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Nearly half of children living in Fukushima region have radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands - (Read Full Article)

An anonymous official from the Japanese government recently came forward with the startling results of radiation tests conducted on children shortly after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility. According to www.dawn.com the official revealed that 45 percent of children tested had radioactive iodine lodged in their thyroid glands.

The Japanese government's nuclear accident task force tested 1,149 children 15 and younger just a few weeks after the events of March 11. 1,080 of these tests were confirmed to be valid, and 482 of them, representing 44.6 percent of children, confirmed the presence of damaging radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands.

The thyroid gland, which is located in the front of the neck just below the larynx, is responsible for regulating the body's metabolism, producing necessary hormones for every tissue in the body, increasing protein synthesis, regulating oxygen consumption by cells, and balancing calcium.

This important gland, which is designed to uptake the nutritious, mineral version of iodine, can also uptake deadly radioactive iodine and other toxic chemicals like fluoride. When this occurs, the thyroid gland is unable to properly function, as hormone production becomes altered or inhibited. The end result is the potential development of a wide variety of diseases.

Burning up food prices: More corn going to ethanol production now than food production - (Read Full Article)

The world has a food shortage. This isn't speculative or subjective, and it's not fear-mongering or alarmist. It's a well-documented fact and, what's more, the real experts - those who aren't influenced by government or corporate interests - have been trying to make that case for months.

Moreover, these same experts say, the shortages are causing global food prices to rise - dramatically in some cases - which is only leading to more hunger, more pain and more hardship.

So, what is the United States doing to blunt the effects of this food shortage? What is official U.S. policy regarding, say, the production of corn - the primary ingredient in scores of food products and livestock feed? Well, officially, our policy is to burn up a substantial amount of corn every year in our automobiles - food that could be used to feed Americans and the world.

"In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars," says Lester Brown, writing in Foreign Policy magazine in January. "That's enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest."

Obama: Assad is slaughtering his people, must quit

President Barack Obama says the time has come for Syrian President BasharAssad to resign for the sake of his brutally repressed people.

In a stinging written statement, Obama says Assad has overseen a vicious onslaught of his people as they protest for freedoms. He says the Syrian people should decide their country’s future and Assad is standing in their way and must go.

Obama also says that Assad‘s calls for reform ring hollow while he is, in Obama’s words, “imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people.”

This was Obama’s first explicit call for Assad to step down. His administration also is slapping new sanctions on Syria.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is set to speak about the government’s tougher stance later Thursday morning.

‘Low-Speed Chase’: TX Cops Chase Drunk, Shirtless Man on Stolen Forklift - (Watch Video Here)

There are high-speed chases of the O.J. Simpson variety. And then there are low-speech chases like the one you’re about to see. It’s not just any low-speed chase, mind you: it centers around a drunken, shirtless man on a stolen forklift.

The man apparently stole the massive piece of equipment before leading police on a wile chase around Ft. Worth, Texas. A couple guys getting gas happened to see the events unfolding and pulled out a camera. And as with many things these days, it all ended up on YouTube.

Promotions of ‘Fast and Furious’ officials draw Texan’s wrath - (Read Full Story)

A senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday described as “inconceivable” a Justice Department decision to promote key Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) personnel who oversaw the controversial “Fast and Furious” weapons investigation that allowed hundreds of guns to be walked into Mexico.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who last week demanded that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. immediately brief his office regarding the “scope and details of any past or present ATF gun-walking programs” in his state, said until Mr. Holder and the department “come clean” on the gun-walking investigation, “it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington.”

The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of the controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

Mr. Cornyn’s comments were in response to a Los Angeles Times‘ article that said three ATF supervisors heavily criticized for pushing the Fast and Furious program forward had been given new management positions at the agency’s Washington headquarters. The three are William G. McMahon, ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, and William D. Newell and David J. Voth, both of whom oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.

Ron Paul: ‘They Call Me Extreme – They’re The Extremists!’ - (Read Full Story)

During an interview with CNN last night, presidential frontrunner Ron Paul explained how the establishment is finding it more and more difficult to portray his ideas as “extreme,” pointing out how his viewpoints are becoming part of mainstream thinking as the real “extremists” in charge continue to follow the same course even as America’s economy crumbles.

Asked why the media obsessed about Michele Bachmann while ignoring Ron Paul completely despite the fact that Paul almost beat her in the Ames straw poll, the Congressman said that the establishment was running scared.

“They’re afraid of me, they don’t want my views out there, they’re too dangerous, we want freedom and we’re challenging the status quo, we want to end the war, we want a gold standard, and their view is that people just can’t handle all this freedom, they want dependency, they want socialism and welfarism, so I think they don’t like to hear our views, but I think we’ll make the best of it and we’ll do very well,” he said.

Paul responded to host Piers Morgan’s assertion that Democrats were hyping Paul’s campaign as a means of dividing Republicans in order to pave the way for an Obama victory by pointing out that polls show he would have the best chance out of all the candidates of defeating Obama in a head to head race.

SF cell shutdown: Safety issue, or hint of Orwell? - (Read Full Story)

An illegal, Orwellian violation of free-speech rights? Or just a smart tactic to protect train passengers from rowdy would-be demonstrators during a busy evening commute?

The question resonated Saturday in San Francisco and beyond as details emerged of Bay Area Rapid Transit officials' decision to cut off underground cellphone service for a few hours at several stations Thursday. Commuters at stations from downtown to near the city's main airport were affected as BART officials sought to tactically thwart a planned protest over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by transit police.

Two days later, the move had civil rights and legal experts questioning the agency's move, and drew backlash from one transit board member who was taken aback by the decision.

"I'm just shocked that they didn't think about the implications of this. We really don't have the right to be this type of censor," said Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART's board of directors. "In my opinion, we've let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that's not fair.”

Why is George Soros selling gold and buying farmland?

Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there's no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency). As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years -- and possibly every two years thereafter.

That's probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry. "Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar," reports Bloomberg magazine. "A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA."

Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, "I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland."

That's because demand for food is accelerating even as radical climate changes, a loss of fossil water supplies, and the failure of genetically engineered crops is actually reducing food yields around the globe. Ceres Partners, which invests in farmland, has produced astonishing 16 percent annual returns since its launch in 2008. And this is during a depressed economy when most other industries are showing losses.

Sun Unleashes Largest Solar Flare in Years - (Read Full Story

An extremely powerful solar flare, the largest in over four years, rocked the sun early Tuesday (Aug. 9), but is unlikely to wreak any serious havoc here on Earth, scientists say.

"It was a big flare," said Joe Kunches, a space scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Space Weather Prediction Center. "We lucked out because the site of the eruption at the sun was not facing the Earth, so we will probably feel no ill effects."

Today's solar flare began at 3:48 a.m. EDT (0748 GMT), and was rated a class X6.9 on the three-class scale scientists use to measure the strength of solar flares. The strongest type of solar eruption is class X, while class C represents the weakest and class M flares are medium-strength events. Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History.

The flare is the largest one yet in the sun's current cycle, which began in 2008 and is expected to last until around 2020. Solar activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year sun weather cycle, with the star currently heading toward a solar maximum in 2013.

"This flare had a GOES X-ray magnitude of X6.9, meaning it was more than 3 times larger than the previous largest flare of this solar cycle - the X2.2 that occurred on Feb 15, 2011," scientists with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a space observatory that monitors the sun, wrote in an update. 

Before the Feb. 15 storm, the largest recent solar flare occurred in December 2006, when an X9-class solar storm erupted from the sun.

Acting as a "central economic planner," the Federal Reserve is moving the U.S. economy from one market bubble to another, and the next one will be a disaster, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas - (Read Full Story)

After the collapse of the tech, housing and financial bubbles, Paul said, the "dollar bubble" will be next.

"That's going to be the big one," the Texas congressman said on the heels of yesterday's worldwide market plummet, which saw the Dow lose more than 500 points.

In response to the market bloodbath, Paul noted, investors are pouring money into treasury bills and dollars, "but that is a bubble, too."

"When the panic comes, and they leave the dollar and go into real assets, that's when the whole world knows that a new monetary system is on the horizon, because this one will not last," Paul warned.

Days like yesterday, he said, "are warning signs that that big crash is coming for the dollar."

Paul emphasized that along with Congress balancing the budget and stopping spending, the U.S. needs a new monetary system.

"The system is built on a monetary system where the Fed creates money out of thin air," he said. "You have to stop doing that, because that is what caused the deficits to pile on and the financial bubble."

Economy Debased by Lies, Fraud, and Bogus Statistics - (Read Full Story)

The entire concept of keeping the economy functioning is based upon US dollar debasement via the creation of excess money and credit, which is accompanied by departments of government and Wall Street. Once in the past 11 years in particular we have seen lies, fraud, bogus statistics and Mickey Mouse bookkeeping. For good measure the powers behind government have thrown in the gutting of America’s industrial base by outsourcing and offshoring. As an extra temporary measure the Fed has bailed out the financial sectors in the US and Europe and continues to bail out the US Treasury. Who cares about currency debasement because it’s a cost of doing business. 

We just witnessed another piece of legislation to destroy Social Security, Medicare and to usurp the US Constitution’s power to govern America via a “star chamber” group of 12 bought and paid for political operatives. Their style of government is very reminiscent of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. 

Currency debasement goes on relentlessly worldwide and now the Fed is hinting that a QE 3 may be needed. We expected those trial balloons to appear on or about August 15th to be followed during the first two weeks of September of an announcement and beginning of QE 3. We felt the $300 billion they could roll over from existing Treasuries would be exhausted around September 1st. We expect during August the Fed will make a major effort to sell CDOs and MBSs, better known as toxic waste to raise more capital. The question is how much will be lost in these latter transactions, that the American people will be responsible for? Again taxpayers pay for bank losses being laundered by the Fed, which a number of the banks involved own. These actions further demean the value of the dollar, cause worse inflation and force gold and silver related assets higher.

Gold surges above $1,700 on US downgrade woes - (Read Full Story)

Gold has hit all-time highs of $1,709 following a week in which Standard & Poors’ downgraded the US credit rating and equity markets plummeted on the Eurozone’s ongoing debt crisis.

The precious metal is up over 3% today and represents one of the only asset classes not to be sold off, with the FTSE 100 index opening trading this morning down 1%, while Asian markets shed 2.4%.

The sell-off follows the move by S&P on Saturday to cut the US credit rating from AAA for the first time in history, down to AA+, not long after the country’s political deadlock over raising its debt ceiling and making a deficit reduction

Schools in Pakistan training Afghan youths to act as suicide bombers - (Read Full Story)

Afghan parents who have sent their sons to schools in Pakistan say they're becoming increasing alarmed about the type of education their children are receiving.

Rather than serve as centers of learning, many fear that these schools and madrassas are designed primarily to turn out a never-ending supply of suicide bombers.

One father in Kapisa province, who asked that his name not be used because he was concerned about security, described the dramatic change his 18-year-old son had undergone after one year at a school in Pakistan.

"My son is vehemently opposed to the government. He says suicide attacks are considered a superior form of martyrdom and courage in Islam, and that Muslims must wage a jihad against the Jews and their friends," he said.

Students, his son told him, were shown footage of Americans and Britons being beheaded.