Costco’s going to great lengths to keep its rotisserie chicken ultra cheap, including opening its own mega-sized factory farm, but the company is passing on hidden costs to its customers and society at large.

With over 91 million sold last year and their own Facebook fan page with 13,000 likes, Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chickens have become “almost a cult item,” CNN reports.

But does anyone ever wonder how they can sell a whole, cooked chicken for $5?

Imagine the costs of raising a chicken from birth to death — hatching it, feeding it, housing it, medicating it, slaughtering it, packaging it, shipping it, storing it, cooking it and sending it through the checkout line.

How in the heck can they do that for just $5?

You probably don’t want to think about it, but… then again… you might want to… because it could have dire consequences on your health, and even the health of people who aren’t eating them.

Government-subsidized, corporate-controlled factory farming has made the seemingly impossible possible – feeding the whole family, without cooking, for $5.

It might seem like too good a deal to pass up, but let’s quickly review the real costs, which include antibiotic-resistant bacteria, urinary tract infections, diabetes, obesity, the indentured servitude of farmers, unthinkable cruelty to animals and giant dead zones in our oceans.

1. Antibiotic resistant bacteria and urinary tract infections

Between 1998 and 2011, the number urinary tract infections requiring hospitalization rose 52% because of an increase in antibiotic-resistant strains.

In the past, it was generally assumed UTIs were sexually transmitted or caused by poor hygiene, but a recent series of studies suggests the vast majority of antibiotic-resistant UTIs are a result of factory farmed chicken.

Factory farmed chickens receive loads of antibiotics to help them survive the extremely stressful conditions under which they are required to put on weight fast.

Drug-resistant E. coli strains from supermarket chicken were matched to strains found in human drug-resistant E. coli infections as early as 2005. A 2006 study confirmed humans could develop antibiotic resistance by eating poultry treated with antibiotics.

A 2012 study found close genetic matches between drug-resistant E. coli collected from human patients and those found in chicken in Canada.

A 2018 study found 80% of chicken, pork and turkey samples purchased from large retail stores in Flagstaff, Arizona, were contaminated with E. coli. The researchers found the same E. coli in 72% of the patients who visited a major medical center in the area for UTIs around the same time […]

via Costco Doesn’t Want You To Know How It Keeps It’s $4.99 Rotisserie Chicken So Cheap, But You Might Want To — Return to Now

By Jake Johnson

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned Monday that heightened nuclear tensions between Russia and the West have dramatically increased the threat of another catastrophic global conflict.

“As long as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal,” Gorbachev said in an interview with the BBC. “All nations should declare—all nations—that nuclear weapons must destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.”

Gorbachev’s remarks came just months after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that Gorbachev negotiated and signed with former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

The pact barred both parties from possessing, testing, or using ground-launched nuclear and non-nuclear missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,400 miles.

Disarmament advocates, including Gorbachev himself, warned earlier this year that Trump’s decision to ditch the Cold War-era treaty would set off a new nuclear arms race […]

via To Avoid World War III, Gorbachev Says All ‘Nuclear Weapons Must Be Destroyed’ — Red Revolution Media

The decision by Pacific Gas & Electric to declare bankruptcy in January did not prevent the utility giant from continuing to spend big on political influence in California’s Statehouse.

The investor-owned utility’s transmission lines have been blamed for multiple wildfires, including the Tubbs fire in October 2017 and the Camp Fire wildfire in November 2018, the two most destructive and deadly wildfires in California history. The company infamously neglected necessary safety upgrades on infrastructure known to be a fire hazard, instead choosing to spend its ratepayers’ money on executive compensation, billions of dollars of investor dividends, and on buying political influence.

The company’s plunge into Chapter 11, widely viewed as maneuver to avoid legal liability for wildfire victims, has temporarily suspended dividend payments to investors, but it hasn’t stopped the company from showering the political system with money in an attempt to secure a preferential bond that could leave customers picking up the tab to cover the company’s negligent behavior.

The latest ethics filings disclosed with the California Secretary of State show that PG&E has spent at least $2.1 million on lobbying policymakers this year, well after declaring bankruptcy, with hefty fees spent to retain half a dozen prominent consulting firms and branding experts, along with a team of in-house lobbyists.

The company also paid for beverages for California State Assemblyman Chad Mayes, R-Yucca Valley, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda. Both lawmakers sponsored legislation, introduced in February, to provide PG&E with as much as $20 billion in tax-exempt bonds, a measure widely criticized as a ratepayer bailout.

Mayes, the disclosure notes, was treated to drinks by PG&E in September at Brasserie Capitale, a French restaurant just two blocks from the California state Capitol. Bonta was served drinks by the utility giant at Pebble Beach, the famed golf course, in July.

Mayes and Bonta did not respond to a request for comment by press time. In a statement sent to The Intercept, James Noonan, a spokesperson for PG&E said, “Like many individuals and businesses, PG&E participates in the political process. PG&E holds itself to the highest standards of public disclosure and compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

PG&E has long maintained a powerful grip on policymakers through its hefty investments in political spending. The company regularly pays for baseball tickets, meals, beverages, and other forms of entertainment for California lawmakers and legislative staff. In 2016, the company paid for San Francisco Giants tickets for a group of Democratic legislative staffers, including Dean Grafilo, who was then serving as Bonta’s chief of staff. Last year, PG&E donated $7,500 to the Bonta California Progress Foundation, a charitable fund launched by Bonta to provide scholarships to disadvantaged youth. The company has also given $8,800 to Mayes for his most recent reelection effort.

The company has maintained influence with a host of other prominent politicians. Last year, the company spent nearly $10 million on campaign donations and lobbying, more than any other single political entity in the state, largely to control the fallout from outrage over the company’s role in fueling wildfires across Northern California.

Following the San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010, PG&E retained the same set of consultants who managed the campaigns of former Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. The firm also donated at least $200,000 to current Gov. Gavin Newsom last year and has long kept former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown as a consultant to the company.

Following its move into bankruptcy this year, the current management and largest shareholders of PG&E have battled takeover attempts by an array of stakeholders, including bondholders and proposals to transform the company into a municipally-owned cooperative, an effort now supported by politicians in San Francisco and San Jose. On November 1, Newsom expressed support for pushing through the bankruptcy process. If negotiations don’t work, he said, the state “will not hesitate to step in and restructure the utility.”

The company has furiously lobbied lawmakers to approve the legislation introduced in February and sponsored by Mayes and Bonta. AB 235 would allow for the creation of a special tax-exempt bond to pay off claims related to the damaged caused by wildfires […]

via PG&E Spent Millions on Lobbying Following Bankruptcy, Wining and Dining Lawmakers Who Sponsored Bailout Lee Fang November 4 2019, 1:56 p.m. — Just Sayin’

via Bolivia: Audios Linking Civic, Ex-Military and US in Coup Plans

By Michael East

Jared Kushner, the senior advisor and son-in-law to Donald Trump via his marriage to Ivanka Trump, secretly gave Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin-Salman the go ahead to arrest the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi new reports indicate.

A whistleblower has come forward to report concerns about a phone call between Donald Trump and Mohammed Bin-Salman and in particular what was said about Jared Kushner during that call. A second whistleblower adds that the original call between Kushner and Bin-Salman was intercepted by Turkish intelligence and used as leverage to ensure that U.S. forces left Northern Syria, allowing Turkey to enact Operation Peace Spring against the Kurdish population.

Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Mohammed Bin-Salman and the Saudi Arabian regime, was murdered and dismembered by a 15 man Saudi hit-squad at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2 of last year. After the operation was exposed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia was forced to admit responsibility and claimed that the murder was a failed attempt at rendition. These claims are not borne out by secretly recorded audio of the killing.

In November of last year the CIA concluded that Mohammed Bin-Salman had personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi. The conclusion was supported by UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard.

Despite the conclusions of his own intelligence service, Donald Trump continued to defend Saudi Arabia and Bin-Salman and ignore the position and statements of the CIA

[…]

The allegation, as yet unproven, is that Kushner used his position as Middle East peace envoy to advance the personal business interests of the Trump organisation. Either through carelessness or deliberate malfeasance Kushner and Trump thus set into motion the events that ended in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the invasion of Syria.

The Democrat-led House Intelligence committee is said to be aware of the allegations against Jared Kushner and plan to probe the issue.

via Jared Kushner Gave Saudis OK to Arrest Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey Blackmailed Trump – Report — Red Revolution Media

November 3, 2019

By Stephen Gowans

In a recent Intercept interview with the beautiful soul Mehdi Hassan, Noam Chomsky resumed his efforts to recruit the political Left into a scheme to support US imperialism.

In the interview, Chomsky spoke about his reasons for trying “to organize support for opposition to the withdrawal” of US troops from Syria. US troops ought to remain in Syria, he said, to deter a planned Turkish invasion and to prevent what he warned would be the massacre of the Kurds. Yet weeks after the Turks moved into northeastern Syria nothing on the scale of massacres had occurred.

The high-profile anarchist, former champion of international law, and one-time outspoken critic of wars of aggression, supports the uninterrupted invasion of Syria by US forces, despite the fact that the invasion is illegal and contravenes the international law to which he had so frequently sung paeans.

But the principles he once upheld appear to have been sacrificed to the higher goal of defending the anarchist-inspired YPG, the Kurdish group which had sought and received support from Washington to establish a Kurdish mini-state in Syria in return for acting as a Pentagon asset in the US war on the Arab nationalist government in Damascus. In this, the YPG recapitulated the practice of political Zionism, offering to act as muscle in the Levant in exchange for imperialist sponsorship of its own political aspirations. For Chomsky, the desired end-state—what he would like the political Left to rally in support of—is the restoration of the status-quo ante, namely, robust US support for a Kurd mini-state in Syria.

Washington’s illegal military intervention has been the guarantor of the YPG’s aspirations to create a state on approximately one-third of Syrian territory. A YPG state east of the Euphrates would be an asset to the US imperialist project of expanding Washington’s already considerable influence in the Middle East. A Kurd-dominated state under the leadership of the YPG would function as what some have called a second Israel […]

via The United States has produced very few anti-imperialists. Noam Chomsky is not among them. — Stephen Gowans

By Gordon Duff
Source: New Eastern Outlook

Before we begin, for those who are not intelligence specialists, these axioms must be, if not learned, at least introduced.

Behind the curtain exists a Deep State, a world super-government that will minimally influence and in most cases control national governments.

Governments are controlled to control resources, to manipulate markets through manufactured needs and shortages, through currencies, though militarization and humanity is little but fodder, tolerated only so long as it serves these efforts.

If two million are killed in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, the Deep State only counts its profits, the dead mean nothing.

Governments are fragile. Elections can be rigged, politicians purchased for a paltry sum and in a world where “everyone has a price,” anyone worth purchasing has been purchased.

Thus, every demonstration can be controlled or “turned” in some way, every government can be destabilized and today, with the power of corrupt social media monoliths and Google Corporation, a massive psychological war begins not only on nations but individuals, all individuals, who are subject to the most dangerous addiction of all, electronic devices.

After so many years, the most recent set up Middle East wars should be examined with skepticism and those involved assumed to be employees of Western intelligence agencies, faker than fake.

With the dramatic and somewhat manic and incoherent announcement by American President Donald Trump of the killing of “chief head chopper” and “super-villain,” Baghdadi, alleged head of ISIS or ISIL or Daesh, an analyst or intelligence specialist might well drown in skepticism or simply quit from frustration.

There are a thousand reasons the Baghdadi killing is fake, but top of the list is this one, there are no ISIS fighters, no facilities, no groups friendly to ISIS within hundreds of miles from where he was allegedly chased down like a dog.

Those of us who know how the US works too well, those who had worked on similar projects, are fearful for different reasons. I once spent several weeks hunting Americans in South Vietnam, so very long ago, who had commanded a Viet Cong unit, the Q84 company.

It seems more than a few American joined the Viet Cong, not pilots mind you, but “tip of the spear” special operations troops.

Then again, half a century later and that story is forgotten. It may well be classified still, I can wait and find out, I guess.

Then of course we will mention the bin Laden story in the most cursory manner. Reported dead on December 3, 2001 by even Fox News, after denying any complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks, he rose from the grave 6 inches shorter and with entirely different facial features for a long career of audio recordings carefully timed to distract audiences from endless American scandals, massive corruption, a badly botched hurricane recovery effort, a story too lengthy to get into now but fascinating all the same […]

via Baghdadi, the Invisible Leader of a Fake Army — Astute News

via The CIA’s Greatest Hits – US Government Assassinations

via US House of Reps Votes to Recognize Armenian Genocide