Thank God! Poverty Has Ended In America!

Mainstream media is lying to us once again with today's blaring headlines in USA Today and The New York Times echoing the Census Bureau's phony and doctored statistics on the decline of poverty in America. "Poverty Rate Falls, but More Are Uninsured " shouted The Times. "Poverty drops as nation's income hits 5-year high" screamed the headline in USA Today. But there's a bunch of little facts in both articles that neither rag decided to share with you, the biggest being the way in which the Census people combine their figures. Let's take a look, shall we?

It's a very simple formula they use at the Bureau really, and one that allows them to fudge the numbers and produce the desired results. They take the tax returns from everyone in the country, and combine the totals to come up with an 'average' annual income for all. This includes the likes of people such as Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, both billionaires, and all the other mega rich CEO's. As we all know by now, the last almost seven years have been very kind to the top one per cent of our population, with big wigs taking home hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and the rest of the population eating dirt. But by lumping everyone in together, the Census people can make it seem as though every American's income has risen, when we all know the opposite is quite true. I would venture a guess as to what big white house the order came from to make it appear as though the economy is chugging along quite nicely for everyone.

Does anyone believe this nonsense? Well, actually, yes they do. And therein lies the problem. People read this rubbish in the newspapers, and assume it must be true, because, gasp! The media would never lie nor mislead nor parrot an administration with whom half of the reporters that work for the major news outlets have little get togethers with in their off time. This disgusting practice by the 4th Estate, who are supposed to be guarding us against just this type of misleading garbage must stop. It's because of incidents like this, and channels like Fox Lunatics, that more and more people are turning to online sources to get their news. And I don't mean the major outlets either. But again, the reason they get away with it, and the government gets away with spewing this stuff around is because they think no one is watching. Well, they'd better think again. A lot of us are watching. And a lot of us don't mind standing on the rooftop and screaming for as long as it takes for people to notice.

Poverty has declined in the country to the lowest levels this decade? Indeed. Tell that to the homeless and the hungry children on the streets of every city in America. Tell it to the wives and husbands and children of the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have to accept food stamps and stand in food pantry lines in order to survive. Tell it to all of those who are about to lose their homes over this latest 'bump' in the housing markets. But most of all, tell it to yourselves, over and over again. And eventually, even you might believe it. Batmanchester

Why Didn't They Warn Us About U.S. Avian Flu?

On August 9th, 2007, 5 nations banned poultry products from being imported from the states of Nebraska and Virginia due to separate flocks of turkeys being found to be infected with H5N1, or Avian Flu. The countries involved were the Philippines, China, Russia, Japan and Turkey. Not only were the turkeys banned for import, but all poultry products, including eggs, were blacklisted. There was no mention of this in any major media outlet, and in fact, on some of the smaller news outlet websites, the links to the original stories have disappeared altogether.

In case anyone has been living in a bubble for the past couple of years, the Avian Flu, or Bird Flu, has been the cause of worldwide panic where ever it appears, causing the culling of millions of food source birds around the world, and the factor in 193 deaths. In one article that managed to stay online from the Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland, it reads like a press release from the meat packing conglomerate itself. One of the companies involved is Micheals Foods, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based company with processing plants in Seward County, Nebraska. Mark Witmer, a spokesman for the corporation said that he didn't know about the bans. How this is possible when Nebraska Deputy state veterinarian Del Wilmot knew about it, as did Toby Moore, a spokesman for the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council. Here's what Mr. Moore said: "The restrictions these countries have placed have absolutely nothing to do with science." Not only that, but Karen Eggert, with the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the department has no qualms about sending the Seward County turkeys into the food supply. She explained that the turkeys tested positive for the presence of antibodies that indicate a possible prior exposure to an H5N1 avian influenza virus that does not pose a threat to humans.

This would be all well and good had the media alerted us citizens to the very real dangers of these potentially tainted meat products, but the silence surrounding this was deafening. And the issue would have died down as planned by all had not an article appeared in the August 19th edition of the Grand Island, Nebraska, Independent entitled "State prepares for Bird Flu Outbreak." By now, the damage control spin was in full swing, with the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa claiming that the strain of Avian Flu exposure was actually of the H7N9 variety, which is less deadly and harder to catch. (Or so they claim.) But even as they were making this claim to quell the fear among consumers, they contradicted themselves with this statement: "This virus causes no risk to birds or people but is of concern as influenza viruses can recombine genes among various strains and potentially become more serious."

Bear in mind, that in Nebraska, the poutry industry accounts for 1.5 billion dollars in annual revenue, and a Bird Flu scare could pretty much devastate Big Business' bottom line. So the birds and eggs were quietly released into our food supply, without so much as a warning from the 4th Estate, that would allow us to make up our own minds as to whether or not we wanted to consume an animal that had been exposed to this deadly disease. Who to blame here? Well, we could start with whomever it was that signed all of the safety deregulation laws and work our way down from there. This is another glaring example of how Big Business and Big Money pay off the political system, to the detriment of all of us.

Remember this little ditty when Thanksgiving rolls around, and the next time that you enter a voting booth. The people responsible for this cover up should be arrested, and the lawmakers who allowed this to happen by passing deregulation laws should be voted out of office. Period. Batmanchester

The Lie Of The Iraqi Purple Fingers

As the U.S. media gleefully reported on the Iraqi people dancing in the streets, as they held up purple coated fingers, they failed to tell us the facts that most in the Arab world already knew, ( except the Iraqis themselves), that the entire vote for an Iraqi Constitution was a sham at best, and an evil Corporate Interest plot at worst. Let's examine the facts.

On October 15th, 2005, the Iraqi people voted on whether or not to ratify the new Constitution for their newly "freed" nation. Putting aside the voting 'irregularities', such as voter turnouts that averaged out nationally to 80 per cent, with some provinces reporting a 99 per cent turnout rate, there is the little known fact that the Iraqis weren't even given a chance to read the draft of their new Constitution until 3 days before the voting took place. That, in and of itself, would give any vote observer pause, but add in the fact that while the people were mulling over this piece of paper, Paul Bremer and Company were in fact changing the wording of the draft, without ever informing the voters of these changes before or after they voted. The changes, explained away in the aftermath as "legalese" by Bremer, were in fact the implementation and lock in of several of Bremer's infamous 100 Orders. The most interesting lock in was specifically Order # 39 which gives American multinational corporations the right to rape the Iraqi people of their resources for at least the next 40 years. Here is the short version of Order # 39, written into the 'legal' version of the Iraqi Constitution: "Bremer Order #39: Foreign Investment
The order on foreign investment five key elements: (1) Privatization of state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of businesses in all sectors except oil and mineral extraction, banks and insurance companies (the latter two are addressed in a separate order); (3) "national treatment" of foreign firms; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all funds associated with the investment, including, but not limited to, profits; and (5) 40 year ownership licenses which have the option of being renewed."

Safeguards were written into the legal version of the Constitution that all but guarantee that this document can not be changed, save for a revolution by the Iraqi people. This so angered the Sunni voting bloc, that their leader of that time, Saleh al-Mutlaq, called the Constitutional Document a "forgery." Is it any wonder that no political solution can not be reached by the various sects of Iraqi society? They were hoodwinked into voting against their own self interests, by cronies of the Bush Administration, whose sole intention in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in the first place was to give access to the Iraqis' resources, to American mutinational corporations. Just before the invasion, and not known by the American people, Hussein had decided to make deals with Russia, China, France and Germany regarding oil field developement, infrastructure building, and had in fact struck a deal to use the Euro as Iraq's form of payment. Adding insult to injury, Hussein stated that no American corporations would be allowed to participate in his country's affairs any longer. (Even though forbidden by U.S. law, Halliburton and several other U.S. corporations were, in fact, doing a lot of business with Hussein's government, through offshore subsidiaries. The loss of revenue would have been in the billions.)

The fraud of the Iraqi Constitution is yet another example of this administration's willingness to lie to the American people about what this war is really all about. Opening Iraqi markets to American multinationals, who import cheap labor from outside the country instead of using Iraqi labor, who went in after the oil, but not to lower the price of gasoline here at home, but to suppress the production of Iraq's oil supply in order to reap record windfall profits, and to have a permanent military presence in the Middle East, from which we can threaten to invade other countries who don't obey us to the letter. Don't believe me? First, listen to the words of Saleh al-Mutlaq: "They want this constitution to pass despite the will of the people." And second, Google something called MEFTA, The Middle East Free Trade Agreement. You'll then see what's really going on. Batmanchester