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Seymour Hersh Succumbs To Disinformation Paul Craig Roberts Seymour Hersh has published a long account of the homicide of Osama bin Laden: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden Hersh concludes that the Obama regime’s account of the killing of bin Laden is a total fabrication…

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Nearly a quarter of British children under the age of five are overweight or obese, according to a new Europe-wide study.

The research found that out of the 28 countries involved in the study, the UK boasted the second highest proportion of overweight children under the age of five.

The data showed 23.1% of youngsters in the under-five age group were classed as overweight or obese with the UK coming closely behind Ireland, which registered 27.5%.

Albania (22%), Georgia (20%), Bulgaria (19.8%) and Spain (18.4%) followed Ireland and Britain in third, fourth, fifth and sixth place out of a total twenty-eight.

The bottom of the chart showed Kazakhstan had the lowest obesity rate (0.6%), along with nations including Czech Republic (5.5%), Belgium (7%) and Sweden (8%).

Another study conducted by the Leeds Beckett University found overweight and obese children showed concern and dissatisfaction over their body shape.

The data, collected from over 300 pupils from eight primary schools in the UK city found a higher body dissatisfaction score among girls.

Prof Pinki Sahota, lead researcher of the study said: “The results suggested that body shape dissatisfaction and dietary restraint behaviours may begin in children as young as six to seven years old, and there is an association with increased BMI."

“Obesity prevention programmes need to consider psychological well-being and ensure that it is not compromised. Further research should be conducted on how interventions can help improve psychological well-being in this age group.”

Dr João Breda of the World Health Organisation’s regional office for Europe, who was involved in the first study, said: “Evidence suggests that early intervention, before five years of age, is necessary if the trajectory to overweight in children is to be arrested and action needs to be taken to have consistent surveillance on this specific population.”

The two studies are to be presented at the European congress on obesity in Prague this week.

SU/PHX

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…

The New Republic Is Queen of the Presstitutes Paul Craig Roberts UPDATE: According to the latest reports, the separatists in Donetsk have handed over to Malaysian authorities the black boxes from the downed Malaysian airliner, which indicates that those who…

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Virtual Economy’s Phantom Job Gains Are Based on Statistical Fraud And More Fraud Is in the Works Paul Craig Roberts Washington can’t stop lying. Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t…

The post Virtual Economy’s Phantom Job Gains Are Based on Statistical Fraud — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

A lot of people that I talk to these days want to know "when things are going to start happening".  Well, there are certainly some perilous times on the horizon, but all you have to do is open up your eyes and look to see the global economic crisis unfolding.  As you will see below, [...]

During a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, Hillary Clinton claimed that Bill and her were "dead broke" when they left the White House.  And then on Sunday, Hillary told the Guardian that they are not "truly well off" despite having earned about a hundred million dollars since leaving the White House and owning a couple of [...]

The Russians are actually making a move against the petrodollar.  It appears that they are quite serious about their de-dollarization strategy.  The largest natural gas producer on the planet, Gazprom, has signed agreements with some of their biggest customers to switch payments for natural gas from U.S. dollars to euros.  And Gazprom would have never [...]

Primary elections originated in the American progressive movement and were intended to take the power of candidate nomination away from party leaders and deliver it to the people.  California’s Top Two Primary takes power away from third parties representing the 99% and delivers it to the 1%.

Voters have increasingly become disillusioned with the Democratic and Republican Parties. According to a poll reported by Rasmussen in April, more than half the country believes that neither of the top two parties represents the American people. As presidential candidate Ron Paul remarked in 2011:

These parties aren’t different, they’re all the same. The monetary policy stays the same. The welfare system stays the same. The foreign policy stays the same. . . . There is but one party.

Or as Ronald Reagan put it, “We don’t need a third party. We need a second party.”

A recent Gallup poll found that nationwide, the share of registered voters identifying as independent has hit a record high of 42 percent. That trend also holds true in California. Yet no third-party or independent candidate for state-wide office will appear on the California general election ballot in November. All were eliminated by Top Two, the new electoral system ushered in by Proposition 14 in 2010. It excludes all but the top-two primary vote-getters from advancing to November, and that effectively means all but the top two political parties.

In the June 3^rd California primary, the highest number of votes received by any third party or independent candidate was 218,847, representing 6.4% of voters. That count went to me, running as a Green for state treasurer on a state bank platform. It was the highest percentage ever gotten by a Green in a statewide partisan California election, but it was not enough to leap the top-two barrier. Laura Wells, also running as a Green on a state bank platform, received 5.6% of the vote for state controller. All other third party and independent statewide candidates got a lower percentage in their races, except for one independent who just placed fourth. That means only Democrats and Republicans will be debating the issues in November.

Top Two has not only foreclosed third-party candidates from the general election but has made it substantially harder for them to get on the primary ballot. From 1992 to 2010, the Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, and American Independent parties averaged 127 primary ballot candidates among them in each election cycle. In 2012, in Top Two’s first year, they were able to qualify only 17 for state legislative and congressional races, the fewest since 1966, when only Democrats and Republicans were on the ballot. This dropped to 13 in 2014, with only 10 others running for quadrennial statewide offices, down from 33 in 2010.

California’s Controversial Proposition 14

On Feb. 19, 2009, between 4 and 7 a.m., without any public notice or public hearing, the Legislature placed a major constitutional electoral reform – Proposition 14 – on the June 2010 primary ballot and approved its companion statute, Senate Bill 6.

The Voter Information Guide did not provide a summary or text of SB 6, which fleshes out critical details of Proposition 14; nor did Proposition 14’s official ballot title and summary refer to it. Many potential negative effects of Top Two were hidden from voters, and opportunities to vet and correct them before the measure was placed on the ballot were denied to the public.

This left the field wide open for California’s largest corporations – which enthusiastically favored Proposition 14 because they thought it would result in the election of corporate-friendly public officials – to flood the airwaves with propoganda about how Top Two would increase voter choice. In fact, it has done the opposite, to the point of excluding “no corporate money” candidates from the general election debate.

Several other barriers to participation were added or strengthened by Top Two, without the prior vetting of voters. The number of signatures needed to be on the statewide primary ballot without paying an expensive filing fee jumped from 150 to 10,000 for smaller-party candidates – and that puts the candidate on the ballot only for the June primary, not into November as under the previous system.

Meanwhile, the fee for a candidate statement in the Voter Information Guide – the chief way many voters learn about candidates – was raised to $25 per word, putting the cost of a full statement at more than double the candidate filing fee. The result was to radically reduce the number of words many smaller-party candidates can afford.

The Legislature even eliminated general election write-in candidacies – a right Californians have enjoyed since statehood in 1850.

By eliminating party primaries, Top Two increased the cost of running for office – and the need for early big money – for candidates from all parties. Candidates now have to campaign to the entire electorate in June as well as in November (assuming they manage to reach the general election).  That means the role of money in California politics has only increased as a result of Top Two, making it even easier for “the 1%” to buy elections.

A Voice in the Debate

California houses 39 million people, far too many to reach by knocking on doors. Many people get their news on television. But candidates who cannot afford to buy advertising airtime and who are not invited to the televised debates (or even to the non-televised ones covered by the print media) cannot reach the broader population. That effectively means all candidates without big corporate money backing or enough personal wealth to self-fund.

Third-party candidates have long been excluded from televised debates, on the pretense that they have not polled well enough or raised enough money to be “viable candidates.” Yet hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters share their views on various issues. Without big money to contact voters or exposure in the debates, however, third party and other grassroots candidates cannot poll high enough to qualify because voters don’t know anything about them, creating a vicious circle of disempowerment.

But it gets worse. Apparently even the appearance of dissent to the corporate dominance of our politics cannot be tolerated. When Laura Wells attended the Brown-Whitman California gubernatorial debates in San Rafael, California, in 2010 – a race in which she was then the Green Party candidate  for governor – she was arrested just for trying to attend and sit in the audience with a ticket.  The charge, she said, was perfect: “trespassing at a private party.” Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party candidate for US president, was similarly arrested for merely attempting to attend the presidential debates at Hofstra University, from which she had been excluded. In 2000, then-Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader was blocked from entering a viewing party in the building next door to the presidential debate from which he had been excluded. And in 2002, California Green gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo was excluded from a gubernatorial debate although he was on the guest list of the Republican nominee in the debate.

Taking Back Our Democracy

Under the current electoral system, corporate-funded politics are strangling democracy. Our political party system needs to be radically overhauled.

At the federal level, the presidential debates are controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation run by the Democrat and Republican parties and funded by corporate America. The Green Party’s alternative is to create a new publicly-funded People’s Commission on Presidential Debates, and to open its presidential debates to all candidates who appear on at least as many ballots as would represent a majority of the Electoral College and who raise enough funds to otherwise qualify for general election public financing. Also recommended is to amend federal law to remove the non-profit tax exemption status that allows corporations to fund the existing Commission on Presidential Debates and other exclusive, privately-controlled debate entities.

In California, the Green Party recommends overturning Top Two and replacing it with a system of multi-seat districts with proportional representation in the legislature. A constituency or party receiving 10% of the vote would win 10% of the seats, 30% of the vote would win 30% of the seats, and so on. This would lower the cost of getting elected while increasing the diversity of representation to more accurately reflect the voters.

For single-seat statewide executive office, Ranked Choice or “Instant Runoff” Voting is recommended, and has been successfully implemented in a number of countries and municipalities. Voters rank their choices by preference. In a five way race, a voter’s first choice gets five points and his last choice gets one point, with other selections in between. The candidate with the most points wins. There is only one election, so issues get discussed and minor party candidates get heard right up to the end. Ranked Choice Voting gives people more power to vote their true preferences, without being trapped in the “lesser-of-two-evils” dynamic that has been used to stifle real dialogue and choice.

For all elections, public financing is needed, in order to ensure that voters hear from all candidates rather than just the most well-funded.

The money is with the 1%, but the vote count is with the 99%. We can prevail, if we can get that great mass of disillusioned voters into the voting booths. And that is just the sort of game-changing event that Top Two is calculated to prevent.

_________________

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally.

Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary Tagged: | California primary, public banking

Interest Rate Puzzle Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler One of the biggest puzzles in the financial markets this year has been the considerable fall in interest rates despite the Fed’s program of tapering or cutting back the Fed’s bond…

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During the first three months of this year, the U.S. economy contracted at a 1 percent annual rate.  Despite this, mainstream economists flooded the mainstream media with assurances that much better days are just around the corner on Thursday.  In fact, many of them boldly predicted that U.S. GDP would grow at a 3 or [...]

Has the next major economic downturn already started?  The way that you would answer that question would probably depend on where you live.  If you live in New York City, or the suburbs of Washington D.C., or you work for one of the big tech firms in the San Francisco area, you would probably respond [...]