(TMU) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Monday that it launched an investigation into the fast-growing phenomenon of people getting “severe” lung disease in connection with vaping.

According to the CDC, nearly 100 people have contracted serious and often life-threatening lung illnesses that may be linked to their use of illicit e-cigarettes, which heat oils into inhalable aerosols, allowing users to consume nicotine, THC or CBD in a highly discrete and smoke-free manner.

The news comes as counterfeit vaping cartridges proliferate across the U.S. with generic packaging and false labels that obscure the fact that they contain a number of mysterious adulterants including cough syrup, various hydrocarbons, toxic heavy metals such as lead, and dangerous synthetic cannabinoids —a category that includes the lethal drug K2 or “spice.”

In many cases, black-market cartridges also contain myclobutanil—a fungicide that when heated releases hydrogen cyanide, a chemical found in Zyklon-B, the poison used in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust.

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On Saturday, the CDC confirmed that they were looking into “94 possible cases of severe lung illness associated with vaping reported in 14 states from June 28, 2019, to August 15, 2019 (this includes 30 cases in Wisconsin).” Other states involved in the investigation include California, Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota.

The CDC further stated that they would investigate “a cluster of pulmonary illnesses linked to e-cigarette product use, or ‘vaping,’ primarily among adolescents and young adults. Additional states have alerted CDC to possible (not confirmed) cases and investigations into these cases are ongoing. There is no conclusive evidence that an infectious disease is causing the illnesses. While some cases in each of the states are similar and appear to be linked to e-cigarette product use, more information is needed to determine what is causing the illnesses.”

The announcement comes after officials in Kings County, California announced last Wednesday that seven people have been hospitalized with pneumonia-like symptoms in the rural town of Hanford after buying unregulated cannabis vaporizer cartridges tainted with deadly toxins.

Within the past month alone, six people in their 20s and one 60-year-old have been placed in intensive care for severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARDS), with two of the patients requiring mechanical ventilation to prevent them from dying, reports Leafly.

Officials in California have long urged consumers to avoid unlicensed cannabis vaping cartridges, colloquially known as “carts,” due to the lack of rigorous testing that legal cannabis products undergo. Officials aren’t yet certain that illegal carts are the culprit in the hospitalizations, but the common nexus in each of the cases is that those who fell ill were using bootleg cartridges.

In each of the cases, patients bought untested THC products that looked remarkably similar to those sold in legal dispensaries. Street dealers typically need only to buy empty vape cartridges from China, through eBay or other intermediaries like Alibaba, before filling them with raw THC oil cut with a variety of different additives ranging from vegetable glycerin to fungicides, and packaging it in generic boxes that falsely advertise the alleged properties and strains contained in the product.

Before long, users who imbibe of the counterfeit carts often report having heart palpitations, shortness of breath, headaches, and other symptoms related to inhaling the mysterious oils.

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Dr. Milton Teske, a health officer with the Kings County Department of Public Health and longtime emergency room physician, said:

“If you’re going to vape THC, get it from a licensed dispensary where you know there’s a certain amount of testing required to do. It sounds like it’s going to cost twice as much as the stuff on the street, but you don’t want to end up in with a life-threatening respiratory condition … Anyone that vapes THC they got off the street and has shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and trouble breathing—go to the ER and tell them you’re vaping, and have heard about this acute respiratory distress syndrome developing from that.” 

Teske explained:

“Almost every patient had a different brand name … And everyone had purchased it on the street.

Whoever is mixing it up in their garage, they’re adding other flavors, I suspect, or it’s how they’re diluting it. I suspect it’s some type of hydrocarbon.”

In another case that has been gaining widespread media coverage, a 26-year old Wisconsin man has been placed in a medically-induced coma after vaping bootleg cannabis oil sold under the popular black-market brand name, Dank Vapes. The patient’s brother has told a number of outlets that he holds the notorious brand responsible for the life-threatening lung and heart damage the young man sustained.

In a newly-published investigative report by Inverse, the so-called cartridge company Dank Vapes—whose products can be found from Toronto to Mexico City—was exposed as being not so much an actual cannabis company, but as a purveyor of packaging for illicit cartridges.

Mark Hoashi, the founder of Doja App, explained:

“They act like a cannabis company but they actually don’t exist. They’re in the packaging industry … These are just people filling cartridges as ‘Dank Vapes.’ It’s not a singular facility. It’s just people in their garages filling them and selling them.”

Most alarmingly, the problem of black-market cartridges likely won’t go away any time soon. After all, people want to get high for a low price—and the prohibitively high costs of top-shelf legal cannabis will always ensure a customer base for shady cart-slangers.

As “hallinsco,” the host of the Stay High, Stay Humble podcast, told Inverse:

“The Dank Vapes brand will continue to get bigger and grow more in illegal states … They are cheaper, and even in legal states where legal meds are taxed very high, some people still prefer the cheaper options on the black market.”

In California, the Bureau of Cannabis Control is hoping that an old-fashioned campaign of public service announcements titled “Get #Weedwise” can educate consumers about the dangers of consuming black market cartridges. Bureau communications chief Alex Traverso said:

“This is the entire reason why we are running our get weed wise campaign. To educate the public about the importance of shopping from licensed retailers only. There are things out of your control when you decide to purchase cannabis from the illegal market. Your health is more important than cost.”

But for those of us who live in a state or country where legally-licensed cannabis isn’t yet a reality, it may be best to just stick to smoking flower in the analog style. As Josh Wurzer, the founder of licensed California cannabis analysis lab SC Labs told Leafly:

“Black market cannabis was a relatively safe product for so long because—outside of illegal pesticide use—it is hard or impractical to adulterate it to the point it’s going to lead to a public health issue. However with these vape cartridges, it doesn’t have to be nefarious, it can just be incompetence. You need to be very careful about the purity of the cannabinoids, terpenes, and any additives you use, but you need to monitor the quality of the materials used to manufacture the cartridges themselves.

You don’t want to trust your lungs with some chemicals someone mixed up in their garage!”

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You wouldn’t eat food that poses health risks. So why risk purchasing cannabis that contains toxic pesticides, dangerous chemicals, and harmful fungi? ??? – Know what's in your grow – Get #weedwise and purchase safe cannabis from licensed retailers only. Visit CApotcheck.com for more information. ?✅? – #cannabis #cannabiscommunity #cannabisculture #safecannabis #getweedwise #weedwise #californiacannabis #californiagrown #legalcannabis #bureauofcannabiscontrol #cannabisnews #capotcheck #retailer #dispensary #licensed #legalshop #pesticides #chemicals #safe

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By Elias Marat | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

In a shocking resignation letter dated March 28, 1999, a 3M environmental specialist accused the company of being more concerned with profits and image than environmental safety.

According to Richard Purdy who penned the scathing letter, PFOS “is the most insidious pollutant since PCB” and is the cause for a potential health crisis across the entire country, but most notably in the state of Michigan. PFOS is used in 3M’s ScotchGard stain-protection product line and isn’t the only PFAS chemical the company uses.

“It is probably more damaging than PCB because it does not degrade, whereas PCB does; it is more toxic to wildlife,” the letter reads.

“I have worked within the system to learn more about this chemical and to make the company aware of the dangers associated with its continued use,” Purdy wrote. “But I have continually met roadblocks, delays, and indecision. For weeks on end, I have received assurances that my samples would be analyzed soon — never to see results. There are always excuses and little is accomplished.”

A new report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Northeastern University has found that people in 43 states in the United States are exposed to drinking water contaminated with PFAS chemicals, of which PFOS is one.

Michigan has been hit hardest, with at least 46 sites where groundwater has PFAS levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) lifetime health advisory guideline. According to Detroit Free Press, “The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy has estimated PFAS could be found at more than 11,300 sites in Michigan” including 17 bodies of water with “‘do not eat’ fish advisories, or limitations on consumption of fish, because of PFOS contamination.”

The revealing resignation letter was recently obtained by the Detroit Free Press along with numerous internal 3M documents. The documents were obtained by then-Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson during a 2010 lawsuit alleging environmental contamination by 3M in the state of Minnesota. The lawsuit was settled for $850 million in 2018.

While PFAS chemicals have proved useful in numerous applications including cleaning products, waterproof clothing, nonstick cookware, textiles, grease-resistant food packaging, leather, paper goods, paint and more, the very same properties that make it so successful in these applications is what makes it so harmful to environment. PFAS compounds are nearly indestructible, with some referring to them as “the forever chemicals.”

But the same qualities that made PFAS compounds so useful also makes them almost indestructible in the environment, giving them the ominous nickname “the forever chemicals.”

Documents show that 3M was, in fact, aware of PFAS toxicity in lab rats all the way back in 1950. In the mid-1970s, health concerns arose after studies of fish, rats, and monkeys. The problems were so prevalent, that the company became aware of rising levels of PFAS compounds in their employees’ blood along with a link to testicular cancer. PFAS compounds were “found to be completely resistant to biodegradation” way back in 1978.

PFAS, which have been linked to a host of medical conditions such as cancer, thyroid problems, hormone imbalances, pre-eclampsia, learning disabilities and more, are found in the blood of almost 99% of Americans.

Documents obtained during the 2010 lawsuit revealed, not only this shocking resignation letter, but documents outlining 3M’s research into PFAS compounds. It turns out, 3M has been well aware for years that the compounds do not break down in the environment as expected, that they were found in both the blood of employees and the public, and laboratory rats and other animals were experiencing negative health effects.

Despite the revelations, 3M continued to sell PFAS compounds used in a range of products including things that touch both human skin as well as food. The company also neglected to inform the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

However, in the 1990s, the EPA became increasingly aware of researching showing the presence of PFAS compounds in the environment and reached an agreement with 3M in 2000 to phase out the use of PFOS by 2003. While 3M stopped using PFOA in 2000, other companies—including DuPont, the company responsible for Teflon—continued their use until an agreement with the EPA to phase them out by 2015.

According to Purdy’s 1999 letter, the environmental specialist argued years before any action was taken that 3M had already “waited too long to tell customers about the widespread dispersal of PFOS in people and the environment.”

“3M continues to make and sell these chemicals, though the company knows of an ecological risk assessment I did that indicates there is a better than 100% probability that perfluorooctansulfonate (PFOS) is biomagnifying in the food chain and harming sea mammals. This chemical is more stable than many rocks.” 

“3M told those of us working on the fluorochemical project not to write down our thoughts or have email discussions on issues because of how our speculations could be viewed in a legal discovery process. This has stymied intellectual development on the issue, and stifled discussion on the serious ethical implications of decisions.”

Now, almost 10 years after the 2010 lawsuit in Minnesota, a new one in Michigan is using the very same internal documents.

Both current and former residents of the small midwest town of Parchment, Michigan are suing 3M and Georgia-Pacific over a toxic mess left in a landfill. PFAS compounds have leached from the landfill into the town’s water supply thanks to a paper mill responsible for manufacturing food safe paper coated with 3M’s product. As a result, thousands of current and former residents of the town were unknowingly exposed to high levels of the compound via municipal drinking water.

Nicholas Coulson, the Detroit environmental class-action attorney who is bringing the lawsuit against 3M said of the allegations against the company, “What we’re alleging that 3M did is really a crime against humanity.”

“It’s an absolute outrage that, in the name of profit, for decades they suppressed this information, and they continued to pump these chemicals out in incredible quantities into the natural environment. And the terrible result of that is that some communities, like Parchment, have had to bear the brunt of it.”

“3M had really, really sufficient notice to know that, one, these things don’t go away, they build up and build up and build up, both in the environment and the body, and two, that they cause really harmful effects,” Coulson added.

In his 1999 resignation letter, Richard Purdy concluded:

“I have worked to the best of my ability within the system to see that the right actions are taken on behalf of the environment. At almost every step, I have been assured that action will be taken—yet I see slow or no results. I am told the company is concerned, but their actions speak to different concerns than mine. I can no longer participate in the process that 3M has established for the management of PFOS and precursors. For me it is unethical to be concerned with markets, legal defensibility and image over environmental safety.”

Purdy wasn’t the only one to sound the alarm. The documents reveal that, dating back to the 1970s, numerous employees—including an employee named M.T. Case who author memos revealing toxicity, another who went by Dr. King, and Eric Reiner who worked in the company’s Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control division—urged the company to act on the research.

In a response to the Detroit Free Press, 3M seemingly bragged of their dedication to “research, technology, and clean-up” while calling the story gleaned from the internal documents “incomplete and misleading“:

“3M has dedicated substantial time and resources to researching PFAS and, to that end, we have invested more than $600 million on research, technology, and clean-up efforts related to PFAS. As a responsible steward of our community, we have a record of sharing information we learn with government regulators, the scientific community, as well as local and federal officials.

The small set of documents from the Minnesota litigation portrays an incomplete and misleading story that distorts the full record regarding 3M’s actions with respect to PFOA and PFOS, as well as who we are as a company. 3M acted responsibly in connection with products containing PFAS and we will vigorously defend our environmental stewardship.”

With 19 million people in 43 U.S. states currently exposed to drinking water contaminated with PFAS chemicals, the task of cleaning up these “forever chemicals” that are reportedly more stable than some rocks, is daunting. Companies like 3M that repeatedly prioritize profits and production of their products over people must be held accountable for the havoc wreaked on the environment, their customers, and their employees. While 3M did lose its $300 million/year revenue-maker ScotchGard after the 2000 agreement with the EPA, the loss only represented a mere 2% of 3M’s total sales. And while 3M bragged in their response to the Detroit Free Press of the $600 million spent on “research, technology, and clean-up efforts related to PFAS,” those amounts pale in comparison to the company’s profits, including the $7.9 billion earned in sales in the forth quarter of 2018 alone.

Time and time again, massive corporations that have caused harm—either knowingly or not—are tasked with clean-up costs or fines that barely make a dent in their bottomline. Without significant consequences for their actions, corporations like 3M will likely continue to prioritize profits over the health of the environment and even their customers. Perhaps the newest lawsuit against 3M will finally hold the company accountable to a degree that will impact the future.

“There is no bad guy in this,” Sgt. Joseph Corrigan propitiated of an unforgiving crackdown targeting do-gooders with the nerve to voluntarily feed people in need — part of wider law enforcement action to quash the act of feeding houseless people throughout Atlanta — to the Associated Press.

There is no bad guy in this.

Activists and advocates for homeless people everywhere in the United States opine ever-tightening legal strictures regarding ‘sharing food’ in public — how feeding houseless people is classified under the law.

According to Georgia State University Police Sgt. Corrigan, a chaplain and head of the department’s homeless outreach, and a plethora of detractors, giving people food serves an acute need, but does little if anything to solve the twin crises of hunger and shelterlessness in the long term — even exacerbating such issues as left-behind refuse, communicable disease, lack of sanitation and restrooms, and more, if allowed to continue.

Indeed, as the AP reports, “About 40 cities nationwide had active laws to restrict food sharing as of November 2014, and a few dozen more had attempted such restrictions, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Interim Director Megan Hustings said she doesn’t have updated numbers but that she’s heard about more cities considering such regulations.”

However, The Nation painted a more appropriately dismal if albeit embarrassing picture on the status of feeding houseless people — nearly three years ago, in February 2015 — reporting,

“According to a survey of more than 180 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, anti-homeless laws pervade urban spaces nationwide. Roughly a third of cities barred public ‘camping,’ for example, up 60 percent since 2011. Restrictions range from prohibiting sitting on sidewalks to imposing steep fees or regulations that effectively criminalize actions of charity groups, often using antiseptic ‘quality of life’ terms (a tent pitched under a bridge becomes an unauthorized ‘camp’). Palo Alto has banned sleeping in parked cars. Mobile has imposed zero-tolerance on ‘aggressive panhandling,’ which could involve just ‘request[ing] a donation from a person standing in line…no matter how mildly the request was made.’ Last year, ThinkProgress reported, Fort Lauderdale authorized police to bust people who ‘store possessions’ on public property — suggesting that homeless people don’t deserve to have what little they carry with them, let alone ‘quality of life.’”

Notably, it isn’t as if these cities have implemented far-reaching and successful programs to replace the lost assistance of do-gooders.

In essence, critics of public charitable food-giving adhere to two problematic mainstays of thought: that people must ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps’; but, failing that, ‘teaching them to fish’ — pointing them in the direction of assistance and having them enroll, for example, in return for food — rather than simply ‘giving them fish,’ is the only valid means of assisting the neediest of individuals.

Our way or no way, they seem to suggest. There is no bad guy in this.

“We don’t want anybody to stop feeding people. We just want it done in a way that’s connected to social services providers,” George Chidi, social impact director for nonprofit community development organization, Central Atlanta Progress, averred to the Associated Press, “and not on the street corner because we can’t make sure those connections are being made in these street corner feedings.”

Thus, Atlanta joins a shamefully lengthening list of cities choosing to declare a de facto war not only against the condition of being homeless, but against anyone willing to offer the stopgap assistance of an immediate meal.

Case in point, volunteer Adele MacLean with Food Not Bombs — who takes issue with the whole of Chidi’s position — landed a citation and court summons from another University of Georgia law enforcement officer on November 19, after the awareness and advocacy group refused to cease feeding houseless people in a downtown park when threats to obtain a permit were ignored. Although the offense was ultimately tossed by a judge, she feels the incident and the fallacious premise of her supposed transgression symptomatic of the crackdown on homelessness, telling the AP,

“Food is a human right, and you don’t force people to do what you want them to do by withholding food.”

Atlanta and other cities added to obstacles between houseless people and those who would provide them nourishment, predicating any immediate assistance on their entrée into the impoverishment assistance complex — while simultaneously frustrating activists and advocates with a deluge of impossible red tape making the act of sharing food a laborious chore for those attempting to work within its confines.

Indeed, shady tactics apparently land within the purview of enforcing the law.

According to the AP, attorneys for MacLean say police have gone so far as to disseminate a “misleading pamphlet” emblazoned with the city seal and a statement indicating a permit is required to feed homeless people in public — but it isn’t true. A previously unenforced county law exists, notes Reason — which only saw enforcement beginning around Thanksgiving — but none does explicitly for the City of Atlanta.

Southern Center for Human Rights attorney Gerry Weber, representing MacLean, explained restaurants, food trucks, and festival vendors may indeed require permits from the city — people voluntarily sharing food in public without charge, not so much.

Food Not Bombs was forced to challenge a similarly callous ordinance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, arguing before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August such crackdowns on feeding houseless people infringe on the group’s constitutional right to free speech, since members share food “as an expression of their political message that hunger and poverty can be ended if society’s resources are redirected from the military and war.”

A decision in the matter has yet to be rendered.

In the interim, charity workers advocating for homeless people in cities across this putatively Great (or, perhaps, Getting There) nation will have to contend with an ambivalent public, ludicrous restrictions, and an eagerly authoritarian body of law enforcement in order to give hungry people food in a public setting.

“I salute genuinely the good will and good nature of all these people,” Sgt. Corrigan insisted to the Associated Press.

“There is no bad guy in this.”

Image: Public domain.

Sizable factions of the scientific community have railed against the EPA for continuing to allow the imprudent and widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on the nation’s crops before extensive testing can determine if the substances pose as deleterious a risk as that found in multiple studies — several of which were conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Such as ongoing analysis and the government’s latest assessment of four neonicotinoid pesticides (often referred to for brevity as ‘neonics’), two of which, EPA scientists conclude, directly threaten not only indispensable pollinators like bees and butterflies, but birds, aquatic life, other insects, and some small mammals, as well.

“The EPA’s assessments confirm neonicotinoid pesticides are extremely harmful to birds and aquatic life at the very center of our ecosystems,” asserted Center for Biological Diversity director of environmental health program, Lori Ann Burd, in a statement Friday. “With bird, aquatic invertebrate and bee populations in decline, the only way to prevent further catastrophic damage is to follow Europe’s lead and ban these dangerous pesticides.”

Dangerous, to say the least, in terms of impact to ecosystems and the broader environment — but, in particular, to the species and pollinators responsible for much of the nation’s agricultural acreage.

“In today’s assessment the EPA found that risks posed to certain birds from eating neonic-treated seeds exceeded the agency’s level of concern — the level at which harm is known to occur — by as much as 200-fold,” the Center for Biological Diversity statement continues. “In addition to killing birds, a recent scientific study also found, neonic pesticides significantly impair the migratory ability of seed-eating songbirds.

“Today’s analysis found that if neonic-treated seeds make up just 1 percent to 6 percent of a bird’s diet, serious harms could result.”

As Burd and the Center note, similar results abroad led the European Union to institute a temporary ban on neonics, while agency regulating pesticides in Canada recommended a ban for one of the most widely used neonicotinoids due to depredation of aquatic life — yet, these sobering findings from the government agency putatively tasked with protecting the environment do not necessarily secure a ban in the United States.

“The EPA’s own research leaves no question that neonicotinoids pose unacceptable risks,” the environmental health expert opined. “But while other developed nations wisely restrict use of these dangerous poisons, the United States has refused to take even the most basic steps to protect our wildlife from neonics.”

Four neonicotinoid pesticides — clothianidin, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran, and imidacloprid — are under investigation by the EPA after a growing body of evidence pegs the insidious substances responsible for sharply declining honey bee, butterfly, and other pollinator populations, as well as slumps in numbers of endangered species, in the U.S. and overseas.

But it’s the latter, imidacloprid, which is of exceptional concern to environmentalists and vigilant scientists — posing an “acute risk,” finds the EPA, to bird populations when sprayed directly onto crops. Indeed, the pernicious substances also threaten birds and animals eating neonic-treated seeds — which is one common method of delivery to treat plants, like cotton, with these pesticides.

“Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on honeybees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species, and they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines,” the CBD press statement from December 15 explains. “These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including pollen and fruit, to become toxic to pollinators; they are also slow to break down and therefore build up in the environment.”

And, as Truthout notes, “In 2016, the EPA also found that imidacloprid ‘potentially poses risk to [bee] hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators,’ according to a preliminary assessment released at the time.”

This November, Futurism reported on a stunning analysis of two of the world’s most popular pesticides, the neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, and the organophosphate, chlorpyrifos — widely suspected of causing brain and nerve damage, and in a class of substances which indeed do, although the assertion remains technically unproven — a long-temporarily banned pesticide removed from consideration for permanent prohibition by Trump EPA-appointee, Scott Pruitt, in March 2017, under highly suspect circumstances.

“Studies on the risks of neonicotinoids have often focused on bees that have been experiencing population declines. However, it is not just bees that are being affected by these insecticides,” Christy Morrissey, a biology professor at the University of Saskatchewan, warned in a press release announcing the study, at the time of publication.

Post-doctoral fellow and leader of that research team, Margaret Eng, added, “These chemicals are having a strong impact on songbirds. We are seeing significant weight loss and the birds’ migratory orientation being significantly altered. Effects were seen from eating the equivalent of just three to four imidacloprid treated canola seeds or eight chlorpyrifos granules a day for three days.”

She noted that although recovery from the effects was possible, “the effects we saw were severe enough that the birds would likely experience migratory delays or changes in their flight routes that could reduce their chance of survival, or cause a missed breeding opportunity.”

Futurism elaborated on the findings, “The insecticides have devastating and quick-acting effects on songbirds. They lost up to 25% of both their body mass and fat stores in addition to becoming lethargic and not eating as much (both signs of acute poisoning). They also became confused when attempting to migrate, unable to successfully orient themselves.”

Yet, the Trump administration’s EPA appears less than reluctant to allow the prolific use of all of the aforementioned pesticides.

In fact, just before press time, the Center for Biological Diversity issued yet another media statement pertaining to neonicotinoids, specifically in re, thiamethoxam, whose application for expanded use was surreptitiously slipped into the Federal Register on Friday — altogether unannounced by the dubious Environmental Protection Agency. Should the application garner approval, the substance — currently allowed to be applied as a seed coating — would be sprayed directly onto food crops, as well.

“For years the EPA and pesticide companies bragged that by using treated seeds they were avoiding spraying insecticides, and despite the science showing that these treated seeds were deadly to birds, claimed that they were environmentally beneficial,” Burd averred. “But we can expect the Trump EPA to now ignore the risks to birds and bees and approve these ultra-toxic pesticides to be sprayed across hundreds of millions of U.S. acres.”

Neonicotinoids indeed remain under ostensive review by the agency, with a determination to be delivered within the next two years.

While waiting without bated breath for government agencies to render verdict for or against an immense and ballooning body of scientific research admonishing of the dangers of neonicotinoids, consider the altogether ominous concluding thought from the Center’s newest press release — and the potentially tragic ramifications of erstwhile flippant, myopic decisions,

“A large and growing body of independent science links neonicotinoids to catastrophic bee declines. Twenty-nine independent scientists who conducted a global review of more than 1,000 independent studies on neonicotinoids found overwhelming evidence linking the pesticides to declines in populations of bees, birds, earthworms, butterflies and other wildlife.”

Image: Siam Teewareecharouen/Shutterstock.

Less than two weeks after the Department of Defense announced it would finally subject itself to a first-ever audit, a new report puts into perspective precisely why the Pentagon so sorely needs a thorough analysis of where its trillions upon trillions in taxpayer funds have gone — because a stupefying $21 trillion cannot be accounted for by just two government agencies, including the gargantuan DoD.

That sum is indeed $21 trillion — tens of trillions of dollars — spent by the DoD and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on … well, no one really knows what.

Not just that, but this rather bewildering amount slipped through cracks in only seventeen years — from 1998, the year legislation passed mandating annual audits of every government agency, through 2015.

Michigan State University Professor of Economics Mark Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, authored the study, which became his brainchild after hearing Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, remark on a report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) revealing no less than $6.5 trillion unaccounted for, but spent, by the DoD.

Skidmore, flabbergasted, had presumed from experience with previous public financing matters the astronomical figure too high not to be a mistake.

“Sometimes you have an adjustment just because you don’t have adequate transactions,” he explained of what typically happens when funds aren’t accounted for, in an interview in early December, “so an auditor would just recede. Usually it’s just a small portion of authorized spending, maybe one percent at most. So for the Army one percent would be $1.2 billion of transactions that you just can’t account for.”

Except, the erstwhile ‘missing’ monies didn’t total in the billions, and Skidmore soon confirmed the preposterous sum published in the OIG report, “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported,” on July 26, 2016. On December 8 — the day following the Pentagon’s audit announcement — he and Boston University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff co-authored a column for Forbes explicating the research and expanding on the problematic OIG report, stating,

“The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015, the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO’s Comptroller General, ‘Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions … For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly.’”

He continues, “Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress.  The July 2016 report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s ‘failure to correct system deficiencies.’ The result, according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-­end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year-end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments  were, according to the report, removed by the Army. There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude. The July 2016 report states, ‘In addition, DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records during the Third Quarter.’”

Affirming the jaw-dropping anomalous figure led Skidmore promptly to enjoin Fitts for a collaboration with graduate students examining thousands of additional Inspector General reports, dating from 1998 through 2015, the last year for which data was available at the time of the project — concentrating solely on the Defense Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is incomplete,” Skidmore advised, “but we have found $21 trillion in adjustments over that period. The biggest chunk is for the Army. We were able to find 13 of the 17 years and we found about $11.5 trillion just for the Army.”

Although even the preliminary numbers would sound nearly anyone’s alarm bells, Skidmore refused to propound on the nature of the unaccounted funds — whether it could have been allotted toward covert but legitimate projects, misallocated, brazenly wasted, or otherwise — but did characterize the raw findings as profoundly telling of a dearth in transparency in funding and parallel evisceration of due process in budgeting at the federal level of government.

Whether the Pentagon’s vanishing funds will ever be matched to tangible ends in its first or future financial post-mortem seems optimistically unrealistic; however, that the ball is finally rolling presents to the disgruntled public a momentous opportunity to pressure officials to be held accountable for squandering such embarrassing sums of taxpayer income.

After all, they’re listening — Skidmore’s interview with USAWatchdog came out on December 3 — with the Pentagon’s announcement following just four days later, on the 7th. Further, Skidmore noted peremptorily that, as he and Fitts scoured figures online, they observed something suspicious on the website for the Office of Inspector General, asserting in a side note,

“[A]fter Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported ‘accounting adjustments,’ was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG reports in advance [available at this link]. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General.  He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG’s disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.”

In fact, as noted previously by The Mind Unleashed, the Department of Defense also recently edited its original audit announcement in a superficially innocuous yet potentially insidious detail — halving the total number of auditors to descend on the military, as seen in an internet archive of the page, to just 1,200 — without explanation, notation of adjusted figure, nor any other remark explicating the adjustment a simple mistake or otherwise.

Despite a remarkable $21 trillion essentially having evaporated from just two albeit notoriously thriftless governmental agencies, Skidmore fears public apathy will reign — with predictably wearisome results.

“If the American people don’t stand up and say this is unacceptable,” the economist admonished, “nothing is going to happen. This is just wrong.”

Image: DOD, fnr.

Legislation from the 1990s obligating each and every government agency to undergo an audit annually notwithstanding, the Pentagon — with its obscenely bloated allocation in the hundreds of billions eclipsing the defense spending of the next several nation-states, combined — managed to escape the nightmarish prospect of accountability in an audit, entirely.

To reiterate, the United States Department of Defense — whose Fiscal Year 2018 budget hovers near a profane $700 billion despite heinous bookkeeping wherein no on is entirely sure what happened to over $10 trillion allotted it in annual budgets over the past three decades — has never faced an audit, ever, in departmental history.

Until now.

“The Defense Department is starting the first agencywide financial audit in its history, Pentagon officials announced today,” a statement on Thursday explained.

Defense Department Comptroller David Norquist told the press he had received notification from the Office of the Inspector General announcing the first-ever audit of the Pentagon beginning this month — an endeavor so momentous in scope, no less than 1,200 auditors will be unleashed across the department to help ensure its completion. [Notably, the original DoD statement cited the number of auditors to execute the probe at 2,400 — a figure which changed remarkably and without additional notation or explanation from the Pentagon as to the nature, typo or otherwise, of the error.]

For good reason — the colossal undertaking will delve into every facet of the Pentagon’s inner workings — from weapons and personnel, to supplies, property, and bases, of which purportedly the exact number remains unknown.

“Starting an audit is a matter of driving change inside a bureaucracy that may resist it,” Norquist told members of the House Armed Services Committee during his tenure as CFO at the Department of Homeland Security, on the feasibility of carrying out an audit, when the time came for DHS to endure its own government-mandated, fine-toothed comb.

While this will be the Defense Department’s first audit in its history, it won’t be the last — Norquist tacitly acknowledged coming somewhat into compliance with the 90s-era law, announcing the Pentagon would undergo audits annually, “with reports issued every November 15.”

“With consistent feedback from auditors, we can focus on improving the processes of our day-to-day work,” the comptroller stated, championing the efficacy of the process. “Annual audits also ensure visibility over the quantity and quality of the equipment and supplies our troops use.”

For years, Defense officials proclaimed the infeasibility of auditing the Pentagon and its myriad branches, asserting without irony that, because an audit would be so massive, one could never be effectively or thoroughly performed.

“Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed,” Rafael DeGennaro, director of Audit the Pentagon, told the Guardian at the beginning of the year. “Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon’s budget.”

Indeed, the lack of collective bookkeeping and, in essence, oversight have left DoD records in such disarray, it has been said no one at the Pentagon knows where some $10 trillion went — from supplies to weapons to bases to personnel to munitions stockpiles — and an audit proffers no guarantees the sum total will ever be ‘found.’

This stems from a plethora of terrible business practices — some, fomented directly as a stopgap when relevant information lacks.

For instance, a report from Reuters more than three years ago divulged, among a sizable laundry list of additional eyebrow-scratchers, the anything-but-ordinary, yet standard operating procedure, termed, “plugging,” as explained by dedicated 15-year Pentagon employee, Linda Woodford — whose entire career quite literally entailed “inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.”

According to Reuters, at crunch time, Woodford and her colleagues — who were required to reconcile U.S. Navy ledgers with those of the Treasury — regularly compensated for missing numbers, errant figures, and information without context with plugs. Straight lies, some, while other plugs were used to account for time discrepancies with financial institutions clearing checks.

However, although employees would attempt to reckon numbers afterward by entering updated and corrected information, such edits were not the rule, according to sources speaking with Reuters, and adding “unsubstantiated change actions” to the books was in 2013, if not still, par for the course at the Pentagon.

Beyond bookkeeping legerdemain, the DoD apparently harbors as much an issue with consumerism as the rest of the U.S. government — at least, judging by a single, telling glance into the ludicrous arrangement that are the Pentagon’s supply stockpiles and protocols for ordering, a morass of red tape courtesy of the Defense Logistics Agency.

If you want to find the missing trillions, one pertinent starting point would be the DLA, about which Reuters deadpanned, “keeps buying more of what it already has too much of.

“A document the Pentagon supplied to Congress shows that as of September 30, 2012, the DLA and the military services had $733 million worth of supplies and equipment on order that was already stocked in excess amounts on warehouse shelves. That figure was up 21% from $609 million a year earlier. The Defense Department defines ‘excess inventory’ as anything more than a three-year supply.

“Consider the ‘vehicular control arm,’ part of the front suspension on the military’s ubiquitous High Mobility Multipurpose Vehicles, or Humvees. As of November 2008, the DLA had 15,000 of the parts in stock, equal to a 14-year supply, according to an April 2013 Pentagon inspector general’s report.

“And yet, from 2010 through 2012, the agency bought 7,437 more of them — at prices considerably higher than it paid for the thousands sitting on its shelves. The DLA was making the new purchases as demand plunged by nearly half with the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The inspector general’s report said the DLA’s buyers hadn’t checked current inventory when they signed a contract to acquire more.”

Though the manipulation of trillions of tax dollars in part through ‘plugs’ and the hoarding of absurdly excess Humvee parts might provide superficial if nihilistic entertainment in print, that the United States Department of Defense — and its war machine apparatus squeezing its tentacles around the planet — hasn’t found mandatory audits necessary until this late date should particularly offend those opposed to an imperialist agenda.

Empire isn’t hidden in such smaller-scale erroneous numbers, Humvee parts, bullets, airplane parts, zippers, or pens — but without a shred of accountability, it might.

Image: Pentagon/Globalresearch.ca.

Catalonia has “won right to statehood,” as results of a plebiscite vote for independence from Spain — declared illegal and banned by the Spanish government — preliminarily but decisively show no less than 89 percent enduring brutal police violence to declare support for the cleft from current rule.

“On this day of hope and suffering, Catalonia’s citizens have earned the right to have an independent state in the form of a republic,” asserted Catalonia regional leader, Carles Puigdemont.

“My government, in the next few days, will send the results of [the] vote to the Catalan parliament, where the sovereignty of our people lies, so that it can act in accordance with the law of the referendum.”

The Guardian and other mainstream sources report upwards of 90 percent of around 2.3 million voters choosing in favor of Catalan independence, and although the final numbers must still be counted and assessed, conjecture already lambastes Spanish authorities’ response to the referendum — stifling censorship for months followed by a violent crackdown by law enforcement of polling places, which left well over 800 people injured and bloodied — as responsible for swelling support for the referendum by orders of magnitude over too-close-to-call assessments prior to October 1.

Earlier in the day, Puigdemont aptly prognosticated, “police brutality will shame the Spanish state for ever.”

Paramilitary Civil Guard and national police indelicately removed people attempting to vote, unceremoniously dropping men, women, and the elderly — with varying degrees of serious injury — onto the pavement at the feet of awaiting Catalans and regional police; the latter of which confronted Spanish authorities and were seen in tears as they defended the defenseless from fascistic attacks.

https://twitter.com/MagdaGregori/status/914484258974109698

Reports the Guardian,

“Jordi Turull, the Catalan regional government spokesman, told reporters early on Monday morning that 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who voted Sunday chose yes. He said nearly 8% of voters rejected independence and the rest of the ballots were blank or void. He said 15,000 votes were still being counted.The region has 5.3 million registered voters.

“Turull said the number of ballots did not include those confiscated by Spanish police during violent raids which resulted in hundreds of people being injured. At least 844 people and 33 police were reported to have been hurt, including at least two people who were thought to have been seriously injured.”

Videos and photos of beaten and bruised Catalans in the clutches of Spanish national police — including many images of senior citizens with blood dripping from open wounds — circulated on Sunday, almost immediately after polls opened. Authorities were seen breaking down doors and employing brute force against eager Catalans — some of whom flocked to polling stations the previous day in anticipation of difficulties voting in a referendum deemed ‘seditionary’ by the ruling government of Spain — as they confiscated equipment and ballot boxes in an effort to stop the vote going forward.

CNN reports regional officials castigated Spanish authorities for the excessive and sweeping force used against peaceful, unarmed civilians, as regional Minister of Foreign Affairs Raül Romeva flatly asserted,

“I want to make clear that all responsibility, all violence acts, repression is exclusively on the government of [Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy.

“Today Europe has to choose, shame or dignity. Violence or democracy, this is our demand. With this demand, we begin to work for a response to these circumstances. The absence of a response would suppose a lack and loss of credibility to the EU and its institutions.”

Rajoy — aligning with the entirety of the Spanish state — balked at the mere suggestion the referendum held weight, reiterating in a televised speech,

“At this point, I can tell you very clearly: Today a self-determination referendum in Catalonia didn’t happen.”

Obdurate, insistent dismissals from Madrid of the viability of the vote for independence, however — and despite, or perhaps due to, footage of thuggish tactics used by Spanish law enforcement — did not deter voters from casting their approval for sovereignty.

Indeed, the fraught and longstanding battle for Catalan independence — (yesterday’s was the latest in a succession of attempts to essentially secede from Spain) — surrounds disparities in representation and governance of the autonomous region.

While Catalonia contributes around one-fifth of the 1.1 trillion-euro Spanish economy, the regional government maintains say in its policing, health, and education — but harbors no control over “taxes, foreign affairs, defense, ports, airports, and trains,” the Times of India explains — leaving an apparent majority of Catalans, who share a distinct language and culture, ravenously seeking a split.

“According to experts,” the Times continues, “lack of economic autonomy, especially, has made people angry. Most of Spain’s regions pay taxes to the central government and then receive a portion in return to spend on health, education and public infrastructure, with the sole exceptions of the northern Basque Country and its twin region Navarre. These regions collect their own taxes and decide for themselves how to spend the money. Spain’s refusal to extend these tax-and-spend privileges to Catalonia has fuelled outrage […]

“The current movement for independence gained traction after Spain’s Constitutional Court in 2010 struck down parts of a charter that would have recognized Catalonia as a nation within Spain and granted it greater autonomy. Since the court’s ruling, hundreds of thousands of Catalan residents have taken to the streets every year on September 11, a Catalan holiday, to demand independence.”

As for Spain’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge Catalonia’s vote to cleave itself, analysts surmise the motivation as simple as economic impact — if the region indeed buoys Spain’s economy, its leaving would be detrimental. In equivalent contrast, Catalan officials contend the lack of true representation or say in governance damages its own economic health beyond the tenable.

Despite Spanish national forces’ barbarous voter suppression tactics, that millions not only managed to cast votes, but did so in favor of independence was considered a complete shock — particularly after opinion polls from July suggested as many as 49 percent did not agree with moving toward sovereignty.

Now that Catalans have spoken, the New York Times reports, “Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said late Sunday that Catalans had won the right to have their own state and that he would soon present the result of the referendum to the regional Parliament to make it binding […]

“Having defied Madrid over the referendum, Mr. Puigdemont’s government risks increasing tensions even further if he proceeds with a declaration of independence. The move could prompt his immediate suspension from office.”

No matter what ultimately results from the historic Catalan referendum this year, indiscriminate cruelty wrought by Spanish authorities at the behest of the State leaves an indelible stain of totalitarianism in the minds of those watching around the globe.

Image: Twitter/Video still shot/Magda Gregori.

In the USA, many Americans are getting ready to celebrate Independence Day or July Fourth with fireworks, parades, concerts, family gatherings, beers, and barbecues. Many Americans know that on July 4, 1776 representatives of the 13 colonies got together and adopted the Declaration of Independence, and therefore declaring independence from Great Britain.

The Declaration of Independence (1776) gave the 13 colonies the legal right to claim that they were independent states and no longer under British rule, which was not totally true. As for The Constitution (ratified in 1789), it was the document that gave specific details about the political and court system of The United States of America and the rights of the People.

Did You Know that the Organic Constitution for the USA was Replaced by a Corporate Version?

What most Americans do not know about “The Constitution for the United States of America” is that it was replaced with a corporate version called “the Constitution of the United States of America” in 1871. Did you notice that the two titles are slightly different?

The organic constitution has a capital “T” in the word “The” and the corporate version has a lower case “t”. When it comes to the legal system, an upper and lower case letter in the first letter of a word can change the meaning of that word, even if it is spelled using the same letters. Another thing you should know is that the word “for” in the title of the organic constitution was changed to “of.”

The act that created a corporate version of The United States of America is called the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871. Here is an excerpt from one of my previous articles titled Why Your Legal Name is Written in All Capital Letters that explains why the current United States of America is a corporation.

When I say the “United States,” I am talking about the “Federal United States” or the “United States of America, Inc.” and not the Continental United States (the landmass). The United States of America, Inc. is operating as the United States of America (Minor) and has a total of 57 states. As for the Continental United States, it is operating as The United States of America (Major), which is made of 50 separate nation states.

The United States of America, Inc., which is the United States of America (Minor), has unlawfully taken over The United States of America (Major) more than a century ago. The act that made this possible was the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, also known as the Act of 1871. As a result, anyone who becomes a United States citizen is a citizen (employee) of the corporation called the United States of America, Inc.

The United States of America, Inc. resides in Washington D.C., which is a district that has a 10 mile radius. This district is not part of The United States of America (Major). In other words, the United States of America, Inc. is a foreign corporation. Any American who had signed a contract and swore a solemn oath to this corporation had basically committed treason against The United States of America (Major).

The Birth Certificate Fraud

The Republic for the USA still exists but it exists like an old empty house filled with dust and cobweb. This is because nearly every American has been tricked into agreeing to join the corporate version of the USA. This trickery was achieved through the birth certificate and the U.S. Citizenship contract.

Here is an excerpt from my book Staradigm about the birth certificate. If you want to know more about how the legal system works and how the birth certificate is used to enslave you, I recommend getting a copy of the second edition of Staradigm and read chapter 8. Be advised that the first edition does not have chapter 8.

In the USA, birth certificates are not really birth certificates but are securities that are traded in the stock market. In other words, the U.S. birth certificate is a bond that is used to represent each of us as a “product” or property of the USA, Inc. The people who claim to own our birth certificates make millions of dollars by selling and trading them on the stock market. To these people we are a product, which is even worse than a slave.

The government agency of the USA that is responsible for turning our birth certificates into securities is the Depository Trust Company (DTC). The DTC securitizes our birth certificates by giving each of them a cusip number and then selling them to the Federal Reserve (Fed). The Fed then uses our birth certificates as collaterals for the national debt of the USA, Inc.

Through this deception, the U.S. federal government and the corporations that control it can legally claim us as their properties and everything that we produce is technically theirs until we claim our rights and learn how to dispute their legal claims. Since you now have a general idea of what it truly means to be a citizen of the USA, Inc., do you still think that you live in a free country?

Is the USA Still the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

Nowadays, when we celebrate July Fourth in the USA, we are not really celebrating freedom because we are not sovereign or free. The United States of America is not the land of the free and home of the brave anymore. Instead, it is the land of the greed and home of the slave. After watching the video in this article, you will most likely agree with me that we do not live in a free country.

If you are planning to get together with friends and families this July Fourth weekend, get together for the reason that you want to spend some quality time with them. Do not get too excited about celebrating freedom, because you and the rest of the American people are not living in a free country.

The following video is a must watch for anyone who cares about their freedom, sovereignty, and future. This video is one of the best videos that I have seen about freedom and sovereignty. I knew most of the information in this video, so it did not surprise me much. However, I also learned some very important information, helping me to understand our political and legal system a little better.

If you are new to this kind of information, the video below titled Season of Treason will blow your mind to the moon! A great video to watch for the Fourth of July weekend to remind us that we should never take freedom and education for granted.

Season of Treason Full
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LxY_H5V0Kw

About the Author

P.L. Chang is the author and founder of EnergyFanatics.com and OmniThought.org, two informative blogs dedicated to exploring esoteric information about energy, health, conscious living, spiritual science, conspiracy, and exotic “free energy” technology. He is also the author of two books titled Staradigm: A Blueprint for Spiritual Growth, Happiness, Success and Well-Being and 40 Enlightening Tips to Increase and Balance Your Energy.

Next year, many Americans will be preparing themselves to go vote at the next presidential election, which is scheduled for November 8, 2016. If you are planning to go vote during that time, you should read this article before doing so.

The right to vote is not what you think it is. When you vote, you are voting for a foreign candidate that represents a foreign corporation called the United States of America, Incorporated. Do you need proof of this? Read further and I will show you all the proof you need.

Proof That the United States of America (Minor) is a Foreign Corporation

If you want proof that the United States of America is a corporation, look at line 15 and 15(A) in title 28 U.S. Code § 3002 and you should see this sentence, ““United States” means— (A) a Federal corporation.”

When I say that the United States or the United States of America is a corporation, I am not talking about the landmass. What I am talking about is the District of Columbia (Washington D.C.), which is a 10 mile radius district that houses the corporation called the United States of America, Incorporated. This federal corporation is also known as the United States of America (Minor). As for the landmass, it is known as the Continental United States or the United States of America (Major).

When the United States of America, Inc. was first created, its main role was to act as a governmental services corporation for The United States of America (Major). The fraud to enslave the America people with debt really began when the International Banksters of the Federal Reserve bought the United States of America, Inc. and took over its agencies around 1911.

The United States of America, Inc. resides in Washington D.C. and is a foreign corporation. This is why it has a president and a vice president, just like Walmart and Target. Under Corporate Law, every corporation is required to have a president and a vice president.

The acronym “D.C.” in the term “Washington D.C.” stands for the District of Columbia, which is a district founded by a powerful masonic secret society called the Colombians. The Colombians also founded Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Columbia Pictures, and Columbia University. Did you notice how similar the words Colombians and Columbia are?

One thing you should know about Columbia University is that it is located in New York. New York was founded by the York Rite, which is also another powerful masonic secret society. This is why it is called New York, which means the new city of the York Rite.

Did You Know the United States of America, Inc. Went Bankrupt in 1933?

In 1933, the United States of America, Inc. went bankrupt.

The United States  defined as “…the District of Columbia et alia” went “Bankrupt” in 1933 and was declared so by President Roosevelt in Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111, and finally, as consolidated in Executive Order 6260,

(See: Senate Report 93-549, pages 187 & 594) under the “Trading With The Enemy Act” (Sixty-Fifth Congress,  Sess. I, Chs. 105, 106, October 6, 1917), and as codified at 12 U.S.C.A. 95a. [Source]

To fix the bankruptcy problem, the International Banksters of the Federal Reserve collateralized every common United States citizens and used them to finance their corporation (United States of America, Inc.). In other words, we (the American people) have been securitized and used as collateral for the U.S. national debt, which is actually the debt of the United States of America, Inc.

When it comes to politics and finance, most of us lack knowledge in these two fields. Because of this, the International Banksters can easily trick us to think that the U.S. national debt is the debt of the American people. In reality, the U.S. national debt is the debt of the International Banksters and their corporation (the United States of America, Inc.).

Proof That Most United States Politicians are Treasonists

The content in block quotation is an excerpt from my second seminar on Natural Law. It contains information that gives us some clue as to why United States politicians are treasonists.

Nearly all politicians in the USA are TREASONISTS, because they swore an oath to a privately owned foreign corporation known as the UNITED STATES INCORPORATED. Washington D.C. or the District of Columbia is also a privately owned foreign corporation. Washington D.C. is NOT part of the USA, just like Vatican City is not part of Italy.

To find the evidence that nearly all politicians in the USA are treasonists, you need to be aware of Title 8 U.S. Code § 1481.

Under Title 8 U.S. Code § 1481:

“(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—

(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;

(4)(A) accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after attaining the age of eighteen years if he has or acquires the nationality of such foreign state;”

In simple terms, once an oath of office is taken by an American citizen, his citizenship is relinquished and thus he becomes a foreign agent. This happens because he is swearing an oath to the foreign UNITED STATES INCORPORATED and the foreign organization that controls it.

As described in the book The Great American Adventure: The Secrets of America.

All of the candidates chosen for the highest positions in government are not chosen by party members or the public but are pre-selected by the Royal and Elite and each approved candidate must swear an allegiance to and render a pledge to adhere to the demands of these Corporate Directors and Masters.

Your so-called right to vote in America is actually about slave registration. Every applicant is asked if they are a United States Citizen or other. A US Citizen is defined in all law dictionaries as a corporate entity. Your vote really means nothing during an election because the electronic voting machines are rigged.

Why the ‘Right’ to Vote in the United States of America is a Fraud

In legal terms, your right to vote is actually a privilege because to be a United States citizen means that you are a legal person, also known as a corporation. A corporation is a fictitious entity that has no right. So, when politicians tell you that you have the right to vote as a United States citizen, they are already lying to you.

Every time you vote, you are giving your consent to be governed by treasonous politicians. These politicians do not care about you because they work for the Banking Elites, which are the International Banksters who own the United States of America, Inc.

The right to vote in the United States of America is a FRAUD, because your vote does not really matter and the voting system is rigged, just like a casino. Furthermore, when you vote, you are voting for a president of a FOREIGN corporation known as the United States of America, Inc.

One thing you need to know about the U.S. voting system is that the presidential candidates are chosen by the International Banksters and they control both of the Republican and Democratic parties. The idea that we have choices when it comes to electing presidential candidates is an illusion.

As an American, when you vote you are basically committing TREASON against the country called The United States of America (Major), which is made up of 50 separate nation states operating as a nation on the land jurisdiction. The United States of America (Minor) is operating under the international jurisdiction of the sea, which is based on Admiralty Law (the Law of the Sea).

The Covert Meanings of the Word Vote

The word vote is defined as “a formal expression of opinion or choice, either positive or negative, made by an individual or body of individuals” or “the means by which such expression is made, as a ballot, ticket, etc.” These two definitions of the word vote only show you its meanings at the surface. To find the deeper meanings of the word vote, you need to use the art of phonics to help you see the relation among words.

Phonetically, the word vote sounds exactly like the word volt. Where do you go vote/volt at? In a voting terminal or a polling/poll-ing place. The word poll sounds similar to the wordpole. A pole is the electric battery pole of positive (+) or negative (-). In other words, in order to vote you need to go to the polls/poles, so that you can place your vote/volt on the candidate that you want to see put in charge.

Once the votes/volts are counted, the politician or “pole-itician” that receives the most votes/volts is the one who is going to be put into the position of power. Maybe this is why it is calledpower politics. Are you starting to see the connection here?

The presidential election is nothing more than a game created by the International Banksters to con you to agree to be a battery, so that they can drain your energy. This is why before they can summon you to go to court, they need to charge you first. The content below explains this concept in greater details. It is extracted from my article titled The Esoteric Definition of Battery.

The word “battery” is an important word in commerce and law, because it has to do with the process of harnessing the energy of humanity. In other words, this is one of the many methods that they used to drain your energy.

This energy is then used by the Controllers to “charge” their corporations (“corpses” or “dead entities”), banks, and other commerce systems, so that they can keep their game of conning humanity going. Without our energy to “charge” their corporations and commerce systems, their con game will not have enough power to stay on.

As human beings, we are being used as “batteries.” This is why before we go to court, we have to be “charged” first. At the court hearing, the judge will read the “charges” and then “charge” them off after a verdict or judgement is made.

If there is a fine or fee included in the judgement, the defendant will be ordered to pay the fine with “currency.” The covert meaning of the word “currency” has to do with the “flow of energy.” This is why the stored energy in a battery is called “electric current” or the “currency of electricity.”

If you live in the USA and want to be free and help spread freedom throughout the world, do not participate in the U.S. presidential election in November 2016. If you do, you are basically committing treason against the United States of America (Major), which is the land that you were born on.

If you do not live in the USA, your voting system is most likely taken over by the International Banksters too. This is because most politicians throughout the world are bought off by the International Banksters (the leaders of the New World Order), especially the politicians of Western countries. This means that when you vote for a candidate in your country, you may also be committing treason against your original country.

About the Author

Pao L. Chang is the author and founder of EnergyFanatics.com and OmniThought.org, two comprehensive blogs dedicated to exploring topics about energy, health, conscious living, spiritual science, and exotic “free energy” technology. He loves to explore the mystery of alternative medicine, the science of consciousness, quantum mechanics, sacred geometry, and how energy affects the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual body.

Sources:

• http://scannedretina.com/2015/03/19/before-things-get-out-of-hand-judge-anna-von-reitz/
• Maxwell, Jordan. Matrix of Power: Secrets of World Control. The Book Tree. San Diego, CA, 2000.
• Judge Dale. The Great American Adventure: The Secrets of America.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.