Widespread Crop Failures The U.S.

US may be facing largest crop failures in history.

© blogfactory

Torrential rains have been hammering the heartland of America for months, and at this point vast stretches of farmland in the middle of the country are nothing but mud. As a result of the endless rain and unprecedented flooding that we have witnessed, millions of acres of farmland will have nothing planted on them at all in 2019, and that is a major national crisis. But most farmers were able to get seeds planted in the deplorable conditions, and now they are desperately hoping that something will actually grow. Unfortunately, on farm after farm what is coming out of the ground looks absolutely terrible. Even if we get ideal weather conditions for the rest of the summer, there is no way that many of these fields will be ready before the first hard frost arrives. As you will see below, the truth is that we are potentially facing the most…

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Tap Newswire: Has Boris fallen into a CIA honey trap?

The CIA/intelligence links behind Boris Johnson’s domestic spat.

ukgovernmentwatch

Sun 23 Jun 2019 7
posted by Tapestry

Boris keeps getting knifed at each moment he’s about to grasp the premiership. His old ‘friend’ from Eton – Gove – was ready with the knife when May won the contest, and he had to stand aside. Now his pretty little thing is working hard to sink his chances.Check into her background and it’s obvious she’s up to her neck in globalist connections, probably put in place to bring Boris down when the moment calls for it…unless he’s party to the charade himself which would seem unlikely.

• The Sun tries to brush the situation aside as follows –

IT’S a scene repeated up and down the country.

Man comes in from a long day at work and like bungling Boris Johnson spills wine on the couch to his partner’s annoyance.

Many of us have had those long, stressful days that you…

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Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food

The mad rush for Fake Food and Fake Meat, ignorant of the diversity of our foods and food cultures, and the role of biodiversity in maintaining the our health, is a recipe for accelerating the destruction of the planet and our health.

HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Dr Vandana Shiva | Independent Science News – TRANSCEND Media Service

The Ontology and Ecology of Food

Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life.

Prof. Vandana Shiva

Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life.

Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life.

As an ancient Upanishad reminds us “Everything is food, everything is something else’s food. “

Good Food and Real Food are the basis of health.

Bad food, industrial food, fake food is the basis of disease.

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Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism

This is reality vs the vested interests of the powerful. Any meaningful policy has to upset the established power base and the political donor class. Any policy that doesn’t upset these people will be useless.

© blogfactory

we need to throw the kitchen sink at this with a total rethink of our relationship to ownership, work and capital

limate change activism is increasingly the domain of the young, such as 16-year-oldGreta Thunberg, the unlikely face of theschool strike for climate movement, which has seen many thousands of children walk out of school to demand that their parents’ generation takes responsibility for leaving them a planet to live on. In comparison, the existing political establishment looks more and more like an impediment to change. The consequences of global warming have moved from the merely theoretical and predicted to observable reality over the past few years, but this has not been matched by an uptick in urgency. The need to keep the wheels of capitalism well-oiled takes precedence even against a backdrop of fires, floods and hurricanes.

Today’s children, as they become more politically aware…

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A complete and comprehensive ban on fracking is needed to mitigate its grave harm to public health and the climate

Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking (Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction), Sixth Edition, June 19, 2019

A group of doctors and scientists have released a comprehensive report highlighting that 84 percent of studies published from 2009-2015 on the health impacts of fracking conclude the industry causes harm to human health, Environmental Health News reports […]

View image on Twitter

Dr. Sandra Steingraber @ssteingraber1

SIGNS OF DAMAGE: #Fracking is linked to preterm birth, asthma, and cancer risks in multiple studies.

See footnotes 59-65; 605-671 in the all-new fracking science compendium, 6th ed. http://concernedhealthny.org

via A complete and comprehensive ban on fracking is needed to mitigate its grave harm to public health and the climate — DES Daughter Network

With cryptocurrency launch, Facebook sets its path toward becoming an independent nation

By Jennifer Grygiel | The Conversation

Facebook has announced a plan to launch a new cryptocurrency named the Libra, adding another layer to its efforts to dominate global communications and business. Backed by huge finance and technology companies including Visa, Spotify, eBay, PayPal and Uber – plus a ready-made user base of 2 billion people around the world – Facebook is positioned to pressure countries and central banks to cooperate with its reinvention of the global financial system.

In my view as a social media researcher and educator, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clearly seeking to give his company even more political power on a global scale, despite the potential dangers to society at large. In a sense, he is declaring that he wants Facebook to become a virtual nation, populated by users, powered by a self-contained economy, and headed by a CEO – Zuckerberg himself – who is not even accountable to his shareholders.

Facebook hasn’t behaved responsibly in the past, and is still wrestling with significant public concerns – and investigations – about its privacy practices, information accuracy and targeted advertising. Therefore, it’s important to see through the hype. People must consider who is reshaping the world, and whether they are doing it in the best interests of humankind – or whether they are just seeking to benefit the new class of elite technology executives.

Humanity needs ethical leadership, and time to think through the potential repercussions of rapid technological change. That’s why, in my view, Facebook’s cryptocurrency should be blocked by financial regulators until its design has been proved to be safe for all of global society […]

via With cryptocurrency launch, Facebook sets its path toward becoming an independent nation — A Sweet Dose of Reality | The Mad Truther

The Danger of Biased Artificial Intelligence

The World According to AI – Episode 2 The Bias in the Machine

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

This documentary examines how drone algorithms the US military developed for the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen (see Civilian Drone Strikes: Targeted by Algorithm) are being rolled out by urban police. Because these law enforcement algorithms are based on faulty data, they disproportionately target the poor and minorities. Because these particular zip codes are already over-policed, they provide the vast majority of data used in creating new algorithms.

What the filmmakers find particularly alarming is that many of the same algorithms are used to make bail decisions, sentencing recommendations and credit scores, as well as determining eligibility for state housing and other benefits.

The filmmakers visit Skid Road, the second most policed area in the world, after Baghdad. Owing to the current housing crisis, it hosts a massive homeless population, most of whom are either Black or disabled. The reason Skid Row is so heavily policed is because Skid Row borders on the wealthy Los Angeles financial district. One Skid Row woman has been arrested 108 times for sitting or lying on the sidewalk.

The US military also uses Skid Row population to test new spy software.