Truth Leaking Through All Over The Place

source: The Young Turks

Bombshell news of the week that the National "Security"Admistration (NSA) had successfully accessed all the calling and browsing records of all the customers of Verizon, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Skype,YouTube, PalTalk and Apple for years -- under a top secret program called PRISM the corporations deny any knowledge of -- surprised some citizens less than others.

If you woke up to realize that you lived under government of, by and for corporations would you really still think that civil liberties for mere people were intact?

I still use all of those corporate services to connect with others concerned about the state of our world, and to share information. It occurred to me years ago that the powers that be allowed me access to these nifty tools for networking and research because those same tools made it so convenient for their surveillance of me.

Since I have nothing to hide and I'm proud of being willing to dissent and to organize resistance, I go along with the plan -- until the day my corporate government shuts down the Internet, and disaffected citizens go to the streets and stay there. (Maybe I should start right now raising carrier pigeons?)

Some of the other truths worthy of notice that leaked into my view this week:

Anonymous responded by leaking a bunch of NSA documents "including seriously important stuff like the US Department of Defense's 'Strategic Vision' for controlling the internet" according to Chris Mills on Gizmodo.

The New York Times published a side by side comparison of the food warning labels and ingredient disclosures of staple comfort food Kraft mac & cheese. According to food watchdog website Food Babe, buyers in the UK see these warnings that buyers in the USA do not:

Warning #1: This Product May Cause Adverse Effects On Activity And Attention In Children (This warning label is required because The US version of Kraft Mac & Cheese has artificial food dyes yellow #5 and yellow #6 which are proven to be linked to hyperactivity in children.) 

Warning #2: GMO Declaration: Made from genetically modified wheat. (May contain GMO) (This warning label is required because the US version of Kraft Mac & Cheese contains GMOs.)

The Environmental "Protection" Agency (EPA) drastically reduced protections to be offered in case of radioactive release events. According to a Reader Supported News article on the EPA's Protective Action Guides (PAG):

The new PAGs eliminate requirements to evacuate people in the face of high projected thyroid, skin, or lifetime whole body doses; recommend dumping radioactive waste in municipal garbage dumps not designed for such waste; propose five options for drinking water, which would dramatically increase the permitted concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water, by as much as 27,000 times, compared to EPA's current Safe Drinking Water Act limits; and suggest markedly relaxing long-term cleanup standards. 

"In essence the government is now saying nuclear power accidents could produce such widespread contamination and produce such high radiation levels that the government should abandon efforts to clean it up and instead force people to live with radiation-induced cancer risks orders of magnitude higher than ever considered acceptable," said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap.

This news saddened but also failed to surprise me because of 1) the tepid response of the corporate controlled Japanese government in response to the continuously unfolding nuclear pollution disaster at Fukushima (of an earthquake damaged reactor built by mega corporation General Electric) and 2) the non-existent response of the corporate controlled U.S. government to the continuously unfolding nuclear pollution disaster in New Mexico on tribal territory of the Navajo nation. The uncontained effect of years of radioactive groundwater on the nation's -- and the planet's -- wheat supply was ably chronicled this week by Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese in "America's Secret Fukushima Poisoning the Breadbasket of the World."

Kevin and Margaret are two of the folks I will be training my carrier pigeons to stay in contact with when the Dept. of "Defense" or some other entity shuts down my online access. For now, their news website is on my often-read list: PopularResistance.org.