A year long sting operation against an Amish “contraband” raw milk producer in Pennsylvania has resulted in a court case against Rainbow Acres Farms. The government filed a ten page complaint against the Amish business in federal court last week.

“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA.

According to the complaint, the FDA began to investigating Allgyer’s farm in late 2009, when an investigator in their Baltimore office used aliases to sign up for a Yahoo user group for Rainbow Acres’ customers, and began to place orders under the assumed names for unpasteurized milk, according to the Washington Times.

In order to make the case federal, orders were delivered to private residences in Maryland, where the investigator, whose name was not disclosed in the documents, would pick them up. By crossing state lines the milk became part of interstate commerce, thus subject to the FDA’s ban on interstate sales of raw milk, Stephen Dinan writes for the Times.

The FDA also says bottles of milk were unmarked, which is also a violation of FDA regulations.

In April of 2010, Amish farmer Dan Allgyer was raided two FDA agents, two U.S. Marshals, and a Pennsylvania state trooper for the crime of selling raw milk. “We have credible evidence that you are involved in interstate commerce,” FDA investigator Joshua C. Shafer told Allgyer.

“An investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined that you are causing to be delivered into interstate commerce, selling, or otherwise distributing raw milk in final package form for human consumption,” the FDA said in a letter to the farmer.

“These busybodies are citing Allgyer’s violation of the misinterpreted commerce clause, which was originally intended to prevent states from prohibiting individuals from doing business with one another across state lines. In other words, the federal food authorities are doing the exact opposite of their constitutional mandate,” writes Andrew Ward of Campaign for Liberty.

“Thank God for the federal government keeping us safe,” writes a FavStocks blogger sarcastically. “Perhaps, they will start strip searches at airports and feeling old lady’s boobies up to protect us from radical Islamic terrorists or some scary guys wearing camouflage who shoot guns on their own private property. Oh, wait, the federal government is already doing that too.”

Advocates cite evidence raw milk is more healthy than pasteurized milk when purchased from responsible farms. They say that pasteurization made sense in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when sanitation was poorly understood and practiced by players in the milk production/distribution chain, leading to outbreaks of milk-borne disease in urban areas, according to Craig Weatherby, writing for Vital Choices.

The very policy of targeted assassinations sidesteps any semblance of law, national or international. By extra-judicially executing people, proper investigations, trials, and justice itself is circumvented, diminished, and ultimately undermined as a whole. The United States in particular has become the greatest purveyor of this perversion of what used to serve as the very foundation of its own constitution and its values as a free nation.

NATO’s attack, reported on May 1, 2011, in an attempt to extra-judicially murder Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has claimed the life of his youngest son Saif al-Arab Qaddafi, as well as several of his grandchildren. The indiscriminate nature of the attack and the killing of children illustrates in its entirety just why civilized nations have long condemned assassination attempts and the indiscriminate use of military force on non-military targets in the first place.

This latest attack is reminiscent of another targeted assassination attempt by the United States in 1986 that missed Qaddafi but managed to kill his 4 year old adopted daughter Hanna. The corporate-owned media has since played semantics suggesting Hanna was adopted posthumously, seemingly more content with the idea of the murdered 4 year old having no ties to Qaddafi.

The botched assassination attempt comes just days after several US government figures called for Qaddafi’s extra-judicial murder. While these calls are supposedly part of America’s ever expanding mission in Libya to “protect civilians,” it should be noted that according to even the US Department of Defense, no credible evidence had been produced to justify the current military operations, let alone their expansion.

While most informed readers are under no delusion as to what NATO really represents, a supranational military force carrying out a global corporate-financier agenda, even the uninformed must understand by now that NATO, between its endless occupation in Afghanistan, its provocative encirclement of Russia, and now their senseless siege of Libya, has become a global menace, removed from both the national laws that are supposed to govern the civilized use of member military forces, as well as the contrived international laws they claim they act to uphold.

When NATO isn’t butchering children or extra-legally occupying sovereign nations, it is busy encircling Russia, inviting World War III in the service of global financiers.

While people in the West may apathetically shrug off the grievous evil being perpetrated in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan Iraq, Iran, and a growing number of other nations through the actions of the United States, UK, France and their NATO allies, they must realize that it is only a matter of time before this disregard for the very laws that govern their society will eventually be visited upon them. In many ways in America and Europe, this is already incrementally becoming a reality. Just as the world continuously turned a blind eye to Adolf Hilter and his Nazi war machine as it incrementally violated the sovereignty of both the German people and their neighbors, we stand only to embolden this expanding, reckless tyranny by remaining silent and tacitly complicit in our support of the politicians and corporations behind this dark agenda.

We may not be able to physically stop this unfolding crime against humanity, but we surely can undermine it, day-by-day, purchase-by-purchase, by committing ourselves to a full-spectrum boycott of the corporations involved – essentially anything that is not produced locally. We can also undermine the corrupt, fiat financial machine driving this global menace by replacing our currency with physical precious metals and alternative currencies used amongst friends, families, and coalitions of local businesses. Finally, we can begin to grow our own food and support local farmers, as well as taking up trades and constructive pastime pursuits to reconnect to our roots of independence and self-sufficiency that made the West great.

While we can easily sit idly by doing nothing, claiming that it isn’t our problem, it isn’t our grandchildren being murdered by “precision ordnance,” we must reflect on history and realize that indeed, soon it will be, most certainly and undeniably. We can choose to stand up to this now, or we can experience first-hand tomorrow the bitter agony of loss, death, and destruction that is consuming Libya’s population, as it has Iraq, Afghanistan, and the myriad of nations past and present to feel the sting of repressive global spanning tyranny.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad have been tracking the locations of users in a hidden file, according to The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/eTvBSm).

Computer programmers, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, presented their findings last week at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 technology conference in San Francisco. Their research showed the iPhone and 3G iPads have been logging the location data for the past year after a software update installed a new hidden file on the mobile devices.

The location and time, which are tracked through cell phone towers and Wi-Fi networks and stored on the devices, are copied over to users’ hard drives when the devices are synced with a computer, the programmers said.

Apple stayed silent on the issue for a week until Google, which was also found to have a tracking program on phones that use its Android system, responded with a statement that the information collected was anonymous. Apple then followed in kind, mirroring Google’s anonymity claims, according to a recent USA Today article (http://usat.ly/l7TNXu).

“It doesn’t matter how Apple explains its way out of this,” said Chenxi Wang, a vice president of Forrester Research who specializes in security and risk. “Just the fact that consumers know that their phone is being tracked is a very big deal.”

Apple should allow customers to opt out of being tracked, said Ian Glazer, director of Gartner Research identity and privacy group.

“There is no way to really turn this tracking off,” he said. “It needs to be visually obvious, or in the settings, to see that this is happening on your phone.”

A blog post by Allan raised the issue of “how Apple intends to use [the information] — or not.” Is Apple gaining access to the information in any way? And why it is being stored at all?

Apple claims it is creating a database of cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots that users have used, which can then help phones better orient to a signal when GPS signals are sketchy or unavailable.

Apple’s purported purpose clearly did not require the data to be stored for long periods of time, and Apple has since reduced the storage time to seven days. Google always had a shorter time period for the data stored on its Android phones.

Google and Apple have agreed to testify before a Congressional committee May 10, according to the Hindustan Times (http://bit.ly/iwu0Et), about consumer privacy issues related to mobile technologies. Apple also faces possible action by data protection regulators in the European Union, according to Bloomberg (http://bloom.bg/kUFtD1).

Sick and tired of high gas prices? It’s all Obama’s fault, according to Mitt Romney, who pumped his own gas on Friday as the cameras rolled.

“It’s a marketplace and if America is not serious about getting our own energy resources in line, then we are going to have higher and higher prices in part today as a result of the expectations of higher prices tomorrow,” Romney said, according to Reuters.

During a dinner sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, Romney said he wants to hang the “misery index” around Obama’s neck.

“You remember during the Ronald Reagan/Jimmy Carter debates? That Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the ‘misery index,’ and that he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck, and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well, we’re going to have to hang the ‘Obama Misery Index’ around his neck. And, I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country, really squeezed, with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So, we’re going to have to talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and higher taxation,” he said.

Romney knows the president has little to do with gas lines and rising commodity prices. He’s just playing the establishment political game where the guy from the other party – that is to say the flip-side of the same party – takes the heat.

If we are unfortunate enough to end up with Romney in the White House, it will be his turn to take heat from Democrats. It’s a tag team game. Meanwhile, nothing changes and the nation continues its slide down the tubes.

Prices are sky high on gas, food, and commodities because the U.S. dollar is being sabotaged by the Federal Reserve and the bankers who own it. Romney’s misery index was created by the Fed.

Even CNBC, usually an obedient lickspittle, admits the Fed is to blame: “A combination of factors accounts for the weakness, with the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, huge national debts and deficits and the consequential possibility of a debt downgrade because of the financial mess in Washington leading the way.”

Obama blames the speculators for high gas prices. He promises to unleash Eric Holder and the Justice Department on them. “We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain,” Obama read from his teleprompter screen as the gathered plebs politely applauded.

It’s not the speculators who are to blame. It is the Federal Reserve with the complicity of Congress and Obama, who are after all merely grocery clerks for the bankster elite.

Dollar devaluation is a direct result of the Federal Reserve printing funny money out of thin air in order to pay an engineered annual federal deficit. In fact, it no longer even prints the money – it just enters a few more digits in a computer.

“There are three primary culprits for today’s high gas prices, and none of them are speculators,” writes Craig Steiner. “The Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the rising prices of oil and other commodities. It is the Federal Reserve that has engaged in QE1 and QE2 and, as a result devalued our dollar which in turn raises prices of commodities such as oil that are priced in dollars.” Obama and Congress carry out the ruinous policies designed by the Federal Reserve.

“It is Obama and Congress that are causing the federal government to spend so much money that new dollars have to be printed to satisfy its borrowing needs. If the government weren’t borrowing so much money, the Federal Reserve wouldn’t be compelled to print money so we wouldn’t be facing the price inflation we are facing in oil and other commodities.”

In fact, the Fed is not compelled to do anything. It designed the Federal Reserve system specifically to lock the nation into a perpetual state of debt slavery.

Earlier this month, presidential hopeful Romney made it clear he has no intention of going after the Federal Reserve. “I’m not going to spend my time going after Ben Bernanke. I’m not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve,” he told Larry Kudlow. “I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy,” Romney added, “he’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do.”

Romney and the Republicans will blame Obama and the Democrats while Obama and the Democrats blame Wall Street and the speculators who have packed Obama’s cabinet since day one. It’s a shell game, a parlor trick, a sleight of hand.

If the American people continue to allow this charade to continue, they deserve to be cut down by the financial Sword of Damocles now hanging by a thread over their heads.

It looks like Ron Paul will run. The American people better get behind him. It’s probably our last chance to save the nation and prevent the slide into grinding poverty and third world status.

After I wrote my last column, several Tea Party activists contacted me to let me know that they had not been “neoconned.” They made it plain in no uncertain terms that they would never support establishment neocon Republicans such as Newt Gingrich for the office of President of the United States. Most assuredly, I was glad to hear from these folks; I only wish my mail box had been swamped with such correspondence–it wasn’t!

See my column at:

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?p=3425

At this point, it may be helpful if I give a little history lesson. The Tea Party movement began in 2007 as a grassroots effort to support the 2008 Presidential candidacy of Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. I am proud to say that I was part of that effort. In fact, I actively campaigned for Dr. Paul in at least four states during that election cycle: Alabama, Florida, Iowa, and South Carolina. I was even honored to represent Dr. Paul in a major South Carolina GOP banquet, in which sitting US congressmen and senators were selected from around the country to represent most of the other Republican Presidential candidates. (I wish readers could have been a fly on the wall to witness the goings on at the speaker’s table during the banquet as these GOP congressmen and senators tried to figure out who I was, and what the heck I was doing there. It was quite a sight!) I well remember that, as I came down from the speaker’s platform, one US Senator told me that my promotion of Dr. Paul’s candidacy that night was the best presentation on behalf of the Texas congressman that he had ever heard. Since then, I have spoken at numerous Tea Party events and appeared on both local and national media outlets (and numerous private videos and recordings) discussing the merits of the Tea Party movement and promoting the candidacy of Dr. Paul.

We need to get this straight: the Tea Party movement was never about electing Republicans–especially neocon Republicans! The Tea Party movement began as a grassroots effort to reduce the size and scope of the federal government; to rid America of the oppressive tax burden under which it currently groans; to eliminate the Federal Reserve; to return America to sound money; to stop the federal government’s obsession with foreign entanglements and wars; and to return America to constitutional governance. And there was only one man within the two major parties that was going to bring about those changes in 2008: Congressman Ron Paul, which is why the Tea Party was birthed as a grassroots extension of his campaign.

Since then, however, many GOP shills and toadies have jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and have attempted to redefine its goals and objectives, including many of the talking heads on FOX News. In truth, many Tea Party activists regularly look to Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and other “conservative” celebrities to champion their cause.

Need I remind everyone that Hannity has hardly ever met a Republican that he didn’t gush over. And I couldn’t count how many times we’ve seen Mr. Neocon himself, Newt Gingrich, on Hannity’s show. And as much as many people will cringe to hear this (and as much as I appreciate many things that Beck has to say), it was Glenn Beck who literally sabotaged a legitimate Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina, on his show. I would even dare say that Medina might have been elected Texas governor had it not been for the hatchet job Beck did on her. And as much as I like Sarah Palin for her fervent pro-life and pro-Second Amendment convictions, when it comes to foreign affairs, she is just another shill for the pro-war, military-industrial complex that has dominated US foreign policy since the days of Lyndon Johnson.

In 2008, the Tea Party movement supported one candidate: Ron Paul. He was the only Presidential candidate who had the guts to say the Federal Reserve was corrupt and needed to be eliminated; he was the only candidate (with the exception of Dennis Kucinich) who said the war in Iraq was unnecessary and unconstitutional; he was the only candidate who sponsored the Sanctity of Life Act, which would recognize the right of the states to nullify Roe vs. Wade; he was the only Republican candidate to speak out against the USA Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other draconian police-state-type legislation and departments; and he was the only man from either party who had the guts to say the US should stop sending foreign aid to all countries–even Israel.

Now, here we are four years later. And, once again, the man who was responsible for the Tea Party movement coming into existence has entered the 2012 race for President. See the story, as it is reported in the National Journal:

http://tinyurl.com/3c67url

Coinciding with his announcement that he was establishing an “Exploratory Committee” for his Presidential bid, Dr. Paul also launched his campaign web site, which is located at:

http://www.ronpaul2012.com

So, once again, the Tea Parties have their man. Will they support him in 2011 and 2012, as they did in 2007 and 2008? If they have not been “neoconned,” they will.

Chuck Baldwin’s article first appeared on his blog.

Alex welcomes in-studio author, researcher and radio host Webster Griffin Tarpley. Tarpley is the author of Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate, Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History, and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography.

Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.

In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: “Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.

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The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

Read entire article

Are you a size 12 at one store, but a size 10 at another? A new scanner will print out your size shop to shop.

This scanner works in much the same way as an airport scanner, and is being publicized by the media as a helpful tool for consumers concerned about their dress size.

<script src=”http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/bestoftv/2011/04/25/exp.mxp.meade.size.scanner.hln” type=”text/javascript”></script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/video”>CNN Video</a></noscript>

On Wednesday, April 27, the Obama administration’s US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) jointly released a new draft guidance for the federal Clean Water Act that aims to dramatically expand both the scope of what constitutes a “water source,” as well as the legal power federal agencies can exert over those water sources.

If enacted, the proposal will basically allow the EPA and ACE to control any stream, pond, or even puddle that they determine “has a physical, chemical or biological connection” to any larger body of water, which includes even privately-owned water sources.

One of the biggest impacts of the guidance will be to reverse previous Supreme Court decisions that have established the proper constitutional limits on the scope of federal government regulatory authority over not only water, but other natural resources.

By undoing these decisions, the EPA and ACE will essentially be giving themselves a free pass to arbitrarily develop and establish their own rules, and they will be able to do so without proper congressional approval.

“Under this new guidance, a bureaucrat at the EPA will be able to dictate radical new rules,” said US Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ). “This is just another example of the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to circumvent Congress and develop rules and regulations that far exceed the authority granted to the agency under existing public law.”

The EPA and ACE, of course, claim that expanded jurisdiction is needed to protect water from pollution and other contaminants. But given how the EPA has already given pollution exemptions to companies like Monsanto in the past, as well as allowed millions of gallons of toxic COREXIT to be dumped into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP disaster, it is clear that protecting water is not necessarily the EPA’s primary agenda. Instead, the draft actually takes more control away from individual citizens, and gives it to corrupt bureaucrats — all in the name of protecting water quality and promoting public health.

“Through vague definitions and broad interpretations laid out in this draft guidance, EPA and the Corps have once again shown little regard for the practical implications of their actions or Congress’ intentions under the CWA,” said Ashley Lyon, Deputy Environmental Counsel for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “Despite a letter from 170 members of Congress opposing the guidance, EPA and the Corps have crowned themselves kings of every drop of water in the country – except maybe a backyard swimming pool.”

The agencies are accepting public comment on the proposal for 60 days:
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guida…

You can also read the entire proposal for yourself here:
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guida…

Sources for this story include:

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle…

http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guida…