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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/8/2013 10:16:35 PM

Nearly half of babies have flat skull spot

Reuters


By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Close to half of two-month-olds have a flat spot on the back of their heads, according to a new Canadian study that suggests changes in parents' habits may be a cause.

Although not thought to be medically dangerous, the flattened head shape can become permanent, researchers said - which can have psychological implications for kids as they grow up.

"This is super common," said Dr. Lisa Stellwagen, a neonatologist from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who has studied what's known as plagiocephaly.

"With the Back To Sleep (campaign) and the overuse of car seats, and people not holding their babies like they used to, we've sort of rediscovered this problem with infants' head shapes," Stellwagen, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

Pediatricians in the early 1990s began telling parents to put their babies to sleep on their backs, in an effort to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), also known as crib death.

That campaign was "enormously successful," Stellwagen said - and the new findings do not mean parents should stop following that advice.

But there are steps they can take - such as holding their baby as often as possible and having "tummy time" when the baby is awake and supervised - to limit skull deformations, she added.

For their study, Aliyah Mawji from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, and her colleagues examined the heads of 440 healthy infants seen for their two-month well-child visit at one of four clinics.

They found that 205 babies, or about 47 percent, had some sort of head deformation visible to the naked eye. More than three-quarters of those were mild, the researchers wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

Prior studies suggested that anywhere from 3 percent to 61 percent of babies have a flat spot on their head, Mawji and her colleagues noted.

Some research has tied plagiocephaly to delayed crawling or rolling over, but babies tend to catch up by 18 months, Mawji said - so it's the potential for being bullied as a child that's more of a concern.

She said the deformation can be corrected with a helmet - but those typically cost $1,000 to $3,000, so they should only be a "last resort."

For young babies, treatment for a flat spot looks a lot like prevention, researchers said.

"You want to vary the side of the head that you're putting your infant to sleep on," Mawji told Reuters Health. "If their head automatically turns to the right … what you need to do the next night is turn their head to the left."

Like Stellwagen, Mawji recommended parents keep their baby out of a car seat when they're not driving. She also said they should alternate the hand they hold the baby in while feeding.

Parents might not notice a small head deformation because they get used to how their baby looks, Stellwagen said, so it's important for doctors to take a close look at the skull at early well-child visits.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online July 8, 2013.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/9/2013 11:00:39 AM
Dear friends, I am borrowing this from Myrna Ferguson's True Tellers's forum. Thanks Myrna!

What You Never Knew About The Red Cross...Blood, Money, Rockefeller,The CIA And Emerging Viruses
Posted By: Watchman
Date: Sunday, 7-Jul-2013 22:48:03
Sandpoint, Idaho — The American Red Cross (ARC) is widely considered a great American institution. It is generally thought of as among the world’s premier humanitarian organizations. Clearly, almost everyone thinks of it as a life-saving agency. Most people know this non-governmental organization (NGO) to be heavily dependant upon the blood and currency generously donated by the American people. But, what if all of the above is untrue? What if everything you think you know about the American Red Cross is a ghastly nauseating lie?
My name is Dr. Leonard Horowitz. What I am about to share with you is deeply disturbing, yet potentially life-saving. The American Red Cross is not what it appears to be … And I urge you to continue reading so that you learn what the ARC really represents.
Let me begin by telling you a bit about myself, and about my bias. For the past ten years I have been conducting health science and U.S. Government cover-up investigations as an independent, Harvard-trained, award-winning medical journalist and internationally recognized authority in public health.
To briefly summarize my training, in 1977 I received my doctorate in medical dentistry from Tufts University in Boston. I later received several advanced degrees … One in public health from Harvard University. I joined the faculties at Tufts University and Harvard. I directed an alternative health center for more than a decade. In the early 1980s, the Associated Press featured my work as a trendsetter. My clinic integrated dentistry with general medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic, nutrition, massage, homeopathy, and other “alternative” methods of healing.
Between 1990 and 1993 I personally trained nearly 30,000 healthcare professionals in dental and medical infection control according to OSHA standards. At that time I was the chief professional advisor for the largest dental and medical catalog supply company in the world.
In 1999, I won the prestigious “Author of the Year Award” from the World Natural Health Organization for my tenth book. This became my first bestseller. It is called Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? Government health officials have said this book is largely responsible for America’s rapidly growing anti-vaccination movement. The blood banking industry is meticulously explored here as well. For my work in exposing the global military-medical-industrial complex, I have been christened, “the King David of alternative medicine versus the omnipotent Goliath of slash, burn, and poison medicine” by consumer health advocates.
Suffice it to say, I have been extremely critical of petrochemical/pharmaceutical/blood banking industrialists for suppressing more information than they have been telling … Including potentially lifesaving information that could stem the rising epidemics of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and much, much more …
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, unlike most Americans, I was appalled by the outpouring of support, not as much to the families of the attack victims, but to the American Red Cross as a go-between. Based on the information and documentation I published in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional?, certain individuals that control the ARC are, in fact, as much to blame for the terrorist attacks on America, and “America’s New War,” as Osama bin Ladin and Afghanistan’s Taliban government. Before you call me crazy and junk this premise entirely, let me explain by giving you a little background on the people who run the American Red Cross. This is little preview of my American bestseller.
Background Intelligence on the American Red Cross
Founded in 1881 by American humanitarian Clara Barton, the American Red Cross (officially named The American National Red Cross) was first chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1900. A second charter, still in force, was granted in 1905. Not long after, however, John D. Rockefeller pirated the entire blood banking industry, along with the administrative leadership of the ARC. As you will soon learn, this quintessential coup de tats represented more than a glorious economic opportunity. The takeover of the ARC, and the entire blood industry, was apparently required to fulfill a far more sinister, even occult-linked, political objective-eugenics management for a racially purified planet.
To begin, during this time, John D. Rockefeller and his associates were making a concerted effort to control the entire field of medicine in America. During the 1890s, Rockefeller interests in medical education and “scientific medicine” were spearheaded by Frederick T. Gates, John D. Rockefeller’s investment manager. 1901 saw the founding of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1902, Rockefeller’s General Education Board was founded with a mission to annihilate the causes of racial discords. This agenda was clarified two years later with the publication of John D. Rockefeller’s Occasional Letter No. 1 in which he detailed his plans to mold Americans to his concept of “perfect human nature.” This, he claimed, might best be accomplished by destroying parental influence, traditions and customs, while reducing national intelligence levels.
In 1904, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (home to today’s Human Genome Project) was built on the estates of John Foster and Allen Dulles, lawyers for the Rockefeller Standard Oil Company. The Dulles Brothers, who openly professed John D. Rockefeller’s racial hygiene doctrines, later directed the U.S. military’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and after World War II, the CIA. Charles B. Davenport constructed the Cold Spring Harbor facility to provide a home for racial hygiene research, what was then called “eugenics research.” The first racial hygiene laws in the world evolved from investigations and reports issued from here. The John D. Rockefeller and Averell Harriman, America’s wealthiest oil and railroad magnates, invested more than $11 million — an extraordinary fortune at that time — in funding this facility. Soon thereafter, in 1909, the first genetics laboratory was established at the Rockefeller Institute and directed by Dr. Phoebus Aaron Theodor Levene.
By 1907, medical education had been mostly monopolized by the Rockefeller consortium. That year, the American Medical Association (AMA) advanced its medical education rating system effectively eliminating, by 1918, approximately 600 of the initial 650 medical schools. Through Rockefeller cohorts in the Andrew Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching, Abraham Flexner was appointed to survey medical schools throughout America. This led to the infamous “Flexner Report” that vilified every alternative to drug-based medicine. The Rockefeller’s political control over this American medical coup was clearly reflected in Flexner family relations. Abraham Flexner served on the Rockefellers General Education Board. Abraham Flexner’s brother, Simon, headed the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. Simon’s brother, Bernard, later joined the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation after he helped found the politically powerful Council on Foreign Relations.
In 1910, following the death of Averell Harriman who presided over Yale’s infamous secret society, the Skull and Bones, his widow donated 80 acres of estate property to establish the Eugenics Research Association at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, along with the Eugenics Records Office. The following year, social Darwinism subscriber, John Foster Dulles, revealed his desire to help develop a “super race.” He explained that by eliminating “the weakest members of the population,” a purer Aryan race might be created. According to several reputable authors, the Dulles brothers directing Rockefeller’s management group and law firm at Sullivan and Cromwell on Wall Street, later administered the American affairs of I.G. Farben — Germany’s leading industrial organization — linked intimately to Hitler and the rising Third Reich. The Dulles law firm also directed U.S. business affairs for Fritz Thyssen, Hitler’s primary financial backer. Thyssen later introduced Allen Dulles to the rising Nazi fuehrer, after which brother John negotiated loans for the Nazis.
All of this activity foreshadowed, in 1928, the Rockefeller financing of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Eugenics, Anthropology and Human Heredity in pre-Nazi Germany. Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s chief racial hygienist, was given authority over this institute principally funded by the Rockefellers. Eugenic psychiatrist Dr. Franz J. Kallmann, and blood geneticist Otmar Verschuer assisted Dr. Rudin. Their institute was named for Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II who was a solid supporter of early eugenics experiments and occult science to further his royal bloodline. According to Wilhelm II, World War I resulted from a conspiracy between his enemies, the blood kin Czar Nicholas II and King George V, and their affiliated secret societies.
According to historic records, Hitler was also an avid student of the occult and a member of the largely secret Thule Society that contained members of the British royal family and European banking industry. Though evidence in this area of research is understandably circumstantial, Thule Society members, with connections to other politically influential leaders in the United States, including members of the Skull and Bones Fraternity at Yale University, are believed to have founded the National Socialist Party in Germany, primarily to initiate World War II.
The Occult, Freemasonry and Rockefeller Blood Banking
In my 1999 book, Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, I shed more light on these shadowy figures of eugenics history. Shortly before the war, in 1936, according to investigative journalist Anton Chaitkin, Nazi eugenicist and Rockefeller grantee, Dr. Franz Kalmann published his schizophrenia experiments after immigrating to New York because he was half-Jewish. The secret society known as the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry published his account of more than 1,000 cases. His book was used in 1939 to rationalize the “murder of mental patients and various ‘defective’ people,” according to Chaitkin and others. At the same time, the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and Otmar Verschuer were collecting blood samples, particularly from twins, to conduct genetic experiments to further advance the eugenics field. I wrote that more horrific experiments followed:
Needles were stabbed into people’s eyes for eye color experiments. Others were injected with foreign blood and infectious agents. Limbs and organs were commonly removed, occasionally without anesthetics. Women were sterilized, men were castrated, and sexes were surgically altered. Thousands were butchered and their heads, eyeballs, limbs, and organs were delivered to Mengele, Verschuer, and the other Rockefeller-linked contingent at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
It was apparently no random “coincidence” that the Rockefeller family gained so much control over the ARC and blood banking. Laurance Rockefeller assembled the New York City blood council that evolved to largely control the international blood banking industry. The importance of blood and bloodlines is a recurring theme throughout my work and history, particularly when considering the highest level and objectives of the secret Scottish Freemasons. According to the “Structure of Freemasonry,” the “Order of the Red Cross” stands third in the top echelon of power just behind the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) and the “Order of the Knights Templar.” Religious scholars cross their Bibles with red marker ribbons today unaware of the symbolism — the Masonic importance of the pure red bloodline.
Beginning with the Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas, more commonly known as the Rose-Croix, or Rosicrucians, the red (or rose) cross was adopted as an identifying symbol of the Masonic tradition. According to authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in Holy Blood Holy Grail, themselves Freemasons, this practice began in 1188 when the Prieuré de Sion accepted the ceremonies of Ormus, said to have been an Egyptian sage, mystic, and “a Gnostic ‘adept’ in Alexandria” — a “hotbed of mystical activity” during the first century A. D. Here Ormus is believed to have exchanged theosophies with Judaic, Zoroastrian, Mithraic, Hermetic, neo-Platonic and Pythagorean scholars. The name “Ormus” was synonymous with “the principle of light” in Zoroastrian and Gnostic history. Thus, Ormus was not only the originator of the Red Cross symbol, but he apparently helped propagate the term “Illuminati.”
Over time, “Illuminati” has come to mean the few powerfully illumined, or en-light-ened souls, who are said to draw their power from “Lucifer.” Illuminati, in fact, according to Webster’s Dictionary; is derived from the French word “Lucifer” meaning “light bearing.” Webster also cross references Lucifer to the word “light.”
According to Secret Societies author Jan van Helsing, “Illuminati” came into more common use during the 14th century in Germany, where it applied to the high initiates of the “Brotherhood of the Snake” — a “savant brotherhood that had subscribed to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge and the attainment of spiritual freedom from … extraterrestrials” more than 3,000 years before Christ.
The Latin name of “Illuminati” and the biblical term for snake have related origins and definitions. The word snake derives from “nahash,” which came from the root word “nhsh” meaning to “discover,” or “decipher.” In Latin, “illuminare” meant “to illumine,” or “to recognize,” or “know.”
Thus, the snake used by Rockefeller-directed organized medicine today, became a symbol of evolving illuminance or intelligence. Likewise, the Knight’s Templar symbol shows the snake beginning and ending with a swastika. Citing van Helsing’s research again, “One of the main branches of the Illuminati in Germany were the mystical Rosicrucians who were introduced at the beginning of the 9th century by Charlemagne.”
Several other authors relayed that the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians were the driving force behind the esoteric religious movements of the 17th and 18th centuries. According to Webster’s Dictionary, “Christian Rosenkreutz (NL Rosae Crucis)” was the “reputed 15th cent. founder of the movement (1624) … a devotee of esoteric wisdom with emphasis on psychic and spiritual enlightenment … ” Their manifestos, fervently supported by the liberal factions of Protestants in Europe, inflamed the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Jesuits. “Among the most eloquent and influential exponents of Rosicrucian thought was Robert Fludd” — the Prieuré de Sion’s sixteenth grand master.
The Jesuit and Church backlashes that resulted in the persecution of the Cathars and Templars also helped spark Martin Luther’s rebellion. “Martin Luther also had close links to both the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians,” wrote van Helsing. Luther’s friends recognized the Rosicrucian seal he wore that contained a rose and a cross with his initials. “After Luther’s death, his confessional community was supported by Francis Bacon,” the highest-ranking Rosicrucian in England, and, the general architect of the King James Bible.
Devil Doing Behind the American Red Cross
In Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? I explained how and why, at the end of WWII, the Dulles brothers, in support of Rockefeller alliances, arranged false Red Cross identifications for Nazi war criminals, scientists, and military officials to escape through the “rat lines.” A couple of years ago, the New York Times carried a story that explained that Red Cross officials were aware of the Nazi atrocities occurring in the concentration camps of WWII. They said they were remiss in reporting their evidence. They omitted, however, the intelligence that the entire Red Cross organization was directed, from high above, by the same devils that directed the business dealings between the Nazis, I.G. Farben, the CIA and the Rockefeller Standard Oil Company from the rise of the Third Reich. No wonder, the New York Times reported in another article, much of the Nazi-stolen gold suddenly emerged in Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank.
In Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola, you will also learn that the Laurence Rockefeller-directed New York City Blood Bank knowingly released thousands of pints of blood contaminated with the AIDS-virus, HIV, despite holding secret the oxygenation technologies capable of clearing the virus from infected supplies. After developing AIDS, approximately ten thousand hemophiliacs died throughout the United States, along with countless others around the world. Likewise, in 1999, CNN reported that approximately 500,000 Chinese people became HIV infected similarly through contaminated blood. Not to mention the millions of others who received the hepatitis B, C and herpes (cancer) viruses through contaminated blood, likewise preventable, but purposely neglected.
In my latest book, Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism, and Toxic Warfare, (released June, 2001, 1-888-508-4787; $29.35) Chapter 18 is titled, “Public Health Politics, Eugenics, and Population Control.” Here I detail the Rockefeller family’s and their foundation’s association with the population control industry. They are currently moving to eradicate half of the planet’s current population, including America’s civilian population as well. According to the Rockefeller-directed Population Council of the City of New York, and its affiliate the Negative Population Growth, Inc. of New Jersey, the U.S. population requires culling to 125 or 150 million people. That’s about half its present number. And that, in a nutshell, is what “America’s New War” on terrorism — leading to WWIII — is really about. Global population control and reduction through managed chaos. Using the standard Machiavellian practice of creating urgent problems, then costly solutions, America has been railroaded into what promises to be a long and deadly war against people previously, and likely still, on the payroll of a secret government and the CIA.
Now you might comprehend, if you have “the eyes” to read the above text, and the discernment necessary to perceive the truth it relays, why I found it nauseating that Americans so readily gave their blood and money to the Rockefeller’s Red Cross. If you are among the millions who made that mistake, chalk it up to simple deception. But for heaven’s sake, don’t do it again!

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/9/2013 12:58:05 PM

One in four injured youth owns a gun: study

Reuters

By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Close to one-quarter of teenagers and young adults treated for assault injuries in a Michigan emergency room reported owning or carrying a gun, according to a new study.

Most of those weapons were obtained illegally, researchers found, and 22 percent of young gun owners said they had an automatic or semi-automatic firearm.

"I think the surprise, if there is any here, is the numbers really are quite high," said Dr. Robert Sege of Boston Medical Center, who wrote a commentary published with the new report in the journal Pediatrics.

"We need to have a general sense that it's not okay for teenagers and young people to be walking around armed," he told Reuters Health.

One 2003 study found rates of gun homicides among 15- to 24-year-olds were more than 40 times higher in the U.S. than in other wealthy nations.

Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics said families with children should ideally have no guns at home, but if they do, guns should be kept locked and separate from ammunition (see Reuters Health story of October 18, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/WsYYwl).

But the U.S. Congress remains divided on issues of gun control, with the Senate rejecting a plan to expand background checks for gun buyers in April.

For the new study, researchers led by Dr. Patrick Carter from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor surveyed 689 young people, ages 14 to 24, about their gun ownership, drug use and attitudes about fighting.

All of the youth were being seen in the ER of a Flint, Michigan public hospital for assault-related injuries.

Just over 23 percent of the young people, or 159, said they owned or carried a gun.

Well-off young men were most likely to have a gun. Possession rates did not vary by race.

More than 80 percent of gun owners said they obtained their firearm from an illegal source - including family and friends, or through a cash purchase.

Gun owners were more likely than other members of the study group to use illicit drugs and to agree that "revenge was a good thing," the researchers found.

That puts those people at higher risk for future gun-related violence, Carter said.

According to Sege, some hospitals and community groups have programs that reach out to kids who have been hurt and redirect their focus away from violence.

"Teenagers need to have another way to deal with those feelings," he said.

But there's a need for more research on how best to help them do that, Sege added - and so far, such studies haven't been funded.

Carter agreed there's a lack of work looking at what types of ER programs may help limit future violence and address safe gun storage.

"In this specific community, which has high rates of violence, there are a lot of youth who have guns," he told Reuters Health.

"I would say to parents, talk to your kids about firearms and the dangers associated with firearms and try to look at ways to prevent kids from getting involved in both substance use and violence."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online July 8, 2013.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/9/2013 1:01:06 PM

Hundreds of people, sled dogs evacuated to escape Alaska wildfire

Reuters


By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - About 600 people and numerous sled dogs were evacuated as a massive wildfire threatened homes in communities northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, state and federal fire management officials said on Monday.

The Stuart Creek 2 fire, whipped by strong winds, expanded about 25 percent over the weekend to more than 100 square miles (259 sq km) as of Monday morning, according to InciWeb, the inter-agency fire information website run by the U.S. Forest Service.

The flames, which were spreading to the north and northwest, threatened about 750 homes and about 150 other structures, and officials issued an evacuation order affecting about 600 residents on Sunday afternoon. Some of the homes are not occupied year-round.

As of Sunday evening, 200 to 300 people had informed authorities that they had left the area, fire information officer Rich Phelps said. But he said it was difficult to determine how many people had evacuated.

"You can't tell people they have to leave," Phelps said. "Some leave, and some don't."

A shelter was set up at an elementary school, and a few people had taken refuge there, he said.

Nearly 700 firefighters were working to try to control the blaze, which is the most serious of the more than 90 wildfires actively burning in Alaska, Phelps said. Firefighting teams include several crews from the Lower 48 states, he said.

It was unclear whether any structures had been lost to the Stuart Creek 2 fire, which officials said was ignited on June 19 by a military exercise. Heavy smoke was making it difficult for air crews to map the blaze accurately.

The affected area, with the unincorporated communities of Two Rivers and Pleasant Valley, is home to several top-ranked sled-dog racers and their kennels.

Rick Swenson, a five-time champion of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, lives in Two Rivers, as does Aliy Zirkle, the runner-up in the past two Iditarod races.

Many of the mushers' dogs, along with horses and other domestic animals, have been taken to the Tanana Valley Fairgrounds in Fairbanks, Phelps said. "It was pretty crowded at the fairgrounds," he said.

Smoke from this and other wildfires has created hazardous conditions in interior Alaska.

Air quality was rated as "unhealthy" over the weekend in the Fairbanks suburb of North Pole, according to the Fairbanks North Star Borough, and poor visibility has hampered vehicle traffic on highways and drifted over Eielson Air Force Base and the Fairbanks International Airport.

Hot and dry weather for much of the summer has fueled a busy fire season this year in Alaska. More than 1 million acres had been burned in wildfires across the state as of Monday morning, officials reported. So far, 442 wildfires have burned in the state, including the 92 fires that were believed to be active as of Monday.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Dan Grebler)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
7/9/2013 1:03:02 PM

The Taste of Irish Austerity Is Horsemeat

Takepart.com


Diets change in times of strife. Scraps that might be tossed away in less frugal days are looked upon as a meal in their own right. Weeds are sustenance, bread is puffed up with theotherwise inedible. And in the worst-case scenario, the family pet might have to become the next family meal.

In cultures where eating dogs or horse is taboo, desperation can bring about such a transgression. But it appears that globalization has changed the diet of austerity: Now the poor are selling the meat of horses owned by the previously, fleetingly rich, feeding the unwitting middle-class of an entire continent with equine-tainted meat.

While covering Europe’s horsemeat scandal earlier this year, I repeatedly wrote that the scandalous aspect of the whole mess wasn’t that people were eating horse, but that they were doing so without having chosen to eat horse. With international chains like Taco Bell and Ikea caught up in the affair, it appeared to be a story of globalization, of a supply chain so long, so complex, that two distinctly different animals couldn’t be kept separate after being run through the machine of global capitalism.

Turns out, I was wrong—the affair was about globalization, but in a very different way.

A radio story that ran last week on NPR member station KCRW, as part of its Independent Producer Project, offers a compelling, fascinating explanation to the how of the horsemeat scandal. Turns out, the various instances of tainted meat had nothing to do with unscrupulous Polish abattoirs. The horsemeat scandal is in fact another entry in what’s proving to be a very depressing genre—it’s a tale of desperation caused by the crushing austerity measures brought against residents of countries whose monetary policy contributed to the Euro Zone crisis—countries like Greece, Spain, and Ireland.


Remember Brad Pitt’s character from the Guy Ritchie film Snatch? The bare-knuckle boxer with the tattoos and the incomprehensible accent? Mickey O’Neil was a Traveller, a member of a nomadic ethnic group that’s despised by much of Irish society. After the economy crashed in 2008, austerity measures ended social programs geared at Travellers, such as after-school boxing clubs.

At the other end of Irealand’s socio-economic spectrum were the nouveau riche, for whom owning horses was a status symbol. After the country’s booming economy collapsed, these people couldn’t afford the upkeep for their stables—never mind their mortgages. Mares and stallions were turned loose, left to fend for themselves in the countryside.

Reporter and producer John Sepulvado’s story of how the Great Recession, and the age of austerity that followed, brought about a homegrown, thoroughly Irish horsemeat scandal is so fascinating that I won’t reveal the link between Travellers and feral horses here. But it’s a story that once again raises questions over the logic of severe budget cutting in the wake of economic calamity. A budget may clearly outline how healthcare, pensions, social programs and food aid, for example, are being cut, but it can’t account for the wide, sometimes weird fallout of austerity. There are myriad hidden costs, and in the case of Ireland and Europe, one of those has been horseburgers.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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