Hot Dogs Actually Tested Positive for Human DNA

♠ Posted by Unknown in DNA,hotdog,human

One of the most American foods could also be one of the most human. A food testing authority using cutting-edge genetic testing has found human DNA in some samples of hot dogs, and meat was found in a shocking number of vegetarian substitutes.

Clear Food, a company that genetically tests food products, analyzed 345 hot dogs and sausages from 75 different brands, and found that 14 percent had hygienic issues or had ingredients that were not displayed on the product label.

Two percent of the samples tested positive for human DNA, and a whopping 66 percent of vegetarian hot dogs contained evidence of such contamination.

“One thing's certain: questions about the hot dog are as old as the hot dog itself. And they're not wholly unwarranted,” the report said.

Other shocking findings involved vegetarian meat substitute products. Ten percent of vegetarian hot dogs and sausages were found to contain meat. Evidence of chicken was found in 10 samples, beef in four samples, turkey in three samples, and lamb in two samples that were supposed to be meat-free.

Pork is a particular concern as an unlabeled substituted ingredient, due to dietary prohibitions in Islam and Judaism. Pork substitution was reported to be an issue in products across the price spectrum being sold at a wide variety of retailers. Clear Food found pork substitution in 3 percent of the samples that were tested. In most cases, pork found its way into chicken and turkey sausages.

Clear Food is a company that "translates quantifiable molecular tests into actionable food data insights," according to its website. That just means it uses genetic sequencing to figure out just what's in your lunch.

The company noted that while the issues they were raised are not necessarily violations of FDA rules, they are providing a service to help people make decisions based on their own preferences, not that of a government regulator.

“While some of these substitutions, hygienic issues, other variances, or off-label ingredients may be permitted by the FDA, our scientific disclosure allows you, as the consumer, to decide whether the variance or problems meet your personal standard in your buying decision,” Clear Food said.

RT
SOURCE

Aliens : Would They Have Sex?

♠ Posted by Unknown in alien,sex

Humans love to ponder whether alien life is out there, and what it might look like. So here’s a burning question: Would extraterrestrials have sex?

The question isn’t entirely prurient. The evolution of sex is a tricky subject. Sexual reproduction is costly. It requires finding a mate, convincing that mate to mingle DNA with you, and opening yourself up to the possibility of sexually transmitted disease or predation while you’re busy wooing.

All that considered, and it might not even result in viable offspring. After all, mixing and matching a genome is a crapshoot, said Sally Otto, director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Potential parents “know their genome works in the current environment,” Otto told Live Science. “They know they survived to reproduce. And here they are, shuffling their genomes together with another individual. … You have no idea if that combination is going to survive and be fit.”

And yet, sexual reproduction is very common on Earth. And given the conditions in which sex evolved, it’s quite possible that aliens might get busy, too.

Swapping genes

Not all life on Earth requires sex for reproduction. Amoebas, yeast and millimeter-long freshwater hydra all manage to create offspring solo, as do many invertebrates. So do some surprisingly complex animals: Virgin births have been reported in Komodo dragons, pit vipers and sharks.

There are species, like the tiny crustacean Daphnia middendorffiana, that can only reproduce asexually. But sex appears to go way back. There are few very old lineages that are entirely asexual, Otto said. [Photos: Bizarre Sex Lives of Hermaphrodite Sea Slugs]

Amoebas, for example, date back at least a billion years, long before multicellular life evolved. For a long time, scientists thought amoebas were purely asexual. In 2011, however, researchers from the University of Massachusetts announced that they had discovered amoeba sex.

Sexual evolution
It’s possible, Otto said, that deliberate sexual reproduction arose with the evolution of eukaryotic cells because all those internal membranes prevented the frequent accidental uptake of foreign DNA.

So, one question that might determine whether aliens have sex, Otto said, is what their cells look like.

“Do they evolve nuclei or other ways of protecting their DNA inside a series of membranes?” she said. If extraterrestrial life is equipped with nuclei, they might benefit from sex.

Another thing that Planet Xenon might need to prompt the evolution of sex is change.

Sex is very beneficial to organisms because the environment is rarely static, Otto explained. Offspring may have to deal with challenges that are slightly different from those of their parents’ generation. As long as change is a constant, genetic variation is helpful.

If an alien planet had, for some reason, constant weather, temperature and other environmental factors, “sex would have mainly costs, but no benefits,” Otto said.

Best of both worlds

Assuming alien planets aren’t entirely static, extraterrestrials might try to get the best of both worlds. Some aphids (small insects that suck plant juice) clone themselves asexually when food is abundant. In fact, Otto said, these cloning aphids can have not only their babies inside them but also their babies’ babies, “like a set of Russian nesting dolls.”

“That really speeds up reproduction when resources are plenty,” she said.

At the end of the growing season, though, the aphids switch to sexual reproduction. This switch to sex during times of stress is a common pattern. Some water flea species spring for sex when food supplies drop or when the environment becomes hostile, according to a 1981 study in the journal The American Naturalist.

LOCKLIP
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New Documentary Exposes Identity of Man Behind Georgia Guidestones

♠ Posted by Unknown in georgia,guidestones

We have reported many times on the mysterious “Georgia Guidestones” – America’s “stonehenge” that has some very dark and mysterious background. Now, a new documentary entitled “Dark Clouds Over Elberton” (see our previous article on this film and a trailer here) from Chris Pinto of Adullam Films exposes the identity of R.C. Christian (no relation) – the mysterious man behind the stones that seem to call for a massive depopulation of humanity.

According to Intellihub:

In part one and part two of the interview below, Pinto describes how they uncovered the identity of R.C. Christian, his connections to the Eugenics and depopulation agenda, how this all fits in with bible prophecy, the elites’ plan for a “global government,” and more.

Pinto also explains why the Georgia Guidestones are referred to as the 10 commandments of the antichrist, as well as connecting them to events and statements we are hearing pushed by the elites in the present day.

Key quote from Pinto – “To me that’s the most disturbing part of the monument, is it seems to call for the abolishment of Christianity, and we’re seeing such a war on Christianity in the world today. ”

WATCH THE VIDEO:

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What's Next for KIC 8462852, the Unusual Star Covered By An Alien Megastructure

♠ Posted by Unknown in alien,planet

I want to revisit the paper on KIC 8462852 briefly this morning, as I’m increasingly fascinated with the astrophysics we’re digging into here. The fact that the star, some 1480 light years away, is also a candidate for further SETI investigation makes it all the more intriguing, but all my defaults lean toward natural processes, if highly interesting ones. Let’s think some more about what we could be looking at and why the ‘cometary’ hypothesis seems strongest.

Remember that we’re looking at KIC 8462852 not only because the Kepler instrument took the relevant data, but because the Kepler team took advantage of crowdsourcing to create Planet Hunters, where interested parties could sign up to study the light curves of distant stars on their home computers. KIC 8462852 has been causing ripples since 2011 because while we do seem to be seeing something passing between its light and us, that something is not a planet but a large number of objects in motion around the star. Some of the dips in starlight are extremely deep (up to 22 percent), and they are not periodic.

Here’s how Phil Plait describes the situation:

…it turns out there are lots of these dips in the star’s light. Hundreds. And they don’t seem to be periodic at all. They have odd shapes to them, too. A planet blocking a star’s light will have a generally symmetric dip; the light fades a little, remains steady at that level, then goes back up later. The dip at 800 days in the KIC 8462852 data doesn’t do that; it drops slowly, then rises more rapidly. Another one at 1,500 days has a series of blips up and down inside the main dips. There’s also an apparent change in brightness that seems to go up and down roughly every 20 days for weeks, then disappears completely. It’s likely just random transits, but still. It’s bizarre.

A ragged young debris disk would be the natural conclusion, but arguing against this is the fact that we don’t see the infrared excess that a dusty disk would create. I also got interested in what nearby objects might be doing to this star when I started digging into the paper, which is cited at the end of this piece. Yale postdoc Tabetha Boyajian and colleagues present an image from the UK Infrared telescope (UKIRT) that shows KIC 8462852 along with a second source of similar brightness, as shown in the image below. Notice the ‘extension’ of KIC 8462852 to the left.

Image: Keck AO H-band image for KIC 8462852 showing the companion was detected with a 2″ separation and a magnitude difference ∆H = 3.8. Credit: Tabetha Boyajian et al.

This gets important as we consider the cometary debris hypothesis. The paper argues that the chance alignment possibility is only about one percent. If the companion is at the same distant as KIC 8462852, which is an F-class star, then we would be looking at an M-class red dwarf, roughly 885 AU distant from its companion. From the paper:

At this separation, the second star cannot currently be physically affecting the behavior of the Kepler target star, though could be affecting bodies in orbit around it via long term perturbations. If such a star is unbound from KIC 8462852, but traveling through the system perpendicular to our line of sight, it would take only 400 years to double its separation if traveling at 10 km sec−1. So, the passage would be relatively short-lived in astronomical terms.

Recall that the paper settles on cometary activity as the most likely natural explanation for the unusual KIC 8462852 light curve. We could be looking at a series of comet fragments seen close to the star as they move on a highly eccentric orbit, a collection of objects that has spread around the orbit and may be continuing to fragment. And as seen yesterday, Boyajian and team make the case that both thermal stress and the presence of super-Earth planets orbiting within 1 AU of the star could account for the tidal disruption that would have produced this scenario.

We’ve often discussed cometary disruptions in these pages, speculating on what the passage of a nearby star might do to comets in the Oort Cloud. As per the images above, it’s a natural speculation that the anomalies of KIC 8462852 are the result of a similar scenario. We have no idea whether the companion star is bound to KIC 8462852, but assume for a moment that it is not. A star passing close enough to this system has the potential for triggering a swarm of infalling comets. If the star is gravitationally bound, then we can invoke the so-called Kozai mechanism, ‘pumping up comet eccentricities,’ as the paper puts it. We can explore this hypothesis by studying the motion of the companion star to confirm its bound or unbound status.

The paper, as we saw yesterday, explores other hypotheses but settles on comet activity as the likeliest, given the data we currently have. The kind of huge collision between planets that would produce this signature would also be rich in infrared because of the sheer amount of dust involved, and we don’t see that. You can see why all this would catch the eye of Jason Wright (Penn State), who studies SETI of the Dysonian kind, involving large structures observed from Earth. Because if we’re looking at cometary chunks, some of these are extraordinarily large.

So what’s next? The paper explains:

First and foremost, long-term photometric monitoring is imperative in order to catch future dipping events. It would be helpful to know whether observations reveal no further dips, or continued dips. If the dips continue, are they periodic? Do they change in size or shape? On one hand, the more dips the more problematic from the lack of IR emission perspective. Likewise, in the comet scenario there could be no further dips; the longer the dips persist in the light curve, the further around the orbit the fragments would have to have spread. The possibility of getting color information for the dips would also help determine the size of the obscuring dust.

Monitoring of KIC 8462852 will continue from the ground thanks to the efforts of the MEarth project, which will begin the effort in the fall of this year, and that’s going to be useful for tracking the variability of the dips. Remember, too, that problem of lack of infrared excess. Those numbers could change if we really are witnessing a recent event. The paper continues:

Several of the proposed scenarios are ruled out by the lack of observed IR excess but the comet scenario requires the least. However, if these are time-dependent phenomenon, there could be a detectable amount of IR emission if the system were observed today. In the comet scenario, the level of emission could vary quite rapidly in the near-IR as clumps pass through pericenter (and so while they are transiting). The WISE observations were made in Q5, so detecting IR-emission from the large impact scenario, assuming the impact occurred in Q8 is also a possibility. We acknowledge that a long-term monitoring in the IR would be demanding on current resources/facilities, but variations detected in the optical monitoring could trigger such effort to observe at the times of the dips.

What a fascinating object! There has been a media flurry about the SETI possibilities, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t investigate KIC 8462852 in SETI as well as astrophysical terms. No serious scientist is jumping to conclusions here other than to say that there is nothing in the laws of physics that would preclude the existence of civilizations more advanced than our own, and nothing that we know of that would keep us from detecting large artifacts. How they could be detected around other stars will be the subject of a forthcoming paper from Jason Wright and colleagues in The Astrophysical Journal, one we’ll obviously discuss here.

By Paul Gilster, Centauri Dreams
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China: 125,000,000-Year Old Giant Mummified Penis Baffles Scientists

♠ Posted by Unknown in mummy,penis,scientists

A team of paleontologists of the Linyi University’s Institute of Geology and Paleontology made an astonishing discovery, while excavating at a site in China’s Sichuan province. They unearthed a 10-meter (33 feet) long mummified penis dating back to the Early Cretaceous period and estimated to be at least 125 million years old.

The scientists, co-led by Dr Xing Xu and Dr Xiaoting Zheng, have unearthed the gigantic reproductive organ of a previously unknown dinosaur, near the town of Zidong, in a region literally known as a “cemetery of dinosaurs”.

This new species has been named Phallosaurus or Xīyì dà yīnjīng, which means “lizard with a large penis”, as the size of its genital organs exceeds, by far, that of any other known species.

“Just like bulls, Xīyì dà yīnjīng had a fibro-elastic penis containing only a small amount of erectile tissue,” said Dr Xu, the lead author of the paper published by the researchers in the Nature magazine. “This means that there was little enlargement after erection and that penis was quite rigid, even when non-erect. Therefore, males of that species of dinosaurs, had to walk around with 10-meter long penises hanging between their legs, all the time!”

Even if no bones of phallosaurus were ever found and there is very little evidence as to what it might have looked like, Dr. Xu believes that it was certainly an herbivorous creature, as the size of its reproductive organ would have greatly limited its mobility.

Some might think that the size of its genital organs could have been a serious hindrance for this strange dinosaur, but the experts believe, on the contrary, that it could have been the species main tool and defense system.

“Its large sexual organ was possibly used as much as a weapon as for reproductive reasons,” adds Dr. Zheng.

“We believe that the phallosaurus certainly used its large sexual organ to intimidate predators, and it could use it as a gigantic club if it was attacked. It might also have been used in other ways during the mating process. It it not impossible that the males may have undergone some sort of “penis-fight” in order to determine which one was the strongest.”

Sigurdur Hjartarson, owner and founder of the Icelandic Phallological Museum and leading specialist in male reproductive organs, was invited to inspect the penis. He believes the phallosaurus must have weighted at least 20 tons and measured 25 meters long to carry such a member.

In comparison, the title of the world’s largest penis today, goes to the blue whale, which has a penis measuring up to two meters in length. If we consider the size of the reproductive organ proportionally to the size of the animal’s body, the title is won by the barnacle, as this small crustacean has a penis of more than 1.5 times his body length.

worldnewsdailyreport.

SOURCE

6 Government Secrets That Go Far Beyond Edward Snowden’s Surveillance Leaks

♠ Posted by Unknown in fovernment,secret

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” – John C. Calhoun, the 7th Vice President of the United States (source)

There are a number of important issues that need constant attention and reiteration when it comes to creating awareness, and one of them is government secrecy, which is happening on multiple levels, so I apologize if you’ve already come across this information from us. It really makes no sense to say that we live in a democracy when, as former Canadian defence minister puts it, “The veil of secrecy has to be lifted, and it has to be lifted now … trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief know nothing about.” (source)

We’ve been warned by many about the world of secrecy. This is precisely why President Eisenhower warned us about the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex,” and that we must “never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” (source)

When we are talking about government, we are talking about corporations that dictate government policy. We do not live in a democracy, we live in a “corporatocracy,” where corporations are above the government, and the banks are above them.

Here is a great video clip from the documentary Thrive that I’ve shared before; I apologize if you’ve seen it before, but it’s fitting.

WATCH THE VIDEO:

“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.” – (source)(source) John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925

The Black Budget World

The black budget world is the pinnacle of government secrecy, at least in North America. It involves programs that are extremely classified and deal with everything from technology to information and more. In fact, Edward Snowden’s leaks were the very first to prove the existence of clandestine black budget operations in the mainstream world, despite the fact that they’ve been investigated before.

“There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” – Senator Daniel K. Inouye, the highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history (source)
The topic was discussed in 2010 by Washington Post journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin. Their investigation lasted approximately two years and concluded that America’s classified world has become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or how many agencies do the same work. (source)

A 1997 US senate report described them as so sensitive that they are exempt from standard reporting requirements to the Congress. (source)

Is this where all of the missing money from the federal reserve system has gone? For example, in July of 2001, in front of the house appropriations committee, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld stated that the financial systems of the department of defence are so snarled up that they can’t account for approximately 2.6 trillion dollars in transactions. (source)

According to RT news, for the past couple of decades many trillions of dollars have been pumped into these black budget programs. (source)

You can read an article that goes more into detail about the black budget HERE.

A lot more is going on here that goes well beyond surveillance, and the black budget is basically the umbrella of surveillance and other programs that are not known to the public.

Who Really Created ISIS & The Truth About ‘Terrorism’

“Another threat that Obama mentioned was ISIS. Well, who on Earth armed them? Who helped to arm the Syrians that were fighting against Assad? Who created the necessary political/informational climate that facilitated this situation? Who pushed for the delivery of arms to the area? Do you really not understand as to who is fighting in Syria?” – Russian President Vladimir Putin (source)(source)

Vladimir Putin recently expressed his concern when it comes to so-called ‘terrorists,’ and he’s not the only one. David Stele, a 20-year Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, said that most terrorists are false flag terrorists, created in the United States. He has said that every single terrorist attack in the United States has been a false flag attack. You can read more about that HERE.

“They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor.” – Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics, spoken at the International Conference on the New World Order (source)(source)

“The US is reviving terror scare with ISIS to promote the terror war industry.” – FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds (source)

We even have documents that tie Al Qaeda to the CIA.

“Malcolm X once said ‘If you’re not careful newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed & loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’ Never has this quote been more relevant than in the way the media paints most conflicts in the Middle East. It’s always ‘sectarian’ or ‘religious’ so we can think Arabs are uncivilized people – that THEY can’t get a long. When in reality, most of the conflicts we see today, from Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, to Syria, are a direct results from Western & imperialist intervention & meddling.” – Mnar Muhawest, Editor-in-Chief of Mintpress News (source)

What Is Happening In Space?

Space news has been at an all time high lately, especially with the recent discovery of water on Mars.

Also in the news recently, the Russian government has called for an international investigation into the United States moon landings. They are concerned about the disappearance of film footage from the original moon landing, as well as the missing 400 kilograms of lunar rock that was taken from multiple missions. You can read more about that here.

Perhaps one of the strangest things is the recent disclosure of UFO files by multiple countries around the world. These files indicate that governments have spent a great deal of resources investigating this very serious/real phenomenon.

For example, here is an article that sources various documents detailing what happens when a UFO is tracked on radar.

Here is a document (1 of thousands of pages) from the FBI illustrating what type of documents were typed up, and the ‘important’ people they were sent to. It provides details of extraterrestrial bodies and craft on pages 21 & 22. You can read more about that document here.

Here is an NSA document pertaining to UFOs, and here is another.

“I’m skeptical about many things, including the notion that government always knows best, and that the people can’t be trusted with the truth. The time to pull the curtain back on this subject is long overdue. We have statements from the most credible sources – those in a position to know – about a fascinating phenomenon, the nature of which is yet to be determined.” – John Podesta, Councillor to Barack Obama, former Chief of Staff at the White House under the Clinton administration, and current head of Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign (taken from Leslie Kean’s 2010 New York Timesbestseller, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, And Government Officials Go On The Record, in which Podesta wrote the forward)

Here is a video of him at the National Press Club speaking about the issue.

Here is the latest batch of files released by the UK government.

Keep in mind that these files, in my opinion and according to my research, are not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to government secrecy about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Who knows what information remains hidden from the public, or why it is so?

All of these now-public documents and statements, like the one below, have people turning their heads.

To view some more statements like the one below, you can browse through THIS heavily sourced article.

“There is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations. That it behooves us, in case some of these people in the future or now should turn hostile, to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.” (source) – Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

The Manipulation of Science

Government secrecy is a shady area to explore, because how much does the government really know? If corporations dictate governmental policy and influence major decisions, is it really government secrecy that we’re talking about, or corporate secrecy?

When we think of science, we think of logic, deductive reasoning, and truth. But what science is turning into is information that has been manipulated and distorted for the sake of corporate interests. Scientists today are muzzled, paid off, threatened, and in many cases, completely misled, resulting in an abundance of fraudulent research.

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” – (source)(source) Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious imporance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” – (source) Dr. Richard Horton, current Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” – (source) Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and long time Editor-in-Chief ofThe New England Medical Journal

The list goes on and on. In 2005, for example, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, currently a professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, published the most widely accessed article in the history of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. In the report, he stated:

“There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false.”

It’s not only in the medical field, think about all of the suppressed science in the black budget world. We are talking about all subjects, from engineering to physics.

Scientists working for the Canadian government are starting to raise their voices, accusing the federal government of “muzzling” them and their findings on various issues, particularly when it comes to climate change. Apparently, the union representing this group of researchers will be taking “the unusual step of demanding Ottawa enshrine scientific independence in their collective agreement.” (source)

You can read more about that here.

Invention Secrecy

New documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal how the Patent Office has been using a secret system to withhold the approval of some applications.

This 50-page document was obtained by Kilpatrick Towsend & Stockton, LLP, who commonly represent major tech companies that include Apple, Google, and Twitter (to name a few). You can view that entire document HERE.

The program delaying patent applications is called the Sensitive Application Warning System (SWAS). Usually, when an application is submitted for a patent approval it requires a couple of examiners who work with the patent office to put it through their process of approval. This process usually takes approximately 1 to 2 years, but applications that are filed in SAWS must be approved by several people, and can be delayed for a number of years.

One great example of delayed patent applications comes from Dr. Gerald F. Ross. He filed a patent application for a new invention he had devised to defeat the jamming of electromagnetic transmissions at specified frequencies. It was not until June 17, 2014 (almost 37 years later) that this patent was granted. (source)

It’s also important to note (as reported by the Federation of American Scientists) that there were over 5,000 inventions that were under secrecy orders at the end of Fiscal Year 2014, which marked the highest number of secrecy orders in effect since 1994.(source)

This is all thanks to an act many people are unaware of. It’s called the “Invention Secrecy Act” and it was written up in 1951. Under this act, patent applications on new inventions can be subject to secrecy orders. These orders can restrict their publication if government agencies believe that their disclosure would be harmful to national security. (source)(source)

As Steven Aftergood from the Federation of American Scientists reports:

The 1971 list indicates that patents for solar photovoltaic generators were subject to review and possible restriction if the photovoltaics were more than 20% efficient. Energy conversion systems were likewise subject to review and possible restriction if they offered conversion efficiencies “in excess of 70-80%. (source)

He goes on to illustrate why this is so concerning:

One may fairly ask if disclosure of such technologies could really have been “detrimental to the national security,” or whether the opposite would be closer to the truth. One may further ask what comparable advances in technology may be subject to restriction and non-disclosure today. But no answers are forthcoming, and the invention secrecy system persists with no discernible external review.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest trade agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United States has been engaged in discussion with eight Pacific nations to come to an agreement on the terms of the TPP. It is a free trade contract that would allow for a more open system of exchange between the United States and less developed nations, apparently, and it has been wrapped in secrecy since discussions began within the Bush administration in 2005.

This is one (of multiple) example(s) of global economic/political partnerships and deals that is happening behind the back of the public eye.

Below is a video of Robert Reich, an American political economist and professor who served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, talking about the deal. He was also Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

The TPP is not really “secret,” but it sure does seem that way, which is why I chose to raise awareness about it here.

WATCH THE VIDEO:

By Arjun Walia, Collective-Evolution
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