U.N. Launches Drone Investigation Into Legality of U.S. Program by Joseph Mercola

President Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warns Americans about the Military Industrial Complex. Many may not remember that President Eisenhower was a General before becoming President, so he spoke from a place of personal knowledge.

The “military industrial complex” has become the military industrial government... It doesn’t stop with the military; other industries seem to have taken over our healthcare, banking, food and agriculture at the federal level as well.

To say that your civil liberties are in jeopardy would be a gross understatement, and while spy drones and the reintroduction of yet another cyber security bill¹ may seem off topic for a health website, remember that your right to learn about, apply, and buy alternative health strategies and products may not be as inalienable as you might think anymore.

The US government is hard at work suppressing and limiting your rights to choose your own health care and your right to take control of your own health in a wide variety of ways.

Health freedom and civil liberties are under attack from every conceivable angle, which is why you simply cannot afford to stay idle any longer.

Any attack on your civil liberties will eventually affect your right to choose what foods you want to buy, the supplements you want to take, and the healing modalities you want to pursue to stay healthy.

From Drone Warfare Abroad to Drone Surveillance Across the US

Federal agencies are stepping up efforts to “ensure safety” by way of massive military and National Security Agency (NSA) spending. A bill passed last year, which allocates more than $63 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would unleash some 30,000 unmanned spy drones in civilian airspace across the United States.²

“Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group, has brought a lawsuit against the federal government requesting the FAA release records on agencies, almost 300 of them, carrying authorization for domestic drone operations.

Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with EFF told Talking Points Memo the new drone bill increases the importance of the lawsuit. 'I think the fact that Congress is pressuring the FAA to expand its UAS program through the FAA Reauthorization Act only reinforces the need for these records,' she noted.

It’s important that we learn more about how the federal government and state and local law enforcement agencies are already using UASs before we expand their use further. The privacy concerns posed by the use of drones for domestic surveillance are too great to excuse the FAA’s lack of transparency on this issue."

In an ironic turn, President Obama, who entered the presidency denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism" and lack of transparency is now being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics — including secret justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments. As revealed in the fall of 2011:⁴

“American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

A War Against Unidentified Foes has No End...

Since then, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists⁵ — a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” While conventional wars are winding down, the US government clearly intends to keep adding names to these clandestine “kill lists,” creating a sort of bizarre secret warfare in which no one really knows who the target is or, after the fact, why the targeted individual was chosen for assassination in the first place. As stated by the Washington Post:⁶

“...Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war.”

“For the first time in history a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out military missions – killing people – in countries where the U.S. is not officially at war.”

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the UN’s investigation into the legality of the US drone program,⁸ launched late last month. Many are now wondering when the first drone attack will occur on US soil. Time will tell.

In the meantime, drones are under Moore’s Law and their ability continues to rapidly improve at the same time that their costs are decreasing. Inventors are coming up with all sorts of uses for drones, such as delivering anything from documents to burritos to your GPS location. Yep, you read that right. One of the competitors in the AngelHack finals was Burrito Bomber, by Darwin Aerospace. It’s a drone that finds you based on your smart phone location, and drops a parachute-endowed tube containing a hot and fresh burrito into your lap... It didn’t win, and is not going to be commercialized any time soon, but it just goes to show there’s no shortage of brains churning out ideas.

Power Grabs by the FTC are Underhanded Threats to Your Health

But let’s move on to health related issues. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have both taken serious steps to restrict or eliminate your access to certain foods and supplements. For example, the FTC recently decided to “make up its own law and squash free speech,” the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) reports.⁹

"Last year, an administrative law judge (ALJ) for the Federal Trade Commission upheld [POM Wonderful’s] right to make what the FDA would call structure/function claims in ads. Structure/function claims include statements such as 'calcium helps build bones.' They don’t directly talk about curing a disease. At the same time, the ALJ found that some of the company’s claims went too far (specifically where they claimed the juice could help heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction).

Because the ALJ’s decision was a partial victory for both POM Wonderful and the FTC, both sides appealed, which necessitated a ruling from the FTC as a whole.

Last Wednesday, the Commission took a much more unreasonable line. It found that thirty-four of POM’s forty-three claims were implied disease claims — fifteen more than the ALJ had found. The full Commission further ruled that a double-blind random-controlled trial (RCT) is required for any 'efficacy' claim and two double blind RCTs for any claim that might seem to be related to a disease. The $35 million on peer-reviewed scientific research previously spent by POM was brushed aside because the studies were not RCTs, which are commonly used for drug testing.

This is a major one-two punch. The FTC is being draconian about what it considers an implied disease claim. One commissioner noted in remarks accompanying the decision: 'It is difficult to imagine any structure/function claims that POM could associate with its products in the marketplace without such claims being interpreted, under the FTC precedent set in this case, as disease-related claims.'"

With its ruling, the FTC grossly blurs the line between the FTC and the FDA. First of all, the FTC is charged with regulating advertising only. Its job is to make sure ads aren’t deceptive or misleading, and you certainly do not need pharmaceutical RCT trials to determine that. Double-blind RCT’s required for making disease claims is actually an FDA labeling standard for drugs — not food. It’s not for the FTC to demand a product provide such evidence. Such studies are extraordinarily expensive, and are typically only done if the substance in question is or can be patented. Natural substances, such as pomegranate juice, cannot be patented (unless it’s genetically engineered).

“Now the FTC is unnecessarily and arbitrarily deciding to use an FDA drug standard for disease claims in advertising. Some industry observers even wonder whether the FDA has asked the FTC to do this because the FDA would not be able to go this far on its own. There is absolutely no statute justifying this. It is making up law without congressional approval,” the ANH writes.

Personally, I believe we’re inching ever closer to a point where you will be completely barred from getting any information about the healing potential of regular foods. I believe that’s their end game, because foods and nutritional supplements are the only competition to the pharmaceutical monopoly. As the ANH so succinctly points out:

“Who benefits from such a change in policy? Just follow the money. If the FTC prevails in requiring double-blind RCTs, only pharmaceutical companies will be able to make health claims on their patented and FDA-approved products.”

FDA’s Sordid History of Overreach and Abuse of Power

Meanwhile, the FDA has been, and still is, engaged in its own shenanigans. The agency, which has been sorely compromised by the revolving door it keeps with both the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, has a sordid history of attacking natural products and procedures that threaten to interfere with big business, including pharmaceuticals, agriculture and more, while allowing obviously harmful products to remain on the market. Here are but a few examples:

Why the War on Raw Milk?

It’s important to realize that the "Food Safety Modernization Act" enacted in 2011 gives the FDA almost unlimited authority to decide if food is harmful, even without credible evidence. Raw foods of all kinds have become targets of FDA overreach and abuse of power, but raw milk is perhaps the agency’s most prominent foe. About 30 US states allow raw milk to be sold, but sales are limited to customers within the states’ borders, as the FDA has a ban on the interstate sale of raw milk for human consumption. The ban began in 1987, but the FDA didn't really begin enforcing it seriously until 2006 – when the government began sting operations and armed raids of dairy farmers and their willing customers.

Why does the FDA allow damaging junk food filled with toxic chemicals, but prevents people from making an educated, informed food choice in purchasing raw grass-fed milk?

As reported by Food Safety News last December,¹¹ Organic Pastures, the largest raw dairy farm in the US, has filed a lawsuit against the FDA for failing to address a “citizen petition” filed by the dairy back in December 2008, requesting the agency to change its interstate ban on raw milk sales. According to law, the FDA is required to respond to such requests within 180 days. After four years of stonewalling, Organic Pastures is suing for a response. According to Food Safety News:¹²

“If the agency doesn’t give him what he’s looking for when it responds to his request, he wants to press for a full-on jury trial. 'I want to bring in the experts to talk about this,' he said, referring to pasteurized milk as 'the most allergenic food in America.' In contrast, he said, raw milk has important nutrients in it such as enzymes that kids need to be able to digest milk.”

Take Action!

Food, drug, and constitutional law attorney Jonathan Emord has called the FTC’s decision against POM Wonderful “arbitrary and capricious,” stating that:

“The breadth of [the FTC’s new two-RCT] requirement is truly astonishing… the health marketplace will be dumbed down considerably to the detriment of health conscious consumers… In the end, that will mean a loss in public health as there will now be a multi-million dollar entry fee imposed on any who would wish to convey a health benefit to consumers in the market.”

Indeed, Americans spend more on health care per capita than any other nation on Earth, yet we rank among the worst in terms of health among industrialized nations. There can be no doubt that lack of truthful information about health and nutrition is to blame for this, and the suppression of information is engineered by industries that have no other concern than to make money. And to make money, they need you to be ill informed and chronically sick... As long as people are not permitted to learn about the relationship between food and health, we cannot expect American disease statistics to improve.

I am however heartened by the introduction of a new bill called the Free Speech about Science Act¹³ (FSAS), which would allow natural product companies to cite peer-reviewed science in their advertising. I urge you to take action to support this bill:

“The Free Speech about Science Act provides a limited and carefully targeted change to FDA regulations so that legitimate, peer reviewed, scientific studies can be referenced by manufacturers and producers without converting a healthy food or dietary supplement into an unapproved drug. The bill amends the appropriate sections of current law to allow the flow of legitimate scientific and educational information while still giving FDA and FTC the right to take action against misleading information and against false and unsubstantiated claims.”