We The People Without Representation

Who Represents Us When Our Political Parties Represent Only Corporations?

Our future depends on bridging the partisan divide that elevates corporate interests above our personal well-being.
money-politics.jpg

We the people of the United States find ourselves in a political crisis and resurgent tribalism that pits left against right, hard-left against moderate-left, and extreme-right against everyone else. The result is a political impasse that leaves us unable to address our own needs domestically and has stripped us of credibility globally.

The crisis has a simple explanation, and it didn’t start with the current occupant of the Oval Office. Irrespective of where we fall on the political spectrum, a great many of us don’t trust our own political system. Nor should we: It represents power that is captive to interests quite at odds with our own.

Two recent news stories brought this home to me in a way that might help us find common cause across the political spectrum.

The first story was about a meeting of the World Health Organization. Ecuador introduced a resolution calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and to restrict promotion of food products found to have deleterious effects on young children. Now what could be more unassailable than that?

Breastfeeding is a wholly natural process and scientific studies confirm that breast milk is the best food source for infants. While most all the national representatives rallied behind the initiative, the United States’ representatives stood firmly in opposition. They even threatened Ecuador with trade sanctions and a cutback in military aid.

Their stance surely did not represent the interests or preferences of the American people. The U.S. representatives left those present with no doubt that they were representing the interest of transnational corporations that sell infant formula.

Within days of the breastfeeding incident, President Trump was attacking the U.S.’s NATO allies in Europe for spending too little on their militaries. At first mention his argument seemed reasonable. Surely our allies should pay their fair share for our common defense.

But then a deeper reality hit home for me. Collapsing environmental and social systems are the greatest current threat to U.S. and world security. The more of Earth’s resources we use preparing for and conducting wars, the less we attend to the needs of our own people and the greater a burden humanity bears. That means we deprive more people of a means of living, more places on Earth become rendered uninhabitable, and a greater the number of people are forced to flee their homes as desperate refugees, or are turned in fear and hatred to terrorism against real and imagined enemies.

The biggest share of U.S. military expenditure goes to preparing for war with another world power—specifically, Russia or China. Russia may tamper with our elections and China is beating our socks off as a global economic competitor, but both have much to lose and nothing to gain from starting a 20th century-style conventional war with the United States that would be fought with 21st century weapons. They are aware such a war would have devastating consequences for all—worst of all if it involved nuclear weapons.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia has not threatened us and our interests nearly so much as we have threatened Russia’s interests. We’ve integrated former members of the Soviet Union into NATO right up to the borders of Russia. China’s economic expansion is simply following the U.S. example, but doing so far more competently.

Our military, however, has not been idle. We have wasted many lives and caused much damage to people, infrastructure, and nature pursuing pointless wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our drone strikes inflict further pain and terror on helpless innocents in more countries than we know.

Our problem is not that we and our allies are spending too little on war, but that we are spending far too much. The parallel to the U.S. stance on breastfeeding is clear. The interests served by bloated military budgets and endless wars against sometimes wholly imagined enemies are corporations that profit from defense contracts.

The misguided corporatist loyalty of the U.S. political establishment did not begin with the Trump presidency. Defense contractors and infant formula corporations are just two examples of the abuse of unaccountable institutional power in which both Republican and Democratic parties have been complicit for decades. Not all Republican and Democratic politicians are willing corporate shills, but the dynamics of the political process force most of them to fall into line with corporate interests—especially at the national level.

The political establishment’s sellout to corporate interests is reflected in every aspect of policy from military, to health care, to financial regulation, to education, the environment and much else. And the sellout is not exclusive to the Republican Party. We experienced it as well with the Clinton and Obama administrations—which explains why so many didn’t trust Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

When two corrupt parties control the political system, debating which is the more corrupt simply diverts attention away from addressing the source of the corruption. In this case, the source is extreme inequality combined with a system of law that allows for a virtually unlimited concentration of corporate power. At the same time, corporations are granted more rights than people are, and are exempted from accountability to the communities in which they do business and from liability for the harm they cause.

The corporate establishment has been winning this battle for decades by keeping us divided between those who place the blame on business and the market and those who place the blame on government.

Responsible businesses and accountable governments are essential institutions, as are fair and ethical markets. All could be corrupted if the electorate allows for concentrations of unaccountable monopoly power. All institutions require an ethical frame and a clear order of accountability.

Government must be accountable to the electorate. Businesses must be accountable to accountable governments. And markets must function within an ethical framework and agreed rules that are fairly enforced by those accountable governments.

Unaccountable corporations protected from public accountability by unaccountable governments leads to certain disaster. And yet, here we are.

President Trump’s unintended gift to the nation and the world may be to awaken us to the reality that, far from being the global model for democracy and a community-centric market economy, the United States’ political system is fundamentally corrupt and destructive to the common good.

Our future depends on bridging the artificially cultivated political divide that serves only interests fundamentally contrary to our common well-being. In the short-term, only the richest of the rich are served by the concentration of wealth and power that in the long term serves none of us. We must all, including the principled wealthy, work to dismantle the institutional instruments of monopoly power while creating truly democratically accountable institutions and markets that advance the equitable redistribution of wealth.

United we stand, divided we fall is a rallying cry for our time. We must do this together.

from:    https://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/who-represents-us-when-our-political-parties-represent-only-corporations-20180723

Are You Eating Your Vaccines?

Patent Reveals Plan To Hide Vaccines In Food Particles

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai

A disturbing patent discovered this week reveals plans to hide vaccines within food particles without the public knowing about it.

US Patent application ‘US20080044481 A1’ (“Microparticles for oral delivery”) was filed in 2005, and allows drugs and vaccines to be embedded into tiny invisible particles of food.

Activistpost.com reports:

Are we to assume the technology hasn’t yet been applied? Is it operating at a stealth level? I’ll try to answer these questions in a minute. But first:

The inventor and assignee is listed as Mordechai Harel, who was associated with Advanced BioNutrition Corporation of Columbia, Maryland. Here are a group of quotes from the patent application. The statements leave no doubt about the wide, wide application of the technology.

“The particles described herein can be used to deliver bioactive agents (e.g., nutrients, drugs, vaccines, antibodies, and the like), bacteria (e.g., probiotic bacteria), smaller particles, or substantially any other material to the animal.”

“The particles described herein can be prepared and used as free-flowing dry powders, slurries, suspensions, and the like, and are useful for delivering to an animal a drug, a pesticide, a nutrient, a vaccine, a smaller particle, or substantially any other composition that can be contained in the particles. The particles are thus suitable for use in human food products, animal feeds (e.g., pet foods and farmed animal diets), therapeutic compositions (e.g., drugs), prophylactic compositions (e.g., vaccines, antibiotics, and probiotic bacterial preparations), and pest control products among other products.”

“A ‘particle’ is a discrete piece of a (homogeneous or heterogeneous) material having a maximum dimension not greater than 5000 micrometers.”

“Furthermore, when the microparticles are to be used as components of a food product, it can be desirable that the microparticles are not visible.”

“The particles described herein can be used to deliver substantially any chemical species, combination of chemicals, cell, or other piece of matter that can be incorporated into the particle to a component of an animal. All such items are referred to herein as ‘bioactive’ compositions, regardless of what the utility of the composition is. Bioactive compositions include, for example, pharmaceutical compositions or compounds, nutraceutical compositions or compounds, nutritional components, probiotic bacteria, bacteriophages, viruses, flavorants, fragrances, detergents or other surface-active compositions.”

“Examples of these [deliverable micro] agents include antibiotics, analgesics, vaccines, anti-inflammatory agents, antidepressants, anti-viral agents, anti-tumor agents, enzyme inhibitors, formulations containing zidovudine, proteins or peptides (such as vaccines, antibodies, antimicrobial peptides), enzymes, (e.g., amylases, proteases, lipases, pectinases, cellulases, hemicellulases, pentosanases, xylanases, and phytases), liposomes, aromatic nitro and nitroso compounds and their metabolites, HIV protease inhibitors, viruses, and steroids, hormones or other growth stimulating agents, pesticides, herbicides, germicides, biocides, algicides, rodenticides, fungicides, insecticides, antioxidants, plant and animal growth promoters, plant and animal growth inhibitors, preservatives, nutraceuticals, disinfectants, sterilization agents, catalysts, chemical reactants, fermentation agents, foods, animal feeds, food or animal feed supplements, nutrients, flavors, colors, dyes, cosmetics, drugs, vitamins, sex sterilants, fertility inhibitors, fertility promoters, air purifiers, microorganism attenuators, nucleic acids (e.g., RNA, DNA, PNA, vectors, plasmids, ribozymes, aptamers, dendrimers, and the like), antioxidants, phytochemicals, hormones, vitamins (such as vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12; C, D, E, and K, pantothenate, and folic acid), pro-vitamins, carotenoids, minerals (such as calcium, selenium, magnesium salts, available iron, and iron salts), microorganisms (such as bacteria, such as probiotics, lactobacilli, fungi, and yeast), prebiotics, trace elements, essential and/or highly unsaturated fatty acids (such as omega-3 fatty acids, and mid-chain triglycerides), nutritional supplements, enzymes (such as amylases, proteases, lipases, pectinases, cellulases, hemicellulases, pentosanases, xylanases, and phytases), pigments, amino acids, agriculturally useful compositions to either prevent infestation (such as herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, mixtures thereof) or to promote growth (such as hormones, fertilizers, or other growth stimulating agents), flavorants, and fragrances.”

I’d say that’s a wide range of application, wouldn’t you?

Did you notice, among the blizzard of compounds deliverable through invisible microparticles, the drug called zidovudine? That’s AZT, a chemo medicine used to treat AIDS patients. To say AZT is toxic would be a vast understatement. It destroys the ability of cells to replicate. And back in 2005, it was mentioned as a drug that can be delivered in food.

So is this technology being applied? Do we, in fact, have these microparticles and their bioactive components in our food?

Let’s go back to the 2005 patent application. As I mentioned, the inventor, Mordechai Harel, was associated with a company, Advanced BioNutrition Corporation. On the company’s website, we find a link to a scientific paper co-authored by Roger Drewes, who became the company’s chief science officer in 2010 (“A novel targeted delivery technology for protecting sensitive bioactive compounds…”). This is an interesting paper. Here is some of the language in the paper. Does any of it remind you of quotes from the 2005 patent application? The paper mentions a novel and proprietary “delivery technology,” MicroMax, which “protect[s] sensitive bioactive compounds through food manufacturing processes.” Also mentioned: a “formulation containing natural polymers surrounding the probiotic bacteria or other biologically active materials…” The probiotic bacteria “remain quiescent while retaining their activity for a long period of time under challenging…gastric conditions…[MicroMax was tested using] bacteria, essential oils, vitamins, enzymes, pigments, and even vaccines in a variety of food and feed products…and the microparticles were sieved to deliver the desired particle range…”

This might help. Here is the abstract from the 2005 patent application: “The invention provides microbeads containing oil-associated biologically active compounds and methods for their manufacture and use. The microbeads consist of a soluble complex of non-digestible polymer and emulsifier with oil-associated biologically active compounds embedded in a matrix of digestible polymer. The disclosed microbead complex protects the biologically active compounds, such as vitamins, fish oil and carotenoids, from oxidation, taste and odor degradation. The disclosed microbeads also provide protection from the stomach digestive distraction [e.g., gastric activity] and allows for the delivery of the biologically active compounds in the intestine.”

I think we’re looking at the same technology in the 2005 patent application and in Advanced BioNutrition Corp’s MicroMax methods—or two technologies that closely resemble each other—in which case, yes, invisible microparticles in food are much more than a proposed system. This is a working system, available now. It can deliver a stunning array of chemicals and bioactive substances to people in their food. (Note: I have no idea what Advanced BioNutrition Corp is or isn’t delivering to its customers—but I think the company should make these facts known.)

Who knows what other companies have, and are using, this technology?

Are we looking at zero informed consent to be treated, in food, with medicines and vaccines? Zero knowledge on the part of the public? Zero accountability? Nothing on the food labels?

If this is happening to the population now, the word “stealth” only begins to describe it.

from:    http://yournewswire.com/patent-reveals-plan-to-hide-vaccines-in-food-particles/