Socio-Economics History Blog

Socio-Economics & History Commentary

Lebanon Warns UN: Israel Planning to Attack Us !

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October 31, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , , | 3 Comments

IRRI Says India May Import Rice, Fueling ‘Panic’ !

  • This is looking like the repeat of early 2008 when the price of rice escalated. 2009 has been a bust for farmers. The world is suffering from massive drought and inconsistent rainfall. With global grain stocks at dangerously low-level, this can result in global famine starting in Q2 2010. Bloomberg reports :
      
    India, the world’s second-largest rice grower, may become a net importer for the first time in 21 years in 2010, potentially sparking the kind of “panic” that sent prices to records in 2008, an agricultural economist said.  India may import as much as 3 million metric tons next year after the wet season harvest plunged,     Samarendu Mohanty, a senior economist at the International Rice Research Institute, said in an interview. Those would be the imports since 2006, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
     
    Food price protests swept the globe from Bangladesh to Haiti last year after fears of shortages prompted producers including India to cut rice exports and importers increased purchases to secure supplies, sending prices to a record. “India can start it again,” Mohanty, author of “Financial Volatility in Agricultural Trade” published in 2002, said yesterday in an interview in Cebu, central Philippines. “If rice prices rise, there will be civil unrest in many countries.”
     
    Rice for January delivery gained 0.5 percent to $14.255 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade as of 4:18 p.m. in Singapore, extending yesterday’s 3 percent jump. The price reached a record $25.07 in April 2008. India’s wet season harvest, which accounts for 80 percent of total output, may slump as much as 24 percent to 65 million tons, from 85 million a year ago, said Mohanty.
     
    Stockpile Drop
    The nation is forecast to continue exporting higher-priced basmati rice, with shipments of up to 2.5 million tons, Mohanty said. Each year, the government sells 20 million tons of non- basmati rice at subsidized prices to about 65 million poor families, Mohanty said.
     
    A drop in India’s production after the weakest monsoon since 1972 may cause stockpiles in the world’s five     largest exporters to plunge by a third to 20 million tons in the year ending Sept. 2010, the lowest level in five years, Concepcion Calpe, senior economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said Oct. 9.
     
    “The Indian government can’t afford to have a very low stockpile of rice next year in case another drought or flooding hurts crops,” Rakesh Singh, head trader at     Emmsons International Ltd., which supplies about 500,000 tons a year in India, said yesterday. “We may hear about a tender in the next few weeks.”
     
    Tight Situation
    The supply situation “is very tight,” Mohanty said. “It depends on how the country reacts, whether there’s a panic in India or the Philippines. Those are the problem countries right now that can tilt the market one way or the other.”
     
    The Philippines may boost purchases to 2 million tons in 2010, from 1.78 million tons this year, after storms damaged crops, the National Food Authority said Oct. 9. The Southeast Asian nation is bringing forward imports for 2010 after the losses, National Food Administrator Jessup Navarro said Oct. 26.
     
    Crop losses may help push rice prices back to record levels, Philippine Agriculture Secretary     Arthur Yap and the U.S. Rice Producers Association President Dwight Roberts said yesterday. “We are not very far from another rerun of 2008 prices,” Yap said. Still, India has no plans to import rice because reserves are adequate, Nanda Kumar, the country’s farm secretary, said in New Delhi on Oct. 27.
     
    Duty Scrapped
    “They can survive without imports, if they decide to do so, but there are risks involved,” Mohanty said. “If they have a drought next year, they have to import.” India’s Central Board of Excise and Customs scrapped the 70 percent import tax on rice through September 2010 to boost domestic supply after the crop losses, the Press Trust of India reported Oct. 27, citing an unnamed official.
     
    India’s trade ministry and customs authorities said they have yet to receive notification of the decision. The country’s return to the import market would push Thai rice export prices, the regional benchmark, to $800 a ton, Emmsons’ Singh said. That compares with this week’s     price For 100 percent grade-B Thai white rice of $525, and the May 2008 record of $1,038.
     
    “Thailand is not in a hurry to sell at all because they know the market isn’t going to go down,” Mohanty said. “The market is most likely to go up.” The Thai government aims to export more than 2 million metric tons of rice next year under a government-to-government sales program, Commerce Minister Porntiva Nakasai said today.
     
    “Demand from India and the Philippines would help boost exports,” Porntiva said in Bangkok, without giving a total for the state sales program this year.
     
    ‘Huge Stockpile’
    To be sure, India “has a huge stockpile of rice that’s way above the buffer norms and I don’t expect any imports,”     Atul Chaturvedi, president at Adani Enterprises Ltd., India’s biggest private trader of farm goods, said today. “The decision to abolish the import duty may be just a precautionary step.”
     
    Rice output in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, South America’s three largest exporters, is likely to drop 5 percent in 2009-2010 after drought cut water levels, Bruno Lanfranco, senior researcher at the     National Agriculture Research Institute of Uruguay, said today. Brazil’s imports will rise to 900,000 tons in the marketing year 2009-2010, from 800,000 tons a year earlier, he added.
     
  • See also:
     
    India Scraps Rice Import Tax.
    Food Shortages Loom in India!
    Is World Hunger About To Start In India? Food Shortages Coming to America? Global Starvation Imminent as US Faces Crop Failure?

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October 31, 2009 Posted by | Economics, Social Trends | , , | 1 Comment

Wilbur Ross Sees ‘Huge’ Commercial Real Estate Crash !

  • This is the next phase of the real estate crisis. No respite in sight. Bloomberg reports:
      
    Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr., said today the U.S. is in the beginning of a “huge crash in commercial real estate.” “All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate — the return that investors are demanding to buy a property — are going up.”
     
    U.S. commercial property sales are forecast to fall to the lowest in almost two decades as the industry endures its worst slump since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, according to property research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price     Indices already have fallen almost 41 percent since October 2007, Moody’s Investors Service said Oct. 19.
     
    Billionaire     George Soros, speaking today at a lecture organized by the Central European University in Budapest, said a “bloodletting” may be coming for leveraged buyouts and commercial real estate. “The American consumer will no longer be able to serve as the motor for the world economy,” said Soros, 79.
     
    His comments came in the same week that Capmark Financial Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after originating $60 billion in commercial property loans in 2006 and 2007.
     
    ‘Extreme Caution’
    Ross, the 71-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of WL Ross & Co. LLC, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio that he would use “extreme caution” before putting money into commercial real estate, especially office space, because properties are losing tenants. U.S. office vacancies hit a five-year high of almost 17 percent in the third quarter, while shopping center vacancies climbed to their highest since 1992, according to the property research firm Reis Inc. “I think it’s going to take quite a while to work itself out,” Ross said.
     
    As of Oct. 15, Ross said he had spent less than $100 million of at least $1.5 billion available to him under the Public-Private Investment Program, an investment pool of private and government money for purchasing distressed assets from financial institutions.

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October 31, 2009 Posted by | Economics | , , | 1 Comment

WebBot Project: Dollar Devaluation, Famine, HyperInflation… Survivor Skills.

Part   5   ,   Part   6   ,   Part   7   ,   Part   8   ,   Part   9   ,   Part   10   ,   Part   11   ,   Part   12  

  • 29 October interview of Clif High and George Ure. Clif and George updates us on what is happening. What portion of their forecast has come true? Are we still on course for a USD collapse? Will we see global famine in 2010? They give us also simple survivor skill tips: solar energy, self sufficiency….etc..

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October 31, 2009 Posted by | Economics, GeoPolitics, Social Trends | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Ron Paul: Sanctions on Iran are an Act of War!

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , | 8 Comments

US-Israeli Missile Defense War Game Signals Israeli Attack on Iran!

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Superfund: Gold to Rise to $2,000 Amid ‘Massive’ Inflation!

Gold Chart - 29 Oct 09

Gold Bull is still intact! $1300/ounce target!

  • I am still pretty much a precious metal bull. The recent minor correction was an opportunity to buy more physical gold/silver. Based on seasonal patterns, in most years, there is an October correction before an upsurge in prices. How high? Gold should achieve at least US$1300/ounce within 6 months. Silver will test and break the US$18.10/ounce and head towards $21.xx on its way to US$25.50/ounce, by April 2010. Bloomberg reports :
      
    Gold may rise to a record $2,000 an ounce in the next three years as investors hedge against “massive” inflation sparked by governments printing money, according to Superfund Financial Singapore Pte’s Aaron Smith. “In the next few years, after the deflation cycle, we’ll see massive inflation,” Managing Director Smith, 30, said in an interview. “Soon, when you go to buy a cup of coffee, you’ll pay $20 or $30 because the dollar won’t be worth anything.”
     
    The company’s Superfund Green Gold A Fund, which has more than doubled since its inception in 2005, has lost 15.6 percent this year because of higher volatility, said Smith, who joined in 2002. Gold rose to an all-time high this month as governments including the U.S.     boosted debt to combat the global recession. “When the U.S. dollar crashes, all the paper currencies have to crash, otherwise if their currencies are too strong, their economies will be weak,” said Smith, who issued similar gold forecasts in May and earlier this month. “Another excellent buying opportunity for investors is silver.”
     
    Gold for immediate delivery, which touched a high of $1,070.80 an ounce on Oct. 14, traded at $1,039.32 at midday in Singapore. The metal has strengthened 18 percent this year, while the     Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge of the dollar’s strength, fell 6.4 percent.
     
    Gold Forecasts
    Smith joins investors including     Shayne McGuire, director of global research at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, and Jim Rogers in forecasting higher gold prices. Pension funds will increase gold holdings as currencies decline, McGuire said on Oct. 22. Gold will probably top $2,000 in the next decade as the dollar weakens, Rogers said Oct. 7.
     
    Superfund, founded in 1995 and backed by $1.6 billion in assets, specializes in so-called managed futures, using its own trading system to generate buy and sell calls on stock, bond, currency and commodity futures. Still, the company’s flagship     Superfund A, which gained 35.4 percent last year, has lost 24 percent this year, Smith said.
     
    The ratio of silver to gold, currently at 62.35, will be “cut in half” in the next three to five years as millions of people in South Asia and China buy the metal as an alternative because they can no longer afford gold, Smith said. Silver has soared 46 percent this year to $16.65 an ounce.

Disclaimer – I am not a financial advisor. This is not an advice to buy, sell or hold any stocks or bonds or any precious metals. I am long gold and silver.

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Comments Off

After All I am a Proper Zionist Jew by Gilad Atzmon !

  • Do all Jews support the genocidal and racist policies of the Zionist state of Israel? Not at all. Many don’t and vehemently opposes them.
     
    I am a Holocaust survivor
    Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.
     
    In spite of all these fear inflicting stories, that were purposely installed in my soul since I opened my eyes for the first time, I have become a functional and even a successful human being. I somehow survived the horror against all odds. I even manage to love my neighbour. In spite of all these fearful, traumatic indoctrination I miraculously  managed to master my cheering alto saxophone rather than the sobbing violin.
     
     In fact, I have already decided that in case the Queen, or any other member of the Royal Family  should ever consider to make me into a ‘Sir’ for my bebop achievements, or even for facing Zionist barbarism with my  bare pen, I will immediately change my surname from Atzmon to Vive, just to become the first and only Sir Vive.
     
    I am also totally against Holocaust denial
    I clearly resent those who deny the genocides that are taking place in the name of the Holocaust. Palestine is one example, Iraq is another and the one that is set for Iran, is probably too scary to contemplate.
     
    The Holocaust is a relatively new religion (4). It lacks mercy or compassion, instead it promises revenge through retribution. For its followers, it is somehow liberating because it allows them to punish whoever they like as long they gain some pleasure. This may explain why the Israelis ended up punishing the Palestinians for crimes that were committed by Europeans. It is rather clear that the newly emerging religion is not just about ‘eye for an eye’; it is actually an eye for thousands and thousands of eyes.
     
    A month ago, while visiting in Auschwitz, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak left a note in the official visitors book: ‘a strong Israel is both the comfort and the revenge’(5). No one could summarise the aspiration of the religion any better. The Holocaust religion doesn’t offer redemption. It is a crude violent manifestation of sheer collective brutality. It cannot resolve anything, for aggression can only lead to more and more aggression. In the Holocaust religion there is neither room for peace or grace. Take it from Barak, revenge is where they find comfort.
     
    To deny the danger posed by the Holocaust religion and its followers is to be complicit in a growing crime against humanity and against every possible human value.
     
    I am also in total support of the Jewish National Project
    Some believe that after 2000 years of ‘phantasmic Diaspora’ Jews are indeed entitled to an imaginary ‘national home land of their own’. The Zionists apparently meant it sincerely. The Jewish state is now realistic enough to have turned the entire Middle East into a ticking bomb.
     
    Reviewing the Israeli record of crimes against humanity in the last six decades doesn’t leave much room for speculation. We are dealing here with a pathological sinister society. Hence, as much as some of us may agree that Jews should enjoy a hypothetical right for a land of their own, planet Earth is certainly not the ideal location for such an affair.
     
    Hence, I would urge NASA to join in and to make a special effort to find a suitable alternative planet for the Zionist homeland in outer space or even in another galaxy. The Galactic Zionist project would signify the immediate move from ‘promised land’ to ‘promised planet’. I would enthusiastically stress that rather than searching for ‘a land with no people for a people with no land’, what we really want is a ‘lonely planet’. It can even be a ‘desert’ for they claim to know how to make the desert bloom. In a planet of their own the galactic Zionists wouldn’t need to oppress anyone, they wouldn’t ethnically cleanse either, they wouldn’t have to lock the indigenous people in concentration camps, for there won’t be any indigenous people around to abuse, starve, murder and cleanse. They wouldn’t have to pour white phosphorous over their neighbours for there won’t be any neighbours. I would highly recommend NASA to search for a planet with very low gravity just to make it light for people to wander around. After all, we want the new galactic Zionists to enjoy their futuristic project as much as the Palestinians and many others may enjoy their absence.
     
    So here I am, a proper Jew after all: I am a survivor, I oppose Holocaust denial, I support the Jewish national aspiration. Even the chief Rabbi of Britain cannot ask for more than that.
      
    (1) Acknowledged recently to be a ‘myth’ by the Israeli holocaust museum     Yad Vashem
    (2) A historical fact protected by European Law.
    (3) A slightly confusing narrative. If the Nazis were interested in annihilating the entire European Jewish population as suggested by the orthodox Zionist holocaust narrative, then it is rather ambiguous as to just what led them to march what was left of European Jewry, into their crumbling Nazi fatherland at a time when it was clear that they were losing the war. The two narratives i.e. ‘annihilation’ and ‘death march’, seem to oppose each other. The issue deserves further elaboration. I would just suggest that the reasonable answers I have come across may severely damage the Zionist holocaust narrative.
     
    (4) The Israeli Philosophy professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was probably the first to define the holocaust as the ‘new Jewish religion’.
    (5)     http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3790707,00.html

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics, Social Trends | , , , , | 12 Comments

Palestinians Homeless Again After Eviction! Israeli Racism and Oppression!

  • The Zionist state of Israel is not the Israel of the bible. Thus, they cannot claim that God gave the promise land to them. The Jews were kicked out of the promised land by God. I am not convinced that God has allowed them to return. On the contrary, I think God wants the true Israel to remain disperse for their protection. The bible states very clearly that they will be persecuted by Satan in the end times. Gathering all Israel into the promise land would only make it easier to kill all Jews. Revelation 7 speaks about the sealing of 144,000 Jews to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Are all these in Israel? I don’t think so!
     

    Star_of_David

    Revelation 2:9 - .... and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

  • Here are the facts about modern ‘Jews’:  
     
    1980 Jewish Almanac
    “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a ‘Jew’ or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.”
    (1980 Jewish Almanac, p. 3).
      
    The Jewish Encyclopedia:
    “Khazars, a non-Semitic, Asiatic, Mongolian tribal nation who emigrated into Eastern Europe about the first century, who were converted as an entire nation to Judaism in the seventh century by the expanding Russian nation which absorbed the entire Khazar population, and who account for the presence in Eastern Europe of the great numbers of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Galatia, Besserabia and Rumania.”
      
    The American Peoples Encyclopedia
    …     for 1954 at 15-292 records the following in reference to the Khazars: “In the year 740 A.D. the Khazars were officially converted to Judaism. A century later they were crushed by the incoming Slavic-speaking people and were scattered over central Europe where they were known as Jews.
     
    American Jew Jack Bernstein
    The powerful Zionist propaganda machine has led the American people to believe that a Jew is a Jew — one race of people and that they are “God’s Chosen People”. I will deal with the “God’s Chosen People” LIE later. First, it is important for you to understand that Jews are NOT one race of people.
     
    There are two distinct groups of Jews in the world and they come from two different areas of the world — the Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazi Jews come from Eastern Europe. The Sephardic is the oldest group and it is they, if any, who are the Jews described in the Bible because they lived in the area described in the Bible. They are blood relatives to the Arabs — the only difference between them is the religion.
     
    The Ashkenazi Jews, who now compromise 90% of the Jews in the world, had a rather strange beginning. According to historians, many of them Jewish, the Ashkenazi Jews came into existence about 1200 years ago.
      ……
    The Khazars chose Judaism, but it wasn’t for religious reasons. If the Khazars had chosen Islam, they would have angered the strong Christian world. If they had chosen Christianity, they would have angered the strong Islamic world. So, they played it safe — they chose Judaism. It wasn’t for religious reasons the Khazars chose Judaism; it was for political reasons.
     
    Sometime during the 13th century, the Khazars were driven from their land and they migrated westward with most of them settling in Poland and Russia. These Khazars are now known as Ashkenazi Jews. Because these Khazar Ashkenazi Jews merely chose Judaism, they are not really Jews — at least not blood Jews.
     
  • The laws of Moses :
     
    Exodus 22:21
    “You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
    Exodus 23:9
    “Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
    Leviticus 19:33
    ‘And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 
    Leviticus 19:34
    The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.  
    Leviticus 23:22
    ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God.’” 
    Leviticus 24:22
    You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the LORD your God.’” 

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , , , | 14 Comments

Daily Show: Anna Baltzer and Mustafa Barghouti on Peace in Palestine!

 

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October 30, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics, History | , , , , | 11 Comments

Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities!

Star_of_David
Revelation 2:9 – …. and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

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October 29, 2009 Posted by | GeoPolitics | , | Comments Off

Curry Kills Gullet Cancer Cells!

  • Some of this simple but effective cancer cures are around. What usually happens is that Big Pharma will suppress it to protect their US$500B a year cancer business. So expect dis-information on this simple cure after a while. It usually goes like: it needs more testing.. tests are inconclusive …. no incentive for us to pursue it as it cannot be patented… results are not repeatable … blah blah blah…etc. Good researchers and scientists who do not comply with corporate policies to protect profits/business will be discredited and fired. The Telegraph UK reports :
     
    Molecules found in curry ingredients have been shown to kill throat cancer cells in the laboratory, reveals research.
    Scientists based at the Cork Cancer Research Centre in Ireland treated  oesophageal cancer cells with curcumin – a chemical found in the curry spice tumeric. They found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells also began to digest themselves, according to the research, published in the British Journal of Cancer.
      
    Dr Sharon McKenna, lead study author, based at the Cork Cancer Research Centre, University College Cork, said: “These exciting results suggests scientists could develop curcumin as a potential anti-cancer drug to treat oesophageal cancer. “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value.
     
    “Dr Geraldine O’Sullivan-Coyne, a medical researcher in our lab, had been looking for new ways of killing resistant oesophageal cancer cells. “She tested curcurmin on resistant cells and found that they started to die using an unexpected system of cell messages.”
     
    Normally, faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide – or apoptosis – which occurs when proteins called caspases are “switched on” in cells. But these cells showed no evidence of suicide and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this ‘switch being flicked’, made no difference to the number of cells which died.
     
    This suggested that curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system. This suggested that curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system. Each year around 7,800 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the UK. Less than 20 per cent of people survive oesophageal cancer beyond five years. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death and accounts for around five per cent of all UK cancer deaths.
     
    Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in tumeric could be developed into new treatments for oesophageal cancer. “Rates of oesophageal cancer rates have gone up by more than a half since the 70s and this is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease so finding ways to prevent this disease is important too.”
     
  • See also:
     
    The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale !
    Journal of the American Society of Nephrology: Baking Soda ‘Could Help Kidneys’
    Baking Soda Prevents Kidney Disease, Renal Failure and Kidney Dialysis
    Cancer is a Fungus! The Sodium BiCarbonate Solution!
    Why Injecting Oxygen Into Tumours ‘Can Kill Cancer’
    Vitamin D The ‘Wonder Drug’, Sunlight and Skin Cancer
    Hoxsey Cancer Cure?
    Vitamin B17 Cancer Treatment ?
    Promising Cancer Cure – DCA !
    Vaccination – The Hidden Truth
    Medical Cartel & Cancer
    The Science and Politics of Cancer 

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October 29, 2009 Posted by | Medicine & Health | | 2 Comments

Girl Dies Within Hours of Cervical Cancer, Cervarix Vaccine!

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October 29, 2009 Posted by | Medicine & Health | | 2 Comments

Boy Rushed to Hospital After Swine Flu Jab!

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October 29, 2009 Posted by | Medicine & Health | , | 4 Comments

Marc Faber: Obama’s Stimulus is a Failure! Dollar Will Become WallPaper !

October 29, 2009 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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