WarOnYou
DC Sniper Tells William Shatner He Worked With Multiple Conspirators
Source: AOL News
Convicted D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo made shocking new claims about his crime spree — during an interview with actor William Shatner.
In the interview that aired on A&E on Thursday night, Malvo not only admitted to committing approximately 42 shootings around the country with John Allen Muhammad; he also claimed the duo had initially worked with two co-conspirators.
“Getting the opportunity to speak with Lee Malvo is a moment I’ll never forget,” Shatner said in an A&E press release. “He was only 17 when he committed these horrific acts, a monster forged by the only father figure in his life, and it was simply astonishing that he’s found the maturity and humility to admit so many new crimes in his effort to make amends.”
Authorities in Virginia said the claim had no credibility, but police in Maryland want to interview him.
The interview with Malvo was conducted for Shatner’s new series “Aftermath With William Shatner.”
Malvo and Muhammad were arrested in 2002 after a three-month crime spree that terrorized the Washington metro area and culminated in the deaths of 10 people. Because of his age at the time, Malvo was sentenced to life without parole. Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed by injection in November 2009.
Speaking with Shatner via telephone from Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, Malvo, now 25, spoke candidly about the shooting spree and revealed new details that had never before been made public, including the revelation that he and his partner were involved in a total of 42 shootings and not 13 as originally reported.
“He would send me to do a crime, and then he would watch the crime,” Malvo said. “[He would then] evaluate me after we finished … what was wrong, what I needed to change … [and] my tactics.”
Perhaps most shocking of all, Malvo shared details about two co-conspirators he said were involved in the shooting spree.
“There were two other people who were supposed to be involved, but in the end, they ended up backing out,” Malvo said.
“What was supposed to happen was that there was supposed to be three to four snipers with silenced weapons, silenced rifles, and in this way, you could do a lot more damage along the entire Eastern Seaboard. … In the end, there was only Muhammad and myself,” Malvo continued.
Shatner also interviewed survivors and family members of victims, law enforcement officials and Malvo’s forensic psychiatrist.
As interesting as the new revelations are, authorities have dismissed them as lies and fantasy, according to The Washington Post.
“I think Malvo’s full of crap,” Lt. Bruce Guth, a Fairfax County, Va., homicide detective who headed the task force that helped convict Malvo, told the newspaper. “He’s changed his story at least five or six different times.”
Despite Guth’s skepticism, officials at the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland have confirmed to ABC News that they will “definitely” send detectives to interview Malvo about his latest claims.
The interview with Malvo is not the only crime case Shatner will be tackling in coming months. According to A&E, “Aftermath,” a show that “takes an in-depth look at what happens when people are tragically or infamously transformed from unknown citizens into household names overnight,” will also include interviews with subway shooter Bernhard Goetz, the brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the daughter of Randy Weaver, and Mary Kay Letourneau, a Washington state teacher who had a sexual relationship with a student and later married him. Related Posts:
The International Money Changers Reward the Euro for Forcing Austerity
Source: Activist Post
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Euro has reached an 11-week high against the dollar.
NEW YORK –The euro rose above $1.31, hitting its highest point in 11 weeks as improving euro-zone economic data helped the common currency extend a strong rally that’s seen it rise more than 10% since early June.
The euro has been perhaps the most visible beneficiary of easing concerns about the European sovereign debt crisis. After hitting a four-year low of $1.1876 on June 7, the currency has steadily gained ground amid confidence that policy makers have forestalled a European sovereign debt default.
This rise in strength comes just 3 months after the austerity measures were forced on the Greek people and the same steps being taken for the other PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain). At the time, the global financial community debated whether the Euro would even survive because of fears that soveriegn debt of economically weak European Union member nations would destroy the Euro. Now that the International bankers got the austerity measures that they wanted, the money manipulators have rewarded them.
The same game plan is playing out in the United States; ratchet up the rhetoric about debt and deficits with the veiled suggestions (threats) by the IMF for austerity, and then weaken the currency to a point where the body politic is forced to act on behalf of the banksters who manufactured the extreme over-leveraging. The growing noise for “solutions” to America’s very real debt problems is becoming louder as the calls for confiscating Social Security and Pensions are now everyday news. Related Posts:
Senate Votes to Double Fines, Jail Time for Pot Brownies
By Mike Whitney – BLN Contributing Writer
Last night the United States Senate voted to double the penalties for the nation’s newest existential threat: brownies made with marijuana!
The Senate unanimously passed Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)’s “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009″ (S. 258) that targets pot brownies and other marijuana edibles preferred by some medical marijuana patients. The bill next moves to the House; if it passes that chamber, anyone making pot brownies or similar products could be subject to double the fines and jail time for regular marijuana.
This bill’s passage marks a step backwards for Congress, which this week also passed the Fair Sentencing Act that reduced the sentencing disparities between cocaine and crack from 100:1 to 18:1. Now we have a new disparity: pot brownies and other marijuana edibles are now treated as something twice as bad as just distributing marijuana.
“Candy Flavored Meth”
Marijuana prohibitionists often hide behind vague threats to children, and DiFi’s bill is no different. Her “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act” is framed to make politicians afraid to oppose. “How dare you voted against saving kids from dangerous drugs?”
But DiFi doubled down on the “Reefer Madness”-style hysteria. In championing this bill, Feinstein raised the spectre of “candy flavored meth” as the target of her bill. Something tells me that once, sometime, somewhere, someone claimed to have found candy-flavored meth, probably cut with pixie stix. DiFi ran with this to cover for her true target: marijuana edibles.
Really? Pot Brownies?
Yep. While DiFi’s public line was all “candy flavored meth,” the bill is written broadly enough that pot brownies and other marijuana edibles can be grouped into the law. She mentioned marijuana products in her support of the legislation, of course, but she sought to distract. Here’s the relevant text of the bill:
(1) UNLAWFUL ACTS- Except as authorized under this title, including paragraph (3), it shall be unlawful for any person at least 18 years of age to knowingly or intentionally manufacture or create, with intent to manufacture, create, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II that is–
‘(A) combined with a candy product;
(B) marketed or packaged to appear similar to a candy product; and
‘(C) modified by flavoring or coloring the controlled substance with the intent to distribute, dispense, or sell the controlled substance to a person under 18 years of age.
‘(2) PENALTIES- Except as provided in section 418, 419, or 420, any person who violates paragraph (1) of this subsection shall be subject to–
(A) 2 times the maximum punishment and at least 2 times any term of supervised release
The text singles out “candy products,” which is a broad grouping; it also specifies products “modified by flavoring or coloring,” which expands the scope of the law. While the bill is ostensibly aimed at distributing drugs to people under the age of 18, it’s broad enough to pose serious problems for both medical marijuana patients and for dispensaries selling these products to patients.
What’s DiFi got against pot brownies? Prop 19.
Feinstein’s was one of the first bills introduced in the Senate in 2009, and sat idle after it was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That is, until California’s Prop 19 to legalize marijuana started gaining momentum in the spring.
Dianne Feinstein is one of the most vocal opponents to Prop 19. Thought she’s not up for reelection, like other Democratic opponents of legalization in California, Feinstein not only opposes Prop 19, but is actively supporting the campaign to defeat the initiative. In order to help the cause of marijuana prohibitionists, she started to move her anti-pot brownie bill.
How did the bill pass?
A member of the Judiciary Committee, DiFi started to push Chairman Pat Leahy to move the bill through the committee. While the bill didn’t go anywhere for 16 months, DiFi had the Judiciary Committee consider the bill on May 27, which passed it on June 17. Then, with the August recess approaching,
At first, the bill wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. But within the last 36 hours, the picture shifted. Firedoglake was ready with an organizing alert to mobilize opposition to the bill. (Though the excellent Students for Sensible Drug Policy were out early with an action to the Senate.) Then, late yesterday, the Senate passed the bill through unanimous consent. Not only did no sane Democratic Senator step up to put a hold on the bill, no Senators even voted against it.
Do do we really need to put more people in jail for marijuana?
Absolutely not. More people are arrested for marijuana possession than any violent crime combined. Blacks and Latinos are unfairly targeted with marijuana arrests; while whites make up a third of marijuana users, relatively few are in prison. Moreover, since 1984, the country’s prison population has quadrupled. Half of our prisoners are in for drug offenses. We now have 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of its prisoners.
This week Congress voted to reduce sentencing disparities and to reduce prison populations. At a time when the country is taking significant steps to tackle this important issue, Dianne Feinstein and the Senate voted to increase those numbers for… marijuana brownies.
What’s next?
This is one of the many subversive attacks on marijuana legalization by prohibitionists opposing Prop 19. DiFi is only happy to oblige. Countering the prohibitionists will require a massive movement of organized action to give Prop 19 the support it deserves in California. But it goes beyond this election: much needs to be done to sustain activism and organizing in every state that will be voting on marijuana legalization and reform in 2010, 2012, and beyond. Related Posts:
Bath entrepreneur ‘holds the key’ to internet security
Paul Kane (r) with Simon Bond, director of the Bath Innovation Centre
A Bath entrepreneur has been selected to safeguard the future of internet security across the world.
Paul Kane – who lives in the Bradford-on-Avon area – has been chosen to look after one of seven keys, which will ‘restart the world wide web’ in the event of a catastrophic event.
Mr Kane, based at the University of Bath’s SETsquared Innovation Centre, will be the key holder for Western Europe.
Six other people from across the globe have also been asked to look after a key.
In the event of a security breach – such as a terrorist attack – Mr Kane may be required to travel to a secure location in the US.
Here he will meet five other key holders, to recover the master signing key.
Mr Kane said: “I’m honoured and excited to be recognised for past achievements and current contributions to global internet security.
“We are very pleased to be part of stimulating innovation in the Bath area and see the University of Bath becoming a global centre of excellence for enabling internet technologies.”
Mr Kane and his team at CommunityDNS were brought in as internet specialists to work in partnership with the university.
Simon Bond from SETsquared Innovation Centre said: “We’re delighted to provide an environment where leading British entrepreneurs like Paul Kane can develop globally significant businesses.
“It’s an honour for Bath to be one of the locations for the ‘keys to the internet’ and it is an acknowledgement of the strength of our region and the individuals who live here in global internet security.”
From this month, the internet will become more secure through a new international agreement and process which verifies web sites and helps protect email accounts from fraud, using high tech cryptographic keys.
DNSSEC (domain name system security) is a new online security system that ensures people reach a genuine website, rather than a look-alike pirate site.
It is estimated that up to 8% of internet traffic is fraudulent, and it is hoped that this agreement is a ‘major advance’ in increasing internet security.
You can find out more about the ‘keys’ via a short video on the CommunityDNS website.
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Monsanto: The evil corporation in your refrigerator
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When we consider the rogue’s gallery of devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporations, we generally come up with outfits like Microsoft, Bechtel, AIG, Halliburton, Goldman-Sachs, Exxon-Mobil and the United States Senate. Yet somehow, Monsanto, arguably the most devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporation in the world has been able to more or less skulk between the raindrops — only a household name in households where documentaries like Food Inc. are regarded as light Friday evening entertainment. My house, for example. But for the most part, if you were to ask an average American for their list of sinister corporations, Monsanto probably wouldn’t make the cut.
It should.
Founded by Missouri pharmacist John Francis Queeny in 1901, Monsanto is literally everywhere. Just about every non-organic food product available to consumers has some sort of connection with Monsanto.
Anyone who can read a label knows that corn, soy and cotton can be found in just about every American food product. Upwards of 90% of all corn, soybeans and cotton are grown from genetically engineered seeds, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These genetically enhanced products appear in around 70% of all American processed food products. And Monsanto controls 90% of all genetically engineered seeds. In other words, Monsanto controls — and owns patents on — most of the American food supply.
When you consider, as Walletpop originally reported, that one-in-four food labels is inaccurate, that the F.D.A.’s testing is weak at best, then how can we trust one corporation to have so much control over our produce? The answer is, we can’t.
Recently, a study by the International Journal of Biological Sciences revealed that Monsanto’s Mon 863, Mon 810, and Roundup herbicide-absorbing NK 603 in corn caused kidney and liver damage in laboratory rats. Scientists also discovered damage to the heart, spleen, adrenal glands and even the blood of rats that consumed the mutant corn. A “state of hepatorenal toxicity” the study concluded.
This hasn’t slowed down Monsanto’s profit machine. In 2008, Monsanto cleared over $2 billion in net profits on $11 billion in revenues. And its 2009 is looking equally as excellent.
Author and food safety advocate Robyn O’Brien told me, “Monsanto is expecting gross margins in Q2 2010 of 62%, its corn and soy price mix to be up 8-10% and its glyphosate revenue to expand to an estimated $1 billion in gross profit by 2012, enabling Monsanto to further drive R&D into seeds and to price those seeds at a premium – further driving price increases on the farm and in the grocery stores.”
This, O’Brien says, in the same year when farm income declined by around 34%.
Because Monsanto claims that its GMOs create higher yields and therefore comparatively higher revenues per acre for struggling American farmers, they’re certainly a tempting option. On the surface, that is. Monsanto controls its seeds with an iron fist, so even if you happen to own a farm next to another farm upon which Monsanto seeds are used, and if those seeds migrate onto your land, Monsanto can sue you for royalties.
Additionally, if you use seeds from crops grown from Monsanto seeds, a process known as “seed cleaning,” you also have to pay royalties to Monsanto or it will sue you. All told, Monsanto has recovered $15 million in royalties by suing farmers, with individual settlements ranging from five figures to millions of dollars each.
Back in 2004, farmer Kem Ralph served eight months in jail and was fined $1.3 million for lying about Monsanto cotton seeds he was hiding in his barn as a favor to a friend. They weren’t even his seeds (yeah, that’s what they all say!). By way of comparison, the fine in Ralph’s home state of Tennessee for, say, cocaine possession, is $2,500.
In keeping with the Orwellian nature of modern marketing, one of the first phrases you see on the front page of the Monsanto website is “we help farmers.” Funny. In a cruelly ironical way, that is.
In fairness, the argument in support of Monsanto is generally “it makes more food for lower prices.” Of course this is a red herring. Basic economics proves that choice and competition create lower prices. Not monopolies. This applies not only to American grocery stores, but also in terms of feeding developing nations where food is scarcer. Moreover, stronger Monsanto herbicides, compatible with herbicide resistant seeds, are giving rise to mutant Wolverine-ish super weeds that have adapted and are rapidly spreading through the air to farms that don’t use Monsanto GMOs, destroying obviously vulnerable crops. Say nothing of the inevitable mutant bugs that will adapt to the pesticides that are implanted into the Monsanto Mon 810 genetic code. And if further studies indicate similar organ damage in humans, the externalized costs to health care systems will begin to seriously out-weigh the benefits of cheaper food.
Ultimately, there are better, healthier ways to make cheaper food. Until then the best thing we can do is to demand further investigations and buy organic products whenever practical.
// < ![CDATA[ adsonar_placementId=1436312;adsonar_pid=986767;adsonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=230;adsonar_zh=260;adsonar_jv='ads.tw.adsonar.com'; // ]]>And if you can’t afford to buy organic, O’Brien recommends, “A great first step, given how pervasive these ingredients are in processed foods that often use these ingredients to extend shelf life, is to reduce your exposure to processed foods and stick with pronounceable ingredients and foods that your grandmother would have served her kids.”
Meanwhile, let’s endeavor to make Monsanto a household name. But not in a good way.
On January 15, the Obama Justice Department launched an anti-trust investigation against the corporate behemoth over its next generation of genetically modified “Roundup Ready” soybean seeds. The very next day, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, which challenges the safety of genetically modified agricultural products — the centerpiece of the Monsanto empire. If the investigation fails, farmers will have to switch over to the next generation of Roundup Ready seeds in 2014. And the cycle of corporate abuse and monopolization will continue.
See full article from WalletPop: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/02/04/monsanto-the-evil-corporation-in-your-refrigerator/?ncid=webmaildl3&icid=sphere_copyright
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“Protocols of Zion”– Damage Control
By Henry Makow Ph,D.
Mankind is slipping into a permanent coma according to a diabolical plan that has been public knowledge for over a century.
When The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were leaked in the 1890′s, Masonic Jewish bankers did effective damage control.
They tricked the gullible goyim into believing it was a “forgery” written by “anti-Semites.”
The bankers couldn’t exactly admit the truth, that they were enslaving humanity, could they? ( Their whole system is based on deception and secrecy.)
Thus they turned the disaster into an advantage by using it to incite more “anti-Semitism.”
In the Protocols, they boast that anti-Semitism is used to “manage our lesser brethren.” They fund anti-Semites to ensure that all Jews are blamed.
By linking their demented conspiracy to all Jews, they used them as Trojan horse, human shield and human sacrifice. Many gentile anti-Semites oblige by blaming all Jews regardless of individual responsibility. (And these critics have great moral pretensions.)
I speak for Jews who oppose this secret plan which was concocted by Cabalist bankers and rabbis centuries ago and revised periodically.
These self-appointed Jewish leaders have put all Jews in jeopardy. They are establishing their world tyranny by stealth — manipulating current events, re-engineering society and controlling perception.
All Jews will be blamed for the disproportionate role many Jews play unless more speak up and are counted.
Many Jews, (especially Zionists/Neocons/Communists/socialists/liberals and feminists) are agents for the Illuminati bankers. The bankers tricked them into thinking they were”changing the world” into a socialist utopia. Unfortunately, this utopia is a mask for the tyranny of monopoly capital and Cabalism (i.e. Communism.)
But everyone, not just Jews, is implicated in this diabolical plan. The Protocols’ Jewish world government is the British Empire repackaged. British imperialism was always a marriage of English aristocracy and Jewish finance under the rubric of (Cabalist) Freemasonry. American imperialism and Zionism serve the same cause.
Freemasons, organized Jewry, Christian Zionists and most everyone of prominence are collaborators in the Illuminati bankers’ fraud. Selling out is a condition of “success.” The banksters reward complicity.
The bankers’ fraud lies in the fact that our currency is created in the form of debt to them. No one can own currency. It is a medium of exchange like beads or shells. It is like oxygen. But they are leveraging their fraudulent “ownership” of currency into ownership of everything and everyone.
THE “HOUSE’ VERSION: CONSPIRACY OF THE RICH
The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” repays constant rereading because it eerily described one hundred years ago what is happening today. Most versions are based on a 1920 translation by Victor Marsden, the Morning Post correspondent in Moscow.
I have been comparing it with a typescript version found by Stanley Monteith in the Edward Mandell House papers at Yale University. This one dates from about 1914. Although House was one of the conspirators, the typescript originated with people opposed to Jewish banker domination. This is indicated by sarcastic footnotes. For example, one lists some of the Jews and crypto Jews in power at the time.
I have already described some differences between the Marsden and House versions.
The Protocols were originally written in French and delivered at workshops of the Mizraim Lodge in Paris.
They were translated from French to Russian and then from Russian to English. There’s room for error.
For example, the Marsden version says they will create class conflicts, and dupe and co-opt the poor. The House version says the opposite. They will play on the “hatred” of gentile elites for the poor.
Marsden: “Then will the hour strike when not for the sake of attaining the good, not even to win wealth, but solely out of hatred toward the privileged, the lower classes of the goyim will follow our lead against our rivals for power, the intellectuals of the goyim.” (page 159, end of Protocol Four)
House: “Then, not for the sake of good, not even for the sake of riches, but only owing to the privileged class hatred towards the lower classes of the GOYS will follow us against the intellectual Goys, our competitors to power.” (p.13, end of Protocol Three; Protocol Three in Marsden is entirely missing in House.)
In fact, the bankers co-opted both the rich and poor of the goyim but it is significant that the Protocols actually speak of co-opting the rich, not the poor.
Think about this next time you wonder why Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are pooling their money to vaccinate Africans, and all the foundations, mass media and corporation sing from the same New World Order/ diversity song book.
It seems counter-intuitive that the rich would seek Communism, but Communism is really a method of institutionalizing inequality. Government is the ultimate monopoly and monopoly capitalists want to run it. Thereby they extend their credit monopoly to power and thought itself, i.e. tyranny.
Unlike Marsden, the House version actually uses the word “Communism.”
House: We will govern the masses “by means of cunningly constructed theories and phrases, by rules of communism and other traps not understood by the Goys…” (p.15)
Marsden: We will govern the masses “by means of cleverly manipulated theory and verbiage, by regulations of life in common, and all sorts of other quirks in all which the goyim understand nothing…” (p.161)
CONCLUSION
The world is a stage play written by Illuminati bankers and staged by their actors in media, government, education and the social sciences.
The bankers want us to think humanity has achieved a kind of Nirvana, the “end of history,” a level of reason and sophistication that renders obsolete the forces that have caused war and suffering.
These historical forces have disguised one satanic force which has emerged triumphant. This is the conquest of mankind by Cabalistic bankers who have a satanic need to own and control everyone. They have bought the world, and the birthright of future generations.
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Kalamazoo River Oil Cleanup
An oil pipeline broke at the Enbridge Energy company leading oil to leak into the Kalamazoo River. Cleanup is underway, but the oil is moving fast downstream, and headed for Lake Michigan. The smell is very strong near the river down by County Park where this video was taken.
The EPA is now saying that the amount of oil spilled from a section of 30-inch underground pipe near Marshall on Monday is close to 1 million gallons, higher than the company’s (Enbridge Inc.) earlier estimate of 840,000 gallons.
What has been reported in the past 24 hours:
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View full sizeKris Kinkade | Kalamazoo Gazette
CIA and Google Fund Same Web Surveillance Startup
July 29th, 2010
Via: Wired:
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.
“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.
Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.
It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.
This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.
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Details of 100 Million Facebook Users Compiled, Distributed Over Bit Torrent
July 29th, 2010
Via: MSNBC:
The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private.
However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised.
The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay.
Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by several thousand people.
This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled.
Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy settings so their names did not appear in Facebook’s search system can now be found if they were friends with anyone whose name was searchable.
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Judge Orders Life Sentence for Florida Keys Drug Smuggler — Who Worked for the U.S. State Department?
July 29th, 2010
Via: Key News:
An admitted drug smuggler who carried millions of dollars in hash oil and marijuana in the keels of sailboats through the Florida Keys will spend the rest of his life in prison, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The life sentence of Juergen Heinz Williams, also known as Juergen Werthmann, was the last chapter in a bizarre trial that harkened back to the days when Keys waters teemed with “square grouper.”
Prosecutors convinced a jury in January that Williams spearheaded a conspiracy to smuggle hash oil from Jamaica into Monroe County, and then north into Canada, where it was distributed.
The same jury acquitted two co-defendants — Morgan Lynch, owner of MD Custom Cycles in Key Largo, and Howard Bornstein, a Key Largo online seafood purveyor.
A September 2009 trial for the three men ended in a hung jury, prompting a retrial that began Jan. 4.
Williams surprised prosecutors when he took the stand in the latter trial and admitted he took part in the conspiracy, even correcting government witnesses who understated the scope of his operation.
Some witnesses testified that there were a total of two or four loads of hash oil, but Williams testified that the true number was closer to seven.
One witness testified that one drug run brought in about $1 million for the conspirators, but Williams said he made closer to $5.5 million in the venture.
Williams also raised eyebrows when he admitted under oath to smuggling drugs, but did so, he testified, while acting as an operative of the U.S. State Department. He later fired his attorney, Joel DeFabio of Coral Gables, for not arguing that point before jurors.
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Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents
July 29th, 2010
This astonishing statistic is mentioned in the audio feature on the page linked below.
Via: PRI:
The term we were looking for is “Forward Operating Base” or FOB. The US has many FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The large ones have many tents and other structures where personnel live and work. And all of them need to be heated in the winter, and cooled in the summer. That can take a lot of fuel.
Steve Anderson is a retired Brigadier General who was General David Petraeus’s chief logistician in Iraq. He says the Pentagon should find ways to make structures at FOBs and other military compounds more energy efficient, not only to save money and be greener, but also, to save lives.
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GE to Pay $23 Million to Settle Bribery Allegations
July 29th, 2010
Mmm hmm.
Via: AFP:
US industrial titan General Electric has agreed to pay over 23 million dollars to settle allegations that it bribed Iraqi officials, a US financial watchdog said on Tuesday.
GE had been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being part of “a 3.6 million dollar kickback scheme with Iraqi government agencies to win contracts to supply medical equipment and water purification equipment.”
Four subsidiaries of the Connecticut-based company were accused of bribing officials at the Iraqi ministries of health and oil, trading cash, computer equipment and medical supplies to win lucrative contracts.
…
The contracts were linked to the UN’s discredited “oil-for-food” program which allowed international firms to offer services paid for from Iraqi oil revenues.
An investigation later found that Iraqi officials had siphoned off around 1.7 billion in kickbacks from the contracts.
In a statement, GE said the “conduct did not meet our standards.”
“We believe that it is in the best interests of GE and its shareholders to resolve this matter now, without admitting or denying the allegations, and put the matter behind us.”
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Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little
July 28th, 2010
And not a word about the profit incentive to lock people up!
America’s Private Gulag is over a decade old, but worth reading if you’re new to the concept of the prison industrial complex:
To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, “It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits.” Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate”.
“(There is a) basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up” notes Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
Private prison companies have also begun to push, even if discreetly, for the type of get-tough policies needed to ensure their continued growth. All the major firms in the field have hired big-time lobbyists. When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City, Esmor hired a onetime aide to State Representative Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The aide succeeded in winning the contract and also the vote of his former boss, who had been an opponent of the project. In 1995, Wackenhut Chairman Tim Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge support for amendments to the Violent Crime Control Act — which subsequently passed — that authorized the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons.
CCA has been especially adept at expansion via political payoffs. The first prison the company managed was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA’s bid for the project, the company awarded Long’s pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him to lobby on its behalf. CCA has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and failed presidential candidate. In one of a number of sweetheart deals, Lamar’s wife, Honey Alexander, made more than $130,000 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter is another CCA stockholder and is quoted in the company’s 1995 annual report as saying that “the federal government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections.”
In another ominous development, the revolving door between the public and private sector has led to the type of company boards that are typical of those found in the military-industrial complex. CCA co-founders were T. Don Hutto, an ex-corrections commissioner in Virginia, and Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. A top company official is Michael Quinlan, once director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The board of Wackenhut is graced by a former Marine Corps commander, two retired Air Force generals and a former under secretary of the Air Force, as well as James Thompson, ex-governer of Illinois, Stuart Gerson, a former assistant US attorney general and Richard Staley, who previously worked with the INS.
More recently, Pennsylvania judges took bribes to send children to privately owned juvenile detention centers.
Books:
Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Tara Herival and Paul Wright
Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime by Joel Dyer
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Via: The Economist:
Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed.
The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them.
In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400, compared with today’s one in 100.
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Congressional Budget Office: “Growing Budget Deficits Will Cause Debt to Rise to Unsupportable Levels”
July 28th, 2010
Via: Congressional Budget Office:
Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels.
…
Beyond those gradual consequences, a growing level of federal debt would also increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates. It is possible that interest rates would rise gradually as investors’ confidence declined, giving legislators advance warning of the worsening situation and sufficient time to make policy choices that could avert a crisis. But as other countries’ experiences show, it is also possible that investors would lose confidence abruptly and interest rates on government debt would rise sharply. The exact point at which such a crisis might occur for the United States is unknown, in part because the ratio of federal debt to GDP is climbing into unfamiliar territory and in part because the risk of a crisis is influenced by a number of other factors, including the government’s long-term budget outlook, its near-term borrowing needs, and the health of the economy.
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Jim Rogers Calls CNBC A Market PR Agency Whose Sole Purpose Is To Make Stocks Go Higher
Source: Zero Hedge
A “cheeky” Jim Rogers appeared earlier on CNBC Europe (which incidentally is orders of magnitude better than its US equivalent), and confirmed the depths to which the once relevant and informative TV station has now fallen. In a discussion over the European Stress BS, the topic turned to the role of PR agencies when it comes to shaping popular perceptions, at which point this slipped: “The whole purpose of PR is to make stocks go higher. That’s what CNBC and many many PR agencies are all about. Yes, they make things look better for a while. Are they really better? No.” Propaganda, in other words. And in the corporatist circle jerk world, advertisers still flock to it, even as the broader public reaches levels of skepticism never before seen courtesy precisely of such blatantly fraudulent media contraptions, and vacates the GE soon to be spin off in unprecedented quantities. The American public may be lazy, but it sure is getting more intelligent, and wiser to the tricks of the media propaganda trade.
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Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water
(NaturalNews) Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I’m about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
Check out this YouTube video of a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.
After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an “unlawful diversion of rainwater.” Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it’s still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah’s various government bodies.
“Utah’s the second driest state in the nation. Our laws probably ought to catch up with that,” explained Miller in response to the state’s ridiculous rainwater collection ban.
Salt Lake City officials worked out a compromise with Miller and are now permitting him to use “their” rainwater, but the fact that individuals like Miller don’t actually own the rainwater that falls on their property is a true indicator of what little freedom we actually have here in the U.S. (Access to the rainwater that falls on your own property seems to be a basic right, wouldn’t you agree?)
Outlawing rainwater collection in other statesUtah isn’t the only state with rainwater collection bans, either. Colorado and Washington also have rainwater collection restrictions that limit the free use of rainwater, but these restrictions vary among different areas of the states and legislators have passed some laws to help ease the restrictions.
In Colorado, two new laws were recently passed that exempt certain small-scale rainwater collection systems, like the kind people might install on their homes, from collection restrictions.
Prior to the passage of these laws, Douglas County, Colorado, conducted a study on how rainwater collection affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. The study revealed that letting people collect rainwater on their properties actually reduces demand from water facilities and improves conservation.
Personally, I don’t think a study was even necessary to come to this obvious conclusion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that using rainwater instead of tap water is a smart and useful way to conserve this valuable resource, especially in areas like the West where drought is a major concern.
Additionally, the study revealed that only about three percent of Douglas County’s precipitation ended up in the streams and rivers that are supposedly being robbed from by rainwater collectors. The other 97 percent either evaporated or seeped into the ground to be used by plants.
This hints at why bureaucrats can’t really use the argument that collecting rainwater prevents that water from getting to where it was intended to go. So little of it actually makes it to the final destination that virtually every household could collect many rain barrels worth of rainwater and it would have practically no effect on the amount that ends up in streams and rivers.
It’s all about control, reallyAs long as people remain unaware and uninformed about important issues, the government will continue to chip away at the freedoms we enjoy. The only reason these water restrictions are finally starting to change for the better is because people started to notice and they worked to do something to reverse the law.
Even though these laws restricting water collection have been on the books for more than 100 years in some cases, they’re slowly being reversed thanks to efforts by citizens who have decided that enough is enough.
Because if we can’t even freely collect the rain that falls all around us, then what, exactly, can we freely do? The rainwater issue highlights a serious overall problem in America today: diminishing freedom and increased government control.
Today, we’ve basically been reprogrammed to think that we need permission from the government to exercise our inalienable rights, when in fact the government is supposed to derive its power from us. The American Republic was designed so that government would serve the People to protect and uphold freedom and liberty. But increasingly, our own government is restricting people from their rights to engage in commonsense, fundamental actions such as collecting rainwater or buying raw milk from the farmer next door.
Today, we are living under a government that has slowly siphoned off our freedoms, only to occasionally grant us back a few limited ones under the pretense that they’re doing us a benevolent favor.
Fight back against enslavementAs long as people believe their rights stem from the government (and not the other way around), they will always be enslaved. And whatever rights and freedoms we think we still have will be quickly eroded by a system of bureaucratic power that seeks only to expand its control.
Because the same argument that’s now being used to restrict rainwater collection could, of course, be used to declare that you have no right to the air you breathe, either. After all, governments could declare that air to be somebody else’s air, and then they could charge you an “air tax” or an “air royalty” and demand you pay money for every breath that keeps you alive.
Think it couldn’t happen? Just give it time. The government already claims it owns your land and house, effectively. If you really think you own your home, just stop paying property taxes and see how long you still “own” it. Your county or city will seize it and then sell it to pay off your “tax debt.” That proves who really owns it in the first place… and it’s not you!
How about the question of who owns your body? According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark office, U.S. corporations and universities already own 20% of your genetic code. Your own body, they claim, is partially the property of someone else.
So if they own your land, your water and your body, how long before they claim to own your air, your mind and even your soul?
Unless we stand up against this tyranny, it will creep upon us, day after day, until we find ourselves totally enslaved by a world of corporate-government collusion where everything of value is owned by powerful corporations — all enforced at gunpoint by local law enforcement.
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Israel’s sex trade booming
Human trafficking in Israel rakes in more than USD billion a year, findings in annual parliamentary survey show
By Miri Hasson
Published: 03.23.05, 12:44 / Israel News
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The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, headed by Knesset member Zehava Galon of the left-wing Yahad
Tel Aviv exhibition A living hell / By Miri Chason Thousands of sex slaves bought and sold each year face danger, threats, violence; run-aways dealt with quickly: one home in Moldova firebombed; Tel Aviv exhibit explores ‘women as chattel’ Full Textparty, commissioned the report in an effort to combat the sex trade in Israel. Findings showed that some 3,000 and 5,000 women are smuggled to Israel annually and sold into the prostitution industry, where they are constantly subjected to violence and abuse.
The report, issued annually, said some 10,000 such women currently reside in about 300 to 400 brothels throughout the country. They are traded for about USD 8,000 – USD 10,000, the committee said.
The U.S. State Department ranks Israel in the second tier of human trafficking around the world, saying the Jewish State does not maintain minimal conditions regarding the issue but is working to improve them.
Israel passed a law in 2003 that would allow the state to confiscate the profits of traffickers, but watchdog groups say it is rarely enforced.
Most foreign prostitutes in Israel come from Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Russia and many are smuggled in across the Egyptian border.
The committee found that the women work seven days a week for up to 18 hours every day and that out of the NIS 120 paid by customers, they are left with just NIS 20, while the rest of the money is passed on to their traders.
The prostitutes face constant threats of abuse and murder, the report said, and Israeli law does little to help them. Delays in trial dates and prolonged hearings force the women to remain exposed to violence for more than a year until they are called in to provide testimony, and courts rarely collect early testimonies, as permitted by law.
To help combat the problem, the committee recommended that the state prosecutor’s office refrain from making plea bargains with sex traders. It also advised to raise the threshold of punitive measures and pushed for financial compensation for sex trade victims.
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Leaked files indicate U.S. pays Afghan media to run friendly stories
Source: Yahoo News
Buried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories.
Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to Afghan reporters as “our journalists” and directing them in how to do their jobs.
Such close collaboration between local media and U.S. forces has been a headache for the Pentagon in the past: In 2005, Pentagon contractor the Lincoln Group was caught paying Iraqi newspapers to run stories written by American soldiers, causing the United States considerable embarrassment.
In one of the WikiLeaks documents, a PRT member reports delivering “12 hours of PSYOP Radio Content Programming” to two radio stations in the province of Ghazni in 2008, and paying one of them “$3,900 for Radio Content Programming air time for the month of October”:
“The PRT provided 12 hours of PSYOP Radio Content Programming to Radio Ghaznwyan FM Station and Radio Ghazni AM/FM Station for week of 6-12 Nov. Topics included Afghanistan History, Law, and Human Rights in both Dari and Pashto, and a spreadsheet with the specific radio content programming for the week of 6-12 Nov will be forward sepcor to SPARTAN. Additionally, PRT paid Radio Ghaznwyan $3,900 for Radio Content Programming air time for the month of October.”Read Full Article Here… Related Posts:
‘Minority Report’ technology used by police to predict crimes
Source: Telegraph
Two police forces have begun trialling the sophisticated programme, which has echoes of the Tom Cruise film Minority Report, where psychics are used to stop criminals before they commit a crime.
The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates crime records, intelligence briefings, offender profiles and even weather reports, to identify potential flashpoints where a crime is most likely to occur.
The “predictive analytics” technology has been credited as a key factor behind a 31 per cent fall in crime and 15 per cent drop in violent crime in Memphis, Tennessee, according to The Observer.
John Williams, of the Memphis Crime Analysis Unit, said: “This is more of a proactive tool than reacting after crimes have occurred.
“This pretty much puts officers in the area at the time that the crimes are being committed.”
The software has been developed by IBM which has invested $11 billion in analytics over the past four years.
Mark Cleverley, the company’s head of government strategy, said: “What the technology does is what police officers have always done, sometimes purely on instinct – looking for patterns to work out what is likely to happen next.
“What is different is the scale on which the systems operates and the speed at which the analysis takes place.” Related Posts:
Raw milk draws armed police raid
By P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles TimesJuly 25, 2010
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With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.
Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid’s target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.
“I still can’t believe they took our yogurt,” said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. “There’s a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they’re raiding us because we’re selling raw dairy products?”
Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities — the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.
Get a daily snapshot of business, financial and technology news delivered to your inbox with our Business Daily newsletter. Sign up »On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are “healthy food” consumers — a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form.
They want almonds cracked fresh from the shell, not those run through a federally mandated pasteurization process that uses either heat or a chemical to kill off salmonella and other possible contaminants. They hunger for meat slaughtered on the farm. And they’re willing to pay a premium — $6, $8 or more — for a gallon of milk straight from the cow.
So despite research outlining the dangers of consuming raw milk and other unprocessed foods, they’re finding ways to circumnavigate federal, state and local laws that seek to control what they can serve at the dinner table. Such defiance, they said, comes from growing distrust of a food sector that has become more industrialized and consolidated — and whose products have been at the root of some of the country’s deadliest food contamination cases.
“This is about control and profit, not our health,” said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. “How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?”
Scientists and regulators point to epidemiological evidence linking disease outbreaks to raw milk: The milk can transmit bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, campylobacter and listeria, which can result in diarrhea, kidney failure or death.
“This is not about restricting the public’s rights,” said Nicole Neeser, program manager for dairy, meat and poultry inspection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. “This is about making sure people are safe.”
Demand for all manner of raw foods — including honey, nuts and meat — has been growing, spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has pressed the government to act.
It is legal for licensed dairies to sell raw milk at retail outlets in California and 10 other states, according to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty states allow people to buy unpasteurized milk directly from farms, or take part in a “cow sharing” program (in which a person buys part ownership of an animal and gets some of its milk).
But in the case of Rawesome, regulators allege that the group broke the law by failing to have the proper permits to sell food to the public. While the raid was happening at Rawesome, another went down at one of its suppliers, Healthy Family Farms in Ventura County. California agriculture officials said farm owner Sharon Palmer’s processing plant had not met standards to obtain a license. Palmer could not be reached for comment.
Rawesome’s fans, though, shrugged off such concerns.
“I always had problems with my stomach and digestion with normal milk,” said Darin Nellis, 41, who runs a nonprofit production company in Culver City and has been a member of Rawesome for three months. “I like how raw goat milk tastes, and I feel better.”
Such sentiments exasperate officials at the Food and Drug Administration, which bans interstate sales of raw milk and advises that both milk and honey should be pasteurized.
The debate has boiled at the state level for years. Alta Dena Dairy founder Harold J.J. Stueve fought for decades to help keep raw milk sales legal in California. This year, Wisconsin legislators approved a bill aimed largely at allowing the state’s struggling small farmers to sell more raw milk products. But Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed that bill under pressure from large producers. In neighboring Minnesota, whose official state drink is milk, authorities recently raided a private club similar to Rawesome in south Minneapolis.
Such battles have had a chilling effect on some retailers. Whole Foods Market used to carry raw milk and raw milk products in California and three other states. But in March, the chain pulled all but a few cheeses off its shelves. Part of the reason, it said in a statement, was “the realities of the very high additional costs for liability insurance … because of the potential risks from selling unpasteurized milk and milk products.”
Rawesome was born of consumer frustration. In 1998, James Stewart — a vegetarian who drank raw milk — couldn’t find the stuff in Southern California grocery stores. So he started making road trips to dairies in northern California and to Whole Foods in San Jose, which at the time carried raw milk. Word spread. Family and friends wanted it too.
So Stewart and Vonderplanitz created a private food club where, for a $25 annual fee, members “lease” the land and livestock directly from a farmer. Then, members pay an additional service fee attached to each grocery item, which they say covers the cost of transporting each food item from the farm to Venice.
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