Go to Prison for Sharing Files? That’s What Hollywood Wants in the Secret TPP Deal

Noncommercial activities could get people convicted of a crime

Image Credits: timpearcelosgatos, Flickr

by MAIRA SUTTON | EFF | FEBRUARY 13, 2015

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) poses massive threats to users in a dizzying number of ways. It will force other TPP signatories to accept theUnited States’ excessive copyright terms of a minimum of life of the author plus 70 years, while locking the US to the same lengths so it will be harder to shorten them in the future. It contains extremeDRM anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own. The TPP will encourage ISPs to monitor and police their users, likely leading to more censorship measures such as the blockage and filtering of content online in the name of copyright enforcement. And in the most recent leak of the TPP’s Intellectual Property chapter, we found an even more alarming provision on trade secretsthat could be used to crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers who report on corporate wrongdoing.

Here, we’d like to explore yet another set of rules in TPP that will chill users’ rights. Those are the criminal enforcement provisions, which based upon the latest leak from May 2014 is still a contested and unresolved issue. It’s about whether users could be jailed or hit with debilitating fines over allegations of copyright infringement.

Dangerously Low Threshold of Criminality

The US is pushing for a dangerously broad definition of a criminal violation of copyright, where even noncommercial activities could get people convicted of a crime. The leak also shows that Canada has opposed this definition. Canada supports language in which criminal remedies would only apply to cases where someone infringed explicitly for commercial purposes.

This distinction is crucial. Commercial infringement, where an infringer sells unauthorized copies of content for financial gain, is and should be a crime. But that’s not what the US is pushing for—it’s trying to get language passed in TPP that would make a criminal out of anyone who simply shares or otherwise makes available copyrighted works on a “commercial scale.”

As anyone who has ever had a meme go viral knows, it is very easy to distribute content on a commercial scale online, even without it being a money-making operation. That means fans who distribute subtitles to foreign movies or anime, or archivists and librarians who preserve and upload old books, videos, games, or music, could go to jail or face huge fines for their work. Someone who makes a remix film and puts it online could be under threat. Such a broad definition is ripe for abuse, and we’ve seen such abuse happen many times before.

Fair use, and other copyright exceptions and limitations frameworks like fair dealing, have been under constant attack by rightsholder groups who try to undermine and chip away at our rights as users to do things with copyrighted content. Given this reality, these criminal enforcement rules could go further to intimidate and discourage users from exercising their rights to use and share content for purposes such as parody, education, and access for the disabled.

Penalties That Must be “Sufficiently High”

The penalties themselves could be enough to intimidate and punish users in a way that is grossly disproportionate to the crime. Based upon the leak, which showed no opposition in key sections, it seems TPP negotiators have already agreed to more vague provisions that would oblige countries to enact prison sentences and monetary fines that are “sufficiently high” to deter people from infringing again. Here is the text:

penalties that include sentences of imprisonment as well as monetary fines sufficiently high to provide a deterrent to future acts of infringement, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity;

Already in many countries, criminal punishments for copyright grossly outweigh penalties for acts that are comparatively more harmful to others. So the question as to what crimes copyright infringement corresponds to in “gravity” is obscure. What’s more alarming is that countries without existing criminal penalties or whose penalties are not “sufficiently high” to satisfy the US government, may be forced to enact harsher rules. The US Trade Representative (USTR) could use the certification process, at the behest of rightsholder groups, to arm-twist nations into passing more severe penalties, even after the TPP is signed and ratified. The USTR has had a long history of pressuring other nations into enacting extreme IP policies, so it would not be out of the realm of possibility.

Property Seizure and Asset Forfeiture

The TPP’s copyright provisions even require countries to enable judges to unilaterally order the seizure, destruction, or forfeiture of anything that can be “traceable to infringing activity”, has been used in the “creation of pirated copyright goods”, or is “documentary evidence relevant to the alleged offense”. Under such obligations, law enforcement could become ever more empowered to seize laptops, servers, or even domain names.

Domain name seizure in the name of copyright enforcement is not new to us in the US, nor to peoplerunning websites from abroad. But these provisions open the door to the passage of ever more oppressive measures to enable governments to get an order from a judge to seize websites and devices. The provision also says that the government can act even without a formal complaint from the copyright holder. So in places where the government chooses to use the force of copyright to censor its critics, this could be even more disastrous.

Criminalization of Getting Around DRM

We’ve continued to raise this issue, but it’s always worth mentioning—the TPP exports the United States’ criminal laws on digital rights management, or DRM. The TPP could lead to policies where users will be charged with crimes for circumventing, or sharing knowledge or tools on how to circumvent DRM for financial gain as long as they have “reasonable ground to know” that it’s illegal to do so. Chile, however, opposes this vague language because it could lead to criminal penalties for innocent users.

The most recent leak of the Intellectual Property chapter revealed new exceptions that would let public interest organizations—such as libraries and educational institutions—get around DRM to access copyrighted content for uses protected by fair use or fair dealing, or content that may simply be in the public domain. But even if it’s legal, it would be difficult for them to get around DRM since they may not be equipped with the knowledge to do it on their own. If someone else tries to do a public service for them by creating these tools for legally-protected purposes, they could still be put in jail or face huge fines.

Conclusion

Like the various other digital copyright enforcement provisions in TPP, the criminal enforcement language loosely reflects the United States’ DMCA but is abstracted enough that the US can pressure other nations to enact rules that are much worse for users. It’s therefore far from comforting when the White House claims that the TPP’s copyright rules would not “change US law”—we’re still exporting bad rules to other nations, while binding ourselves to obligations that may prevent US lawmakers from reforming it for the better. These rules were passed in the US through cycles of corrupt policy laundering. Now, the TPP is the latest step in this trend of increasingly draconian copyright rules passing through opaque, corporate-captured processes.

These excessive criminal copyright rules are what we get when Big Content has access to powerful, secretive rule-making institutions. We get rules that would send users to prison, force them to pay debilitating fines, or have their property seized or destroyed in the name of copyright enforcement. This is yet another reason why we need to stop the TPP—to put an end to this seemingly endless progression towards ever more chilling copyright restrictions and enforcement.

If you’re in the US, please call on your representatives to oppose Fast Track for TPP and other undemocratic trade deals with harmful digital policies.

Go to Prison for Sharing Files? That’s What Hollywood Wants in the Secret TPP Deal
kurtnimmo
Fri, 13 Feb 2015 17:17:18 GMT

The "Catastrophic Shutdown Of America's Supply Chain" Begins: Stunning Photos Of West Coast Port Congestion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/12/2015 11:20 –0500

• Bank of America
• Bank of America
• Congressional Budget Office
• Fail
• Greece
• Port Of Long Beach
• President Obama
• Reality
• Recession
• recovery
• White House

One week ago, when previewing what may be the first lockout of the West Coast Ports since 2002, we cited the Retail Industry Leaders Association who, realizing that failure to reach an agreement between the dockworker union and their bosses, the Pacific Maritime Association representing port management would lead to devastating consequences for the US retail industry, had several very damning soundbites:

• "a work slowdown during contract negotiations over the past seven months has already created logistic nightmares for American exporters, manufacturers and retailers dependent on an efficient supply chain. A complete shutdown would be catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk if America’s supply chain grinds to a halt."
• "A west coast port shutdown would be an economic disaster."
• "A shutdown would not only impact the hundreds of thousands of jobs working directly in America’s transportation supply chain, but the reality is the entire economy would be impacted as exports sit on docks and imports sit in the harbor waiting for manufacturers to build products and retailers to stock shelves."

And the punchline: "The slowdown is already making life difficult, but a shutdown could derail the economy completely."

Just so readers have a sense of what is at stake, this is what the average dockworker makes: $147,000 a year in salary, plus $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care and an annual pension of $80,000 (according to an association press release). It is the overtime compensation to the total shown here, which grosses to over a quarter of a million dollars, that dockworkers are negotiating to raise or else the key US supply-chains gets it.

Incidentally, the demands of the dockworker union and their leverage is precisely the reason for the dramatic discrepancy we showed in the following chart:

In any case, as of last night, the choking of the US supply-chain has officially begin, when as the LA Times reported last night, "West Coast ports — including the nation's busiest in Los Angeles and Long Beach — will partially shut down for four days as shipping companies plan to dramatically slash dock work amid an increasingly contentious labor dispute."

More:

Terminal operators and shipping lines said that they would stop the unloading of ships Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, because they don't want to pay overtime to workers who, they allege, have deliberately slowed operations to the point of causing a massive bottleneck. Thursday is Lincoln's Birthday and Monday is Presidents Day, which are holidays for the workers.

Slowing down work "amounts to a strike with pay, and we will reduce the extent to which we pay premium rates for such a strike," said Wade Gates, spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Assn., the employer group representing the shipping companies. The local union in Los Angeles and Long Beach has denied using slowdown tactics.

Accoring to the LA Times, it is not clear if the partial shutdown foreshadows a total closure of the ports. Fears of a lockout of dockworkers, who have been without a contract since July, have risen in the last week and the two sides haven't held talks since Friday. SF Gate was far more clear on what the dockworker action means: "West Coast ports to shut down 4 days amid labor dispute."

Work delays and stoppages over the past three months have caused mounting problems for Bay Area importers and small-business owners, who say they are losing money as trucks line up daily outside the Port of Oakland waiting for container ships anchored in San Francisco Bay to unload.

The shutting down of port operations is ironic because it’ll make the situation worse, said union officials who claimed the association canceled a negotiating session Wednesday and has not been available since last Friday.

“This is an effort by the employers to put economic pressure on our members and to gain leverage in contract talks,” said Robert McEllrath, president of the longshore and warehouse union. “The union is standing by ready to negotiate, as we have been for the past several days.”

Regardless of who is at fault for the (partial) shut down, one can't blame dockworkers for doing what Greece is actively doing at the same time in its own negotiations with Europe: maximizing its leverage. Because as Bank of America showed yesterday, in a piece dedicated precisely to this topic, nothing short of 3.5% of marginal US GDP is at steak, which translated into CAGR terms, means that the fate of America's estimated 3% growth in 2015 is suddenly in the hands of a few thousand port workers, and with that, whether or not the US has a recession.

Some more thoughts from BofA:

Could port activity grind to a halt?

Due to continued unsuccessful contract negotiations between West Coast port employers (Pacific Maritime Association) and workers (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), there is a growing risk of a shutdown/lockout at West Coast docks, possibly within days. This past weekend, ports temporarily halted operations, adding to uncertainty. In our view, although a port strike/lockout could weigh on operations and profitability in some industries, the economic fallout of a one-week strike is likely to be limited to a loss of $0.8-1.8bn, representing a 0.1-0.2% hit to annualized GDP growth in 1Q15.

Size matters

Since the fall, a notable disruption in activity at the ports has materialized, and the risk is the current delays could spiral into full-blown gridlock, or that employers could lock out workers. West Coast ports are an important component of US trade. As cited by our Transportation Analyst Ken Hoexter, the value of total traffic at West Coast ports (waterborne, air and land) accounts for 12% of GDP. However, drilling down specifically to goods arriving/departing by water vessels (and hence, impacted by the labor dispute) reveals a much smaller share, only 3.5% of GDP or roughly $600bn, as of 2014.

Gauging the economy-wide risk during a shutdown

The economic fallout of a port shutdown is challenging to measure and depends heavily on the technique of analysis. Economic impact studies of West Coast  port shutdowns have yielded loss estimates as high as $2bn per day. However, analysis by Peter Hall of the University of Waterloo and by the US Congressional Budget Office criticized such techniques as they fail to account for the ability for firms to substitute to alternative transportation routes, resulting in inflated loss estimates. Instead, according to research published by the CBO in 2006, the fallout is likely much lower, roughly $65mn to $150mn per day if Los Angeles and Long Beach ports were to shut down for a week in 2004. To get a sense of what the risks are in today, we gross that figure up to account for higher trade volumes, and include all West Coast ports. Our back of the envelope calculation suggests the daily loss to GDP would be $150-350mn per day, or $0.8-1.8bn per week. That would represent 0.1-0.2% hit to annualized 1Q15 GDP growth.

Learning from the past: short-term pain is likely

If history is any guide, a temporary port shutdown would acutely hurt the trade sector in the short term, but would not threaten to derail the recovery. In 2002, port workers at 29 West Coast ports were locked out for roughly 10 days in October, before President Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to reopen the ports.

What could go wrong?

We highlight two key scenarios that may lead to greater downside risk relative to our base case:

• A protracted disruption could trigger non-linear (accelerating) economic costs as temporary contingency measures run their course, resulting in worsening supply chain disruptions. President Obama could intervene by invoking the Taft-Hartley Act as was done in 2002, but it is not clear if or how quickly the White House would be willing to step into a labor dispute this time around.

There is uncertainty regarding the capacity of alternative transportation routes. Extensive use of air freight and Canadian/Eastern ports may lead to capacity constraints at those sites, limiting the ability of industry to successfully substitute to alternative supply chains for an extended period.

So the bottom line is that nobody really knows what will happen if the "partial" stoppage becomes a permanent one, as dockworkers try lever their influence on the US economy (which according to financial comedy TV is so strong, it should have no problem to meet their demands, right?), but it is safe to say that the final outcome will be somewhere between the "catastrophic" devastation for the economy which the retail industry predicts, and anywhere up to a 3.5% hit to the GDP, which in turn means an economic recession, if only temporary.

One thing, however, about which there is no doubt at all, is the unprecedented congestion that has slammed the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor: that is very much real, as can be seen on the series of photos below courtesy of Mike Kelley. From his blog:

As anyone who follows my work knows, I'm fascinated by industry and infrastructure. For the past few weeks, a labor dispute has been unfolding at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. After flying over the area while coming in to land at LAX, I saw all of these giant container ships anchored offshore and instantly knew that I had to photograph it.

The next day I called my pilot and said 'when is the soonest we can go up?!' Less than 24 hours later we were in the air. It was one of the most exciting experiences I've had doing aerial photography - being that far out at sea, with the huge swells underneath you, and these massive, massive container ships everywhere was like living a scene out of Walter Mitty's life.

Cargo ships have been backed up for weeks on end at the ports of LA and Long Beach amid a labor dispute.

The size of these ships blows the mind; many of them are over a thousand feet long.

We photographed them from anywhere between 200 and 5,500 feet, and even at this height the enormous size was something else entirely.

The haze and setting sun created an ethereal mood to all of the pictures

Cargoes from around the world are backed up right now

I've never seen ANYTHING like this, even rush hour at the 405 doesn't look so bad.

Colorful and massive, this ship is over 1000 feet from end to end.

From this angle, the scale and size of the city and ships becomes quickly apparent

* * *

Finally keep in mind that to many economists, or at least those who realize that the US economy is in a far worse shape than what official government data represents, an "exogenous" event like a West Coast port strike, just like a "Polar Vortex" is precisely what the doctor ordered. After all, what better scapegoat for the lack of growth than a few thousand dockworkers who are merely leveraging capitalism as much as they can... even if it means shutting down key US economic supply-chains in the process.

h/t @Theonlyexpert

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IMPORTANT READ: What the Media and Food Industry Won’t Tell You

Written by Max Goldberg on January 26, 2015. Follow Max on Twitter.

For those of us who are food activists or are simply individuals who care about healthy food, the most important event of the year will be taking place over the next few months.

And it centers around the February 10th release of the The Food Babe Way by Vani Hari.

To me, this book represents something much greater than a guide on how to live a healthy lifestyle each day. This will be the biggest attack ever on the food industry and its despicable business practices.

Here are the hard facts. 41% of American citizens will get cancer and 21% of Americans will die from cancer. More than 2/3rds of American adults are obese or overweight, and 25% of American children are obese or overweight.

Here’s another truth. The food industry has A LOT to do with this. They serve us genetically-modified, artificially-preserved, pesticide-laden garbage — all disguised as food.

So, when Vani Hari’s book comes out, it is guaranteed that she will face enormous criticism. Why?

Because this book tells the truth about what is really going on and is a very serious threat to the food industry’s profits and its biggest brands.

As we’ve seen in national media outlets already, such as NPR and Business Week, Vani Hari gets portrayed as a fear mongerer and someone ill-qualified to discuss food subjects because she doesn’t have a nutrition or a medical degree.

Yet, what they won’t mention — and what you need to be aware of — is that many scientists share Vani’s concerns about many different ingredients.

Here are a few examples of food additives that she has fought against.

1) RACTOPAMINE – A controversial drug used widely as an animal feed additive in industrial factory farms, which accelerates weight gain and promotes feed efficiency and leanness in pigs, cattle, and turkeys. The drug mimics stress hormones and increases the rate at which the animals convert feed to muscle.

EVIDENCE/ CONCERN FROM SCIENTISTS

– Most of the 196 countries in the world have banned or restricted its use. Only the U.S. and 25 other major meat-producing nations allow ractopamine.

– Data from the European Food Safety Authority indicates that ractopamine causes elevated heart rates and heart-pounding sensations in humans.

– Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce in China estimates that between 1998 and 2010, 1,700 people were poisoned from eating pork containing ractopamine.

– The Center for Food Safety filed a petition with FDA urging the agency to conduct comprehensive studies on the long-term effects of human consumption, immediate health impact on animals, and a thorough review of international standards.

2) AZODICARBONAMIDE (ADA) - A chemical substance approved for use as a whitening agent in cereal flour and as a dough conditioner in bread baking.

EVIDENCE/ CONCERN FROM SCIENTISTS

– ADA is banned in Europe and Australia.  If you’re caught using it in Singapore, you’ll get fined $450,000 and be sentenced a prison term of 15 years.

– During bread making, ADA completely breaks down to form other chemicals, one of which is semicarbazide (SEM). At high levels, SEM has been shown to increase the incidence of tumors when fed to female mice.

– A second breakdown product, urethane, is a recognized carcinogen. When ADA is used at its maximum allowable level, it leads to slightly increased levels of urethane in bread that poses a small risk to humans.

– Senior Scientist Lisa Lefferts from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a statement urging the FDA to ban ADA.

– The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has called on all manufacturers to immediately end its use in food and recommends that consumers take steps to avoid the industrial additive ADA in their food.

– The World Health Organization has linked ADA to respiratory issues, allergies and asthma.

3) ARTIFICIAL FOOD DYES - Food dyes that are synthesized mainly from raw materials obtained from petroleum.

There are 7 artificial colors permitted in food in the U.S.: FD&C Blue No. 1 (Brilliant Blue FCF); FD&C Blue No. 2 (Indigotine); FD&C Green No. 3 (Fast Green FCF); FD&C Red No. 3 (Erythrosine); FD&C Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine); FD&C Yellow No. 6 (Sunset Yellow); and FD&C Red No. 40 (Allura).

They have no nutritional value and are only used cosmetically to improve the appearance of food and drinks, yet there are safer alternatives available to food manufacturers.

EVIDENCE/CONCERN FROM SCIENTISTS

– Europe requires a warning label “consumption may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children” on products that contain most artificial dyes as an ingredient.

– In 1938, there were 15 artificial dyes approved for use in the U.S. Many of those have since been banned but 7 remain. For example, Red #3 was banned for use in cosmetics because animal studies linked the dye to cancer, but it is still allowed in food due to heavy food industry lobbying efforts.

– In 2007, a University of Southampton double-blind, placebo-controlled study found a link between hyperactivity in children who consumed some food dyes along with the preservative sodium benzoate.

– In 2008, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban artificial food dyes. In 2011, it urged the FDA to require front-of-package disclosures on packages of dyed foods.

4) CLASS IV CARAMEL COLORING – Class IV caramel coloring is a food coloring created in a laboratory with ammonium-containing and sulfite-containing compounds, which produce the byproduct 4-MeI.

There are four types of caramel coloring, and only the two made with ammonia compounds can contain 4-MeI (Class III and Class IV). Yet, any type of caramel color may be listed on the ingredient label as only “caramel color”, and the class is not typically disclosed.

It has no nutritional benefits and is only used cosmetically to improve the appearance of food and drinks, but there are safer alternatives available to food manufacturers.

EVIDENCE/CONCERN FROM SCIENTISTS

– Any food or drink that contains more than 29 micrograms of 4-MeI requires a cancer warning label in California (under Prop 65) that says, “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer”.

– Some companies (e.g. Starbucks) use level IV caramel coloring in the U.S., but don’t use it in other countries in Europe. For instance, Starbucks uses beta carotene instead of caramel coloring in the U.K.

– A 2007 U.S government funded National Toxicology Program study found that feeding mice caramel coloring IV increased their risk of developing lung cancer and leukemia. The National Toxicology Program wrote that there is “clear evidence” of the carcinogenic activity of 4-MeI in male and female mice.

– The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies 4-MeI as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.

– In 2011, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban caramel coloring due to safety concerns and the cancer risk.

IN CONCLUSION

As you can tell from the evidence listed above, Vani Hari is very, very far from alone in her concern about specific food additives approved by the FDA.

Yet, don’t expect the mainstream media to mention this – many of them would rather take the easy way out than do any real investigation.

That’s why it is essential that you know that Vani has many deeply credentialed organizations and scientists who share her beliefs.

But there is something else that you need to know. When Vani gets attacked by the critics, they are really attacking all of us. Why?

In essence, they’re saying that the average American citizen doesn’t have the right or the intellectual capacity to question any food that our government has approved.

They want us to keep our mouths shut, continue to have 21% of us die from cancer, and maintain the corrupt food system as we know it today.

To me, this is completely unacceptable. And the publication of The Food Babe Way is our best hope yet to create meaningful change in the way that food companies operate and formulate products for our children.

We cannot let this golden opportunity pass us by.

—-

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If so, make sure you Like my Facebook page, follow me on Instagram and join my email list.

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The Food Babe: Enemy of Chemicals

How one woman mobilized an army against food additives, GMOs, and all else not "natural"

JAMES HAMBLINFEB 11 2015, 8:00 AM ET

Lauren Giordano/The Atlantic

“Cereals here in the United States contain a packaging ingredient called—God, I’m paranoid." The natural-food advocate Vani Hari paused, laughing, looking at a man standing a few feet from our table in a Union Square coffee shop. He was huddled over his phone, just waiting for his coffee—or so it seemed. She lowered her voice, continuing, barely audible: "... called BHT."

Hari looked in my blank eyes. I asked, "In the plastic bags?"

She nodded as if I'd just been let in on the secret to end all secrets. "And in the U.K., they can't use it," Hari, who is better known through her blogging, speaking, and TV appearances as "The Food Babe," continued. "The purpose of it is to leach into the cereal, so it keeps it fresh. And, how many millions of kids are eating this every single day?"

"Why did the U.K. take it out?" I asked.

"They don't allow it," Hari said.

"They must have a reason."

"There are studies that suggest it's linked to cancer, tumors," she said. "It's an endocrine-disrupting chemical."

Such is the gist of many of the food-additive campaigns that Hari has undertaken: A chemical in the U.S. food supply is not allowed in other countries, so why is it being used here? Petition the food companies to take it out. Over the past three years, Hari has rapidly become one of the most popular voices on nutrition in mainstream media. She has lived the American dream: monetizing a lifestyle blog and quitting her job to write about what she's eating and why.

Hari is now working on developing a TV show, and her first book, released yesterday, is bound to lead bestseller lists. The title, a mouthful, leaves little to the imagination: The Food Babe Way: Break Free from the Hidden Toxins in Your Food and Lose Weight, Look Years Younger, and Get Healthy in Just 21 Days! It is more than just another ultra-simple diet plan, or a compendium of claims intended to provoke, devoid of nuance, though it is also those things. ("Could an apple be more fattening than a hot fudge sundae? Quite possibly, especially if you consider the exposure and accumulation of pesticides over time in the body.")

The book also offers the origin story of The Food Babe—how she left her job as a financial consultant and, despite no training in human metabolism, toxicology, or environmental science, became an unintentionally influential figure in public health. The book does little to address that she has also drawn the ire of many scientists who believe her claims are inaccurate or even dangerous. But Vani Hari did not intend to attract attention on the scale that she has. Her crusade began simply enough, with her own health issues, and the recovery that ensued after she discovered an all-natural approach to life. "Everything I had been putting in my body," she writes in the book, "was either made from something out of a chemical factory, sprayed with chemicals, or genetically modified to make companies richer and me sicker."

Hari's secrecy when we met in New York was not because the story of butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) was a particularly hot one. The additive has been widely used in cereal packaging for many years. BHT has to be listed as an ingredient on food labels, and some consumer-protection advocates like the Environmental Working Group have advised people to avoid it when possible. BHT is not a listed carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, but at high levels of exposure, rats have been found to develop lung and liver tumors, as well as problems with motor skills. These issues have not proven themselves to be relevant to humans, so the Food and Drug Administration classifies the chemical "Generally Recognized as Safe."

Rather, Hari had explained that her secrecy was because, five days after we met, she was going to launch a campaign imploring her legion of followers (dubbed "The Food Babe Army") to demand that General Mills and Kellogg's stop usingBHT. She made me swear that I wouldn't break the news in advance. I swore. And five days later, Hari posted a petition on her widely read blog FoodBabe.com, and pushed it to her 900,000-plus Facebook followers. Within a few hours, the petition had garnered more than 17,000 signatures. By the end of the day, last Thursday, Hari had published a press release saying that General Mills and Kellogg's had announced that they were going to phase out BHT.

"There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever."

She called it "a giant victory for the Food Babe Army." (General Mills' brand manager said the company was "already well down the path of removing [BHT]," and that the petition played no role in that.) In either case, this is far from the first victory to Hari's name. Since 2012, she has been leading campaigns demanding that food manufacturers remove ingredients that concern her, however remote the odds of serious danger. In March 2013, shesuccessfully implored Kraft to remove one of the chemical dyes that gave its macaroni and cheese that classic yellow-orange glow—because, Hari writes in the book, "at least one study" suggested a correlation between the chemical (yellow 5) and hyperactive behavior. Before that, her blogging and advocacy led to changes by Chipotle and Chick-fil-A, among others.

"I never gave permission for my body to be used as a toxic-waste dump or a science experiment," Hari writes in the book, blaming the food industry for said use. "You’d think our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would protect us from all of this, wouldn’t you? Hell, no. They’re part of the problem." Her stance on food additives is an absolute one: "There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever."

Toxicologists the world over dispute that with the fundamental adage "The dose makes the poison." Any substance is toxic at high enough quantities. Even something as banal as carbon dioxide can asphyxiate a person. And, similarly, almost anything is benign at low enough quantities. These are things that Hari knows but gives little due, sticking instead to the messages that are most visceral. She escalates the concerns raised by possible associations to concrete, actionable fear. Chapter One, titled "You've Been Duped," sums up the most divisive elements of her ideology:

Every bite of food that passes through our lips, and every glass of water we drink, are potential sources of toxic chemicals, including pesticide residue, preservatives, artificial flavors and colorings, addicting sugars and fats, genetically modified organisms, and more. These toxins can travel to, and settle into, all the organs of your body, particularly the liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract, and lungs—and do great damage. Scientists are now blaming chemical-ridden food for the dramatic rise in obesity, heart disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, infertility, dementia, mental illness, and more.

Most of the scientists who have spoken on Hari's work, though, are less than supportive of that sweeping message. Rather, her work has drawn ardent criticism, primarily from a vocal contingent of academic researchers and doctors, who accuse her, in no uncertain terms, of fear-mongering and profiteering. They say that she invokes science when it is convenient, as in the passage above, but demonizes it when it is not—as in her blanket case against any and all genetically modified food. Last month, NPR ran a critique of Hari's work, quoting several of her outspoken detractors. Science writer Kavin Senapathy, for one, captured the concerns of many in saying that Hari "exploits the scientific ignorance of her followers." Others, including neurologist Steven Novella, have said that she is to food what Jenny McCarthy is to vaccines.

"The Web is cluttered with people who really have no idea what they are talking about giving advice as if it were authoritative," Novella wrote in a blog post. "Often that advice is colored by either an ideological or commercial interest. The Food Babe is now the poster child for this phenomenon." NPR also quoted oncologist David Gorski, who has called Hari "a seemingly-never-ending font of misinformation and fear-mongering about food ingredients, particularly any ingredient with a scary, 'chemically'-sounding name."

The deferential language of careful science, unfortunately, lends itself to little influence on the emotion-laden Internet.

In recent months the attacks have escalated, and Hari has mobilized her army for war. Her response to many detractors is a simple and effective charge of corruption: Those who criticize her work are doing so because of ties to the food industry. Rebutting the NPR article, Hari addressed her followers with an impassioned response, opening with a quote she attributes to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." (If the Gandhi invocation feels a little self-aggrandizing, compare it to the book's forward, in which 10-Day Detox Diet author Mark Hyman likens Hari's work to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.) That was followed by more than 5,000 words ofresponses to her critics, including some humility—"I’ll admit it. My microwave blog post was not my most impressive piece of work"—all the while imploring her army to stand by her side in these trying times.

Illustrating the depth of what Hari endures, the post also includes images of some of the most hateful vitriol she has received from various dark corners of social media, complete with threats of rape and entreaties to kill herself.

"I'm getting attacked every day with a death threat," she told me. When it first started, the criticism and negativity dissuaded her in her work. Now, she explained, it fuels her. It is becoming part of her identity as a crusader. She implores her followers to join the battle, to resist the influence of the food-industry-fueled opposition.

Lauren Giordano

Hari is a paragon of opportunism in that way, turning criticism in her favor, incorporating it as part of her outsider identity. Her critics are part of an establishment trying to suppress the truths she holds, the truths they don't want you to hear. This week, Hari braced her fans on Facebook for the release of her book: "The ‪#‎FoodBabeWay‬ is hitting stores everywhere on Tuesday and I'm scared to death. The Food Industry is not going to be happy, they are going to fight back with their detractors leaving dishonest reviews and try to take me down any chance they get. ... " The post generated more than 9,000 likes. In the same way, she opens the book by turning her lack of scientific training into a point in her favor: The establishment is the problem, and she is its antithesis. She is at once the victim and the hero.

"What's really concerning to me is that the majority of the medical establishment, including registered dietitians, have some sort of industry tie," she told me. "It's entrenched. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the corruption. And to talk about it in a way that people understand."

I asked her about that positioning, as the relatable underdog-outsider going against the medically trained elitists. "It wasn't intentional," she said. "This just isn't stuff that you have to be a doctor or scientist to understand, and the fact that they're telling you that, there's a problem with that. That you have to be a food scientist in order to understand what these chemicals do in your body. Not really."

Nutrition and human metabolism are among the most complex and consequential disciplines in the health sciences, but sentiment like Hari's is not at all rare, evidenced by the many celebrities who feel qualified to write their own weight-loss books. They sell well, at least in part because people who are not scientists tend to be better at using evocative language and less married to conservative "may be related to"-type caveats; the scientific establishment that guardedly posits potential correlations, and ends every statement with "more studies are needed." The deferential language of careful science, unfortunately, lends itself to little influence on the emotion-laden mainstream Internet.

Back in 2011, a public-health program at the University of California, Berkeleyadvised consumers about the cereal-bag chemical: "The nutritional benefits of, say, a whole­ grain cereal with the additives outweigh any risk. But because [BHT's] health effects are still unclear, limit how much you consume." Alas, the staid article did not lead to the removal of these chemicals from the food supply. That's where one needs a Food Babe.

Hari is also part of an ongoing, escalating challenge to the identities of academics as gatekeepers of knowledge. The role of celebrity in giving public-health advice is not unique to the Internet era; Jane Fonda was the fitness expert of a VHS generation. But the idea of a lone consultant becoming, in three short years, more influential than entire university departments of Ph.D.s, is indicative of a new level of potential for celebrity in health messaging.

"And that's the problem that we have: too many moderate people."

"I wanted the hashtag to be #CerealKiller, but people talked me out of that," Hari said, laughing but not unserious. I told her, as a writer who not-infrequently covers food and nutrition, that I worry about making people freak out when they shouldn't. Toxic contamination of the food supply is an incendiary topic, and telling people they've been poisoning themselves or their kids (however innocently) can be a serious burden.

"And that's the problem that we have: too many moderate people," she said. "We need someone demanding change."

NPR posited that its readers cannot simply ignore Hari, because her reach is growing. She wrote an op-ed about her success, and the widespread misuse of the term natural, for The New York Times. Hari is on track to become the next Dr. Oz-level health-media personality. She has already been a guest on the embattled doctor's daytime-television extravaganza, during the macaroni-and-cheese crusades. By the end of the campaign, the petition to remove yellow 5 had almost 250,000 signatures. She's clearly speaking to people in a way that resonates. Analytically-minded people, her scientist critics among them, often with big health ideas of their own, might do well to understand why and how these messages work. Or, as Hari phrases it, as a challenge: "People chastise me for being too simplistic, but it's like, okay, how are you getting through to people?"

‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Word Search Puzzles Given to Middle School Students

Terms  include "bondage," "handcuff" "leather cuffs" and "spanking"

Image Credits: KDKA-TV

by MIKAEL THALEN | INFOWARS.COM | FEBRUARY 11, 2015

A Pennsylvania school district is under fire after middle school children were given “Fifty Shades of Grey” themed word search puzzles.

Based on the popular erotic romance novel and upcoming film, the puzzle includes such sexual terms as “bondage,” “handcuffs,” “leather cuffs” and “spanking.”

According to numerous news outlets, the issue became known after parents approached educators at a Tuesday evening school board meeting.

School officials with the Monessen School District reportedly began an investigation into the matter the day prior, asserting that no solid information had been gathered as of Wednesday.

Infowars reached out to district officials and was unable to learn any additional information regarding who provided the worksheets to students.

A parent speaking with CBS Pittsburgh stated that several administrators including the school’s principal refused to answer questions when an audio recording device was present.

Other Pennsylvania parents took to social media to voice their concern over what they saw as a lack of oversight.

“This is what you get when our society no longer has any kind of moral compass,” one parent said.

“So not Ok for children of any age,” another said. “Bad taste whoever passed them out to kids.”

Although unconfirmed, one parent stated that the district was already aware of the responsible teacher but has thus far refused to release a name.

Regardless, many parents feel the situation represents the continued sexualization of young school children.

Parents of a middle school student in California were outraged last June when a sex-ed teacher asked their daughter “how far she would go” sexually during an in-class assignment.

The father of a female middle school student was equally upset several months earlier when his daughter discovered a school poster that listed graphic sexual acts. The school claimed the poster was simply part of a health and science curriculum.

As if middle school wasn’t early enough, Chicago public school administrators demanded that allkindergarten children receive mandatory sex-ed courses in 2013. Similarly, feminist groups attempted toforce classes on kindergartners in California as well.