a bank run would be to not let the lion's share of your money ever cross the bank. The simplest way to accomplish this is to prevent any form of deposit from going automatically into your account, as much as it is possible.

Secondly, you need to begin to pay cash for everything. Let's say that every 30 days, Bob cashes his check at the bank from his work worth $5,000 net pay. Bob leaves just enough in the bank to be able to conduct normal banking business. Bob walks out of the bank every month with the majority of the cash from his check. Bob should begin to pay cash for as much as he can, such as eating out, paying the electric bill (pay the bill in person), buying groceries, etc. When it becomes necessary to make a "big ticket" purchase, Bob could temporarily leave more in the bank to cover the writing of a check.

You would also be wise to open multiple banking accounts ranging from the big five megabanks to your local credit unions. You could withdraw much smaller amounts until the sum total of your accounts is greatly diminished and is in your possession. To open the accounts, simply write a personal check from your home bank. Of course, in these cases, the bank could hold the check for 15-30 days.

I cannot promise you that if you become the target of federal investigators, that you will not have your every financial move scrutinized and the feds will eventually discover the aggregate patterns of withdrawal. People who I interviewed told me that they believe that the federal government is in the process of getting the banking computers to "talk" to each other in a way that would reveal structuring.

If you ever become the target of a federal investigation, do not under any circumstances allow yourself to be interviewed by federal officials without an attorney present. In many cases, people go to jail and pay huge fines, not because they have committed a federal crime, but because federal officials state that they have lied or misled them. And if you do not have an attorney present, it is your word versus the federal government.

Where to Put the Money You Are Able to Withdraw From the Bank

There is some wisdom in putting your money where the elite do. Goldman Sachs shorting gold in April of 2013 (described earlier in this article), should be motivation enough the average person to convert their dollars into gold. And to do so, one does not even need to withdraw money from bank. One simply needs to write a check to the broker and this totally negates structuring, SARs and CTR reports.

The fact that the Federal Reserve spent several months purchasing mortgage backed securities should provide another clue as to where the elite think which assets will hold their value in a post-collapse economy. Start with paying down your mortgage. In a post-collapse nation, as long as you can pay your property taxes, you will hang on to your home. If you have discretionary income, real estate is the second best investment behind previous metals.

Please keep in mind that this is a post collapse strategy, there is no prevention for what is coming.

Certainly, you should purchase supplies that will sustain life (e.g. food, water, guns) with cash only. You do not want to leave a trail of what survival assets you have accumulated. For all other investments, write checks and bleed your account down to a servicable level.

Conclusion

The time to have acted to protect your earnings was two years ago when the elite began buying gold in earnest.

The forces of Jade Helm are engaged in massive and monumental preparations. Although not guaranteed, there is a danger that this summer will see a collapse of the dollar and your assets will be gone forever. Once Jade Helm 15, or something that follows on its heels, is in place and martial law is in effect, you will not have this opportunity again.

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Is the federal government ready for war against the American people?

© Liberty Beat

    

Prior to even the beginning of the Jade Helm provocation strategically announced months in advance for the purpose of triggering reactionary alarm amongst US citizenry fearing martial law and FEMA roundups that the feds have been planning for years (see 2010's FM 39.40 manual here), and now police killings in cities nationwide are ramping up urban tensions to the point that civil unrest is opportunistically providing the feds their sought after excuse to possibly declare martial law even before Jade's "summer games" commence mid-July throughout the US Southwest.

By design events are being staged in Baltimore and now Detroit with yet another police killing that may incite public protest and civil unrest that then "justify" calling out the National Guard.

Michael Snyder just wrote an article entitled "Are We Being Psychologically Conditioned to Accept Martial Law in America?" He documents firsthand accounts that the Baltimore police authorities may have purposely attempted to bait high school students into violence and that the mayor ordered police to stand down while the city began burning before they were finally dispatched to the scene when conditions had already unraveled out of control.

It also comes out that while pandemonium in Baltimore broke out, various state National Guard units across the nation were simultaneously undergoing training to quell civil unrest. It's all going down like perfectly planned clockwork. When police and military are training to gear up for civil unrest, somewhere in the country a major flare-up just happens to co-occur. This "coincidence" keeps recurring.

At the dog and pony show at the Bastrop County public hearing in Texas earlier this week, Lt Col. Lastoria, the Special Ops Jade Helm spokesman, admitted that during any military exercise an order to suddenly go live may be made at any time. And the feds wonder why there's such an uproar over Jade Helm. Tick, tick, tick as the time bombs go off in cities across the nation, almost as if in preparation synchronized just in time for Jade Helm 15 to go live.

Citizen participant Bob Wells wrapped up the Bastrop County Q & A session with the following comment:

It's the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany: You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police...They're gathering intelligence. That's what they're doing. And they're moving logistics in place for martial law. That's my feeling.

Everywhere you look nowadays Americans are witnessing their police militarily clad in full riot/combat gear armed with automatic weapons waging urban warfare that's effectively brought US Empire wars home to roost right here in the streets of America. Our nation observed its first taste of martial law when the entire city of Boston went into complete lockdown in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, yet another of the ongoing federally executed false flags specifically designed as the dry run Beta test on how Americans would react to unprecedented martial law conditions in an entire major metropolitan area. In the meantime, over the last couple decades the federal government has been militarizing local police forces across the nation with sweet deals arming them for domestic combat with war weapons and materials direct from US Empire war zones.

At the same time, we've observed US law enforcement brutally murdering unarmed Americans with little to no provocation at alarming rates... from a police ambush overkill caught on youtube last year of an unarmed mentally ill man peacefully camping out in the hills outside Albuquerque to cigarette street vendor Eric Garner senselessly choked to death in New York City to a defenseless baby in a crib nearly blown away by a police stun grenade in their home invasion drug raid in Georgia by another militarized police zealot to the unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer to another unarmed black man attempting to run away shot in the back by a trigger happy cop in South Carolina earlier this month to the even more recent victims in Baltimore and now in Detroit and coming next to a US city near you.

© Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
Demonstrators marched in Baltimore on Thursday in protest of the death of Freddie Gray.

    

A just released New York Times article cites the F.B.I.'s account of justifiable homicides by police officers since 2009 ranging from 397 to 461 in 2013. Criminologists and law enforcement experts agree the F.B.I. numbers are notoriously low, with other accounts considered more accurate ranging near 1100 deaths by police action per year. Last year when so many high profile cases made headlines were not included in this latest report. Additionally, mainstream media purposely tends to minimize the rising incidence of police murder. It's also important to note that the FBI only includes "justifiable homicides." For obvious reasons law enforcement avoids self-incrimination by failing to even track unjustified police killings much less track the race of those victims killed.

Young black males in America are obviously targeted for racial profiling and excessive violence far more than any other American. The increasing protests and tensions around the nation have as much to do with the police murdering more innocent Americans every year as what appears to be institutionalized lethal racism (that some have even called ethnic cleansing) as well as both law enforcement and the Justice Department's permissively unacceptable response in their gross failure to hold homicidal police officers accountable. Consistently the thin blue line protects criminals in its own ranks, backed just as consistently by the feds' protection. What does that tell you?

Over aggressive police on steroids who swore oaths to protect US citizens are instead brutally murdering them, not unlike the latest designated terrorist fake enemy on steroids ISIS who are actually US paid mercenaries fighting as US proxy war allies, yet for shock and awe effect are allowed to continue in full world video display busily beheading Christians and reporters. There's a definite crime syndicate link between the US government, the criminal activities of US law enforcement including the US intelligence community and the crimes against humanity committed by Senator McCain's friends ISIS. This international crime cabal pretending to be the US government is directly or indirectly responsible for all of this appalling bloodshed.

Led by the F.B.I. and emboldened by the practice experience gained in 2011 having systematically attacked and destroyed the nationwide Occupy movement, a nationalized movement to unleash increasingly hostile, mostly white police forces on mostly innocent, darker-skinned US citizens has led to the exponential rise of unarmed Americans being killed at the brutal hands of the US police state demonstrating by its actions that it's at war with its own people. The number of murdered Americans killed in this US police state war since 9/11 now exceeds the total number of US soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Since that number compiled a year and a half ago was 5000, taking into account the rash of recent deaths, in all likelihood more Americans have been killed by police than in America's two longest wars combined. As such, Americans are now 55 times more likely to die as US police state casualties than by so called foreign terrorists.

A 2008 US Army War College report sounded an alarm for the military to be prepared to suppress civil uprisings in America. Activist-journalist Chris Hedges wrote that the Army monograph warned:

'Violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,' which could be provoked by 'unforeseen economic collapse,' 'purposeful domestic resistance,' 'pervasive public health emergencies' or 'loss of functioning political and legal order.' The 'widespread civil violence would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.'

John W. Whitehead astutely pointed out that virtually every government agency unrelated to either the armed forces or law enforcement has morphed into a militarized SWAT team army:

Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department. As of 2008, '73 federal law enforcement agencies... [employ] approximately 120,000 armed full-time on-duty officers with arrest authority.' Four-fifths of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Department of Justice. Whitehead goes on to list the enormous stockpiling of bullets and guns that some of these "noncombatant" agencies have been accumulating. The ominous conclusion can only be that they will be used against fellow American citizens.

Ever since the inside 9/11 job when the US-Israeli crime syndicate assassinated 3000 Americans on US soil, the federal government has used "national security" to covertly strip away all our rights to privacy, all our civil liberties as well as our rights to due process. Meanwhile abroad, the US government unleashed its global agenda to destabilize nations and economies around the world, illegally invade, occupy, and murder millions of innocent civilians in the Middle East and North Africa in a heinous blood for oil endgame laying waste of one failed state after the next. By imperialistic design the King Midas touch in reverse has been in effect in every nation the US Empire intervenes, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen to Ukraine. This list of nation fatalities just keeps growing with no end in sight.

Throughout this calculated worldwide destruction the feds have been claiming the outright lie that their war on terror is making the world saferwhen in fact it's had just the opposite effect. The so called al Qaeda/ISIS "terrorist enemy" has only grown stronger and taken control over more territory in yet more countries than ever before (of course all the while secretly created, armed, trained, financed, supplied and supported by treasonous criminals in Washington and Tel Aviv). Squandering and decimating the US middle class tax base by choosing to wage its longest, most costly wars in US history at the sacrificial expense of its own people, the Ponzi scheme debtor economy lies choking, stagnant, long broken and unsustainable. As the bubble of the Federal Reserve's band-aid tactic relying on printing unlimited fiat money out of thin air to keep it going nears ready to burst, the United States of America and the American way of life now teeters on the brink of total collapse.

Hence, the tightening of the noose with fed up Americans sick and tired of being brutally victimized and betrayed by its crime cabal government that's now out to kill us law abiding citizens using the excuse of martial law to go on the offensive to quell the very civil unrest that the federal government intentionally created and caused in the first place. Washington's been not-so-covertly preparing for this day of reckoning ever since 9/11 to wage war against its own people. And through globalization what's been tragically happening here in the US has also been taking place insidiously throughout the industrial world - in Canada,Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Israel and most all of Europe. All these Western nations are controlled by the same oligarch globalists whose NWO agenda successfully fabricated and invented their war on terror in order to enact counterterrorism laws completely draconian in nature that effectively destroy our freedoms while enslaving us in the twenty-first century version of George Orwell's totalitarian nightmare come true.

Right now the globalists are pushing through the passage of their Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) that's also being kept secret under the worn out "national security" lie. The actual reason is our treasonous government is promoting a treaty that allows foreign corporations to literally override American law. Bloomberg faults TPP as nothing more than "a corporatist power grab." Ron Paul believes that TPP would severely undermine our national sovereignty bringing us one huge step closer to the New World Order of a one world government.

It's up to us citizens to resist the tyranny of a government loyal to its oligarch puppet masters. We must prepare for the impending US collapse by banding together as resourceful neighbors, developing and joining local food co-ops to feed and sustain ourselves. We should begin implementing local and statewide currencies and banking institutions that are responsive to the needs of the community residents. Stop patronizing the big banks. Continuing to be dependent on the central banking cabal will only push us into further debt while having ripped us off for centuries. Placing your money in local credit unions or smaller banks is the way to go. The state of North Dakota has led the way with starting its own state bank. Local bartering of goods and services can further promote community cohesion and independence.

Another defense against the totalitarian assault is at the battlefront where each state declares its own independence and fundamental rights from the federal tyrannical government. We currently have the required two-thirds majority of states calling for an unprecedented Constitutional Convention. It can be the tipping point to take back our local and regional power from the abusive feds by repealing the Patriot Act along with the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that eliminates our due process. We need to hold the judges and politicians who've betrayed the US Constitution that they swore oaths to protect, defend and uphold. They should be prosecuted for breaking the federal law prohibiting them from violating their sworn oaths.

Unfortunately the war against us has only just begun. We still have our Second Amendment right to defend ourselves, our families and our homes. Neighbors can stand together in solidarity supporting and defending their communities. We still have the World Wide Web and the power to instantaneously connect and unite in opposition against those bent on destroying us. A number of religions and churches preach to members that they are doing God's will when challenging their government when it oversteps its bounds and becomes oppressive and authoritarian.

We need to reach out to our brothers and sisters in uniform as members of both the armed forces and law enforcement and support them in acting on their conscience that may require them to willfully disobey unconstitutional orders from their command that could potentially be to kill their fellow citizens. Time and again in the past our brave military soldiers have stepped up and refused to comply with treasonous, morally reprehensible orders to do the evil bidding of their psychopathic leaders. Those nuclear armed warhead cruise missiles intended for preemptive strike on Iran in 2007 that were illegally ordered from high up in the Bush regime to be transported from a North Dakota airbase to a Louisiana airbase readily come to mind.

Similar to what the late great Nelson Mandela spearheaded in South Africa after the fall of his nation's sinister apartheid government, a truth and reconciliation commission can be set up to facilitate and motivate defectors inside the government to come forth to expose evildoing as well as to cease and desist the current diabolical agenda promoting world war and potential nuclear, biological and/or chemical annihilation of humanity.

Since so many of us citizens of the world are facing the exact same brutality and destruction from traitors within our respective crime cabal governments, we need to stand up in worldwide solidarity to fight for truth, international peace and global justice. In the face of these darkening clouds on our horizon, rather than cower in fear, passivity or continue sticking our heads in the sand in denial, as empowered, mindful citizens of the world we must realize that together we can collectively make a difference. We must choose light over darkness and life over death. The very survival of our human species may be riding on what we the people of this earth can do at this critical, dramatic late hour during these most dangerous, harrowing times.

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Dead zones: Places where no animal can survive found in Atlantic Ocean

© NASA Earth Observatory
Example of an ocean eddy (not from the study) as seen from space.

    

A team of German and Canadian marine biologists have for the first time ever witnessed so-called 'dead zones' in the Atlantic Ocean - places where no life can thrive, owing to there being almost no dissolved oxygen in the water.

Zones depleted of oxygen do exist in nature and have previously been discovered along populated coastal areas off the eastern and southern coasts of the United States and the Baltic Sea. But this is the first time such a place has been observed in the open ocean.

In a paper published in the journal , researchers outline the existence of pockets of low-oxygenated patches of water in the Atlantic Ocean.

They are vast - sometimes 100 square miles in size. They travel constantly and are also seasonal. One of the biggest ever discovered forms each year in the Gulf of Mexico.

What makes these things tick is a hodge-podge of nutrients and microbes delivered from elsewhere. It's a cyclical process: the nutrients are food for algae blooms, which in turn get devoured by microorganism. This creates waste, which is then eaten by other microbes. This process uses up a lot of oxygen, creating oxygen-free pockets.

The nutrient run-off here is a means of transportation. But if you're an animal or fish, there are only two options: moving and surviving, or staying and dying.

Dead zones are normally found in shallow water, where not a lot of mixing takes place. The Atlantic Ocean is obviously very different, which creates a puzzle.

Researchers found that these particular dead zones masquerade as 'eddies' - basically huge underwater ocean cyclones that spin into a vortex, practically no different to how weather sometimes acts above ground. They can twist uninterrupted for months on end. The spinning vortex creates a wall around the central core - a process, which quickly depletes oxygen from it, and so, a dead zone is born.

study author Johannes Karstensen of the University of Bremen says in the press release of the journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

What surprised him and the team was that the levels of oxygen depletion found previously in dead zones were way off: before the study, common estimates put dissolved oxygen at around 1 milliliter per liter of seawater. Karstensen and team though found the lower end of the spectrum in the Atlantic to contain only 0.3 milliliters.

The intensity of the phenomena is dependent upon the speed of the eddy, chemical concentration, weather patterns and the Earth's rotation.

The researchers worry that the existence of dead zones even at the center of the Atlantic could have an effect on people living on land, particularly in Cape Verde.

Kartsensen explains.

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Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, California, Idaho and Washington all jolted by significant earthquakes

© USGS

    

Did you know that Michigan was just hit by the worst earthquake that state has seen in more than 60 years? In recent days, there has been a series of alarming earthquakes all over the United States. Of course none of these earthquakes was anything like the massively powerful quake that just crippled the entire nation of Nepal, but many are concerned that these earthquakes could be a sign of what is to come.

All over the planet, seismic activity is increasing. In fact, I recently wrote about how the number of volcanoes erupting right now is greater than the 20th century's average for an entire year. At the same time, the surface of the sun has become very, very quiet. As you will see in this article, there are scientists that link the two.

It is believed that times of very low solar activity have something to do with a rise in seismic activity, and there is one scientist that is claiming that solar activity is declining faster "than at any time in the last 9300 years" right now. So what does this mean for the future of our planet?

Before we get to that, let's review some of the very unusual earthquake activity in the U.S. that we have been witnessing lately.

As I mentioned above, the state of Michigan was just hit by the worst earthquake that it has seen in more than 60 years...

If you thought you felt an earthquake on Saturday — you did. And it was one of the strongest quakes ever experienced in Michigan. Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey, said an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.2 and a depth of focus of 5.9 km was measured around 12:23 p.m. about nine miles southeast of Kalamazoo, near Galesburg. Dozens of residents in several different regions beyond Kalamazoo — from Mount Pleasant and Sterling Heights to Lansing and even as far as Cleveland, Ohio — called the WWJ Newsroom and reported feeling a rumble and the ground shake for between five and 10 seconds.

If that was all that happened, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But at the same time, unusual earthquakes are striking all over the country. For instance, check out what just happened in Texas...

North Texas was rattled once again with an earthquake early Sunday morning.

The USGS confirmed that the 3.2 magnitude earthquake struck about two miles north-northeast of Irving at about 10:11 a.m.

NBC 5 viewers reported feeling the earthquake in Irving, Dallas and here at the NBC 5 studios in Fort Worth near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

This follows a string of earthquakes in the area just last month.

And nobody really ever thinks of Mississippi as a place for earthquakes, and yet the state was just hit by two of them. According to the USGS, a magnitude 3.0 earthquake and a magnitude 3.2 earthquake shook up the residents of Canton, Mississippi over the weekend.

In addition, on Sunday morning Los Angeles was hit by a magnitude 3.8 earthquake...

A shallow magnitude 3.8 earthquake was reported Sunday morning one mile from View Park-Windsor Hills, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 4:07 a.m. PDT at a depth of 5.6 miles.

The quake was classified by the USGS as "light" but was felt over a wide area of the L.A. basin.

Not to be outdone, the Bay area in northern California was hit by a magnitude 4.0 earthquake on Sunday afternoon...

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake rattled San Francisco Bay Area residents Sunday afternoon.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake hit about one mile south of the city of Concord.

Of course it is not really a great surprise for California to get earthquakes. The state had been fairly quiet for several decades, but everyone knows that it is just a matter of time before "the big one" comes. Could these mid-size quakes be a sign that the region is starting to wake up?

Meanwhile, sizable quakes are also being reported in regions of the country that are not typically known for seismic activity. In fact, northern Idaho was jolted by two substantial earthquakes on Thursday night...

Two earthquakes — a magnitude 4.1 and a 4.2 — jolted north Idaho on Thursday night, with residents from northeastern Washington to northwestern Montana saying they felt the tremors.

It is fairly easy for scientists to explain the earthquakes in California. But what is with the quakes in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho? Something very unusual appears to be happening.

At the same time, volcanic activity is rising all over the planet. In fact, scientists believe that a submarine volcano off the northwest coast of the United States may have just erupted...

More than 80 scientists from around the world gathered in Seattle last week to discuss a thrilling development: For the first time, seafloor instruments were providing a real-time look at the most active, submarine volcano off the Northwest coast — and all signs indicated it might erupt soon. But even the researchers most closely monitoring Axial Seamount were stunned by what happened next. Beginning Thursday, April 23 — the day after the workshop ended — the new sensors recorded 8,000 small earthquakes in a 24-hour period. The volcano's caldera, which had been swelling rapidly from an influx of magma, collapsed like a deflated balloon. "All the alarm bells were going off," said Oregon State University volcanologist Bill Chadwick, who along with a colleague predicted last year that the volcano would erupt in 2015. "It was very exciting."

And one of the largest volcanoes in Hawaii is spewing lava for the first time in more than 30 years...

For the first time in more than 30 years, lava is flowing on the floor of Halema'uma'u crater in Hawaii.

Kilauea volcano's volatile lava lake spilled over the rim of a deep vent within Halema'uma'u crater several times overnight, lapping onto the edges of the vent like an overflowing pool.

So what is causing all of this to happen?

Well, could you believe that it is because the sun is being too quiet right now?

For a long time, scientists have known that there is a link between activity on the sun and seismic activity on our planet...

A 1967 study published in the Earth and Planetary Science journal, stated: "Solar activity, as indicated by sunspots, radio noise and geomagnetic indices, plays a significant but by no means exclusive role in the triggering of earthquakes."

A 1998 report by a scientist from the Beijing Astronomical Observatory... "Earthquakes occur frequently around the minimum years of solar activity."

As reported on NewScientist.com and numerous other science sites, including Space.com, the sun has recently entered into its lowest (minimum) actively levels in four centuries, coinciding with an increase in global seismic activity. "Solar activity is declining very fast at the moment," Mike Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at Reading University, UK, told New Scientist. "We estimate faster than at any time in the last 9300 years."

Very interesting.

So why aren't we hearing anything about this in the mainstream media?

In recent years, the sun has become extremely quiet, and now things have gone to a whole new level. In fact, it is being projected that we could shortly see a sun that is "completely blank"...

Everyone knows that high solar activity has a profound effect on the space around Earth. Less well known is that *low* solar activity can be equally transformative. This week, the sun is plunging into a quiet state with almost no sunspots. Only a few dark cores are peppering the face of the sun, and they are so small you might have trouble finding them in this April 30th image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory: Almost no sunspots = almost no solar activity. The sun's X-ray output has flatlined, and NOAA forecasters estimate a scant 1% chance of strong flares in the next 24 hours. If the sunspot number continues to drop, the sun could become completely blank.

If we have indeed entered a time of decreased solar activity, that could mean that seismic activity on our planet will continue to increase.

This is something that I have been warning about for a long time. I believe that we are going to see enormous natural disasters both inside the United States and all over the planet during the next few years. I believe that at some point we are going to see natural disasters that are so dramatic that they will literally change the geography of nations.

So what do you think? Do you believe that we have entered a time of increased seismic activity? Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

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USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 4.0 - San Francisco Bay Area

© USGS

    

Geographic coordinates:
37.968N, 122.030W

Magnitude: 4.0

Depth: 14 km

Universal Time (UTC): 3 May 2015 22:13:19
Time near the Epicenter: 3 May 2015 15:13:19

Location with respect to nearby cities:
1 km (1 mi) S of Concord, California
3 km (2 mi) NE of Pleasant Hill, California
7 km (4 mi) NNE of Walnut Creek, California
8 km (5 mi) WNW of Clayton, California
82 km (51 mi) SW of Sacramento, California

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Israel, like America, allows their cops to brutalize anyone with dark skin and the people are fed up

© AFP
Ethiopian protesters scuffle with Israeli security forces in the city of Tel Aviv, on May 03, 2015, during a demonstration against police brutality and institutionalized discrimination.

    

Israeli police forces have clashed with Ethiopians protesting against the Tel Aviv regime's racism and police brutality. Sunday's clashes erupted in the city of Tel Aviv on Sunday as Israeli forces fired stun grenades and tear gas to disperse thousands of Ethiopians, who had taken to the streets to voice anger against institutionalized discrimination and police violence.

Some demonstrators threw stones and glass bottles after attempting to storm the municipality building. According to local media reports, at least 20 policemen and several protesters were injured during the clashes.

Demonstrators were chanting and holding up signs reading, "A violent policeman must be put in prison" and "We demand equal rights".

The event's organizers reportedly put the number of people attending the rally at 10,000. Ethiopian demonstrators blocked major arteries and junctions in central Tel Aviv, vowing to continue rallies until their demands are met.

They are calling for an investigation into racism and violence exercised by Israeli police against Africans. A similar march was held on April 30 in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) during which Israeli security forces clashed with the Ethiopian protesters. The rally was held after a video emerged earlier showing an Ethiopian being beaten by police in a racist attack.

Ethiopians have long complained about unfair treatment and police violence in Israel. Thousands of Jews of Ethiopian origin, who are living in the occupied Palestinian territories, are treated as third-class citizens.

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Unbelievable: Young girl dies while in police custody, cops offer no explanation, media silent

Shenenque Proctor, 18 years old at the time of her death

    

A young African American woman from Brighton, Alabama recently died in police custody. Police have still refused to provide any reasonable explanation for the cause behind her death. We were among the first and only news sites to report on the death of Sheneque Proctor. But we honestly expected mainstream coverage of the tragic death of this 18-year-old woman to follow, especially given how widely our report on her death circulated.

We are used to being among the first to cover cases of police brutality and injustices, only to see the mainstream, corporate media catch on weeks or sometimes months later. But this time something is different. Unlike our early coverage of John Crawford, or Tamir Rice, the story of Sheneque Proctor continues to be ignored by the mainstream media, in spite of the numerous similarities to high profile cases like that of Eric Garner.

A new petition has begun circulating in response to Proctor's death at the hands of police officers. Many have begun referring to Proctor as the "female Eric Garner," not to diminish her unique life, personality and death, but instead to highlight how the media is ignoring the death of an African American woman with asthma in police custody.

The petition demands a federal and state investigation into the death of the 18-year-old, who died in the Bessemer City Jail after she was arrested on November 1st. She was at a Bessemer hotel at a party with friends when police arrived and arrested her for "disorderly conduct," according to her aunt, Tracy Rodda. Early the next morning, Proctor was found dead in her jail cell, after having complained of problems with asthma which police apparently refused to take seriously.

Bessemer City Attorney Shan Paden commented, "I know the case. I know we had a death in the jail. Erring on a conservative side, not to protect the city but to protect the rights of an 18-year-old, the city of Bessemer will not disclose any information."

The petition was created on Change.org last Monday, but has received relatively little attention. The petition explains the following about Sheneque Proctor's death and links it to unrest throughout the nation.

"The death of Black Men like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice is a clear indication that Black Lives are in jeopardy from Police who have declared it open season on Black Men," Karen Jones of Montgomery Alabama writes, in her description of the petition.

"Insult over injury, no indictment and a video which clearly shows officers using a choke hold on Eric Garner who loudly and clearly stated that he could NOT breathe was not enough to save his life," according to the online petition.

"Yet in Alabama where most of the historical landmark Civil Right Movements...we have lost an 18-year-old Black young woman under the hands of Bessemer Police," the petition continues.

Proctor's family says that she suffered from asthma, and had complained of being treated violently by Bessemer Police officers who made the arrest.

After Proctor made complaints, she was found dead in her jail cell the next morning, but Bessemer authorities refused to comment on the case. All media inquires have been referred to the State Bureau of Investigations, which spokeswoman Robyn Bryan said "is looking into the case."

"This family deserves some answers," the petition declares. "We don't need another 'I can't breathe' story. Her life mattered and still matters to her family. They deserve answers from the State Bureau of Investigations and the FBI."

The petition demands that State Senator Quinton Ross, State Representative Alvin Holmes and U.S. Representative Terri Sewell "request both State and Federal investigations in the death of this 18 year old Black female."

"We don't know what happened," said Proctor's mother Scherita to reporters. Her family is encouraging people to sign the petition and help put the pressure on for a thorough investigation.

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3.2 magnitude earthquake rattles North Texas

© WFAA
A 3.2 magnitude earthquake struck near Las Colinas in Irving on May 3, 2015.

    

The WFAA newsroom received multiple reports of an earthquake in Irving and Northwest Dallas on Sunday morning shortly after 10 o'clock.

The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed the tremor at 10:11 a.m. and initially measured it as a magnitude 3.1, but later revised the intensity to 3.2.

"We felt it in the middle of 9:30 mass at Christ the King Church in Dallas," Joyce Aldaba said.

Its epicenter was just southwest of the intersection of Highway 114 and Rochelle Boulevard in Northwest Dallas.

"My apartment just shook," tweeted WFAA anchor Marcus Moore. "Not fun!"

WFAA's Facebook page was immediately inundated with comments, like this one from Bruce Crone: "Man, did I feel that one!!! Seems like the biggest one that I have felt!!!!"

The strongest recent quake recorded in North Texas since 2010 was measured at 3.6 magnitude on January 7. There have been four earthquakes from 3.3 to 3.5 magnitude in the same area since 2012, and more than 60 quakes measured since 2010.

But Sunday's tremor clearly raised concerns for a lot of people.

"MacArthur and 183. Apartments shook hard!" wrote Samantha Guzman on the WFAA Facebook page.

Llaloha Lennick said she felt it in Northwest Dallas near Love Field.

"Story and Walnut Hill, lasted a few seconds, very strong!" Taylor Amanda Dorris wrote.

Niki McClure said she was at David McDavid Honda in Irving. "Biggest one I've felt yet," she wrote. "Feels like a big truck backed into the building."

Tonya Parker Wyatt at MacArthur Boulevard and Shady Grove Road had a similar assessment: "Felt like a car went through our apartment building, and the windows rattled," she wrote.

Other commenters said they could feel the earth move in East Dallas, Euless, Arlington, Carrollton, Farmers Branch and Fort Worth. Several Facebook posters worried about possible damage to their home foundation, but there were no immediate reports of structural damage or injuries.

Last month, an SMU study said drilling activities were the likely cause of a swarm of recent earthquakes in the Azle area. The cause of the quakes in the Irving-Dallas area remains under investigation.

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Credible evidence that Saudi's are using US made cluster munitions in Yemen

© HRW.org
An expended BLU-108 canister from a CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon found in the al-Amar area of al-Safraa, Saada governorate, in northern Yemen on April 17, 2015.

    

The Saudi-led bombing campaign against rebels in Yemen is using U.S.-supplied cluster munitions, endangering civilians and violating an international arms treaty, Human Rights Watch warned on Sunday.

According to the group, there is "credible evidence" that cluster bombs have been used in recent weeks as part of coalition airstrikes in Yemen's northern Saada governorate, a Houthi stronghold that borders Saudi Arabia. Through analysis of satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch charges that the weapons landed on a "cultivated plateau, within 600 meters of several dozen buildings in four to six village clusters."

Cluster bombs, which are composed of hundreds of submunitions, pose a long-term threat to civilians because they are designed to explode after spreading over a wide area. Often, the submunitions do not explode, causing the bombs to become de facto landmines.

Over one hundred countries signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions banning their use. However, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen all abstained from signing on.

According to a U.S. Defense Department contract, Saudi Arabia purchased 1,300 CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed cluster munitions from Textron Defense Systems, which is based in Wilmington, Mass. The shipment was meant to be completed by December 2015. Additionally, the UAE received an unknown number of CBU-105 from Textron Defense Systems in June 2010, HRW reports.

"Saudi-led cluster munition airstrikes have been hitting areas near villages, putting local people in danger," said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch. "These weapons should never be used under any circumstances. Saudi Arabia and other coalition members - and the supplier, the US - are flouting the global standard that rejects cluster munitions because of their long-term threat to civilians."

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Baltimore cop pepper sprays passive protester wearing 'F*ck the police' t-shirt, flings him to the ground

© AP video screengrab
Baltimore man on ground after being pepper sprayed.

    

In dramatic footage captured by the Associated Press, an unidentified Baltimore protester wearing a "F*ck the police" t-shirt is pepper sprayed before being dragged to the ground by his hair.

As the man stands impassively in the street with his arms at his side, an officer walks up to him and, without provocation, sprays his face with pepper spray. As the man attempts to shake it off, not even reaching upwards to his face, the officer then grabs him by his hair and flings him to the ground as fellow officers swarm all over him.

After being dragged to the sidewalk another officer pours water on his face as he lays moaning on the ground, his hands bound behind him.

Leaning against the wall next to the man is a protest sign reading "Amnesty 4 Jailed Youth."

According to the Associated Press, the man was reportedly on the street after the 10PM curfew.

Watch the video below uploaded to YouTube by the Associated Press:

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Sucking spoilt milk from a bloated dead sow

    

With US GDP growth 'officially' back where it belongs, in the Arctic zone close to freezing on the surface but much worse in real life, for reasons both Albert Edwards and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (not exactly a pair of Siamese twins) remarked this week; that is, excluding the "biggest inventory build in history, the economy contracted sharply", it's time for everyone to at long last change the angle from which they view the world, if not the color of their glasses.

But 'everyone' will resist, refuse and refute that change, leaving precious few people with an accurate picture of the - economic - world. Still, for you it's beneficial to acknowledge that very little of what you read holds much, if any, truth or value. This is true when it comes to politics, geopolitics and economics. That is, the US is not a democracy, it is not the supreme leader of the world, and the American economy is not in recovery.

Declining business investment, a record inventory build and extreme borrowing to hold share prices above water through buybacks, it all together paints a picture of a very unhealthy if not outright dying economy, and certainly not one in which anything at all is recovering. But how are you supposed to know?

The entire financial media should change its angle of view, away from the recovery meme (or myth), but the media won't because the absurd one-dimensional focus on that perpetuated myth is the only thing that makes the present mess somewhat bearable, palatable and, more importantly, marketable, to the general public.

This has the added simultaneous benefit of keeping that same general public from understanding how sinister the myth really is; it can only be upheld by greatly increasing the debt levels which burden their shoulders, in hidden ways. If the media can no longer keep the consequences of the debt increases hidden, the game is up.

And there are undoubtedly many people who find it more important right now to profit from the whole scale distortion by central banks of what were once the financial markets, than they find it to know the truth and understand the system they owe their gains to. But that may no be all that smart; they risk losing their gains again overnight. You can't rely on what you don't understand. So here are a notes:

1 - There are no markets anymore (and therefore no investors either).

There are ways to make money, but that's not the same thing. Markets must of necessity reflect - the performance of - underlying economies, and to even pretend today's markets do that is preposterous. Financial markets these days exclusively reflect central banks' pumping money into their respective bankrupt banking systems, a practice poetically known as QE. Markets need to be functional in order to be called markets and if they don't we should find another term to label them with.

Or, in other words, present day western economies - and their former markets - are being artificially propped up by either making already poor people poorer today, making them poorer tomorrow, or both. It's the only way left to make things look passable. And those who still desire in these non-markets to call themselves 'investors' are merely little piglets sucking spoilt milk oozing from the teats of their mother sow's long-dead bloated corpse.

2 - You have no idea what anything is truly worth.

Central bank stimulus across the globe has fully demolished price discovery. And whether you like it or not, financial markets can not and do not function without it. Lots of people try to make us believe that central bank announcements have momentarily taken the place of price discovery, but that is nonsense. And if you don't know what any asset is really worth, how can you be sure you want to own it other than for myopic short-term reasons?

3- There is no recovery now, and there's not one around the corner.

The weight of our debt, just to name one thing, has kept us from turning that corner for 7-8 years now, and the weight is getting more forbidding, not less. Publishing falling unemployment numbers while out-of-labor-force data rise (to a record 93 million working age Americans today) is an insult to everyone's intelligence, not a sign of economic health. Whatever is seen as recovery or expansion is a testament to the power of illusion and propaganda, not the power of the economy. If you choose to look at the world from a point of view that focuses only on recovery, you're not going to understand what is happening, because there is no recovery anywhere in sight.

4- You can't trust anything your government and media say.

The entire apparatus is geared towards selling you a doctored image of the world you live in, instead of presenting you with reality. Not because as Jack Nicholson said "You can't handle the truth", but because you knowing the truth is not in the interest of those who run governments, nations and supranational organizations. You're caught in a trap somewhere between Goebbels and Orwell, and it takes a lot of energy to escape it, energy you will be inclined and tempted to instead use to improve your position inside the trap. Just like everyone else does. We are social animals, we are disposed to do as those around us do.

As I said above, you can't trust anything you hear or read about politics, geopolitics and economics:

- The US is not a democracy. You can't have a democracy and SuperPacs at the same moment. For the hundredth time: if you allow money into your political system, it will end up buying the entire system. And if you allow endless amounts of money to enter it, that process is greatly accelerated.

- The US is not the supreme leader of the world. Today's world doesn't allow for a supreme leader. Neither does it need one. Countries like Russia and China will not tolerate American supremacy to dictate what they do. Not economically, and not militarily. This is very hard to stomach for parts of American society, but they're going to have to get used to it. Going to war over these issues is pointless. Unfortunately, it increasingly looks like the entire globe will have to find that out the hard way. The very hard way.

- The American economy is not in recovery. I already mentioned the creative jobs numbers accounting. Also, without Fed intervention, asset prices (bonds, stocks, real estate..) would be much lower. This would have been a lot healthier for everyone, except for banks and their shareholders. But once QE is unleashed, there is no smooth exit possible. It will need to continue until it self-implodes.

At present, Japan is leading the way to economic self-immolation, but the US and Europe must inevitably follow. The only thing that helps is what the banks most resist: restructuring, cutting the leverage from the debt. But all we get is fantasy stories about how the crisis was left behind. Stories that of course all 42 million or so Americans on foodstamps and tens of millions of otherwise underpaid can confirm. Why am I even trying to show that, and why, there is no recovery?

We need to start thinking from the perspective of what we can and must do if and when that elusive and illusionary recovery is not going to happen. Decisions made from that point of view will substantially differ from those taken in order to 'produce' the recovery, which is the only perspective that exists in politics, media and indeed the minds of 99% of the population today.

We need to think about how we're going to lay a foundation, as solid as we can, under our societies now, with the means we still possess to achieve that, knowing there will be times when those means will be increasingly less available. We're not doing that, because we focus only on a world that does manage to attain a recovery. We truly think the world is one-dimensional.

Which is why, among other things, we strive to make individuals richer, and fail to see that this makes communities and societies poorer. Everything seems fine as long as we deny the bigger picture, and because we like things to look fine, we stick to that one dimension of our world that is ourself. And ignore each other.

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Death toll exceeds 7,000 with 14,000 injured; 101-year old man pulled from rubble alive in Nepal

© Reuters/Adnan Abidi
An earthquake victim walks past a collapsed temple in Sankhu, on the outskirts of Kathmandu.

    

The death toll after the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal last week, has reached at least 7,040, officials said.

A spokesperson from the National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed the death toll on Sunday. The number of injured has climbed to 14,123, with 6,512 of theses currently being treated in hospital.

The death toll will be "much higher," warned Nepal's Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat.

"There are still villages where we know that all houses have been destroyed, but haven't yet been able to reach. The aftershocks have not receded and we expect the final casualty numbers to climb much higher," he said.

Earlier, Nepal police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam spoke of 7,056 dead and 14,227 injured.

"We are continuing our search and rescue operations, " Bam said on Saturday.

Nepal's Home Ministry official Laxmi Dhakal added there is little hope of finding any more survivors: "Unless they were caught in an air pocket, there is not much possibility."

About 100 people in neighboring India, China and Bangladesh were also victims of the quake.

Miraculous survivors in Nepalese earthquake

However, police and army managed to rescue several survivors almost eight days after the earthquake struck. At least three people were pulled from rubble in Sindhupalchowk district, northeast of the capital Kathmandu, a home ministry official said.

Also a 101-year-old has been rescued from the rubble of his house after it collapsed, Arun Kumar Singh, a local police official told AFP.

"He was brought to the district hospital in a helicopter. His condition is stable," Singh said. "He has injuries on his left ankle and hand. His family is with him."

Rescuers have managed to pull out the bodies of 50 people from the area hit by a strong avalanche on Mount Everest. This includes several foreign trekkers. None of the corpses have been identified, Pravin Pokharel, deputy superintendent of police in the northern district of Rasuwa, said on Saturday.

© Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
A man arrives to feed pigeons at a temple damaged after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, May 3, 2015.

    

About 200 others, including villagers and trekkers, are still missing in the area, Uddhav Bhattarai, the senior bureaucrat in the district, told Reuters.

"We had not been able to reach the area earlier because of rains and cloudy weather," he said.

About 8 million people in Nepal (population of 28 million) have been affected, the UN said, adding that at least 2 million people still need tents, drinking water, food and medicine.

Some 600,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged and survivors are afraid to go home, fearing aftershocks.

"Hospitals are overflowing, water is scarce, bodies are still buried under the rubble and people are still sleeping in the open," Rownak Khan, UNICEF's deputy representative in Nepal, said in a statement, "This is a perfect breeding ground for diseases."

UNICEF added that children may be most vulnerable in the quake aftermath.

"With the monsoon season only a few weeks away, children will be at heightened risk of diseases like cholera and diarrhea infections, as well as being more vulnerable to the threat of landslides and floods," the UN body said.

On Sunday, Nepalese authorities shut Tribhuwan International Airport, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, to large planes flying in relief supplies and aid workers, officials said. According to Birendra Shrestha, the airport manager, big jets are now banned due to runway deterioration. Medium and small-size planes are still being permitted to land.

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Perception management: Deceptive labeling tricks and hidden ingredients in processed foodstuffs

    

You've probably heard that avoiding processed foods is one of the keys to staying healthy, but do you understand why, exactly?

Scottish author Joanna Blythman has written a behind-the-scenes exposé book, Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets, that delves into the details of what makes processed food the antithesis of a healthy diet.

If you have any concerns about the food you're eating, this is a must-read book. It will radically increase your appreciation of just how processed your food really is and enlighten you to many of the deceptive tricks the industry uses to fool you.

It's quite challenging to avoid processed foods as nearly all of us eat at restaurants occasionally. The only question is how much? After you read this book, I guarantee your motivation to avoid processed food will skyrocket.

Joanna is an award-winning investigative journalist, and that background served her well as she literally went undercover to get the inside scoop on what's really going on in the processed food industry. She actually carefully worked her way in and became an insider able to attend many of the member-only conferences.

"I have been writing about food for over two decades," Joanna says. "I've written six other books. They've dealt with the production side of food: how and what goes on in fields, what goes on in farms, how to tell a good chicken from a bad chicken, that kind of thing.

But I just knew that we weren't getting the full story. It wasn't about the production end. It was at the processing end.

We know quite a lot about how chickens are reared for our tables, but we don't know very much, or anything really, about how chickens nuggets are produced in a factory. I knew that we had to get to this information about processed food."

[embedded content]

Going Undercover...

Getting such information is easier said than done, considering how the food industry has created a near-impenetrable wall of security around its manufacturing activities.

Companies hide behind the rationale that processing methods are trade secrets, and that they're merely protecting proprietary information from competitors.

"They've gotten away with that for years. What that means is that unless you're a food industry insider, you're just not going to know what's happening behind the scenes," Joanna says.

So, to get the inside scoop, Joanna assumed a fake identity and managed to convince a smaller food manufacturer to provide her with a professional cover. Using that cover, she got an inside look into the "core" of the food manufacturing industry. And what she learned was surprising to say the least.

For starters, what non-insiders do not know is that there are a multitude of chemicals used in food that do not have to be in any way disclosed, as they're considered "processing aids." So besides preservatives, emulsifiers, colors, and flavors, which are generally listed, there are any number of others that you'll never find out the details about.

"I realized that there's so much going on behind the scenes of food manufacturing. Most consumers, we haven't got a clue, and we are not allowed to know. You can't even trust things that would seem to be the healthy choice," she says.

This is disconcerting, as many health conscious consumers now take the time to carefully read food labels. But what Joanna's research reveals that there's an array of additives that will never make it onto the label.

Surprising Truths the Processed Food Industry Hides from You

Do you eat processed meats like hamburgers, thinking you're eating mostly real beef? Chances are you're way off in your assumption. One type of meat process involves soaking butchered carcasses in hot water with added enzymes. This has the effect of releasing about another five percent of meat-like substance from the carcass.

This is then added into cheap burgers, sausages, and other processed meat products. Enzyme-treated blood products are also routinely added to lower-end processed meat products.

"What really got me were the things that seemed to be really natural... For example, I was amazed to find that there is a kind of coloring known as the cloudifier. It makes your juice look as though it's got more real fruit juice in it because it creates that hand-pressed, natural look," she says.

Enzymes are used in a number of different ways in food processing. For example, when eggs are pasteurized, they lose their color. An enzyme is therefore added that brings back the color of the egg.

There are at least 150 enzymes being used in food manufacturing, and they're rarely ever listed on the label. According to Joanna, there's typically at least one enzyme-modified ingredient in every processed food. Breads usually have five enzyme-modified ingredients.

Enzymes by themselves aren't intrinsically toxic. They're merely functional proteins composed of natural amino acids. But what they do is they mask and deceive you about the underlying process, fooling you into believing that you're buying something that you really aren't.

"The classic one is a mature cheese flavor. If you matured cheese the proper way, then you have cheese. You keep it for three months or six months, even longer, to develop that nice, mature flavor. But you can do that in a few days with an enzyme. You can create a fake flavor."

Most Processed Food Is an Imitation of the Real Thing

The goal of food technologists is to reduce the amount of real ingredients by finding cheap substitutes that mimic the authentic food. In doing so, chemicals and processes are used that turns the end product into something that looks, smells, and tastes like "good food," but really is anything but. Rarely is real butter used for example, because it's expensive. So they use additives that make the food taste like butter, but at a fraction of the cost.

"But they will still put in enough butter that they can put on the 'made with butter' label," Joanna notes. "Another thing I discovered is that most processed food wouldn't look at all attractive if it didn't have colorings added. It would be gray and beige...

Flavorings do two jobs in processed food. They cover up the unpleasant taste that comes as a result of processing. Flavor masking is one of the main reasons why food industries use flavorings. But they also use flavorings to try and give food flavor when it's been through a manufacturing process that has totally stripped it of flavor.

They have to try and add back something that sort of resembles the flavors that have gotten lost. Because food processing is high temperature and high pressure. Something has to be done to them to make them taste better again. That's the logic of flavoring and coloring."

What You Need to Know About the Clean Label Concept

She also exposed the industry concept of "Clean Label." The food industry realizes that consumers don't like long chemical-sounding names on the ingredients list. These names are known as "label polluters."

To avoid having to list the chemical names of additives, they invented a Clean Label concept, which is aimed at removing all the old additives and long chemical names, and replacing them with ingredients that sound better. "Carrot concentrate" instead of "coloring" is one example of a Clean Label swap.

A related issue is the extraction methods used for these healthy-sounding extracts. While antioxidants are healthy, plant-derived antioxidants are typically extracted from the whole food using toxic organic solvents like hexane, which you cannot remove. Those solvents remain in the ingredient, and they're not required to disclose any of this.

Perception Is Everything

The processed food industry is primarily driven by the perception of wholesomeness. The moment the food industry finds out that a labeled ingredient is perceived poorly, they will either rename it, or find an alternative that may be just as bad, or worse, that doesn't have that negative association.

"Perception is a really good word for understanding what the food manufacturing industry is up to," Joanna says. "They have this thing called perceived naturalness. Their whole job is to try give you ingredients that sound natural, but actually aren't the same as natural. Another one is fresh-like quality. The industry doesn't talk about fresh any longer. They talk about a fresh-like quality.

There are number of technologies that they can use behind the scenes and mainly on labels that will give products this fresh-like quality. Everything [related] to naturalness and freshness is being manipulated constantly. On my desk, at the moment, I have some chocolate chip muffins that I bought six weeks ago. I've got them on my desk and they have not changed in any way. They look identical. I'm keeping them as a sort of science project to see how they eventually, if they ever, change."

There's actually a whole section in the book dedicated to processed baked goods. Many grocery stores now have bakeries, where fresh bread is baked every day. But what many do not realize is that nothing is baked from scratch.

As Joanna says, these bakeries are little more than "tanning salons" for processed frozen products pre-cooked in factories thousands of miles away. Another factoid: When baked goods are sold loose this way, they do not require an ingredient label. So that's another way they can get away with not disclosing what the ingredients are.

"One of the reasons I started writing the book is because I knew that if I made a muffin at home, it didn't taste anything like a bought one. I wanted to find out why. It's really interesting to find out why because the ingredients are completely different and the processes are completely different. And these are great lies perpetuated by food manufacturers—that what goes on in the factory is just a scaled up fraction of home cooking. But that really is a lie. It's quite a different activity."

The Foxes Are Watching the Hen House

If you're like most people, you probably think there's someone somewhere looking out for the consumer's best interest. If something is sold as food, it surely cannot be hazardous. Can it? In truth, it just might be... More often than not, government oversight committees are usually manned by members of the industry, who have a vested interest in commercializing these chemical ingredients; or they're academics who appear on first glance to be independent but actually, in their day job, are getting a lot of funding from food companies.

Most of the research used to establish safety is also done by the industry itself, which structures the research to show that its products are safe. What's worse, no one is really looking at the health effects of exposure to toxins from processed foods.

"What happens to people who eat large quantities of processed food, maybe people who really based their diets on that? No one is doing any research on that," Joanna says. "There are all these assumptions that chemicals are fine in small quantities, but that's not really looking at the cocktail effect for people, particularly children, who are obviously more prone to being affected by chemical overload. No one is looking at that at the moment."

More Information

Avoiding processed foods is one of the most important changes you can make if you want to improve your health or prevent or address disease. If there's any question in your mind at all as to the reasons for reverting back to whole, minimally processed foods, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Joanna's book, Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets as it will radically increase your understanding, and secondarily your motivation and desire to avoid these toxic foods.

As an undercover insider, Joanna reveals details about the food processing industry that you simply cannot get anywhere else. Read it, and pass it around. Create awareness that will eventually, hopefully, inspire more people to make the switch to a more wholesome, health-preserving diet. If we don't buy these foods, food manufacturers will have to stop producing it, and healthier whole foods will again become the norm.

As Joanna says, "we've got to catch up with the industry because they really bypass our comprehension of what they're doing to our food. The take home message for me is that, in Europe, we have this idea that processed food is getting better. Everything is going a little bit not more natural, and actually, that's wrong.

And we really can't trust our regulators to get it right. We have to adopt our own, what I call PPP: Personal Precautionary Principle. You are the only person who's going to really bother to think about these issues to deal with your food. You can't rely on anyone else doing it for you."

In the future, Joanna is considering writing another book on food processing, delving into newer processing technologies and synthetic biology, called SynBio. The use of completely artificial biology is also disconcerting, and an area that is as unregulated as the old Wild West.

Synthetic biology is basically like an extreme form of genetic engineering, which obviously carries a number of unknown risks. And, like genetically engineered foods, most people have no idea synthetic biology is even used, or that they may be eating it on a regular basis. To learn more about Joanna's work, see her website, JoannaBlythmanWriting.com. It contains all of her journalism, covering all of her seven books.

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