“Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me, how to transfer all my posts from this blog over to the new one. So I gave up. The new blog is starting from scratch. Which sucks but what are you gonna do?”
“Hopefully our criminal government and their globalist masters will realize that we’re all intricately connected and we all have an overwhelming underlying love for each other and… you know… stop fuckin’ shit up. Because I’m tired of the dissent but as long as these truly evil people exist, I will never stop.”
(and as i sit and type this word’d this dissent is spreading all across our America like a gorgeous incurable virus)
Last night, President Obama made it clear he intends to push hard for a government-run Health Control system. His plans, if enacted, will result over time in either a complete government takeover of Health Care, or the total destruction of any meaningful private system.
Now is the time for us to raise our voices and insist Congress vote “NO” to this government power grab.
Make no mistake, the Obama plan will cause the price of insurance to skyrocket even further by increasing payouts and other costs of doing business, putting many more Americans in the position of having to drop their coverage.
One plan currently being considered in the Senate would impose a $3,800 fineon families who refuse to get health insurance. Health insurance will no longer be a free choice in our country. President Obama has long advocated a universal, single-payer system, and that is the ultimate goal of enacting this so-called “reform” package.
In regards to his deficit-neutral promise, the Congressional Budget Office has already statedthat HR 3200 will add over $200 billion to the deficit over the next ten years, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are already trillions of dollars in the red.
Are we really expected to believe that yet another government program on top of all these will save money?
And, hidden throughout the over 1000 pages that make up this bill are even more “goodies” for the allies of Big Government, such as a massive payoff to Big Labor, who will reap millions of new forced union dues and wield unprecedented power over government and “private” health care as reportedin The Wall Street Journal.
President Obama has repeatedly stated that we cannot deal with the rising cost of health care by maintaining the status quo. I wholeheartedly agree.
We must acknowledge that the root cause of the health care crisis in this country is government interference. Of course, many in the insurance industry have taken full advantage of their lobbying power and monopolies, but they have been able to do this because of the government.
It is government that prohibits individuals from being able to shop across state lines for insurance.
It is government that imposes thousands of mandates on insurance providers.
It is government that created HMOs in the 1970s.
It is government that has skewed the marketto prop up third party payers.
Simply put, the problems with health care in America are TOO MUCH government interference already. The solution is to lessen government control – NOT give them more power!
The Council for Affordable Health Insurance has identified a total of 2,133 mandated benefits and providers currently required by state legislatures, mandates they estimate increase the cost of basic coverage from around 20% to as high as possibly 50%. Read their report here.
If the president thinks we can pay for his plan through saving billions of dollars by eliminating waste and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, then why don’t we clean out those systems now and return that money through tax cuts to the American taxpayer, providing them extra funds to buy insurance if they want it?
Both major parties believe the answer to our health care crisis is through government intervention. They only differ in the degree of that intervention.
It’s time to choose freedom.
Americans should be free to shop across state lines for health insurance, to easily go outside the country for cheaper medications, and to buy health insurance without being taxed on it.
Congress should give Americans control over their health care by giving them control over their health care dollar via tax credits and deductions similar to those outlined in Congressman Ron Paul’s Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act (HR 1495).
And Congress should protect privacy rights by allowing patients and physicians to opt-out of any government-mandated or funded system of electronic health care records, and by repealing the federal law creating an “unique patient identifier” by adopting the policies contained in Congressman Ron Paul’s Protect Patients and Physicians Privacy Act (HR 2630).
Tell Congress todaythat you oppose cementing the status quo of government care. Urge your representative and senators to oppose HR 3200 and all other bills that would take control over your health care out of your hands. Clickhereto sign our petition.
President Obama ran on a platform of hope and change, but his policies have proved to be not only more of the same, but a fresh stamp of approval on the ways things have been done for the last thirty years.
Real reform starts with freedom, and real hope for America means upholding its founding principle of self-determination.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
P.S. A complete government takeover of health care has been defeated before, but the odds have never been as stacked against us as they are now. If you are able, please consider contributingto C4L today to help us promote true health care reform and defend the principles that made this nation great from further desecration.
Baucus Health Care Draft to Fine Reluctant Gun Owners up to $3,800
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151 Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408 http://www.gunowners.org
Thursday, September 10, 2009
By now, members of Gun Owners of America should have received pre-written postcards opposing the anti-gun health care bills that are floating around on Capitol Hill.
Please send in those postcards — as it’s very important for legislative offices to see mounds of gun owners’ mail being dumped on their desks!
Now that Congress is back in session — and the President has given his televised push on health care — it is time for us to redouble our efforts.
To review the bidding:
Every major health care bill being considered in Congress would require many (if not most) Americans to be covered by insurance policies written by the Obama administration — so-called ObamaCare.
Among other things, ObamaCare will almost certainly require, by regulation, that all gun-related medical data be fed into a federal health database — pursuant to a $20 billion program Obama insisted be included in the $787 billion stimulus bill.
So, as a gun owner who doesn’t want this data to be trolled by the BATFE from a federal database, you might say:
* “I’m not going to buy an ObamaCare policy.”
or
* “I’m going to buy the type of insurance that I want to buy.”
Well, anti-gun Democrat Max Baucus (D-MT) has a question for you: “How would you like to pay a $3,800 a yearfine?”
That’s right. In a legislative draft released this week, Baucus would fine you up to $3,800 for not buying preciselythe insurance policy which Barack Obama orders you to buy.
So, what’s going to be required under ObamaCare? And how much is it going to cost?
Baucus isn’t going to tell you that until after the bill is passed. We do know that, under the Baucus draft, a lower middle income family could be forced to pay up to 13% of its income to buy an ObamaCare policy. And, presumably, a middle income family would be required to spend much, much more.
Take into consideration that the Baucus draft — with its $3,800 per year fines and its ObamaCare -related gun databases — is the so-called “conservative” bill. This is the one that they’re trying to get Republicans to sign onto because it’s so “conservative.” The final Pelosi-written conference report will be much, much worse.
Incidentally, Obama opposed forcing Americans to purchase government-approved insurance during the campaign, but guess what? He lied.
ACTION:
1. Write your Senators. Ask them to oppose the anti-gun Baucus draft, with its requirement that Americans purchase an Obama-approved insurance policy or pay a $3,800 annual fine. This legislative draft has not yet been publicly released; however, several news agencies have reported on its key features — and these reviews are widely available on the Internet.
2. Distribute this email far and wide. There are people that you know who should be involved in the fight against socialized health care who are just sitting on the sidelines. Please forward this email to them and get them involved in the fight!
—– Pre-written letter —–
Dear Senator:
Please oppose the open-ended anti-gun mandates contained in the Baucus health draft. Among other things, Baucus-mandated policies, which would have to be approved by the Obama administration, will almost certainly require, by regulation, that all gun-related medical data be fed into a federal health database — pursuant to a $20 billion program Obama insisted be included in the $787 billion stimulus bill.
So, what if a gun owner insists on buying the type of insurance he wants to buy? Sen. Baucus would fine him up to $3,800 a year.
That’s right. In a recently released draft, Baucus would fine gun owners up to $3,800 for not buyingpreciselythe insurance policy which Barack Obama orders them to buy. So, what’s going to be required by this Baucus-mandated policy? And how much is it going to cost?
Baucus isn’t going to tell us that until after the bill is passed. We do know that, under the Baucus draft, a lower middle income family could be forced to pay up to 13% of its income to buy an ObamaCare policy. And, presumably, a middle income family would be required to spend much, much more.
Incidentally, Obama opposed forcing Americans to purchase government-approved insurance during the campaign.
In short, please oppose the anti-gun, anti-freedom Baucus “compromise” and please let me know exactly where you stand on this issue.
WASHINGTON — One year after the near collapse of the global financial system, this much is clear: The financial world as we knew it is over, and something new is rising from its ashes.
Historians will look to September 2008 as a watershed for the U.S. economy.
On Sept. 7 , the government seized mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . Eight days later, investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, sparking a global financial panic that threatened to topple blue-chip financial institutions around the world. In the several months that followed, governments from Washington to Beijing responded with unprecedented intervention into financial markets and across their economies, seeking to stop the wreckage and stem the damage.
One year later, the easy-money system that financed the boom era from the 1980s until a year ago is smashed. Once-ravenous U.S. consumers are saving money and paying down debt. Banks are building reserves and hoarding cash. And governments are fashioning a new global financial order.
Congress and the Obama administration have lost faith in self-regulated markets. Together, they’re writing the most sweeping new regulations over finance since the Great Depression. And in this ever-more-connected global economy, Washington is working with its partners through the G-20 group of nations to develop worldwide rules to govern finance.
“Our objective is to design an economic framework where we’re going to have a more balanced pattern of growth globally, less reliant on a buildup of unsustainable borrowing . . . and not just here, but around the world,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner .
The first faint signs that the U.S. economy may be clawing its way back from the worst recession since the Great Depression are only now starting to appear, a year after the panic began. Similar indications are sprouting in Europe , China and Japan .
Still, economists concur that a quarter-century of economic growth fueled by cheap credit is over. Many analysts also think that an extended period of slow job growth and suppressed wage growth will keep consumers — and the businesses that sell to them — in the dumps for years.
“Those things are likely to be subpar for a long period of time,” said Martin Regalia, the chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce . “I think it means that we probably see potential rates of growth that are in the 2-2.5 (percent) range, or maybe . . . 1.8-1.9 (percent).” A growth rate of 3 percent to 3.5 percent is considered average.
The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August and is expected to peak above 10 percent in the months ahead. It’s already there in at least 15 states. Regalia thinks that it could be five years before the U.S. economy generates enough jobs to overcome those lost and to employ the new workers entering the labor force.
All this is likely to keep consumers on the sidelines.
“I think this financial panic and Great Recession is an inflection point for the financial system and the economy,” said Mark Zandi , the chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Economy.com. “It means much less risk-taking, at least for a number of years to come — a decade or two. That will be evident in less credit and more costly credit. If you are a household or a business, it will cost you more, and it will be more difficult to get that credit.”
The numbers bear him out. The Fed’s most recent release of credit data showed that consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent from April to June, after falling by a 3.6 percent annual rate from January to March. Revolving lines of credit, which include credit cards, fell by an annualized 8.9 percent in the first quarter, followed by an 8.2 percent drop in the second quarter.
That’s a sea change. For much of the past two decades, strong U.S. growth has come largely through expanding credit. The global economy fed off this trend.
China became a manufacturing hub by selling attractively priced exports to U.S. consumers who were living beyond their means. China’s Asian neighbors sent it components for final assembly; Africa and Latin Americasold China their raw materials. All fed off U.S. consumers’ bottomless appetite for more, bought on credit.
“That’s over. Consumers can do their part — spend at a rate consistent with their income growth, but not much beyond that,” Zandi said.
If U.S. consumers no longer drive the global economy, then consumers in big emerging economies such as China and Brazil will have to take up some of the slack. Trade among nations will take on greater importance.
In the emerging “new normal,” U.S. companies will have to be more competitive. They must sell into big developing markets; yet as the recent Cash for Clunkers effort underscored, the competitive hurdles are high: Foreign-owned automakers, led by Toyota , reaped the most benefit from the U.S. tax breaks for new car purchases, not GM and Chrysler .
Need a loan? Tough luck: Many U.S. banks are in no condition to lend. Around 416 banks are now on a “problem list” and at risk of insolvency. Regulators already have shuttered 81 banks and thrifts this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported on Aug. 27 that rising loan losses are depleting bank capital. The ratio of bank reserves to bad loans was 63.5 percent from April to June, the lowest it’s been since the savings-and-loan crisis in 1991.
For all that, the U.S. economy does seem to be rising off its sickbed. The latest manufacturing data for August point to a return to growth, and home sales are rising. Indeed, there are many encouraging signs emerging in the global economy.
It’s all growth from a low starting point, however, and many economists think that there’ll be a lower baseline for U.S. and global growth if the new financial order means less risk-taking by lenders and less indebtedness by companies and consumers.
That seems evident now in the U.S. personal savings rate. It fell steadily from 9.59 percent in the 1970s to 2.68 percent in the easy-money era from 2000 to 2008; from 2005 to 2007, it averaged 1.83 percent.
Today, that trend is in reverse. From April to June, Americans’ personal savings rate was 5 percent, and it could go higher if the unemployment rate keeps rising. Almost 15 million Americans are unemployed — and countless others are underemployed or uncertain about their job security, so they’re spending less and saving more.
A few years ago, banks fell all over themselves to offer cheap home equity loans and lines of consumer credit. No more. Even billions in government bailout dollars to spur lending haven’t changed that.
“The strategy that was stated at the beginning of the year — which is that you would sustain the banking system in order that it would resume lending — hasn’t worked, and it isn’t going to work,” said James K. Galbraith , an economist at the University of Texas at Austin .
Over the course of 2008, the nation’s five largest banks reduced their consumer loans by 79 percent, real estate loans by 66 percent and commercial loans by 19 percent, according to FDIC data. A wide range of credit measures, including recent FDIC data, show that lending remains depressed.
Why? The foundation of U.S. credit expansion for the past 20 years is in ruin. Since the 1980s, banks haven’t kept loans on their balance sheets; instead, they sold them into a secondary market, where they were pooled for sale to investors as securities. The process, called securitization, fueled a rapid expansion of credit to consumers and businesses. By passing their loans on to investors, banks were freed to lend more.
Today, securitization is all but dead. Investors have little appetite for risky securities. Few buyers want a security based on pools of mortgages, car loans, student loans and the like.
“The basis of revival of the system along the line of what previously existed doesn’t exist. The foundation that was supposed to be there for the revival (of the economy) . . . got washed away,” Galbraith said.
Unless and until securitization rebounds, it will be hard for banks to resume robust lending because they’re stuck with loans on their books.
“We’ve just been scared,” said Robert C. Pozen , the chairman of Boston -based MFS Investment Management . He thinks that the freeze in securitization reflects a lack of trust in Wall Street and its products and remains a huge obstacle to the resumption of lending that’s vital to an economic recovery.
Enter the Federal Reserve. It now props up the secondary market for pooled loans that are vital to the functioning of the U.S. financial system. The Fed is lending money to investors who’re willing to buy the safest pools of loans, called asset-backed securities.
Through Sept. 3 , the Fed had funded purchases of $817.6 billion in mortgage-backed securities. These securities were pooled mostly by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae , Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae . In recent months, the Fed also has moved aggressively to lend for purchase of pools of other consumer-based loans.
Today, there’s little private-sector demand for new loan-based securities; government is virtually the only game in town. That’s why on Aug. 17 , the Fed announced that it would extend its program to finance the purchase of pools of loans until mid-2010. That suggests there’s still a long way to go before a functioning securitization market — the backbone of consumer lending — returns to a semblance of normalcy.
The latest disturbing example of how the federal government, under the umbrella of Obama’s “civilian security force,” is recruiting young people to serve the state comes with the announcement that the Department of Homeland Security is planning to enlist the Girl Scouts.
“The United States wants to enlist its 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the effort to combat hurricanes, pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched a campaign Tuesday to entice the blue, brown and green-clad multitudes to be even more prepared, with the promise of a new patch if they pitch in,” reports AFP.
The girls will be allowed to emblazon their sashes or vests with the new DHS patch if they complete training courses, according to the article.
The news that Girl Scouts are to be recruited for disaster preparedness by the federal government follows similar programs being run by the DHS that train Boy Scouts how to conduct armed raids on discontented American citizens, described as “terrorists” and “drug dealers” by Homeland Security.
As we reported back in May when the program was announced, one of the “terrorists” that the Boy Scouts were trained to kill in one scenario was actually a disgruntled U.S. war veteran.
In the mock training scenario, the Boy Scouts were ordered to, “Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” by a Border Patrol agent, who added “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”
Given recent concerns over the DHS definition of “right wing extremists” and the agency’s penchant to affiliate veterans, gun owners, Ron Paul supporters and even those who question the mainstream media with terrorists, one wonders exactly who the Boy Scouts and now the Girl Scouts are being trained to target.
Both programs will do nothing to quell concerns that President Barack Obama’s promised “national civilian security force” is gradually being formed from such groups in a wider effort to oppress political opposition to Obama’s domestic agenda by demonizing opponents, flames that were fanned further recently when Obama’s own website described its political adversaries as “right-wing domestic terrorists”.
Last night, in the middle of Obama’s corporate media prime-time address on health care, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson accused Obama of lying about illegals and health care. Wilson made his accusation after Obama pointed at the Republican side of the aisle and criticized them for opposing the government plan during his speech to a joint session of Congress.
Democrats have called for disciplinary action against Wilson, even though he quickly backed down, apologized for his outburst, and went so far as to scrape and grovel before White House Chief of Staff and political enforcer Rahm Emanuel.
For Democrats, this was not enough. “There’ll be time enough to consider whether or not we ought to make it clear that that action is unacceptable in the House of Representatives,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
“It’s time for us to talk about health care, not Mr. Wilson,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Indeed, it is time to talk about the government’s plan to take over health care, as Pelosi suggests.
Early last month, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment which would have excluded illegal aliens from Obama’s totalitarian health care bill. The Democrat-dominated committee voted 23-18 to defeat the measure introduced by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), which would have required the use of the existing Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements System before care is dispensed.
In other words, there would be no way to verify the citizenship of those seeking care under Obama’s government plan.
CNN reported last month the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan policy research arm of Congress, found that without a citizenship verification system illegal aliens would receive subsidies. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, told CNN the report “undermines the claims of the president and others that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the House version of the bill.”
“Democrats can keep claiming all they want that illegal immigrants will not be covered in this bill. But their actions speak louder than their words. Democrats have rejected opportunities to close the gaping loopholes in this health care bill that will allow illegal immigrants to participate,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith said after the CRS report was released. “If President Obama is committed to ensuring that illegal immigrants do not benefit from the bill – as he says he is – why not include the same verification mechanisms in this bill as already exist for other federal benefits programs?”
In addition, undocumented immigrants who live in the United States for a certain period of time during the year would be classified as residents and would meet the substantial presence test required under HR 3200 to have health insurance, according to the report.
Pelosi said Wilson’s outburst during Obama’s speech shows the “bankruptcy” of Republicans’ ideas on health care, the Washington Post reports.
In fact, it shows how the Democrats in league with the corporate media are attempting to ram Obama’s totalitarian health care plan down the throat of the American people and stifle opposition.
The US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.
Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to “credit easing”.
“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
“If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.
China’s reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world’s largest.
“Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets,” he added.
The comments suggest that China has become the driving force in the gold market and can be counted on to
buy whenever there is a price dip, putting a floor under any correction.
Mr Cheng said the Fed’s loose monetary policy was stoking an unstable asset boom in China. “If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise.
“Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down.”
Mr Cheng said China had learned from the West that it is a mistake for central banks to target retail price inflation and take their eye off assets.
“This is where Greenspan went wrong from 2000 to 2004,” he said. “He thought everything was alright because inflation was low, but assets absorbed the liquidity.”
Mr Cheng said China had lost 20m jobs as a result of the crisis and advised the West not to over-estimate the role that his country can play in global recovery.
China’s task is to switch from export dependency to internal consumption, but that requires a “change in the ideology of the Chinese people” to discourage excess saving. “This is very difficult”.
Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China.
“The US spends tomorrow’s money today,” he said. “We Chinese spend today’s money tomorrow. That’s why we have this financial crisis.”
Yet the consequences are not symmetric.
“He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing,” said Mr Cheng.
It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.
Part I: Evidence Linking Autism Rise in Children to Vaccinations
by F. William Engdahl
The WHO and US Government CDC are escalating a public psychological conditioning to create hysteria and panic among an uninformed public about an alleged “virus” H1N1 Influenza A, aka Swine Flu, whose alleged effects to date appear comparable with a common cold. Before people line up in the streets demanding their vaccinations for their children and themselves, it would be wise to remember, to paraphrase a 1992 campaign statement of Bill Clinton to George H.W. Bush: “It’s the vaccination, Stupid!”
By countless scientific accounts, far more dangerous to human health than any reported incidences of Swine Flu are the dangers of severe health issues including paralysis, brain damage and even death arising from what is added to vaccines by virtually every major vaccine maker. Almost without exception, all commercial vaccines today contain various substances known as adjuvants designed to make the vaccine “work.” These adjuvants are the source of horrendous and sometimes deadly damage.
It has been speculated for some time that there might be a link in the alarming rise in cases of autism among tiny infants and children and massive multiple vaccinations today given routinely to infants and children from the first hours of birth. There is clear and shocking evidence of the link between the two. If you do not have a strong constitution, you are advised not to read further.
A new study shows a direct link between standard childhood vaccination series, MMR, and autism-like symptoms in monkeys. The principal scientist involved in the study, Dr. Laura Hewitson of the University of Pittsburgh, presented the alarming conclusions as an abstract pending publication at the International Meeting for Autism Research. It has been presented at scientific conferences in both London and Seattle, USA.
The study compared vaccinated macaque monkeys with non-vaccinated macaques. No major flaws in the study have been revealed by any attending scientist. The vaccines included the popular MMR series. The study found a marked increase in “gastrointestinal tissue gene expression” and “inflammation issues” with those monkeys which received vaccinations. They are a common symptom of children with regressive autism.
The study also found marked behavior changes and development differences in those monkeys given the vaccines versus those who were not. “Compared with unexposed animals, significant neuro-developmental deficits were evident for exposed animals in survival reflexes, tests of color discrimination and reversal, and learning sets,” the study`s authors reported. “Differences in behaviors were observed between exposed and unexposed animals and within the exposed group before and after MMR vaccination.”
US Government-mandated research approved by Congress was to begin this year, but the funds were rescinded in early January. Claiming “conflict of interest” because of ongoing court cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a long-time supporter of infant vaccinations, withdrew the research plans.
The most shocking of all is the recent and now common medical practice, reinforced by an aggressive pharmaceutical industry, of giving multiple vaccines, often virtually within hours of birth, to infants despite the fact that no study including all of the vaccine series commonly given to children in the US and UK, about 30 in all, has been conducted until now. The practice of newborn multiple vaccinations has become widespread in Germany and other EU countries over the past decade. Significantly there have surfaced reports of dramatically increased instances of autism in newborn and infants in various German hospitals over the past decade, precisely the period multiple vaccinations of newborn and infants has become routine.
US Government coverup
Tragically, the US Government agency theoretically entrusted with guarding public health, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as with the case of health dangers of GMO foods, as well with the dramatic evidence of the link between autism and adjuvants used in typical vaccines, is accepting the argument of big and politically powerful Pharmaceutical companies.
The Food and Drug Administration considers vaccines safe but, just as with GMO, they have done no studies into the effects of multiple vaccinations as given in the common childhood series which started in the 1990s in the USA and spread to the UK and now across the EU.
According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late Attorney General and an attorney active in campaigning to expose mercury (Thimerosal) and other toxicity dangers in vaccines, recently stated, “as autism is a behavioral affliction rather than a precisely defined biological injury — epidemiological studies are critical to establishing its causation. But the greatest source of epidemiological data is the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) — the government maintained medical records of hundreds of thousands of vaccinated children — which Health and Human Services Department has gone to great lengths to keep out of the hands of plaintiffs’ attorneys and independent scientists…The raw data collected in the VSD would undoubtedly provide the epidemiological evidence needed to understand the relationship between vaccines and autism. The absence of such studies makes it easy for judges to say to plaintiffs they have not met their burden of proving causation.”
Autism was virtually unknown in the United States until 1943 when it was diagnosed and identified eleven months after Thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine “adjuvant” was first added to baby vaccines along with various aluminium compounds in the United States. Thimerosal is often used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines despite massive evidence of its severe effects as a potent neurotoxin. Following independent studies, Russia, Japan, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Britain have banned Thimersol from childrens’ vaccines. Germany to date has no such ban. The toxin was developed in 1930 by Eli Lilly. Tragically in 1991, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary the US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), the same agency fuelling the current hysteria over the non-proven H1N1 Swine Flu virus danger, recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-containing vaccines in some cases within 24 hours of birth for Hepatitis B and two months for diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
Before 1989 US pre-school children received eleven vaccinations—polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR). By 1999, because of the various CDC recommendations, the number of vaccinations was twenty two before first grade of school. Parallel with this explosive rise in vaccinations of the very young in the United States, according to Kennedy, the rate of autism among children. The state ofIowa reported a 700% increase in autism in children beginning in the 1990’s and along with California has banned mercury in vaccines. Despite evidence, however the US FDA continues to allow drug makers to include Thimerosal in numerous over-the-counter non-prescription medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. The US Government ships vaccines preserved with Thimerosal to numerous developing countries as well, where some are reporting sudden explosion of autism rates as well. In China, where autism was unknown before introduction of Thimerosal by US drug makers in 1999, press reports indicate there are almost two million autistic children.
Instances of autism in the US exploded as some 40 million children were injected during the 1990’s with Thimersol-based vaccines, giving them unprecedented accumulations of mercury poison. The level of ethylmercury in a vaccine routinely given then to children of two months age was 99 times greater than the US Government’s daily limit for exposure. As with the current WHO pandemic declaration around H1N1 Swine Flu, the CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee is filled with scientists with close ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Sam Katz, chairman of the committee was a paid consultant to most companies producing the vaccines he “recommended.”
The aluminium danger remains
While vaccines available in the US today exist with no Thimerosal (50% mercury), virtually all vaccines still contain aluminum, which has been linked to impaired neurological development in children. Aluminum has not replaced thimerosal as a vaccine preservative; it has always been used in vaccines.
In the recent past, most US chioldren got exposed to both thimerosal and aluminum simultaneously with the hepatitis B, Hib, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) and pneumococcal vaccines. Combining mercury with aluminum increases the likelihood that the mercury will damage human tissue.
According to a recent report by Michael Wagnitz, an American chemist, “Currently eight childhood vaccines that contain aluminum ranging from 125 to 850 micrograms (mcg). These vaccines are administered 17 times in the first 18 months of life, an almost six-fold increase compared to the vaccine schedule of the 1980s.”
Wagnitz adds, “According to the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, based on IV feeding solutions, a child should not exceed a maximum daily dose of 5 mcg of aluminum per kilogram of weight per day. That means if a child weighs 11 pounds, the child should not exceed 25 mcg in a day. This level was determined to be the maximum safety limit based on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Aluminum Neurotoxicity in Preterm Infants Receiving Intravenous Feeding Solutions.”
The hepatitis B vaccine, administered at birth, contains 250 mcg.
In a 1996 policy statement, “Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children,” the American Academy of Pediatrics states, “Aluminum can cause neurological harm. People with kidney disease who build up bloodstream levels of aluminum greater than 100 mcg per liter are at risk of toxicity. The toxic threshold of aluminum in the bloodstream may be lower than 100 mcg per liter.” What level of aluminium toxicity is contained in vaccines routinely given German, French and other children n the EU is not known. It might be time for a public demand for such information to be disclosed, and before governments launch mass vaccination campaigns for untested vaccines against a non-proven H1N1 Swine Flu threat.
Suppressed CBS News 60 Minutes on Landmark cult leader Werner Erhard, 3 Mar 1991
The ZIP archive presents the video and transcript of an investigative report into “est” (Erhard Seminars Training) guru Werner Erhard by CBS News, originally broadcast on the program 60 Minutes on March 3, 1991.
Both, video and transcript, have been published at various points in time, but are not publically available anymore due to legal threats against publishers from Werner Erhard.
The material contains interviews with friends, business associates and family of Werner Erhard making serious claims against him. Erhard is accused by family members of beating his wife and children, and raping a daughter, while still giving seminars on how to have relationships that work. The story also includes interviews with two former staff members of Werner Erhard: Wendy Drucker (a senior manager) and Dr. Bob Larzelere (head of Erhard’s counseling staff).
The current incarnation of the est training is now known as Landmark Education, with its course the Landmark Forum. Landmark Education is run by CEO Harry Rosenberg, who is Werner Erhard’s brother, and General Counsel and Chairman of the Board of Directors Art Schreiber, who has acted as Werner Erhard’s lawyer. Werner Erhard’s sister Joan Rosenberg also sits on the Board of Directors of Landmark Education.
The likely audience for this material includes researchers of the “est” and Landmark Education / Landmark Forum movement – including psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as well as those researching the controversial life of Werner Erhard. The audience also includes potential clients/customers of the company Landmark Education – whose course the Landmark Forum was originally developed by Werner Erhard as the “est training”.
The material can be verified as the original CBS broadcast on 60 Minutes of March 3, 1991. The episode of 60 Minutes is Program # 2325.
Additionally, Cult expert Rick Ross of The Ross Institute Internet Archives for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements maintains a large database on Landmark Education[1], est[2], and The Forum[3], and his attorneys are also quite educated as to the organization’s methods[4].
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama returns to Washington next week in search of one thing that can revive his health-care overhaul: a sense of crisis.
Facing polls showing a drop in his approval, diminished support from independents, factions within his Democratic Party and a united Republican opposition, Obama must recapture the sense of urgency that led to passage of the economic rescue package in February, analysts said.
“At the moment, except for the people without insurance, we’re not in a health-care crisis,” said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington. “You do need a crisis to generate movement in Congress and to help build a consensus.”
Obama speaks to labor leaders on Sept. 7 and to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9 as he attempts to rebuild support for his top domestic priority, one that affects 17 percent of the economy. Lawmakers, trying to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and rein in costs, are considering mandates on employers to provide coverage, new rules for insurers, and creating a government program to compete with private insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc.
Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the administration made unprecedented health-care progress in eight months.
‘Not There Yet’
“We gave Congress a charge, we gave them broad outlines, which is the reason we are farther along than any of the five presidents that have tried,” Emanuel said in an interview yesterday. “We’re not there yet, and this speech is intended to finish the job.”
Presidential speeches historically do little to move public opinion significantly, saidGeorge Edwards, author of “The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership.”
“This is almost like a Hail Mary, because they know that they’re substantially behind and the trajectory is negative for them,” Edwards said.
Unlike the financial crisis he inherited, the health-care debate is of Obama’s making and places a different burden on him, Edwards said.
“The best thing in presidential leadership is to recognize and exploit opportunities,” said Edwards. “The White House overestimated the nature of the opportunity.”
Stimulus Debate
Obama’s economic stimulus was debated as the Dow Jones Industrial Averagedropped 18 percent from Nov. 4, 2008, to Feb. 13, when Congress approved the legislation. Unemployment had risen to more than 7 percent.
On the stimulus, Obama was able to say “that unless we do X right now, and X is pretty painful and pretty expensive, there is a serious danger in the next few weeks that the entire financial system will come crashing down,” said Bill Galston, a former official in President Bill Clinton’s administration, now a Brookings Institution scholar in Washington.
Emanuel remarked at the time that a crisis was a terrible thing to waste, and Obama pushed for health-care overhaul and energy legislation along with financial and auto bailouts.
He has framed health-care legislation as part of his long- term strategy to improve the economy. Republicans focused on the potential impact on patients. Throughout the summer and in town halls, Republican opponents said Obama wanted a government takeover of the system and creation of panels to decide end-of- life issues.
Democratic Critics
Within the Democratic Party, critics say Obama hasn’t pushed universal health care and others say the overhaul would balloon the federal deficit.
Obama “has said about this issue continually, if it was easy it would have been done by now,” said White House Communications Director Anita Dunn.
Obama’s difficulty on health care is compounded by broader economic worries. While 36 percent of Americans say the economy is getting better, only 10 percent see improvements in their households, according to a CBS poll at the end of August.
“People are not convinced the president’s strategy has helped their family during the economic downturn,” said Robert Blendon, a health-policy pollster at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That has forced them to be more skeptical towards the president’s health-care proposals.”
Less than a fifth of Americans say a health-care overhaul will help them personally, compared to 31 percent who think the government’s efforts will hurt, and 46 percent who say it will have no effect, the CBS poll showed.
‘Not a Crisis’
“There is a problem in our health-care system today, and we need reform; it’s not a crisis,” said Ed Gillespie, White House counselor to President George W. Bush. “It’s just people saying this is way too much, way too fast, we don’t know where this money is going and we don’t know where it’s coming from.”
The CBS survey of 1,097 Americans Aug. 27-31 found Obama’s approval fell 12 percentage points from a high of 68 percent in April to 56 percent; the error margin is 3 percentage points.
A survey of 4,518 likely voters by Zogby International Aug. 28-31 put Obama’s approval rating at a record-low 42 percent; it also showed he’s well liked.
“He’s got to get control of his presidency,” said John Zogby, president of Zogby International. “There’s a way out of this. Some of it is going to have to be his personality and his ability to frame messages, which is still good.”
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in a report published Monday that the U.S. dollar should be replaced as the world’s standard reserve currency, giving rise to a new global currency managed by an as-yet undetermined financial regulatory organization.
Heiner Flassbeck, director of the conference, told Bloomberg News that changes needed in the world’s financial systems rival the scope of the Bretton Woods or European Monetary System agreements.
The Bretton Woods agreement established in 1944 the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, following allied victory in World War II.
“[The] dominance of the dollar as the main means of international payments [has] played an important role in the build-up of the global imbalances in the run-up to the financial crisis,” the report says. “Another disadvantage of the current international reserve system is that it imposes a greater adjustment burden on deficit countries (except if it is a country issuing a reserve currency) than on surplus countries.”
The UN adds: “Such a multilateral system would tackle the problem of destabilizing capital flows at its source. It would remove a major incentive for speculation and ensure that monetary factors do not stand in the way of achieving a level playing field for international trade. It would also get rid of debt traps and counterproductive conditionality. The last point is perhaps the most important one: countries facing strong depreciation pressure would automatically receive the required assistance once a sustainable level of the exchange rate had been reached in the form of swap agreements or direct intervention by the counterparty.”
The move should not be surprising to observers of global economics, as a U.N. panel of currency experts came to the same conclusion in March, according to Reuters.
The conference specifically emphasizes the enhancement of the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing right” (SDR), which may serve as the “supranational” currency.
World-wide shake-up
The past year has seen a dramatic shake-up in oversight and management of the U.S. and global economies.
For months, Russia and China have been calling for a new world reserve currency.
Russia, for its part, supports replacing the dollar on the world stage, suggesting the Chinese yuan may be the quickest path to diversified reserves.
“There is a need to make the IMF a true representative of the world’s leading economies. It’s not there right now,” said Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin in June, noting that China had a lower representation quota than Switzerland or Belgium.
Kudrin also said he did not expect to see any new monetary unions rise, although the Gulf states agreed in May to use Saudi Arabia as a base for a pending “monetary union” and new central banking authority.
The issue of IMF reform should therefore be raised “in earnest, in a bold way,” Kudrin said, adding countries should be “represented in proportion to the strength of these economies and their role in the world economy.”
Over the weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued successfully tostrengthen the “Basel II” framework for international commerce, which would see all G20 member nations increase their currency liquidity and allow centralized, “global supervision” of financial industries. The Obama administration is committed to full compliance with the framework by 2011.
The Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors plan to meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Sept. 24 and 25. Several major liberal groups are planning demonstrations, including the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. The city has alreadysecured a deal to use National Guard troops to provide a security buffer for the world’s financial elite during their meeting.
Also on Sunday, a key Chinese official predicted that the dollar’s increasing supply, which grows with added liquidity, meant the currency could “fall hard” within “a year or two.” The official also signaled that China is moving its reserves away from the dollar and toward gold, euros and yen.
Washington has staunchly defended the dollar as the world’s reserve, with President Obama, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner all insisting there is no need for a new global reserve currency.
The UN report which makes the recommendations is available online (PDF link).
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Actor and television star Charlie Sheen has publicly requested a meeting with President Barack Obama to urge him to reopen the official investigation into 9/11 in light of the fact that the majority of the 9/11 Commission members have now publicly gone on record to express their conviction that the government agreed to lie about the official story.
Sheen’s request takes the form of a letter to the President in the context of a fictional meeting between the two entitled “20 Minutes With The President,” published exclusively on radio talk show host Alex Jones’ Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com websites.
The letter cites evidence, backed up by a substantial online bibliography, that proves the official story behind 9/11 is a fraud and that this conclusion was also reached by the majority of the 9/11 Commission members, a fact that mandates President Obama to reopen the investigation into the terrorist attacks.
Sheen expresses his hope that President Obama will follow through on his promises of change, accountability and government transparency by using his executive powers to re-examine 9/11, adding that he voted for Obama with the understanding that he would follow a different course to the Bush administration.
However, as Sheen highlights in his letter, the course of Obama’s first year in office clearly indicates that he will do nothing to reverse policies crafted by the Bush regime, and in fact has sought to exceed outrages of the previous administration in areas such as warrantless wiretapping, rendition, detention without trial, and wars in the Middle East – all of which arrived as a consequence of 9/11.
Sheen’s letter is a public declaration demanding the truth behind 9/11 as America approaches its eighth anniversary since the tragic events of that day. His questions are shared by a majority of victims’ family members, according to Bill Doyle, the representative of the largest 9/11 families group.
The letter focuses around the fact that no less than 60 per cent of the 9/11 commissioners have now publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.
Sheen also presents a plethora of other evidence to illustrate how the official story is a fraud, including the revelations of whistle blowers like FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who recently broke a Federal gag order to expose how Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were working for the U.S. government right up until the day of 9/11.
The issues highlighted by Sheen do not represent idle speculation or conspiracy fodder, they are documented facts that have been deliberately ignored by strawman 9/11 truth hit pieces that are now doing the rounds again as the anniversary approaches, particularly last months’ 9/11: Science and Conspiracy which was aired by the National Geographic Channel and wasted little time in portraying people who have doubts about the official 9/11 story as extremist cranks, while failing to acknowledge that the majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission have publicly expressed similar concerns.
Charlie Sheen is once again using his prominent public platform in an attempt to expand a national debate about the disturbing unanswered questions behind 9/11, having first spoken out on the issue in March 2006. After he first went public, Sheen was asked to do more and now he is doing more as he feels there is a chance to get more traction behind a new investigation with a new President in the White House.
Sheen is directly appealing to Barack Obama to read his letter and to look into the lies surrounding 9/11 for himself.
Regardless of whether or not President Obama agrees to meet with him, Sheen is confident that his letter will serve as a catalyst from which questions surrounding 9/11 and other false flag events will be brought to national attention.
This is a call to action and a declaration of war on the lies of 9/11 that have formed the foundation of the endless wars abroad and the police state at home as the Republic falls. Sheen is demanding that truth activists and those who simply care about the future of the country stand up beside him and speak truth to power.
Sheen is now urging grass roots political organizations and individuals across the country, such as the town hall protesters and We Are Change groups, to go to press conferences and other public events and demand answers about the truth behind 9/11. As much awareness as possible around the issue of false flag terrorism needs to be generated in order to prevent tragedies like 9/11 from happening again. Sheen emphasizes in his letter that we cannot let 9/11 become ancient history, try and forget about it or just move on, because if a nation forgets its history then it is doomed to repeat it.
We cannot allow governments to continue to advance their political agendas by exploiting forged pretexts, argues Sheen, and the fact that big budget hit pieces against 9/11 truth are still being rolled out proves that the establishment is upset that the population is waking up to false flag terror.
Sheen will appear live on The Alex Jones Show on Wednesday and Friday to discuss the content of his “20 Minutes With The President” piece and how he plans to move forward with this exciting new initiative. You can listen free here or subscribe to prison planet.tv to watch live streaming video.
Since its inception in American homes in the late 1930’s, television has essentially given America it’s culture. Today, television watching is the most popular leisure activity as more and more people are choosing the fantasy world of TV over engaging with others in real communication and experiences. Where people once wanted to explore the wonders of the world and nature, now many explore the world outside their homes only through what they view on television. Once a vast majority is living the same reality through television, then they are more predictable and easily managed. The television does an excellent job placing everyone that watches it on the same page, all sharing the same views, worries, interests, and idols.
Through the television, we are trained from birth to death as to what to believe. Many studies have demonstrated that the young unquestioningly accept whatever reality is presented by television. Impressionable children will often spend hours in front of the television each day as it is used as a trust worthy babysitter. As they sit down for their daily intake of cartoons, children’s programming and commercials, many parents fail to realize what lessons the television is teaching their children. And so culture and norms of behavior are often more strongly influenced by what is on television rather than by what parents are teaching children. The parents of today grew up in front of the television as well and so the television is not often questioned and instead accepted as a part of the family’s daily life. Children who grow up in front of the TV learn to arrange their lives around TV programming and will likely grow up to be adults who get their entertainment, news, and information from it.
Heavy television watching is culturally accepted and expected in our society. In fact, the act of not watching TV can actually offend some people. With the average American adult watching more than 4 hours of television each day, the television plays a major role in continually creating the reality in which we live. Those who create the television programming- the 6 corporations and little over 100 board members who control all American mass media outlets shape this reality. The interests of these corporations and those who lead them are to make money for both the media corporations and those corporations that the board members have special ties to. Rather than creating television shows that engages critical thinking and keeps Americans well informed on topics that may affect their well being, the TV causes us to see ourselves as consumers who need to be entertained. Television is creating a culture of occupied minds- an apathetic and passive population only interested in being entertained by mindless trivia with no interest in analyzing information and instead relying on the TV for all answers.
TV has lead us into a world controlled by science and run by experts. In predicting a “Scientific Dictatorship,” Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and well known for his studies on the development of new techniques by which to control and direct human behavior, described a world run by experts, which isn’t hard to imagine when we’ve been trained through our television sets to always listen to experts. Major media promotes experts on just about every topic you can imagine while implying that the public is too dumb or uneducated to make their own decisions about such topics as vaccinations, financial management, and medical interventions. In this way, the television is creating in individuals a sense of learned helplessness, leaving us dependent on those given to us as experts to direct our decisions and actions.
The act of watching TV regularly is obedience to those in control. For total control in any system, everyone must be predictable. TV creates a collectivism society, where to be an individual is seen as an enemy to the peace within the collective society. Groupthink is essential in a society where everyone is to be controlled by those in power. Aldous Huxley once said, “It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.”
Just when you thought the news about the Obama administration couldn’t get any worse, gun owners find themselves needing to rally the troops once again.
This time it’s the proposed “Regulatory Czar” who will be coming to a vote this week in the U.S. Senate.
His name is Cass Sunstein, and he holds some of the kookiest views you will ever hear.
For starters, Sunstein believes in regulating hunting out of existence. He told a Harvard audience in 2007 that “we ought to ban hunting.” And in The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer(2002), he said:
I think we should go further … the law should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific experiments, entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against unnecessary animal suffering. It is easy to imagine a set of initiatives that would do a great deal here, and indeed European nations have moved in just this direction. There are many possibilities. (Italics are his emphasis.)
If that’s all Sunstein believed, he would be dangerous and extreme, but not necessarily kooky. Unfortunately, when you look at WHY he wants to restrict hunting, this is where he goes beyond extreme.
In Sunstein’s world, animals should have just as many rights as people … and they should be able to sue humans in court!
“We could even grant animals a right to bring suit without insisting that animals are persons, or that they are not property,” Sunstein said on page 11 of Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions(2004).
Well, that’s a relief … he is at least willing to concede that animals are not persons! But he would still have animals suing humans, apparently, with more enlightened humans representing the cuddly critters.
Imagine returning from a successful hunting trip … only to find out that you’ve been subpoenaed for killing your prize. Who knows, maybe Sunstein would have the family of the dead animal serving as witnesses in court!
By the way, if you’re wondering what he thinks about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, you won’t be surprised to know that Sunstein is a huge supporter of gun control.
In Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America(2005), Sunstein says:
Almost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine…. [O]n the Constitution’s text, fundamentalists [that is, gun rights supporters] should not be so confident in their enthusiasm for invalidating gun control legislation.
Hmm, what part of “shall not be infringed” does Sunstein not understand?
Imagine the power that Sunstein could have as the Regulatory Czar — the nickname for the person heading the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House.
As the Regulatory Czar, he could bring about changes in the regulations that affect hunting, gun control and farming. In short, he could make your life hell.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) objected to his nomination several weeks ago, preventing him from being unanimously confirmed.
That means that the Senate will now need to garner 60 votes to confirm this radical, kooky choice to the OIRA.
No doubt, many of the people our President wants to associate with are radical kooks. First, there was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright … then there was the self-avowed communist (Van Jones) who was nominated for the Green Jobs Czar … now, there’s an extreme animal rights activist who wants to take away our guns and get Bambi to sue us in court.
It’s time to take a STRONG STAND against this radical administration.
I urge you to vote AGAINST Cass Sunstein as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, as I am very concerned about the impact this “Regulatory Czar” would have upon firearms and hunting.
Sunstein told a Harvard audience in 2007 that “we ought to ban hunting.” If that were all Sunstein believed, he would be dangerous and extreme, but not necessarily kooky. Unfortunately, in Sunstein’s world, animals should have just as many rights as people … and they should be able to sue humans in court!
Moreover, he is a firm supporter of gun control. In Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America(2005), Sunstein says that, “Almost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sunstein is part of the small minority — 11% of Americans, according to a Zogby/O’Leary poll in August — who opposes licensed concealed carry.
I hope you will understand that Cass Sunstein’s views are WAY OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM of American thought and that you should vote NO on this radical, kooky nomination.
Sincerely,
(Your Name)
***************
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Once Again… To Send All You Gun Control People Hurdling Back To Reality… Cause God Knows You Chose Not To Live In It:
After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit singlepayeraction.org), six physicians from Oregon, with 191 years of combined real-world medical experience, are crossing the country in a 27-foot Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to debate, educate and advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out.
Calling themselves “Mad as Hell Doctors,” these physicians are already drawing crowds and expect thousands to turn out at each city that they visit, culminating in a large arrival demonstration in front of the White House around October 1. (Visit www.madashelldoctors.com)
They have written President Obama asking for a meeting “to discuss the future of health care as well as the moral, social, and fiscal imperative of enacting a single-payer system for America at this moment in our history.”
The White House turned them down flat, not even leaving the door open for reconsideration. Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer “if we started from scratch,” he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation.
The White House has shown that it lacks smarts. The formless, waffling Obama health insurance proposal is being shattered by the Republican cluster of Limbaugh-driven lies and the Blue Dog renegades in the Democratic Party, who are busy cashing mounds of campaign checks from the so-called health business. By ignoring and excluding the majority-supported single payer approach, the White House stifles any kind of insurance reform worthy of the name.
Publicized lies are translating into fears among people who should be supporting full medicare for all. FactCheck.org reports that “a notorious analysis of the House health care bill contains 48 claims. Twenty-six of them are false, and the rest are mostly misleading. Only four are true. For example, false are claims that the bill includes an order for end-of-life plans or health care for illegal aliens or assertions that ‘your health care will be rationed.’”
So wild are the falsehoods, fueled by runaway internet traffic, that the Republican National Committee implied in a fundraising letter that Democrats may structure the overhaul in a way to deny medical treatment to Republicans!
As with war, truth is the first casualty when it comes to the health care debate. The Democratically-controlled Congress, on its return after Labor Day, needs a wide-ranging personal, evidence-based series of public House and Senate hearings to again publicize the compelling story of avoidable suffering, fraud, waste, egregious profiteering and top executive self-enrichment – all subsidized by taxpayers.
Take the enormous and shocking information researched by Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow—an applied mathematician whose knowledge of health care billing schemes and regulatory deficiencies is without peer.
Mr. Sparrow is no arm-chair commentator. He has dug deeply into the enormously comprehensive frauds on medicare and consumers. He has found payments for medical services ordered by deceased doctors or huge payments in treatments for deceased patients—many gone for years.
Highlighting the widespread fraud on medicare by criminal behavior, he argues that these actions should be treated as “a crime problem” not just a “claims-processing problem.” Without criminal prosecutions, there is no deterrent stopping this massive robbery.
How massive? Read these words in recent testimony by Professor Sparrow:
The units of measure for losses due to health care fraud and abuse in this country are hundreds of billions of dollars per year. We just don’t know the first digit. It might be as low as one hundred billion. More likely two or three. Possibly four or five. But whatever that first digit is, it has eleven zeroes after it. These are staggering sums of money to waste, and the task of controlling and reducing these losses warrants a great deal of serious attention.
In the early 1990s, the Congressional Government Accounting Office estimated that billing fraud accounts for 10% of health care spending annually. That would be about $250 billion this year. In 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno declared that health care fraud was the number two crime problem, after violent crime in the country.
With someone as carefully authoritative as Malcolm Sparrow, the Democrats can make this crime spree front and center during the health care debate. People want to be assured that their health insurance dollars are protected. Instead the “license to steal,” which is the title of Mr. Sparrow’s groundbreaking book, continues. And the Republicans continue to sidetrack priorities for action with seedy prevarications.
It is a remarkable commentary on the state of the White House and Congress that the Democrats appear befuddled in dealing with the kind of coarse, cruel, fear-mongering that an FDR and Lyndon Johnson would have overwhelmed and sent packing.
Meanwhile, join the “Care-A-Van” of roadtripping Oregon physicians and their efforts to bring the message of health care for all to Washington, DC.
“This is why a lot of us amazingly handsome and astute humans have been trying to tell people WHY global warming is a huge production of a hoax. It’s to bleed you suckers more dry with taxes you’d throw yourself in front of a bus to pay because you think your carbon ass-print is gonna make the world explode.”
“Just because Brad Pitt doesn’t have the brain capacity to understand that he is selling you something straight from the minds of some of the most evil people who pollute this land and his babies daddy Al Gore seems like a harmless shark-headed human in his natural habitat doesn’t mean they are right. Smarten up butter-cups and stop listening to semi-retarded celebrities. I’m broke and I can’t afford any more taxes on the account of lazy-azz brains.”
(Yes, WE DO need to take better care of the Earth but apocalypse, no, check out the factual science and the natural cooling & heating trends of this earth-thing where you live).
The top climate science advisor to the German government has proposed that everyone on the planet should have a personal CO2 budget and be forced to pay a tax if they exceed it, adding that westerners have already exceeded their allocations and should pay climate reparations to poorer countries.
This is not just another tax being rammed through using the phony pretext of global warming, it’s the entrée for complete government tracking and control over your personal life. This is the “inventory” that Nancy Pelosi called for during her visit to China in May.
On May 28, the Associated Press reported that Pelosi told a Chinese student that in order to cut back on CO2 emissions, “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.”
German climate scientist Joachim Schellnhuber is pushing for the same thing – the nanny state on steroids.
How will a personal CO2 budget be enforced? Every plane ticket you buy, every time you fill up at the station, every mile of every journey you make will be fed into a centralized government database, creating a leviathan matrix system to catalogue every aspect of your personal behavior. Exceed your personal carbon budget and you’ll be hit with a hefty fine, with the majority of the proceeds no doubt going straight to the huge international banking interests that own the carbon trading market, mainly N M Rothschild & Sons, as well as people like Maurice Strong and Al Gore.
“Schellnhuber is proposing the creation of a CO2 budget for every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing,” reports Der Spiegel, a “breathtaking” idea according to Czech physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, who said Schellnhuber’s proposal helped him “to understand how crazy political movements such as the Nazis or communists could have so easily taken over a nation that is as sensible as Germany.”
Schellnhuber goes further, claiming that westerners have already exceeded their CO2 allocations and will need to pay climate reparations to poorer countries amounting to no less than $142 billion dollars a year, every year.
“Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. […] Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. […] With the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years. […] The industrialized nations are facing CO2 insolvency. This means that they have to notch up their efforts to reduce climate change, otherwise they will use up the CO2 budget actually designated to poorer countries and future generations,” he told Der Spiegel.
The proposal mirrors similar measures called for by MP’s in Britain, which would force every adult to use a “carbon ration card’ when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy.”
The next step has also already been floated. Should you become a serial carbon offender, no doubt your thermostat will be forcibly turned down by the government via remote control. Sound too far fetched? According to a January 2008 New York Times report, “State regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.”
American death-tech goliath Boeing has announced a long-delayed in-flight firing for the smaller of its two aeroplane raygun-cannon prototypes, the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL). The ATL blaster, mounted in a Hercules transport aircraft, apparently “defeated” an unoccupied stationary vehicle.
“This milestone demonstrates that directed energy weapon systems will transform the battlespace and save lives,” said Boeing exec Greg Hyslop. “The ATL team has earned a distinguished place in the history of weapon system development.”
“The bottom line is that ATL works, and works very well,” added corporate raygun honcho Gary Fitzmire.
The ATL is much smaller than Boeing’s headlining laser weapon, the jumbo-jet-mounted Airborne Laser (ABL), intended to blast enemy ICBMs as they soar upward from pad or silo. Rather the ATL is intended to pick off individual ground targets, somewhat in the fashion of existing Hercules-based side-firing AC-130 gunships. Indeed Boeing has referred to the ATL in the past as its “Laser Gunship”.
ATL does resemble the ABL in some important respects, however. Like the bigger weapon, it is a chemically-fuelled laser rather than a solid-state electrically powered one, meaning that it can fire only a limited number of blasts before its sealed, six-ton laser module must be maintained and refuelled with hazardous toxic chemicals.
Just how many shots the ATL can fire before being rearmed is unclear, but hints dropped by Pentagon sources suggest it could be as few as six. This compares poorly with the firepower available aboard a normal AC-130, leading some analysts to wonder what the point of the ATL really is.
Boeing say that it will offer “ultra-precision” and “dramatically reduce collateral damage”, though so far nothing of this sort has really been shown. A 40mm cannon aboard a normal AC-130 could “defeat” a stationary ground vehicle without damaging its surroundings: a .50-cal sniper rifle fired from a helicopter could do the same to a moving one.
It hasn’t escaped notice, however, that neither of those things could strike silently – perhaps from so far off that the carrying aircraft wouldn’t be noticed either – and without leaving any solid evidence of US military presence. Nor have observers failed to note that the US military agency in charge of ATL is the secretive Special Operations Command (SOCOM).
Boeing have evidently had some problems with the ATL – airborne test firings were expected last year, but this success didn’t happen until last Sunday. However it would seem that the system may soon be as ready for frontline use as it will ever be, at least until electric lasers without fuel limitations are weaponised.
In years to come, the secret supertroopers of SOCOM may be able to cause a cell tower to stop working, a vehicle’s fuel tank to suddenly explode, or a single person to inexplicably be incinerated – all completely silently and tracelessly, without anyone knowing they were ever there and not so much as a spent bullet left behind.
Seventy-five percent of Americans agree with us that it’s time to thoroughly and completely audit the Federal Reserve System.
Every Republican and over one hundred Democrats in the House of Representatives have signed on as cosponsors of HR 1207. Almost a quarter of the Senate has gotten on board with S 604.
So what does this tell us?
It’s time to go get the rest!!
Last month, I announced that we would be holding an Audit the Fed Mass Action Event starting in the last couple weeks of August and culminating in a nationwide Mass Action Day on September 15.
Since then, C4L members have been knocking on doors, standing outside stores, attending county fairs, and gathering petition signatures in support of S 604.
On September 15, C4L National will deliver over 100,000 petitions to Capitol Hill while members across the country deliver the petitions they’ve collected to their senators’ local offices. Many of your fellow members will be holding rallies outside those offices, and several have contacted local media about covering the event.
Here are three ways you can help ensure the success of this Mass Action Event:
1.) Gather petitions –Hit the streets! Make sure your senators hear from as many people in your state as possible. Let’s spread the word and add to the seventy-five percent of Americans who support our cause. You can download petitions at CampaignforLiberty.com and AuditTheFed.com.
2.) Call your senators– Starting Tuesday, September 8, C4L members will be calling their senators’ offices to urge them to cosponsor S 604. Our objective is to keep their phones ringing off the hook by having members call every day for the week leading up to the petition drop. Commit to calling your senators by signing up here.
3.) Show up on September 15 – Congress counts on grassroots activists being content with just calling and sending petitions. To make sure they get our message that it’s time to Audit the Fed, we’re going to take our cause right to their offices in person. These events will be as effective as you make them. Show your senators that you are serious about real reform by rallying with your fellow members right outside their offices.
State and local coordinators and leaders have been working hard to create the most effective and efficient plans for September 15’s petition drop. Click hereto find out how to take action in your area.
We were able to secure the support of almost two thirds of the House with your hard work gathering petitions, calling, and showing up at your representative’s offices. This could be the event that tips the scales in the Senate!
As we also announced last month, we’re adding an extra incentive. The person who gathers the most signatures in each state will win a pocket Constitution and a copy of Dr. Paul’s new book, End the Fed,both autographed by Congressman Paul himself.
And whichever state collects the most signatures (as a percentage of population) will win a $1,500 gift certificate to the Campaign for Liberty store!
Our representatives and senators are expecting to settle back in to business as usual when they return to D.C. after Labor Day. They think that they can leave your opinions and concerns behind in their districts while they continue to work on completely taking over our health care and finding other new ways to run our lives.
Let’s show them that their top priority should be finding out how the Federal Reserve has doled out trillions of our dollars, what deals they have locked us into with foreign central banks and governments, and why they refuse to disclose the details.
The day after our petition drop will mark the official release of End the Fed.This comprehensive look at the Federal Reserve System and its disastrous effects on our lives and country is sure to be a powerful tool with which to convince your family, friends, and neighbors that it’s time to restore our economy by reinstituting a sound money system.
A year ago, no one would have said we could make an audit of the Fed into a national, mainstream issue. Join us on September 15 as we show the political establishment, entrenched bureaucrats, and the media that our grassroots Revolution is more energized and determined to take back our country than ever before.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
P.S. Together, we cansee Audit the Fed signed into law. But to do so, we have to take action to grow and secure our support in the House and Senate. Download our petitions and other materials, spread the word, call your senators, and join us on September 15 as we come together across the country to fight to Audit the Fed!
The “securitization” of mortgages — bundling mortgage policies and selling them on to investors — is considered to be one of the major reasons for last year’s financial collapse.
Now, Wall Street banks want to do it all again — but this time, with life insurance policies instead of real estate.
The New York Timesreports that large investment banks are lining up to begin securitizing “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell so that they can get cash before they die.
According to the Times:
[Banks] plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Life settlement companies — companies that buy life insurance policies and cash in when the original policy holder dies — have been around for some time, but this would mark the first time that life insurance policies are turned into big business on Wall Street.
THE FASTER YOU DIE, THE MORE INVESTORS MAKE
One of the principal dangers in this plan is that it creates an incentive to see ill people die quickly. The investors who buy life insurance policies have to pay the premiums on those policies in order to collect when the original holder dies. So the faster an ill person dies, the fewer premiums have to be paid, and the higher the profit.
Conversely, life insurance securitization would create a disincentive for finding cures for diseases. If a person sells their life insurance policy and then their illness is cured, the investor who bought their policy loses money.
As the Times points out:
In addition to fraud, there is another potential risk for investors: that some people could live far longer than expected.
It is not just a hypothetical risk. That is what happened in the 1980s, when new treatments prolonged the life of AIDS patients. Investors who bought their policies on the expectation that the most victims would die within two years ended up losing money.
LIFE INSURANCE PREMIUMS WILL GO UP
A certain percentage of life insurance policies is never paid out by insurance companies. This is because some policy-holders stop paying their premiums, either because they no longer need the additional financial security or because the premiums have become too expensive.
But if life insurance policies are packaged and sold to investors, those investors will invariably pay the premium until the original policy holder dies. Insurance companies calculate their premiums on the expectation that some policies will lapse. If fewer policies lapse, the insurance industry will have to raise insurance premiums.
“This defeats the idea of what life insurance is supposed to be,” Steven Weisbart, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, told the Times. “It’s not an investment product, [it’s] a gambling product.”
PREYING ON THE WEAKEST?
One of the principal reasons people sell their life insurance policies is to be able to pay for their health care before they die. If the buying and selling of life insurance policies becomes big business, then there would be little incentive to reform health care, as reform would — presumably — make treatment more affordable, thereby reducing the number of people willing to sell their life insurance.
Thus the plan to securitize life insurance would likely create even more resistance among bankers and investors to any plan to reduce health care costs, or to introduce a public health care option. Indeed, a public health care option would eliminate the need for terminally ill people to seek new sources of money, thereby potentially decimating the life insurance securities market.
WHO’S INVOLVED?
The Times names two companies that it evidently believes to be heading up the effort to securitize life insurance. One is the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, and the other is investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Some financial firms are moving to outpace their rivals. Credit Suisse, for example, is in effect building a financial assembly line to buy large numbers of life insurance policies, package and resell them — just as Wall Street firms did with subprime securities.
The bank bought a company that originates life settlements, and it has set up a group dedicated to structuring deals and one to sell the products.
Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements, enabling investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned. The index is similar to tradable stock market indices that allow investors to bet on the overall direction of the market without buying stocks.
According to the Economist, the life-settlement market in existence today is worth about $18 billion to $19 billion, meaning that about that amount of life insurance policies is bought and sold every year. The Times estimates that a securitized market for life insurance policies could be worth about $500 billion.
Simon Norwood, a construction worker who hasn’t found work in months, poses in a garage apartment belonging to a friend in Little Rock, Ark., Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009. The official poverty rate for Americans 65 years and older has stood for years at 10 percent, the lowest rate among age groups. But the true rate could be nearly twice that high, according to a revised formula created by the National Academy of Sciences that is gaining favor among public officials, including some in the Obama administration.
(AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 4, 7:22 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The poverty rate among older Americans could be nearly twice as high as the traditional 10 percent level, according to a revision of a half-century-old formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations in the cost of living.
The National Academy of Science‘s formula, which is gaining credibility with public officials including some in the Obama administration, would put the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6 percent, or 6.8 million people, compared with 9.7 percent, or 3.6 million people, under the existing measure. The original government formula, created in 1955, doesn’t take account of rising costs of medical care and other factors.
“It’s a hidden problem,” said Robin Talbert, president of the AARP Foundation, which provides job training and support to low-income seniors and is backing legislation that would adopt the NAS formula. “There are still many millions of older people on the edge, who don’t have what they need to get by.”
If the academy’s formula is adopted, a more refined picture of American poverty could emerge that would capture everyday costs of necessities besides just food. The result could upend long-standing notions of those in greatest need and lead eventually to shifts in how billions of federal dollars for the poor are distributed for health, housing, nutrition and child-care benefits.
The overall official poverty rate would increase, from 12.5 percent to 15.3 percent, for a total of 45.7 million people, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. Data on all segments, not only the elderly, would be affected:
• The rate for children under 18 in poverty would decline slightly, to 17.9 percent.
• Single mothers and their children, who disproportionately receive food stamps, would see declines in the rates of poverty because noncash aid would be taken into account. Low-income people who are working could see increases in poverty rates, a reflection of transportation and child-care costs.
• Cities with higher costs of living, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco, would see higher poverty rates, while more rural areas in the Midwest and South might see declines.
• The rate for extreme poverty, defined as income falling below 50 percent of the poverty line, would decrease due to housing and other noncash benefits.
• Immigrant poverty rates would go up, due to transportation costs and lower participation in government aid programs.
The changes have been discussed quietly for years in academic circles, and both Democrats and Republicans agree that the decades-old White House formula, which is based on a 1955 cost of an emergency food diet, is outdated.
The current calculation sets the poverty level at three times the annual cost of groceries. For a family of four that is $21,203. That calculation does not factor in rising medical, transportation, child care and housing expenses or geographical variations in living costs. Nor does the current formula consider noncash aid when calculating income, despite the recent expansion of food stamps and tax credits in the federal economic stimulus and other government programs. The result: The poverty rate has varied little from its current 12.5 percent.
Next week, the Census Bureau will publish official poverty figures for 2008 with a cautionary note about the shortcomings. The agency says it will expedite release of alternative numbers in the following weeks, because of the interest expressed by lawmakers and the Obama administration in seeing a fuller range of numbers.
“The current poverty measure does a very bad job of measuring the impact of quite a few of our anti-poverty policies,” Rebecca Blank, the Commerce Department’s undersecretary of economic affairs, said in an interview. “It isn’t meaningless, but it isn’t complete.”
Although the White House Office of Management and Budget dictates how federal poverty is measured, legislation pending in Congress would require use of the National Academy approach. Advocates are hoping the White House may act on its own.
Cities are already showing interest.
In New York City, roughly one in three senior citizens fell below the poverty line after Mayor Michael Bloomberg adopted the new formula last year; state officials in Albany, N.Y., plan to publish their revised numbers next month. Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago also have been considering a switch.
Nationally, official poverty rates for older Americans have improved significantly over the past 30 years due to expansions of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income. But many older people with modest cash incomes would fall below the poverty line under the NAS formula due to out-of-pocket expenses from rising Medicare premiums, deductibles and a coverage gap in the prescription drug benefit that is known as the “doughnut hole.”
The NAS figures could take on added significance at a time when the government is touting an overhaul of Medicare and Social Security as its best hope for reducing the ballooning federal debt.
“This is like a story from the Onion but unfortunately it’s not. So, it makes this story very unfunny and insane.”
-F.F. 9/6/09
Paul Koring
Washington — From Friday’s Globe and Mail
The Taliban will attack an Afghan village set up in the heart of Washington courtesy of the Canadian Forces, who will send in a medic in a dramatic effort to save a civilian crippled by the explosion.
At least four times over two days this month, simulated IED blasts will bring the Afghan war – and Canada’s combat role in Kandahar – home to Americans if an elaborate scheme based on modern training realism attracts widespread attention, as is hoped.
“If this works the way I want it to, more Americans will know what Canada is doing in Afghanistan,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Martin, a military attaché at the Canadian embassy.
A clutch of top American generals, powerful Capitol Hill players and Afghan experts from both sides of the border are expected at the two-day conference hosted by the embassy.
But the highlight will be the explosive blasts, simulating the powerful improvised explosive devices wreaking havoc in Afghanistan, to be staged twice a day.
Whether they will send jumpy tourists and Washingtonians on Pennsylvania Avenue fleeing in fear remains unknown, but embassy officials say they have a green light from the Secret Service, the State Department and the D.C. fire marshal.
The mock village, complete with a small souk and peopled by nearly a dozen Afghan actors, will be created in the courtyard of the Canadian embassy, halfway between the Capitol and the White House. A handful of Canadian soldiers and, Col. Martin hopes, U.S. Marines will arrive to “see the village leader” just as the IED blows up, “critically injuring” at least one Afghan, who will get immediate first aid from a Canadian medic.
“It should provide the full flavour of hyper-realistic training,” said Col. Martin, adding: “Absolutely, you are going to hear it out on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The dramatic recreation of combat, using sophisticated simulations developed by American companies and used to train U.S. and Canadian troops before they are sent to Afghanistan, is intended to garner attention for the often overlooked Canadian combat effort.
“Unfortunately there are still a lot of Americans … who don’t know about how great the Canadian commitment is,” Col. Martin said.
Got a new website in the oven. Pretty excited. The traffic on this blog has increased steadily in the last year or so, to where it’s getting anywhere from 700-1000 hits a day, (7000 busiest day). I know that’s small potato’s to a lot of other sites but I just started this site for my friends and family, (who think this is all crazy anyway), to hopefully open a few eyes at least. I’m currently working on transferring all the posts from my WordPress.com blog. I even got some cool (non-evil) sponsors involved so hopefully I make a little spare change. God knows I could use it. Anyway, should be up in a few days or so.
“It was the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me, ever.”
“That is what this is all about. The TSA flight screening insanity, cops drawing your blood, not being able to take family photos in front of Washington D.C. landmarks, etc. It’s getting in your mind that YOU are the potential threat. It’s sick… really sick psychological warfare being committed by the same people who are creating this false terrorist threat. All in the guise of you and your kids safety. They’ve broke you down this far without a stink. Whats next… Forced Vaccinations? DUI anal probing? It’s totally fucking cool. It’s the new thing. You’ll learn to love it!”
-Fred Face 9/6/09
LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — An Indiana man has filed a lawsuit claiming that police forcibly withdrew blood and urine from his body during a drunken driving arrest, WLWT-TV reported.According to the suit, police arrested Jamie Lockard, 53, on suspicion of drunken driving in March.A Breathalyzer test showed he was under the legal limit, but Officer Brian Miller doubted the findings. Lockard and his attorney claim in the suit that police took him to Dearborn County Hospital and forced him to submit to a urine and blood test.Police said they obtained a warrant, but Lockard’s attorney said his client was shackled to a gurney and had a catheter inserted against his will.”It has to be executed reasonably,” said attorney Doug Garner. “No one would say this is reasonable behavior. It’s reprehensible that anyone could think that this is appropriate.”The blood test showed that Lockard’s blood-alcohol level did not exceed Indiana’s legal limit, police said.Garner said the police officer did not apologize, but instead charged Lockard with obstruction of justice.”He took it too far. He thought he could do whatever to me,” Lockard said.The suit names the Lawrenceburg police department and Dearborn County Hospital, in addition to Miller and Dr. Ronald Cheek.”I would hate for this to happen to someone else,” Lockard said. “It was the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me, ever.”
WASHINGTON – The White House environmental adviser under fire for inflammatory statements made before he joined the administration resigned after what he called a “vicious smear campaign against me.”
Van Jones “understood that he was going to get in the way” of President Barack Obama’s agenda, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sunday.
The resignation was disclosed without advance notice by the White House in a dead-of-the-night e-mail on a holiday weekend. It came as Obama is working to regain his footing in the contentious health care debate.
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Jones, who specialized in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.
Gibbs said Obama did not endorse Van Jones’ comments but thanked him for his service.
“What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual,” Gibbs said on ABC’s “This Week.
Sept. 11 comments
Recent news reports cited a derogatory comment Jones made in the past about Republicans, and separately, of Jones’s name appearing on a petition connected to the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officials had allowed the attacks to occur.
“On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones said in his resignation statement. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”
Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that he thought Jones “was brought down” and that his resignation was “a loss to the country.”
Jones said he has been “inundated with calls from across the political spectrum urging me to stay and fight.” But he said he could not in good conscience ask his colleagues to spend time and energy defending or explaining his past.
Jones said in an earlier statement that he did not agree with the petition’s stand on the Sept. 11 attacks and that “it certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever.”
As for his other comments he made before joining Obama’s team, Jones said, “If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize.”
Despite his apologies, Republicans demanded Jones quit.
‘Extremist views’
Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana said in a statement, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Missouri Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond said Congress should investigate Jones’s fitness for the job.
Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck repeatedly denounced Jones after a group the adviser co-founded, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck’s show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist.
The president of Beck’s media organization, Christopher J. Balfe, said the commentator had begun focusing on Jones’ “radical beliefs” on July 16, before the group started taking on Beck.
But James Rucker, the organization’s executive director, has said Jones had nothing to do with ColorofChange.org now and didn’t even know about the campaign before it started.
Jones, well-known in the environmental movement, was a civil-rights activist in California before shifting his attention to environmental and energy issues. He is known for laying out a broad vision of a green economy. Conservatives have harshly criticized him for having left-wing political views.
Nancy Sutley, who heads the White House environmental council, said Jones “had been a strong voice for creating jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources.’
For war journalist Scott Anderson, the most confounding part of his recent assignment for GQ magazine to explore the root of terrorist acts in Russia a decade ago wasn’t the suggestion of treachery and subterfuge he found.
It was the reception his story ultimately received in the United States.
“It was quite mysterious to me,” Anderson says. “All of a sudden, it became clear that they were going to run the article but they were going to try to bury it under a rock as much as they possibly could.”
Anderson, 50, is an accomplished reporter and novelist who has written previously for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair.
His investigative piece, published in the September American edition of GQ, challenges the official line on a series of bombings that killed hundreds of people in 1999 in Russia. It profiles a former KGB agent who spoke in great detail and on the record, at no small risk to himself. But instead of trumpeting his reporting, GQ’s corporate owners went to extraordinary lengths to try to ensure no Russians will ever see it.
A Management Memo
Conde Nast owns Vanity Fair and GQ as well as other publications, including Russian versions of GQ, Glamour, Tatler and Vogue. On July 23, Jerry S. Birenz, one of the company’s top lawyers, sent an e-mail memo to more than a dozen corporate executives and GQ editors.
“Conde Nast management has decided that the September issue of U.S. GQ magazine containing Scott Anderson’s article ‘Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power’ should not be distributed in Russia,” Birenz wrote.
He ordered that the article could not be posted to the magazine’s Web site. No copies of the American edition of the magazine could be sent to Russia or shown in any country to Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers. Additionally, the piece could not be published in other Conde Nast magazines abroad, nor publicized in any way.
It wasn’t just that there was no reference to Anderson’s piece on the cover of this month’s GQ, which featured a picture of Michael Jackson, a reference to tennis star Andy Roddick’s wife and a ranking of obnoxious colleges and top drinking cities. At this writing, I cannot find any reference to Anderson’s piece on the Internet.
The idea that information can be sequestered at a time when people can communicate instantly across oceans and continents may seem quaint. But in this instance, Conde Nast sought, against technology, logic and the thrust of its own article, to show deference in the presence of power.
Lawyers, executives and editors at Conde Nast and GQ did not respond to repeated requests for comment this week, and a spokesman ultimately declined on their behalf. But NPR has spoken to several people knowledgeable about the handling of Anderson’s piece. No issues have been raised to date about the article’s accuracy.
A Taboo Topic
To understand why Conde Nast might have reacted the way it did, it’s worth remembering the subject of the report — and the context in which it is now being written. Back in September 1999, Chechen terrorists were blamed for the attacks. The new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, emerged from the shadows and consolidated power. A crackdown ensued and a second war was launched against Chechnya. Putin took over from President Boris Yeltsin soon after the new year.
Chechen separatists have been known to commit deadly terrorist acts. Hundreds of Russians were killed after the takeover of a school in Beslan, Russia, while more than 100 other people died at a Moscow theater after a siege by Russian forces seeking to liberate it from Chechen gunmen.
But in today’s Russia, says Nina Ognianova, the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the Committee to Protect Journalists, the origin of the 1999 bombings is a taboo topic. And she says Russian authorities often turn up the heat on reporters who stray into unwelcome terrain.
“You can be sued for defamation — but you don’t even have to be sued. You can be audited,” Ognianova says. “Politicized audits are a big hurdle for publications that dare to publish sensitive topics.”
Those audits can focus on just about anything — including fire codes — that could paralyze a publication for months and send advertisers fleeing. That’s a consequential result for media companies that see foreign publications as increasingly important sources of revenue.
Journalists in Russia do fear retribution. Ognianova will be in Moscow on Sept. 15 to release a CPJ report about 17 journalists who have been killed since 2000. There have been convictions in only one case. One of the most prominent killings involved an American citizen of Russian descent who was editor of Forbes‘ Russian-language magazine. And other critics have been silenced as well — most notably Alexander Litvinenko, another former KGB agent who claimed the Russian security services were tied to the terror attacks of 1999. Litvinenko died in England after being poisoned with radioactive polonium.
Professional Obligations
But Conde Nast’s Birenz did not raise security issues in his memo. And Anderson says he was not told of any safety matters by the company, just concerns of lawyers.
“If you’re worried about repercussions and you bow to them, you’re basically surrendering to the other side,” Anderson says.
Jane Kirtley, an attorney who is a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota’s journalism school, says Conde Nast’s position makes no sense as a matter of pragmatism or principle.
“On one level, the smart thing is to stay in business and to stay in Russia, of course,” Kirtley says. “But these stories will get out, they will get read in Russia. They’re being somewhat naive to believe that by limiting this to their American edition that somehow they’re preventing this from being read.”
More important, she argues, is Conde Nast’s failure to live up to its professional obligations. “It goes with the territory of a news organization to speak for those who can’t speak — and to bear the consequences,” she says.
‘It’s Really Kind Of Sad’
Anderson had never hidden his subject from editors at GQ when they approached him to write something about Russia. His ensuing six-page story centered on Mikhail Trepashkin — a former KGB agent who had investigated the bombings. Trepashkin spoke at length about the inconsistencies in the case — and about possible links between the bombings and to the security agency that Putin once headed. Trepashkin himself has ties to a controversial Russian billionaire and recently spent several years in jail before being released. But Amnesty International said he had been treated unjustly and said the charges against him appeared to be politically motivated.
“Here’s a guy who spent four years in prison on a trumped-up, really rather silly charge (that) was a direct result of the investigative effort he’s made on these bombings,” Anderson says. “Now he’s out — he’s certainly kind of walking around with a bullseye on his back — and yet is still willing to tell the story.”
“I think it’s really kind of sad,” Anderson says. “Here now is finally an outlet for this story to be told, and you do everything possible to throw a tarp over it.”
GQ editors were also told not to promote the story, but in an act of quiet defiance, the magazine sought publicity for Anderson’s article from a few news outlets, including NPR’s All Things Considered.
Anderson was also asked to refuse to syndicate the article to any publications that appear in Russia once the rights revert back to him. He says he acknowledged the request, but told GQ he would refuse to honor it.
In a Friday press release, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) condemned a NATO airstrike which killed 95 people, including much of the population of a small Afghan village, and renewed his call for the United States to withdraw its forces from both Afghanistan and Iraq.
“News reports covering today’s attack by the U.S. command southwest of Kunduz province show that the good intentions of NATO forces in Afghanistan are not sufficient,” Kucinich stated. “If we want to avoid killing innocent civilians, we must end the war.”
The incident occurred after Taliban fighters hijacked two oil tankers and drove them to a village under their control, where they became stuck in the mud. The local villagers then emerged to try to siphon off the fuel. Meanwhile, the hijacking was reported to German troops, who called for an airstrike. The fireball when the trucks were hit killed or badly burned many of the villagers along with some Taliban.
According to the independent, “Western forces were engulfed in bitter controversy yesterday” as the extent of the carnage became apparent. “Nato initially insisted that all the dead were Taliban insurgents. Later, after angry protests from local residents and officials, they acknowledged there had been civilian deaths.”
General Stanley McChrystal, who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, is now facing questions over why the attack was authorized, given his prior orders forbidding any airstrikes with a prospect of civilian casualties unless allied forces are in imminent danger.
“The attack … could not have come at a more volatile time in Afghanistan,” theIndependent article continues, “with intense anger over civilian casualties and an intensifying clash between President Hamid Karzai and Washington over the disputed national election.”
Public support for the Afghan War is declining in both the United States and Europe. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is under particular pressure at the moment, following the unanticipated resignation of an aide to the UK’s Defence Secretary in protest over the war.
Kucinich’s press release concludes, “There is little hope for a truly independent investigation because the Karzai Government is compromised and NATO forces are digging in for the long term based on the Administration’s policy. The war in Afghanistan is quickly developing into a tragedy of monumental proportions. It is time for the U.S. to end this war and bring our troops home.”
Mostly because a) it’s a lot of fun, and b) it concerns one of my favorite topics, the always lively Internet Anonymity vs. Privacy vs. Personal Responsibility debate. Besides, how often does an IT blogger get to write about catty supermodels, skanky or otherwise?
Today I’m hitting that topic again, but from the opposite direction.
Despite what some tenacious commenters may have thought, I was not defending the right of the now-not-so-anonymous blogger (better known as 29-year-oldRosemary Port) to anonymously defame. Otherwise, the Internet would be one big slanderfest (or, at least, more of a slanderfest than it already is). There needs to be some disincentive for completely juvenile behavior.
But today brings news of a case where anonymity on the Net absolutely needs to be protected. It too involves a court subpoena ordering Google to turn over private information; in this case, the names of the owners oftcijournal@gmail.com, the e-mail address for The TCI Journal, a muckracking news site based in the Turks & Caicos Islands.
Apparently, people in T&C don’t spend all their time listening to Jimmy Buffet, eating conch, and drinking mojitos out of hollowed-out pineapples with little umbrellas stuck in them. They also spend time exposing people who allegedly bribe government officials.
Attorneys for one of the alleged bribers, developer Dr. Cem Kinay, are now suing The TCI Journal in California in what some are calling a case of “libel tourism.” (Not to be confused with a defamation vacation.) In other words, the developer in T&C chose to sue in a California court because U.S. courts make it easier to demand a company’s records.
Here, nobody is calling anyone a skank. The TCI Journal mostly appears to have been reporting on an inquiry into government corruption and reprinting letters from readers about the topic. Lawyers for the developer wanted the site to redact any mentions of the developer in its reports, which to its credit The TCI Journal declined to do.
… culminated in a dramatic UK governance takeover of the Islands on August 14. A trail of evidence dug up by the TCI Journal, a UK commission of inquiry, and others, showed that foreign property developers were giving millions in secret loans and payments to senior Islander politicians, including an alleged $500,000 cash payment to the Island’s now former Premier, Michael Misick.
A litigious bunch, these developers also sued the commission and the T&C government to force it to redact the final commission report, blacking out their names. Not to worry, though: Wikileaks got a copy of theunredacted 266-page document and posted it online. The official redacted report is published at tci-inquiry.org. (If you’ve got time, scroll through the unredacted one — it’s a juicy read.)
Attorneys for the big developer have gone after the site’s Web host and domain registrar, managing to take the site offline for a few days. Now they’re attempting to wrest the owner’s information from Google.
According to Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web, Google sent the Journal a letter warning that unless TCI sends Google a letter asking them to quash the subpoena, they have no choice but to roll over on TCI.
TCI is not the New York Times by any stretch. It’s a tiny volunteer-run organization with cojones the size of coconuts. So in addition to reporting on government corruption, it’s been publishing all the nastygrams it’s received from Kinay’s legal team — which, of course,they also want redacted from the site.
Wait, it gets better. Someone calling him or herself “TCI Controversies” started the TCI Citizen blog at Blogger.com shortly after the unredacted report appeared. The blog’s sole purpose seems to be trashing The TCI Journal. Of course, it’s anonymous.
Someone (probably the same person, judging by the writing style) has also been planting anti-TCI Journal stories on sites like AllVoices, which will publish contributed articles from anyone without any human intervention.
Now I wonder if TCI Journal will sue Google to get the names of the folks behind that defamatory blog. Bet you 20 coconuts the authors have a more-than-casual relationship with those developers.
Attempts at suppressing negative press are hardly unheard of in this country — corporations try to do it all the time (Steve Jobs, your iPhone is buzzing). Few of them pursue it so aggressively, though, or try to stomp out the sources of bad news. Whether The TCI Journal survives probably depends on whether they can afford to pay attorneys to protect them.
So this is why anonymity is important: Not so people can make nasty comments about anyone else just because they feel like it, but to help the little guys who are trying to serve the public and don’t have the resources to protect themselves against corporate or government attacks. If Google can’t or won’t do it, someone else needs to.
Should the right to anonymity be protected? If so, how? E-mail me: robert_cringely@infoworld.com. (Hopefully, cringe@infoworld.com will be working again soon.)
“This is fucked, (read story below). I can see it right now. Some C.I.A. backed (fake) terrorist blows up one of these blue night rider trucks. Then the story comes out how the identity of these trucks were released by “Freedom of Information Act.”
(So lets get the roll down of how this would benefit our insanely criminal U.S. government):
1. The government can have a lightning rod of an example for getting rid of the Freedom of Information Act.
2. They can use a “crazy white right-wing militia dude” (CIA op) terrorist as the mastermind of this attack. When asked his reason for carrying out the attack…. because he hates having a black president. Or they can go with the proverbial Arab terrorist… so they can continue to demonize another race of people, (and to keep Americans from “fully” caring), as our government commits nothing short of genocide in Iraq & Afghanistan.
So, how does this benefit the Government??:
3. They get rid of another tool, (Freedom of Information Act), that Americans with brains can keep (minimal) tabs on their retardedly corrupt government.
4. They have a new group to demonize… good white people who speak out about the current administration. (As all of you know, who have a brain & a spine… it’s not because the president is black but because he’s as corrupt & fucked as the last idiot). And yes, I understand that their are real actual racists people who exist but it is nothing like you are being spoon fed.
5. Thus.. sending out even more “chilling affects” through the media that you are a racist if you speak out against Obama. Creating more fear and delusion amongst these kind of people who buy into it, (people who are glued to the TV watching msnbc, Olbermann, and Maddow), you know… people who can’t grasp the concept that these liberal talk shows are just as slick at providing disinformation and dividing the American people. The same corporate fuck-nuts who fund the dumb liberal shows are happily bankrolling the dumber Republican shows. Keeping y’all bickering amongst each other all the while each party screws y’all decade after decade.
“Obviously I’m not saying this is what is really going to happen with the nuclear 18-Wheeler but it’s happening 10-folds with all of the retarded racial stuff for criticising Obama. And it’s no secret that our media is 100% corporate/pentagon funded. And most importantly to understand is the left/ right paradigm that has kept the people, of all America’s glorious diversities, from having any substantial change at all.”
-Fredrick Face 9/4/09
The Story:
The idea of nuclear weapons being carted around in our highways, cities and neighborhoods doesn’t really put one’s mind at ease. However, the government has been transporting seriously dangerous stuff like enriched uranium and plutonium secretly without public warning. Friends of the Earth through the Freedom of Information Act has forced the Department Of Energy to release color photos of the trucks used to transport weapons. According to FOE, these are the first of such pictures that have been released in many years.
Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with Friends of the Earth in Columbia, South Carolina made the following statement about the importance of the release of the photos.
“The trucks carrying nuclear weapons and dangerous materials such as plutonium pass through cities and neighborhoods all the time and the public should be aware of what they look like. Release of these photos will help inform the public about secretive shipments of dangerous nuclear material that are taking place in plain view.”
Japan has serious plans to send a solar-panel-equipped satellite into space that could wirelessly beam a gigawatt-strong stream of power down to earth and power nearly 300,000 homes.
The satellite will have a surface area of four square kilometers, and transmit power via microwave to a base station on Earth. Putting solar panels in space bypasses many of the difficulties of installing them on Earth: in orbit, there are no cloudy days, very few zoning laws, and the cold ambient temperature is ideal.
A small test model is scheduled for launch in 2015. To iron out all the kinks and get a fully functional system set up is estimated to take three decades. A major kink, presumably, is coping with the possible dangers when a 1-gigawatt microwave beam aimed at a small spot on Earth misses its target.
The $21 billion project just received major backing from Mitsubishi and designer IHI (in addition to research teams from 14 other countries).
The drive to audit the Federal Reserve continues to gain momentum, thanks to hundreds of thousands of patriots like you that have made their voices heard on the issue. Now we need your help again to make sure that our efforts end in victory. With your support, we will get an audit bill passed!
Here’s the situation:
Right now there are 282 cosponsors to HR 1207 in the House of Representatives. That’s just under 2/3rds of the House, a truly remarkable accomplishment. How did we get there? By calling our congressmen, signing petitions, sending letters, and by letting our representatives know in every possible way that this issue is important to us and important to America.
But there is still work to be done in the Senate. The Audit the Fed companion bill, S 604 has 23 cosponsors. That’s a great start and the bill is certainly gaining momentum, with 20 cosponsors since the 4th of July. But to overcome resistance from the Senate leadership, we’re going to need even greater support.
We didn’t come this far just to watch the audit bill stall out in the Senate!
That’s why Campaign for Liberty is organizing a nationwide Mass Action Event to bring as many senators as possible on board with S 604 and round up some obstinate representatives. Last spring, a similar effort for HR 1207 resulted in over 50 new cosponsors as the support in the House doubled in just a few weeks.
Since that time, our organization has grown and the American people have become increasingly aware of the damage being done to our country by the Federal Reserve. Over 75% of Americans want to see an audit of the Fed, and more Americans actually think less of the Federal Reserve than the hated IRS. We’ve made monetary policy a key issue in the public conscience. Our efforts can and will be more successful during this Mass Action Event.
We are very fortunate in Texas: both of our senators have already cosponsored S 604 (let’s call and thank them!). However, we still have a few representatives who have not signed on to HR 1207, and we need to put pressure on them.
If you live in or near any of these congessional districts, please help us make a final push to get them on board! We need to collect petition signatures and deliver them to these representatives:
We need everyone to show up for petition drop-off events on Tuesday, September 15th at 4PM across Texas. Campaign for Liberty’s Mass Action Event will culminate with nationwide visits to local congressional offices. Our goal is to have over 100 people show up for the rally and petition drop at Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson’s Dallas office at 3102 Maple Avenue, Suite 600, Dallas, TX, 75201
Please join us if possible! From there we will head over to the Federal Reserve Bank, 2200 N Pearl St, Dallas, TX 75201 for an evening rush hour sign wave.
Smaller events will be planned at office locations across the state. If you are one whose representative hasn’t signed on, we need you to step up and choose a good location for your area’s rally. Please contact me.
We know what we have to do to succeed. We also know that victory could mean a revolution in the United States’ monetary policy, once the workings of the Fed are finally revealed.
If that’s not enough motivation (really?), Campaign for Liberty is offering prizes for truly outstanding efforts. The person that collects the most signatures in the state (as certified by a State, Regional, or County Coordinator) will win an autographed copy of Congressman Paul’s new book, End the Fed. And if Texas collects the most signatures (as a percentage of the population), we’ll win a $1,500 gift certificate to the Campaign for Liberty store.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Gold futures rose Thursday to six-month highs, with nearby contracts approaching $1,000 an ounce while contracts for next year’s delivery topping the psychologically important level, as a weakening dollar and continued fund buying pushed up prices. Gold for delivery, the most active contract, gained $19.20, or 2%, to $997.70 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement for the contract since Feb. 23. It rose as high as $999.50 earlier. The October contract rose to $996.30, while futures for April delivery ended at $1,000.20 an ounce. (Updates to correct the December contract closing price.)
“Why don’t you do humanity a favor for once and just stay home & do whatever it is you guys do that keeps you from accepting the horrendous nightmare that is your lives.”
-F.F.
By Eric Berman 9/2/2009
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush says he’s not running for president in 2012 — but he’s not closing the door completely.
The brother of one Republican president and son of another was in Indianapolis Wednesday to tout Florida’s education reforms to Indiana’s Education Roundtable. Bush says he’s not running for anything “right now.”
“I’m focused on my own private life and trying to help others continue their public service,” Bush says. “It’s a secondary role, not a primary role, and it’ll probably remain that way.”
Bush’s hedged denial of interest stands in contrast to the man at his side as he spoke, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Daniels’ name has been floated by some Republican insiders — including Bush, who’s called him one of the GOP’s top leaders — but Daniels has been unequivocal in declaring he won’t run for president or any other elected office.
Bush praises President Obama for supporting some of the same education reforms Bush backed as governor, including charter schools. But he says he disagrees with the administration’s overall path.
“I’m just very disturbed by the rapid change of who we are as a nation, or the attempt,” Bush says.
Earlier this year, Bush passed up a chance to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Florida Republican Mel Martinez, who has since resigned. Bush’s successor as governor, Charlie Crist, is running for the post.
“This is about the only thing keeping me interested in living on a planet with a lot of strange, silly, and weak minded people. Well plus good music & art and all the normal creatively free-thinking people, too. Ahh, who am I kidding, I love it here… I just wish I could snap more people out of their slumbers and stick some stiff upright spines in their backs, so, we can all begin the path to a more independent, (i.e. less government), understanding, intellectual, and compassionate way of conducting our way in our worlds very, very beautiful patchwork.”
Is driving while under the influence of THC, one of marijuana’s active ingredients, actually dangerous? One prominent California DUI attorney believes it is not nearly as dangerous as driving drunk and has issued a challenge to laws that punish marijuana users who get behind the wheel.
San Diego defense attorney Lawrence Taylor, considered “The Dean of DUI Attorneys,” according to a release by his firm, is apparently arguing that DUI laws are unfair because they do not allow consideration for the varying degrees of inebriation caused by drugs of abuse.
Drivers convicted of marijuana intoxication are usually sentenced only after authorities have taken a blood sample. However that blood sample, he notes, only measures the body’s metabolism of marijuana’s compounds, not the actual level of impairment.
Evidence of marijuana use can remain in the human body for weeks or or longer, as it has been shown to latch on to fat cells, causing some inactive users to fail drug tests after a period of weight loss. For drivers accused of operating a vehicle while stoned, the presence of blood test results showing recent marijuana consumption can become a tricky legal hurdle.
In an advisory circulated through PRNewswire, Taylor cites two recent federal studies which concluded driving stoned is less dangerous than driving drunk, particular for more experienced marijuana users.
“In one [study], the U.S. Department of Transportation conducted DUI research with a fully interactive simulator on the effects of alcohol and marijuana, alone and in combination, on driver-controlled behavior and performance,” Taylor’s release said.
That study noted, “alcohol was found to have a consistent and significant impairment effect, while marijuana had only an occasional effect,” according to the National Transportation Library. “Also, there was little evident of interaction between alcohol and marijuana. Accidents and speeding tickets reliably increased under alcohol, but no marijuana or combined alcohol and marijuana influence was noted. The alcohol impairment effects on steering and speed control behavior and performance were consistent with the increased accident and ticket rate.”
On his blog, Taylor wrote in April: “A more recent report entitled “Marijuana and Actual Performance”, DOT-HS-808-078, noted that ‘THC is not a profoundly impairing drug….It apparently affects controlled information processing in a variety of laboratory tests, but not to the extent which is beyond the individual’s ability to control when he is motivated and permitted to do so in driving’.”
He added that the researcher concluded it is apparently “not possible to conclude anything about a driver’s impairment on the basis of his/her plasma concentrations of THC and THC-COOH determined in a single sample.”
Taylor, who authored the book “Drunk Driving Defense,” also said recently that DUI laws discriminate against women, as current means of measuring sobriety put females over the legal limit, even when they’ve consumed less alcohol than a man of similar weight and height.
For that claim he cited a study by the Journal of Analytical Toxicology, which found that “women have significantly lower partition ratios than men,” his release noted. “[The] lower the ratio, the higher the reading — even though the true blood alcohol level does not vary.”
Which means, “the breathalyzer will show an average man accused of drunk driving to be innocent — but a woman with the same blood alcohol level to be guilty,” Taylor said.
Can vaccinations actually fuel pandemics? According to a study released August 26, 2009 by the British Medical Journal, more than half of Hong Kong’s healthcare workers surveyed said they would refuse the H1N1 shot, which is not yet available, because they are afraid of side effects and doubt how safe and effective it will be.
More importantly, the study suggested the trend would be repeated worldwide.
“The truth is that vaccines aren’t effective, generally carry dangerous side effects, and in many cases actually fuel the spread of pandemics,” said Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard Universitytrained medical researcher who also holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health. “The fact is that most healthcare workers know this, and they don’t trust that any swine flu vaccine will do anything but cause more problems and potential harm to the patients they care for.”
In Dr. Horowitz’s view, vaccines do more harm than good, and are little more than a way for the pharmaceutical companies to profit from epidemics and side effects.
“In April, 2009, the swine flu scare placed the world at high alert thanks to gads of suspicious publicity,” Dr. Horowitz said. “Anglo-American officials and Reuters News Service first claimed this was a rapidly spreading combination of the world’s scariest flu’s – swine, avian and Spanish flu viruses. They were all said to be rolled up in this never-before-seen Mexican pathogen.”
The scare, however, seemed to have less substance than volume, as the thousands of U.S. deaths that were predicted never happened, Dr. Horowitz added.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com
Thursday, September 3, 2009
According to a Psychology Today hit piece written by psychologist John Gartner, people prone to thinking that powerful men might actually get together and plan to maintain and advance their power are borderline psychotics who are a danger to society. In reality, hundreds of years of history has taught us that psychologists routinely aid authoritarian regimes in enforcing tyrannical and inhumane policies while helping them crush political opposition by defining suspicion of authorities as a mental illness.
As we highlighted in our article yesterday, psychologists in the Soviet Union were used to stifle free speech by classifying skepticism and political opposition to the state as a mental illness, which is precisely the implication littered throughout Gartner’s crass hit piece.
In the former Soviet Union, psikhushkas — mental hospitals — were used by the state as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. The Soviet state began using mental hospitals to punish dissidents in 1939 under Stalin.
According to official Soviet psychiatry and the Moscow Serbsky Institute at the time, “ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure.” Treatment for this special political schizophrenia included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, electromagnetic torture, radiation torture, lumbar punctures, various drugs — such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin — and beatings. Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History, indicates that at least 365 sane people were treated for “politically defined madness,” although she surmises there were many more.
The profession of psychology blossoms under tyrannical regimes, as is explored in Ulfried Geuter’s The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany. Under Hitler’s Third Reich, the relationship between the ruling Nazi thugs and psychologists was close and mutually beneficial. People like Nazi psychologist Robert Ritter, Ph. D. (pictured top) were instrumental in persecuting minorities and enforcing eugenicist policies of genocide.
“From Nazi Germany, South Africa, Russia and the former Yugoslavia, to Iraq today, psychiatry has been and/or remains a key player. In fact, the marriage between authoritarian government and psychiatry is as old as psychiatry itself,” writes Jan Eastgate, International President, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, “In the 1800s, Germany’s militaristic “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, utilized psychiatry to influence and control whole populations in order to fulfill his dreams of conquest through war.”
In his book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era, praised as “eloquent and convincing” in a New York Times Review of Books piece, author Robert Munro exposes how psychiatrists and psychologists continue to be at the forefront of the brutal Communist Chinese system of ascribing mental illnesses to those who express even mildly negative political opinions towards the ruling Party.
The book reveals how, “From the 1950s onward not only Chinese dissidents but people who submitted petitions to the authorities have been detained by the police, examined by psychiatrists, and found to be criminally insane—or, if found mentally “normal,” designated as criminals to be cast into the prison system.”
An official Chinese police designation for those worthy of “psychiatric custody” cited by Munro lists people who write anti-government letters, make anti-government speeches or those who merely express opinions on important domestic and international affairs that could be considered anti-government.
But the use of psychologists in the pursuit of inhumane policies is not just resigned to tyrannical regimes of the first half of the 20th century.
Recent revelations surrounding the torture scandal highlight the role of psychologists in what the Physicians for Human Rights organization alleges amounted to “unlawful human experimentation” and torture on inmates at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other U.S. detention sites.
“PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA’s secret “torture programme,” reports the London Guardian.
Doctors and psychologists actively monitored CIA torture techniques and helped evaluate their effectiveness, a “violation of core ethical values” according to the American Medical Association and a flagrant abuse of the 1947 Nuremberg Code, which forbids experimentation on humans without their consent.
The CIA’s close relationship with psychologists and psychiatrists in conducting illegal torture programs stretches back decades.
“Historian Alfred W. McCoy has shed light in this area in his recent book A Question of Torture and in numerous articles and interviews,” writes Stephen Soldz. “He documents the decades-long CIA effort to utilized psychological expertise to develop forms of torture that could break down the personality of detainees, rendering them, it was hoped, incapable of withholding desired information. Many of these technique were utilized during the Vietnam conflict and in the various brutal U.S.-supported counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin American in the 1970s and 1980s.”
While Psychology Today’s John Gartner cites a single example of a “conspiracy theorist” who voiced support for Alex Jones entering Bohemian Grove armed with guns, and uses it to make the implication that “conspiracy thinking” is a major threat to society, documented history stretching back hundreds of years shows that psychologists, and particularly their tactic of classifying suspicion of authorities and “conspiracy thinking” as a mental illness, have played a key role in preserving the power of dictatorial elites and helping them to carry out inhumane practices while crushing free speech and legitimate political opposition.
I’m going to ask for my money back. I’ve seen this Afghanistan movie before. The first time, Vietnam was in the title.
As in an early scene from the Vietnam version, U.S. military officials are surprised to discover that the insurgents in Afghanistan are stronger than previously realized.
And our protagonist, Gen. Westmoreland — sorry, I mean McChrystal — sees the situation as serious but salvageable. As Westmoreland did with President Lyndon Johnson, McChrystal is preparing to tell President Barack Obama that thousands of more troops are needed to achieve the U.S. objective — whatever that happens to be.
As in Vietnam, uncertainty about objectives and how to measure success persist in Afghanistan. Never has this come through more clearly than in the fuzzy remarks of “Af-Pak” super-envoy Richard Holbrooke who has purview over Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On Aug. 12 at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank, Holbrooke tried to clarify how the Obama administration would gauge success in Afghanistan.
John Podesta, the center’s president who was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and served as head of Obama’s transition team, waxed eloquent not only about his friend Holbrooke but Holbrooke’s team; really spectacular, impressive, multidisciplinary, interagency, truly exceptional were some of the bouquets thrown at team members.
Holbrooke said his Af-Pak squad is “the best team” he’d ever worked with, adding that “Hillary” – the Secretary of State whose last name is Clinton – personally approved “every member.”
It may indeed be a good team but that doesn’t change the fact that it appears to be on a fool’s errand. Each member has considerable expertise to offer, but no one knows where they’re headed.
The whole thing reminds me of the old saw: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. (Or you might say Holbrooke’s team finds itself in a dark place peering into the distance looking for a light at the end of the tunnel.)
Pressing for Answers
To his credit, Podesta kept trying to get a clear answer from Holbrook about the overall objective in Afghanistan, as well as seeking some metrics to judge progress.
“There is increasing concern here at home and in allied capitals abroad about the cost of winning in Afghanistan, and to what end-goals we should aspire,” Podesta said. “I hope to focus on … our objectives in Afghanistan and how we measure progress.”
Holbrooke was as smooth — and vacuous — as Gen. William Westmoreland and his briefers were in Saigon:
“We know the difference with input and output, and what you are seeing here is input,” Holbrooke said. “The payoff is still to come. We have to produce results, and we understand that.
“And we’re not here today to tell you we’re winning or we’re losing. We’re not here today to say we’re optimistic or pessimistic. We’re here to tell you that we’re in this fight in a different way with a determination to succeed.”
In an apparent attempt to get Podesta to stop asking about objectives and how to measure success, Holbrooke tossed a bouquet back at the Center for American Progress for doing “an extraordinary job of becoming a critical center for our efforts.”
For those who may have missed it, Podesta’s Center surprised many, including me, by endorsing Obama’s non-strategy of throwing more troops at the problem in Afghanistan. (The charitable explanation is that there is something in the water here in Washington; less charitably, the Center may have feared losing its place at Obama’s table.)
Holbrooke’s flattery, though, did not deter Podesta, who kept insisting on some kind of cogent answer about objectives and metrics.
Podesta: “From the perspective of the American people, how do you define clear objectives of what you’re trying to succeed as outputs with the inputs that you just talked about?”
Holbrooke: “A very key question, John, which you’re alluding to is, of course, if our objective is to defeat, destroy, dismantle al-Qaeda, and they’re primarily in Pakistan, why are we doing so much in Afghanistan? …
“If you abandon the struggle in Afghanistan, you will suffer against al-Qaeda as well. But we have to be clear on what our national interests are here….
“The specific goal you ask, John, — is really hard for me to address in specific terms. But I would say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue, we’ll know it when we see it.” (Emphasis added.)
Holbrooke almost chokes on the words as they proceed out of his mouth, and then takes a very visible gulp of air. Up until this point, Podesta has been bravely suppressing any outward sign of frustration with Holbrooke’s vacuous comments on U.S. objectives and measures of success.
After the “we’ll know it when we see it” remark, Podesta pauses for a few seconds and looks at Holbrooke — as if to say, and that’s it? Then, like a high school teacher ready to move on to the next ill-prepared student, Podesta utters a curt “okay.”
“Know It When You See It”
The Supreme Court test involving “know it when you see it” refers to a phrase used by former Justice Potter Stewart 45 years ago. Frustrated at not being able to define pornography in an obscenity case, he gave up and fell back on the “know it when you see it” formulation.
The same phrase was used by a similarly frustrated official, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in December 2002, just three months before the U.S.-U.K. attack on Iraq.
Unable to come up with any specific evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but determined to rebut Saddam Hussein’s claims that he had none, Wolfowitz quipped, “It’s like the judge said about pornography. I can’t define it, but I will know it when I see it.”
How is it that we let people get away with that kind of rubbish when it means people — Iraqis, Afghanis, as well as Americans — are going to get killed and maimed?
But Holbrooke’s “we’ll know-it-when-we-see-it” measure of success is just the latest sign that the Obama administration has been playing the Af-Pak strategy by ear. The President himself seems generally aware of this, given his readiness to give wide latitude, not clear instructions, to Holbrooke and the generals.
An early hint of the disarray came on March 27, a little more than two months into his presidency, when Obama showed up a half-hour late to the press conference at which he announced a “comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
No explanation was given for his lateness, which required TV talking heads to reach new heights of vapidity for a full 30 minutes. I ventured a guess at the time that his instincts were telling him he was about to do something he would regret.
It soon became apparent that Obama’s 60-day Afghan policy review lacked specificity on strategy but tried to make up for that with lofty rhetoric — kudos to the alliterative speechwriter who coined the catchy phrase “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda.”
More important, the President also took pains to assure us that: “Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course.” Rather, he promised there will be “metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.”
(Yet the key “metric” appears to be what Holbrooke blurted out on Aug. 12, “we’ll know it when we see it.”)
In Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appear to have picked a loser. It is bad enough that he does not seem to have a clue about how to measure success toward U.S. objectives — or, at least, cannot articulate them — even before a friendly audience.
Perhaps Secretary Clinton and President Obama were also unaware of his well-deserved reputation for logical inconsistencies, not to mention the delight he takes in bullying foreign officials — the more senior the person, the better.
A former Foreign Service officer who worked on the Balkans confided that he believes Holbrooke actually prolonged the Yugoslav civil war for several years by pushing a policy of covert military support for the Muslim side.
It should come as no surprise, then, if Holbrooke ends up playing a role in deepening the Af-Pak quagmire, if only by adopting a belligerent attitude towards the Pashtuns and also the Pakistani government — not to mention rival U.S. officials.
In sum, Holbrooke will probably prove more hindrance than help in working out a sensible U.S. strategy and objectives. Worse, he is not likely to serve as a much needed counterweight to the generals, who may well succeed in persuading Obama to give them still more troops for an unwinnable war.
George Will Favors Pullout
Surprisingly, one of the new voices urging a troop drawdown in Afghanistan is conservative columnist George Will, who showed his human side in an op-ed appearing Tuesday in the Washington Post, “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.”
Will starts and ends the piece with references to a young Marine who had just lost two buddies. To his credit, Will avoids the customary quote from the poet Horace — “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”(“How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country”) or anything like it.
Will says, in effect, that syrupy sentiments and faux appeals to patriotism do not apply in present circumstances. He would probably be the last to draw this connection, but he has begun to sound like Cindy Sheehan, who has been trying for over four years to get George Bush to explain to her the “noble cause” for which her son Casey died in Iraq.
Will ends his article with a heartfelt appeal for substantial troop reductions now, “before more American valor…is squandered.”
On Wednesday, the neoconservative editors of the Post compiled a series of rebuttals to Will’s column in a section entitled “Where Will Got It Wrong,” including a lengthy excerpt from a blog post by leading neocon theorist William Kristol, who attacks Will for sentimentality when “it would be better to base a major change in our national security strategy on arguments.”
Not surprisingly, given his enthusiastic support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Kristol advocates “a surge of several brigades of American forces” in Afghanistan and a determination “to support a strategy, and to provide the necessary resources, for victory.”
Alongside Kristol’s blog post was an op-ed by Post columnist David Ignatius, another enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War.
Regarding Afghanistan, Ignatius concludes that “this may be one of those messy situations where the best course is to both shoot and talk – a strategy based on the idea that we can bolster our friends and bloody our enemies enough that, somewhere down the road, we can cut a deal.”
You may recall that President Johnson followed a similar strategy of trying to bomb his Vietnamese enemies to the bargaining table.
Counting the tragedy in Iraq – as well as the one in Vietnam – this is the third time I’ve seen this movie.
By: BYRON YORK Chief Political Correspondent September 2, 2009
There’s been a lot of discussion about the new and powerful federal agencies that would be created by the passage of a national health care bill. The Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange — there are dozens in all.
But if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats’ health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have access to confidential IRS information about millions of individual taxpayers.
In short, health care reform, as currently envisioned by Democratic leaders, would be built on the foundation of an expanded and more intrusive IRS.
Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don’t have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.
The Democrats’ plan would require all Americans to have “acceptable” insurance coverage (the legislation includes long and complex definitions of “acceptable”) and would designate the IRS as the agency charged with enforcing that requirement. On your yearly 1040 tax return, you would be required to attest that you have “acceptable” coverage. Of course, you might be lying, or simply confused about whether or not you are covered, so the IRS would need a way to check your claim for accuracy. Under current plans, insurers would be required to submit to the IRS something like the 1099 form in which taxpayers report outside income. The IRS would then check the information it receives from the insurers against what you have submitted on your tax form.
If it all matches up, you’re fine. If it doesn’t, you will hear from the IRS. And if you don’t have “acceptable” coverage, you will be subject to substantial fines — fines that will be administered by the IRS.
Under some versions of health reform now circulating on Capitol Hill, the IRS would also be intimately involved in how you pay for insurance. Everyone would be required to buy coverage. The millions of Americans who can’t afford it would receive a subsidy to pay for it. Under the version of the plan currently under negotiation in the Senate Finance Committee, that subsidy would come through the IRS in the form of a refundable tax credit. Under the House plan, the subsidy would come directly from the Health Choices Administration.
In either scenario, the IRS would be the key to making the system work. Before you could receive any subsidy, whether through the IRS or not, the Health Choices Administration would have to determine whether you are eligible for it. To do so, the bills under consideration would give the Health Choices Commissioner the authority to demand sensitive, confidential information from the IRS about individual taxpayers. The IRS would have to provide it.
Under current law, it is a felony for a government official to release taxpayer information in all but the most limited of circumstances. One such exception is for law enforcement; the IRS is allowed to give taxpayer information to prosecutors in criminal cases. The information can also, in some instances, be released to the Social Security Administration and the Veterans’ Administration for the determination of benefits. The health care bills would change the Internal Revenue Code to permit the IRS to give similar information to the vast, new health care bureaucracy.
That means the personal tax information of millions of Americans would enter the system whether they want it to or not. “There’s a mandate to buy insurance,” says one Republican House aide. “You have to buy it. You have millions of people who can’t buy it without a subsidy, so they will have no choice but to accept the subsidy in order to buy insurance, and then the Health Choices Commissioner will have access to their tax records.”
“How many hands would this information go through?” asks a GOP source in the Senate. “What are the quality controls? This increases the risk of misusing this information.”
Some versions of the bill even permit the release of confidential taxpayer information for decidedly less pressing reasons. In H.R. 3200, the IRS would be required to provide taxpayer information to the Social Security Administration for the purpose of helping Social Security officials find qualifying seniors who can then be encouraged to enroll in the prescription drug program. “There is no precedent for using taxpayer information for the purpose of identifying people to go out and advertise to them,” says the House expert.
So far, there has been little substantive public debate about the integral role of the IRS in nearly every aspect of the various national health care proposals. But people who are closely involved with the process are deeply concerned about what they view as a massive, and in some senses unprecedented, expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.
First, they wonder whether the IRS can handle the new demands. “There is a sense at the IRS that their purpose is to collect revenue and not to implement all sorts of other programs,” says a second Senate GOP aide. “Also, the IRS isn’t necessarily great at doing what it does already. How is it going to determine whether 300 million people have health insurance?”
Second, they are concerned about anticipated abuse of the system. “You’re going to have lots of fraud,” says the House source. “People claiming lots of affordability credits or refundable tax credits. The IRS is not going to have the resources and expertise to police this stuff.”
Finally, there is a third concern, more fundamental than questions of whether the IRS can handle the job: Should the IRS be involved in health care enforcement in the first place? As seen in the town halls across the country in August, many Americans are concerned about the coercive nature of the proposed national health care system. Handing the IRS the power to monitor every American’s place in the system worries them even more.
Backers of the Democratic bills are betting that the handouts involved — giving people money to buy health insurance — will outweigh concerns about privacy and coercive government. Perhaps. But before Congress makes any decision on national health care, voters should know just what it will involve.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The attorneys singled out Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is the company’s owner, for blame in the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007. Six former Blackwater guards were criminally charged in 14 of the shootings, and family members and victims’ estates sued Prince, Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) and a group of related companies.
“The person responsible for these deaths is Mr. Prince,” Susan L. Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. “He had the intent, he provided the weapons, he provided the instructions, and they were done by his agents and they were war crimes.”
Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed deep skepticism about the claims. “Are you accusing Mr. Prince of saying ‘I want our boys to go out and shoot innocent civilians?’ ” he asked the attorneys.”These are certainly allegations of not engaging in very nice conduct, but where are the elements that meet the elements of murder? I don’t have any doubt that you can infer malice. What you can’t infer, as far as I can tell, is intent to kill these people.”
Attorneysfor the former Blackwater company denied the allegations at the hearing, which was called to consider their motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Ellis said he would issue a ruling “promptly.”
The hearing — combative in its words but respectful in tone — was the latest fallout from Blackwater’s controversial actions in Iraq. The North Carolina company, which has provided security under a lucrative State Department contract, has come under scrutiny for a string of incidents in which its heavily armed guards were accused of using excessive force.
The deadliest was a September 2007 shooting in central Baghdad in which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqis in a crowded street, killing 17 civilians. The company has said the guards’ convoy came under fire. Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted on federal charges in 14 of those shootings. A sixth guard pleaded guilty.
The lawsuit cites that incident and other shootings to accuse the company of “lawless behavior.” A consolidation of five earlier lawsuits, it says the company covered up killings and hired known mercenaries. In sworn affidavits recently filed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, two anonymous former Blackwater employees also say — without citing evidence — that the company may have conspired to murder witnesses in the criminal probe.
Attorneys for Blackwater say the lawsuit should be dismissed on a variety of legal grounds and that although the deaths were tragic, the guards were closely supervised by U.S. government officials. The allegations “go far beyond describing the harm allegedly suffered by Plaintiffs,” the Blackwater attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss. “They include an encyclopedia of vituperative assertions.”
The Blackwater attorneys are also calling on the judge to strike the affidavits from the former employees from the court record, calling them “scandalous and baseless” and designed to get publicity. Ellis has yet to rule on that motion.
This complaint forms part of a lawsuit filed against the US mercenary firm Blackwater for war crimes, wrongful death, summary exectuion, and other matters. It is a public record, but currently only available for a fee from PACER.
There is an outstanding motion to seal two exhibits by anonymous Blackwater employees which contain reports about the company’s allegedly illegal actions.
It has been an interesting week indeed for the Federal Reserve. Early this week, it was announced that President Obama intends to reappoint Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to a second term in January, signaling a vote of confidence in him. Bernanke seems to be popular with the administration and with Wall Street, and with good reason. His lending policies have left big banks flush with newly created cash that covers up old mistakes and allows for new ones. By buying up mountains of Treasury debt he has also enabled spending to soar to ridiculous levels that should startle any responsible economist, and scare any American concerned about the value of the dollar. However, these highly sensitive decisions about our money are not made by economists, they are made by politicians. Bernanke, like most of his predecessors, is the politician’s best friend. However, there is no reason to believe any other central planner would behave any differently, considering the immense political pressure on the Fed.
Fed policies have been as bad for the economy as they are good for politicians and bankers, as the recently released numbers on the debt and deficit demonstrate. For the first time since World War II the annual budget deficit is projected to be over 11 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It is also projected that by 2019 the national debt will be 68% of GDP. Our path, if unchanged, is completely untenable.
The administration claims that it inherited a dire situation from the last administration, which is absolutely true. However, that hasn’t stopped them from accepting all the policies and premises that got us here, and accelerating those policies to rapidly make a bad situation much worse. The bailouts started with the last administration. They have gotten bigger with this one. The last administration gave us expanded government involvement in healthcare with a new prescription drug benefit. This administration gave us a renewal and expansion of SCHIP, and now the current healthcare takeover attempts. In reality, we can afford none of this, but shady monetary policy allows Washington to continue along its merry way, aggravating all our economic problems.
Not everyone in government finds it acceptable that the Fed wields so much power and privilege in secrecy. Last week, a federal judge ruled against Fed secrecy, compelling them to release under the Freedom of Information Act information regarding which banks received emergency loans, and under what terms. The Fed will, of course do everything in its power to fight this ruling and it is certainly not the last word on the issue. Still, it is encouraging to see that the interests of the taxpayers were defended victoriously in court, while the Fed only sees the plight of its big banker friends.
Meanwhile HR 1207 and S604, legislation to open up the Fed’s books to a complete audit, continue to gain momentum in Congress as the people continue to insist on real transparency of the Federal Reserve. One way or another, the days of Fed autonomy are coming to an end, as well they should. No one should have the power to debauch the currency and gut the economy as they do. It is time they answered for their actions, so the people can understand that we truly are better off with freedom instead of Fed tyranny.
The corporate media is ignoring S. 2028, the flu pandemic bill that was unanimously passed by the Massachusetts Senate. The draconian bill was covered extensively by the alternative news sites, but not a word from the New York Times or the Washington Post.
S. 2028 will be used as a template for legislation in other states. The bill imposes a virtual police state and martial law on Massachusetts at the behest of the governor in the event of a flu pandemic this autumn. It gives the state health commissioner, law enforcement, and medical personnel wide authority to mobilize forces, vaccinate the population, enter private property with no warrants, and even quarantine people against their will in violation of the Constitution. The bill allows the state to enter property without a search warrant and destroy the property without a court order. It would force in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination.
Law enforcement authorities are authorized to “arrest without warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order for isolation or quarantine and shall use reasonable diligence to enforce such order. Any person who knowingly violates an order for isolation or quarantine shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than 30 days and may be subject to a civil fine of not more than $1,000 per day that the violation continues.”
Other states are in the process of implementing legal actions in response to the H1N1 virus hyped by the government and the corporate media. Florida has distributed blank quarantine order forms, including a voluntary home quarantine agreement, a quarantine to residence order, a quarantine to residence order (non-compliance), a quarantine to facility order, quarantine detention order, quarantine of facility order, building quarantine closure order and area quarantine closure order. North Carolina released a draft isolation order that would provide for imprisonment for up to two years and pretrial detention without bail for any citizen who fails to comply with an isolation order. Washington has granted authority to local health officers to issue emergency detention orders forcing citizens to be immediately and involuntarily isolated or quarantined for up to 10 days.
A form released by the state of Iowa for voluntary home confinement, home quarantine and home isolation recently made the rounds on the internet. “Rumors started swirling after a quarantine form was found by someone on the internet,” KIMT 3 reported. “Health leaders in Iowa are reassuring people that there are no H1N1 related quarantines being ordered.” The form calls quarantine of all individuals suspected of coming in contact with the virus.
S.2028 is now in Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee. The Liberty Preservation Association of Massachusetts has vowed to kill the legislation before it can reach the House (see MassLPA video above). The organization plans to lobby lawmakers at the capital on Beacon Hill on September 9 and convince them not to vote for and pass the bill.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) For the last several years, I’ve referred to drug companies as “criminal” operations. They have engaged in price fixing, marketing fraud, science fraud and many other criminal activities that we’ve written about here on NaturalNews. And yet, until today, they always managed to avoid the criminal charges by settling with the government for a few million dollars in payouts. This was their racket: Violate the law, then when you get caught, just settle with some cash. (And there’s always some spare cash to go around since fraudulent science and fraudulent marketing is very, very lucrative.)
But all that changed today with the announcement of a Dept. of Justice criminal case that has resulted in Pfizerpleading guilty to a felony crime. Which crime? “…for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead.” You can read the DOJ documents describing the settlement here: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/Se…
Essentially, Pfizer asked the FDA to approve Bextra for a variety of diseases and conditions, and when the FDA refused those approvals, Pfizer decided to go ahead and market the drugs for those diseases and conditions anyway (off-label marketing).
But that’s not all. In the DOJ statement, you’ll read the following:
Pfizer has agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs — Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug — and caused false claims to be submitted to governmenthealth care programs for uses that were not medically accepted indications and therefore not covered by those programs. The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs. The federal share of the civil settlement is $668,514,830 and the stateMedicaid share of the civil settlement is $331,485,170. This is the largest civil fraud settlement in history against apharmaceutical company.
False claims, kickbacks, felony crimes and civil fraud… it seems that the truth about pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer is finally starting to emerge.
And here’s the best part: Pfizer’s own whistleblowers will cash in! “Six whistleblowers will receive payments totaling more than $102 million from the federal share of the civil recovery,” says the DOJ.
$2.3 billion in fines
Along with this admission of guilt for committing a felony crime, Pfizer is paying well over $1 billion in criminal fines, plus another $1 billion or so to resolve civil allegations against its fraudulent marketing practices. In all, the multi-billion dollar settlement is the largest in the history of the DOJ.
All I can say is: Good work! I’ve often stated that the pharmaceutical industry should be subjected to our nation’s laws, and yet it has operated in a largely lawless fashion for decades. The FTC, for example, which should be investigating the drug industry monopolies that rip off American consumers and limit consumer choice, has all but ignored the monopolistic (and highly illegal) practices of the pharmaceutical industry. But the Dept. of Justice has now apparently decided that enough is enough — it’s going to investigate and prosecute serious criminal fraud being committed by drug companies.
Reporting from Washington – U.S. officials are planning to add as many as 14,000 combat troops to the American force in Afghanistan by sending home support units and replacing them with “trigger-pullers,” Defense officials say.
The move would beef up the combat force in the country without increasing the overall number of U.S. troops, a contentious issue as public support for the war slips. But many of the noncombat jobs are likely be filled by private contractors, who have proved to be a source of controversy in Iraq and a growing issue in Afghanistan.
The plan represents a key step in the Obama administration’s drive to counter Taliban gains and demonstrate progress in the war nearly eight years after it began.
Forces that could be swapped out include units assigned to noncombat duty, such as guards or lookouts, or those on clerical and support squads.
“It makes sense to get rid of the clerks and replace them with trigger-pullers,” said one Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been announced. Officials have spoken in recent days about aspects of the plan.
The changes will not offset the potential need for additional troops in the future, but could reduce the size of any request from Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander, officials said.
McChrystal submitted a broad assessment of the Afghanistan war effort this week, calling the situation there “serious.”
Details of the assessment remain secret, but officials said it did not contain a request for more troops. Such a request could be submitted in coming weeks.
The planned changes in the U.S. troop mix are part of what military officials call a “force optimization” review, a critical middle step between the assessment and a request for additional troops, designed to ensure that the existing force is operating as efficiently as possible.
The plan reflects the view that much of the military bureaucracy that has built up in Afghanistan no longer serves a useful purpose. Services performed by troops that are no longer considered crucial could be outsourced to contractors or eliminated, officials said.
Defense officials said they would not know how many positions and jobs might be eliminated until the McChrystal review was completed. But two officials estimated the total could be 6,000 to 14,000 troops.
The review will scour the U.S. roster for situations in which several people perform the same job or for service members considered less than fully utilized, for example, working just a six-hour shift.
Army Col. Wayne M. Shanks, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said that some people may no longer be needed and can be “streamlined.”
“We have asked all commands to take a hard look to reduce redundancy, eliminate any excess and generally look for efficiencies in all our structures,” Shanks said.
He declined to outline any specific groups of soldiers or Marines that were no longer needed, but said the command would not “compromise the welfare of the troops.”
Raising the overall number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a controversial issue.
President Obama has ordered an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan to bring the U.S. force to about 68,000. About 38,000 non-U.S. troops with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are also deployed in the country.
Top Obama administration officials have sent mixed signals about whether they would approve more troops.
Complicating any decision to approve more troops is declining public support for the Afghanistan war as the number of casualties climbs, with August the deadliest month for U.S. troops there since the war began. According to a CNN poll, 57% of Americans oppose the war, up from 46% at the end of last year.
But advisors to the military command believe that McChrystal needs a larger force to carry out his counterinsurgency strategy, perhaps as many as 20,000 additional troops. Culling unneeded units would allow McChrystal to increase U.S. combat power without running afoul of political sensitivities at home.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.
“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”
The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.
The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.
Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions.
It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.
It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.
Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor.
They look for signs that a patient is approaching their final hours, which can include if patients have lost consciousness or whether they are having difficulty swallowing medication.
However, doctors warn that these signs can point to other medical problems.
Patients can become semi-conscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs such as morphine if they are also dehydrated, for instance.
When a decision has been made to place a patient on the pathway doctors are then recommended to consider removing medication or invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips, which are no longer of benefit.
If a patient is judged to still be able to eat or drink food and water will still be offered to them, as this is considered nursing care rather than medical intervention.
Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.
He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.
He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.
“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”
He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.
“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”
He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.
Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.
In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.
“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.
Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: “Even the tiniest things that happen towards the end of a patient’s life can have a huge and lasting affect on patients and their families feelings about their care.
“Guidelines like the LCP can be very helpful but healthcare professionals always need to keep in mind the individual needs of patients.
“There is no one size fits all approach.”
A spokesman for Marie Curie said: “The letter highlights some complex issues related to care of the dying.
“The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient was developed in response to a societal need to transfer best practice of care of the dying from the hospice to other care settings.
“The LCP is not the answer to all the complex elements of this area of health care but we believe it is a step in the right direction.”
The pathway also includes advice on the spiritual care of the patient and their family both before and after the death.
It has also been used in 800 instances outside care homes, hospices and hospitals, including for people who have died in their own homes.
The letter has also been signed by Dr Anthony Cole, the chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, Dr David Hill, an anaesthetist, Dowager Lady Salisbury, chairman of the Choose Life campaign and Dr Elizabeth Negus a lecturer in English at Barking University.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “People coming to the end of their lives should have a right to high quality, compassionate and dignified care.
“The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is an established and recommended tool that provides clinicians with an evidence-based framework to help delivery of high quality care for people at the end of their lives.
“Many people receive excellent care at the end of their lives. We are investing £286 million over the two years to 2011 to support implementation of the End of Life Care Strategy to help improve end of life care for all adults, regardless of where they live.”
I would like to introduce you to a good friend of mine, Debra Medina. I have known Debra for over ten years and have always been impressed by her drive and commitment to principle. Debra has been a real defender of Liberty both in her home town of Wharton and across the state of Texas.
Debra has for years been a key supporter and member of my campaign team. As chairman of the Wharton County Republican Party, she has stood up to the big government establishment and fought to hold our party accountable to our platform and our conservative Texas values. Because of her leadership and organizational skills, I asked Debra to serve on the board of directors of my national grassroots action group, Campaign for Liberty, where she has played an important role in our fight to defend our Constitution.
In addition to her political accomplishments, I am proud of Debra for the person she is. Debra Medina is a loving wife, a home school mother of two talented honor students, and a successful business owner. Debra is a true success story and role model for Texans across our state.
I am proud to call Debra Medina a friend, and as a fellow Texan, I encourage you to get to know her. Debra is exploring a run for higher office and would appreciate your input on her effort. You can learn more about her at www.medinafortexas.com.
I am sure we will look to Debra for leadership in my community and across our state for many years to come.
Exactly one year ago today, over 10,000 passionate grassroots activists gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota to proudly proclaim their support for limited constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a free people.
The Rally for the Republic was a clear call to all political parties to return to the founding principles that made our nation great. Featuring premier speakers and musicians from our movement, the Rally officially kicked off Campaign for Liberty and energized and motivated us for the battle ahead.
It served notice to the political establishment that our Revolution, which so many assumed would fade away after the Ron Paul presidential campaign, was just getting started.
Every day, you continue to spread the message in innovative ways. It is through your actions and your involvement in C4L that we will take back our country and pass on a legacy of freedom to future generations.
Here are just a few of the exciting activities being done by your fellow C4L members all across the country:
Florida:In our last update on member activities, we reported that Florida Campaign for Liberty was preparing for their Liberty Summit and working hard to recruit additional Local Coordinators to promote liberty in their own backyards.
As one of the attendees, I can proudly say that I was overwhelmed by Florida C4L’s tremendous turnout for the Summit! It is estimated that over 1,500people came to the Summit’s Liberty Celebration, which featured speakers including Congressman Ron Paul and Tom Woods.
Read Interim Florida State Coordinator Mark Cross’ report here.
And congratulations to Florida C4L for their continued success in recruiting Local Coordinators. Our last report noted that they had 159, and they have since added 44 for a nation-leading total of 203!
Keep up the great work!
Missouri:After the Missouri Information Analysis Center released their report attacking the freedom movement last March (which was eventually retracted after C4L members and others in the freedom community put enormous pressure on them), Missouri C4L members promised to hold those responsible for the report accountable and to do all in their power to prevent another such blatant abuse of power in their state.
On August 31, C4L Director of Membership Services Deb Wells, Interim Missouri State Coordinator Paul Hamby, and C4L member Larry Flinchpaugh testified before the Missouri House Interim Committee on State Intelligence Analysis Oversight. This committee is charged with taking recommendations about the MIAC back to the state legislature.
Read Paul’s report on what happened here, and thanks to all those in Missouri and every other state who are taking such courageous stands for the freedom movement.
California:On August 8, Sacramento Campaign for Liberty held an event called the “Federal Reserve Sunshine Day.”
As member Tom Davenport says, it was “an outdoor event to be held in an accessible, high traffic, high visibility location for the specific purpose of promoting Federal Reserve transparency in a non-partisan manner.” They decided to hold the event on “Second Saturday,” which Tom reports is a “long standing Sacramento tradition in which local art galleries, restaurants, bars, and businesses participate by keeping extended hours and holding special events. Second Saturday is a draw not only for residents of Downtown and Midtown, but for residents of the greater Sacramento area as well, which made a perfect opportunity for exposure.”
Read his full account (including video) of what happened here. Congratulations to Sacramento C4L for their success with this event, which resulted in over 500 petitions signedfor Audit the Fed. Tom’s blog post also includes many helpful tips for those who are interested in holding a similar event.
Maryland:In Hartford County, local Campaign for Liberty members gathered outside of Congressman Frank Kratovil’s office on August 11 to protestthe latest government attempt to completely take over health care. Around 400 people gathered to make their views known, and they were able to garner some local press coverage from Fox 45.
The Hartford County Campaign for Liberty has been rapidly expanding, and we congratulate them on their success. Their county blog reports they will be taking sevenfull buses to D.C. for the 9-12 March!
Across the country, your efforts are also continuing to gain media exposure. In Tennessee, a local newspaper covered Campaign for Liberty members collecting and dropping off petitions for HR 1207 to Congressman Bart Gordon’s office. In Arkansas, Regional Coordinator Rob Richard was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News after asking a question during a town hall meeting on health care. In Pennsylvania, York County Coordinator Michael Koffenberger was interviewed for 30 minutes on a cable access show called Uprisingsspecifically to discuss Campaign for Liberty, local events, the upcoming Northeast Regional Conference, and much more.
C4L members are using Congressman Paul’s new book, End the Fed, to educate their countrymen on the Federal Reserve and the dangers of fiat money. Brevard County C4L in Florida has a goalof placing a copy in every single Brevard County library, as well as in four college campus libraries.
You are not the usual brand of activist the establishment was expecting to easily dismiss. You are educated on the issues, passionate about our message, and confident in the real change that we can bring about by restoring our Constitution.
And later this month, we will gather to hold our biggest Regional Conference yet! Joining us in Valley Forge, PA on Sept. 17-19 will be an incredible roster of speakers including Congressman Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, Daniel Hannan, Tom Woods, Peter Schiff, and Phil Giraldi. Don’t miss this chanceto hear from these leaders in our movement and to network and train with other C4L members. (Register using promotional code “Henry”to receive a free gift from C4L.)
Be sure to visit our Recent Member Blog Postssection at CampaignforLiberty.com to catch the latest news and reports from your fellow C4L members!
Do you have a state success story you want to see included in future installments? Send them along! Email any reports you would like to see highlighted to StateStories@CampaignforLiberty.com.
Thank you for all of the hard work you do in defense of our freedoms. May we proudly look back one day and know that when tyranny threatened on all sides, we answered the call, overcame the challenges, and took back our country.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
P.S. Campaign for Liberty members are reclaiming our Republic, one neighborhood at a time. If you are able, pleasecontribute todayto help C4L spread the freedom message and awaken more Americans and people all over the world to the prosperity and peace offered by championing liberty.
According to testimony given at a Missouri House of Representatives meeting yesterday, anarchists attempted to get other protesters to commit criminal acts during the End the Fed protests late last year, in what was a possible attempt to instigate chaos to justify a harsh crackdown on behalf of the authorities.
In March it came to light that the End the Fed protests, which took place at banks and regional Federal Reserve branches across the country on November 22, were being monitored closely by the United States Army Reserve Command, who implied that those protesting against the Fed and the bankster bailout were essentially terrorists.
On November 22, 2008, Alex Jones led a rally at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas Texas. The Dallas protest is specifically mentioned in the official Army document. Ron Paul’s brother was also in attendance.
During testimony given in response to the infamous Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report, a document authored by Missouri Highway Patrol and distributed to fellow law enforcement agencies that characterizes Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display political bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag as potential domestic terrorists, one of the organizers who attended the protests said that “anarchists” attempted to recruit followers and encouraged them to commit illegal acts.
“My group was at the End the Fed rally and there were a bunch of different groups there,” Cisse Spragin told the Missouri House of Representatives on Monday. “And there was this group of anarchists who started talking to us. And then they tried to recruit us or have us join their group. Then they started telling us what should we should write on our signs, and insisting on letting them re-write some of our signs. Later we overheard them saying they couldn’t even get us to jaywalk.”
Spragin’s testimony suggests that the anarchists were attempting to steer the nature of the protests in the opposite direction to guidelines published by End the Fed rally organizers before the protests which called for “Cooperation and respect for local laws and authorities,” and “No blocking of pedestrian or vehicular traffic.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that anarchist groups have been used as a tool with which to stir chaos. As we have documented before, the black bloc anarchist groups are routinely infiltrated and steered by authorities who use them to provoke disorder as a pretext to crack down on legitimate demonstrators.
During the April 2009 G20 summit in London, police stood back and watched anarchists attack banks and other buildings in an incident that had all the hallmarks of a staged event.
Following the SPP protests in Canada in 2007, Quebec provincial authorities were forced to admit that three rock-wielding black mask-wearing “anarchists” were in fact police infiltrators used to gather information on protesters.
Video shows two of the provocateurs pick up rocks and try to incite violence before they are outed as cops by legitimate demonstrators. The two thugs then tried to slip behind police lines before their fellow officers were forced to stage their arrest. Again, the fact that they were cops in disguise was later admitted by authorities.
Alex Jones’ film Police State 2: The Takeover exposed how the black bloc anarchists were completely infiltrated and provocateured by the authorities during the violent 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.
The authorities declared a state of emergency, imposed curfews and resorted to nothing short of police state tactics in response to a small minority of hostile black bloc hooligans. Police allowed the black bloc to run riot in downtown Seattle while they concentrated on preventing the movement of peaceful protestors. The film presents clear evidence that the black bloc anarchist group was actually controlled by the state and used to demonize peaceful protesters. Watch the video below.
At the WTO protests in Genoa 2001 a protestor was killed after being shot in the head and run over twice by a police vehicle. The Italian Carabinere also later beat on peaceful protestors as they slept, and even tortured some, at the Diaz School. It later emerged that the police fabricated evidence against the protesters, claiming they were anarchist rioters, to justify their actions. Some Carabiniere officials have since come forward to say they knew of infiltration of the so called black bloc anarchists, and that fellow officers acted as agent provocateurs.
At the Free Trade Area of Americas protests in Miami in late November 2003, more provocateuring was evident. The United Steelworkers of America calling for a congressional investigation, stated that the police intentionally caused violence and arrested and charged hundreds of peaceful protestors.
“They“, (being the real people who really run this country… not puppet Obama… though he sure ain’t helping), may use Blackwater like Hitler used his SS scum-fuck’s to help run this country in the ground. It’s a huge throbbing steroid of a possibility. This will be their army to carry out all the treasonous actions that 99% of real working-class service men & women would not carry out against their own country. They’ll use little yuppie toy soldiers from homophobic Erik Prince’s fairy stable. (If that sounds like the most ridiculous thing ever said then look into the companies history). These are the kind of people to worry about. Not fake middle-eastern or, (the media’s new one), right-wing American terrorists. These Blackwater guys are no good. Period.
“Well ok… they’ve done one good thing… you can thank Eric Prince for driving even more good American people into gun ownership.”
They’re not criminals. They’ve broken no laws. But an elderly Richardson couple claims the state is holding them against their will. Investigative reporter Becky Oliver explains.
Our grassroots Revolution has set its sights on restoring a sound monetary policy to our nation, and every day we are awakening more of our countrymen to the dangers of Federal Reserve secrecy and its stranglehold on our economy.
A year ago, no one in the political establishment would have believed that a bill to thoroughly audit the Fed would have almost two-thirds of the House (including every Republican representative and nearly one hundred Democrats) and a quarter of the Senate on board.
Certainly, no one would have bet that three-fourths of the American people would supportsuch an audit.
As many of you may have heard by now, recent statements from Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, have indicated that the House will vote on Audit the Fed in the next few months.
However, rather than voting on HR 1207 as a standalone bill, many in Congress hope to roll it into the comprehensive regulatory reform package recently proposed by the White House.
This reform package grants new, more comprehensive powers to the Fed and strengthens the government’s control over our economy. C4L and other friends of liberty stand in opposition to this proposal, as well as any other attempt to convert this historic movement for transparency into yet another rubber-stamping of politics as usual.
It is imperative that Audit the Fed come before the House and Senate on its own merits.
The American people stand behind a thorough audit of the Fed, and we should not be adding additional powers when we don’t fully know what is being done with the ones they currently have.
Call Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office today at (202) 225-0100 and urge her to stand with the American people by giving the Audit the Fed bill full debate and a standalone vote on the House floor.
Click herefor contact information for your representatives and senators and ask them to get behind Audit the Fed if they have not yet done so. If they have already cosponsored, tell them to push for a roll call vote on HR 1207 and S 604 on the bills’ own merits.
Our movement has worked hard to bring transparency and accountability to one of the nation’s most secretive institutions. Audit the Fed has received a bipartisan level of support that is very rare in politics today.
Together, we can see a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve signed into law, but it should not be accompanied by more of the same interventionist legislation that helped create the current crisis.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
P.S. Click hereto take action, and don’t forget to tell your family and friends about AuditTheFed.com, where they can view the coalition in support of transparency, sign a petition, and learn more about this historic effort.
We Texans know how to fight for liberty. We won’t sit idly by and watch our freedoms stripped away. It is our responsibility to buck these career politicians and their big spending, broken promise, RINO politics. The only true conservative to step into the gubernatorial boxing ring is Debra Medina. Debra has answered the call to service and is ready to fight for Texas!
Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison may have big names and deep pockets, but they lack honesty, accountability, and real conservative values. We Texans must stand behind Debra Medina and support the only conservative candidate that is running for governor in 2010.
What can you do? Get on board! Go to www.medinafortexas.comand check out the store! You can order bumper stickers, t-shirts, yard signs, and flyers. Bumper stickers are a great way to get Debra’s name in front of hundreds of people. T-shirts can be utilized as a great segue into conversations. The flyers are very informative and can be passed out at rallies, to neighbors, friends and family, or any other public forum. Yards signs are a great way to show your support and they encourage others to make a stand. Purchasing Medina merchandise not only supports the campaign, but it gives you the opportunity to help Debra get her name out there. All transactions, including direct donations, can be made via PayPal. If you would like to make a donation to the campaign without using PayPal, please send donations to:
Debra Medina Campaign
904 W. Montgomery
Suite 4-506
Willis, TX 77378
We Texans have a big fight on our hands, but with your support, we can take back our state. Big government Republicans are not right for Texas! Pass this email along. Tell everyone that Texas does have another choice for governor; that choice is Debra Medina!
Saturday, August 29, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) Vaccines are the quackery of modern medicine. Mass vaccination programs not only fail to protect the population from infectious disease, they actuallyaccelerate the spread of disease in many cases.
Many website have cropped up over the last few years to counter the pro-vaccine propaganda put out by drug companies (who profit from vaccines) and health regulators (who serve the drug companies). One of those sites iswww.VaccinationDebate.com , which lists the following historical facts about vaccines:
• In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that bothpolio vaccines were contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)
• In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000 deaths. During the same period in Germany, with avaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/020…)
The Hadwen Documents
• In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don’t Get Stuck, Hannah Allen)
• In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after 96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)
• In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )
• In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)
• In the 1970’s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)
• In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People’s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)
• In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)
• In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)
A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank.
Rothschild, an architect of several privatisations, made its pitch in the weeks running up to the summer recess on July 21, Whitehall sources said. Bankers told leading politicians that the sale of the roads overseen by the Highways Agency — all motorways and most big trunk roads — could help revive battered public finances.
Toll-road companies and infrastructure funds would compete to operate and maintain stretches of the network.
In one version of the scheme, the government would pay for upkeep through a system of “shadow” tolls. A more radical, and less politically palatable, option would be for companies to charge motorists directly through toll booths or electronic card readers. The RAC Foundation, a motorists’ group, advocated privatisation in a report last week.
The Rothschild plan has already won the support of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader and Treasury spokesman.
“This is an attractive, positive idea which could release considerable resources to the public finances and may have real environmental merits,” Cable said. “The scale of it is vast — it makes rail privatisation look like small beer.”
Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, said the Conservatives had “no plans” to back Rothschild’s proposals: “Rothschilds, like many other banks and consultancies, have approached me and my team on a range of ideas for our transport network, including their ideas for our road infrastructure, but we are not working on any proposals for privatisation of the strategic road network and have no plans to do so.”
Motorway privatisation was considered by John Major’s Conservative administration, which sold British Rail, but was rejected.
A spokesman at the Department for Transport said: “It is not unusual for organisations to suggest ideas to government departments but ultimately all policy is decided by ministers and there are no plans to sell off a stake in the Highways Agency.” Rothschild declined to comment.
The bank was behind many of the key privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s, including British Steel, British Gas and British Coal. It has close links to the Conservatives, having employed several senior Party figures including Lord Lamont, John Redwood and Lord Wakeham. Oliver Letwin, the former shadow chancellor, works there part-time.
Politicians of all Parties are seeking ways to decrease the need for large tax rises or heavy cuts in public services. The bank bailouts and a recent collapse in tax revenues has seen public sector debt rise to more than £800 billion, 56.8% of GDP — up from 35.5% just two years ago.
Road tolls are unpopular, however. When Labour mooted road pricing two years ago, more than 230,000 signed a petition on the Downing Street decrying the plan.
If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.
Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that time, just 17% wanted to keep them.
There has been a bit of a partisan shift since last fall. With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, it’s not surprising to find that the number of Democrats who would vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of Democrats were ready to throw them all out.
While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators, voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected politicians in the House and Senate. That’s up from 62% last year.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) now believe that members of Congress are overpaid. That’s up 10 percentage points from last October. Just five percent (5%) think their Congress member is paid too little. Thirty percent (30%) think the pay is about right.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans believe that when members of Congress meet with regulators and other government officials, they do so to help their friends and hurt their political opponents. Most believe that’s why politicians are able to solicit contributions from business leaders. Most, however, say it’s generally a good investment because political donors get more than their money’s worth. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of American adults say political donors get more than their money back in terms of favors from members of Congress.
Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely gets reelected every two years. It’s a shock when any incumbent loses. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently heard in Washington, D.C. is that “people hate Congress but love their own congressman.”
When the Constitution was written, the nation’s founders expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms). For well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.
In the 20th century, turnover began to decline. As power and prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer and fewer members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, congressional turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever, and it has remained very low ever since.
On August 28, Media Matters posted a hit piece on Glenn Beck. In the article, Oliver Willis attempts to link the Fox News disinformation operative Beck to Alex Jones. “We’re used to Glenn Beck being ‘out there’, but today’s show was special,” writes Willis. “Beck’s hour (the second day in a row in which he didn’t say a thing about the passing of Sen. Kennedy) was all about the supposed secret army being built by President Obama. This secret army idea, not supported by any facts, though possibly written in invisible ink that Beck can interpret, is a pet cause of fringe radio host Alex Jones.”
In fact, during the election last year, Obama admitted his desire to create a national security force, what Mr. Willis calls a “secret army.” The U.S. “cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set” and needs a “civilian national security force,” he said. Obama said his national security force needs to be as well funded — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars — as the U.S. military. See the video clip below.
The idea did not disappear after the election. On March 12, during a speech at the National Defense University, Obama said the following: “America must also balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We cannot continue to push the burden on to our military alone, nor leave dormant any aspect of the full arsenal of American capability. And that’s why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power, and todeveloping our civilian national security capabilities.” (Emphasis added.)
It gets worse. In January, without any recognizable corporate media coverage, Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, introduced H.R. 675. The bill would amend title 10 of the United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms. The bill was referred to the Armed Services Committee on January 26, 2009. At approximately the same time, the DoD issued a Defense Directive 1404.10 that establishes a “DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce” and rescinds a prior Clinton era directive dealing with the emergency use of civilian personnel. The Obama administration describes the Civilian Expeditionary Workforce as follows:
Members of the DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce shall be organized, trained, cleared, equipped, and ready to deploy in support of combat operations by the military; contingencies; emergency operations; humanitarian missions; disaster relief; restoration of order; drug interdiction; and stability operations of the Department of Defense in accordance with DoDD 3000.05
In other words, Congress is busy proposing bills that would accomplish what Obama announced during his campaign speech in Colorado.
Mr. Willis and the Clintonite organized Media Matters are uncomfortable with the facts. Here is another one — the Obamas have organized a cadre for a civilian national security force since 1993. It’s called Public Allies and is modeled after the communist Saul Alinsky’s “people’s organizations.” It is under the watchful eye of Michelle Obama. It has received $75 million per year from private donors, including the Rockefellers and the Ford Foundation.
In the lead up to the election, budding activists in the Marxist tradition of Alinsky were sent to Camp Obama. “Obama is not like other candidates, and part of this training is learning to mimic the methods he used before he was an elected official — back when he was a community organizer in Chicago following the textbook of legendary agitator Saul Alinsky,” the Chicago Sun Times reported in September, 2007. Camp Obama was described as a “national program for social change,” no doubt of the sort envisioned by Alinksy, who once said: “From all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.”
Incidentally, taking money from globalists and bankers is not a problem for Media Matters. In 2005, CNS News uncovered the fact David Brock, the former conservative turned liberal and Media Matters CEO, had taken money from the arch globalist George Soros. In addition, Media Matters receives money from Democracy Alliance. George Soros is a member of this “progressive” organization.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, wrote a book entitled “The Plan: Big Ideas for America.” In the book, Emanuel states: “It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.” (Emphasis added.)
Emanuel calls this a “new social contract,” that is to say an obligation imposed on the people by the government. “If you forget everything else you read in these pages, please remember this: The Plan starts with you. If your leaders aren’t challenging you to do your part, they aren’t doing theirs. We need a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen service,” writes Rahmbo. “Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background together to make America safer and more united in common purpose.”
It’s a “common purpose” envisioned by George Soros, the communist Alinksy, the Ford Foundation, and globalist “progressives.”
Mr. Willis declares there is nothing sinister about AmeriCorps, created under former president Clinton — a member in good standing with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group. Clinton’s administration was a virtual Who’s Who of CFR members and globalists, apparently a good thing for liberals like Mr. Willis.
Here’s what Willis and Media Matters didn’t tell you about AmeriCorps — the legislation initially called for “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people.” It anticipated requiring “all individuals in the United States” to become indentured servants for the government – including elementary school students. A Washington Examinereditorial on March 26, 2009, stated:
The bill also summons up unsettling memories of World War II-era paramilitary groups by saying the new program should “combine the best practices of civilian service with the best aspects of military service,” while establishing “campuses” that serve as “operational headquarters,” complete with “superintendents” and “uniforms” for all participants. It allows for the elimination of all age restrictions in order to involve Americans at all stages of life. And it calls for creation of “a permanent cadre” in a “National Community Civilian Corps.”
In short, the people who wrote the bill had the same totalitarian mindset as Joe Stalin and Mao.
No mention of the original bill or the mindset of its authors in Mr. Willis’ hit piece against Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. He mentions the fact George W. Bush was all for AmeriCorps and even met with AmeriCorps volunteers for Earth Day. But then “progressives” and those mesmerized by the false right-left paradigm always insist there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans and between Obama and Bush — never mind virtually nothing has changed under Obama, not the twin occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, not the unconstitutional surveillance of the American people, not the torture camps and the murder of hundreds of people in Pakistan — and certainly not the bogus global war on terror (although Obama’s people decided to play asemantic game with the term).
Finally, the article posted on the Media Matters website is a transparent effort to link Alex Jones to the Fox News disinformation operative Glenn Beck and thus discredit him. As a slick disinfo operative, Beck is tasked with taking down the truth and patriot movements by agreeing with their basic arguments while coming off as a kook that can be easily criticized and lampooned by the so-called “liberal” media, thus inflicting damage on the patriot community.
Addendum
Regardless of the philosophy of the Marxist Saul Alinsky, Obama is not a communist, a fact underscored by the heavy presence of CFR and Bilderberg members in his administration.
Lawrence Summers, the Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, is a former Chief Economist at the World Bank and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political mentor Robert Rubin, the former Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup and Chairmen of Goldman Sachs. Summers is a member of the CFR. Timothy Geithner, the current United States Secretary of the Treasury, was previously the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner also worked for Kissinger and Associates. In 2002 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department and was director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund.
“The council has gained a virtual lock-hold on the U.S. government, regardless of which party is in office,” writes John McManus. “No other organization comes close to boasting the kind of clout that the CFR members have held: eight presidents of the U.S.; seven vice presidents; 17 secretaries of state; 20 secretaries of war/defense; 18 secretaries of the Treasury; 15 directors of the CIA. And on it has gone throughout the Cabinets, in seriatim — through Democrat and Republican administrations — with hundreds of deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, etc.”
One of Obama’s professors at Columbia Universality and an ardent supporter of his campaign — and his early foreign policy adviser — was Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski cofounded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, a director of numerous multinational corporations and “endowment funds” and a central figure in the Council on Foreign Relations.
“If the Council on Foreign Relations could be said to be a spawning ground for the concepts of one-world idealism, then the Trilateral Commission was the ‘task force’ assembled to assault the beachheads. Already the Commission had placed its members in the top posts the U.S. had to offer.” writes Patrick Wood.
Bankers and one-worlders are not communists in the traditional sense, although they have traditionally used that political ideology to consolidate and centralize power and influence.
“If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs,” wrote the late Gary Allen. “Communism or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”
“I expected a reaction but not such a violent one”
In April 2009 Andrés Carrasco, an Argentinian embryologist, gave an interview to the leading Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12, in which he described the alarming results of a research project he is leading into the impact of the herbicide glyphosate on the foetuses of amphibians. Dr Carrasco, who works in the Ministry of Science’s Conicet (National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations), said that their results suggested that the herbicide could cause brain, intestinal and heart defects in the foetuses. Glyphosate is the herbicide used in the cultivation of Monsanto’s genetically modified soya, which now covers some 18 million hectares, about half of Argentina’s arable land. [1]
Carrasco said that the doses of herbicide used in their study were “much lower than the levels used in the fumigations”. Indeed, as some weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, many farmers are greatly increasing the concentration of the herbicide. According to Página 12, this means that, in practice, the herbicide applied in the fields is between 50 and 1,540 times stronger than that used by Carrasco. The results in the study are confirming what peasant and indigenous communities – the people most affected by the spraying – have been denouncing for over a decade. The study also has profound consequences for the USA’s anti-narcotics strategy in Colombia, because the planes spray glyphosate, reinforced with additional chemicals, on the coca fields (and the peasants living among them).
Three days after the interview, the Association of Environmental Lawyers filed a petition with the Argentine Supreme Court, calling for a ban on the use and sale of glyphosate until its impact on health and on the environment had been investigated. Five days later the Ministry of Defense banned the planting of soya in its fields. This sparked a strong reaction from the multinational biotechnology companies and their supporters. Fearful that their most famous product, a symbol of the dominant farming model, would be banned, they mounted an unprecedented attack on Carrasco, ridiculing his research and even issuing personal threats. He was accused of inventing his whole investigation, as his results have not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a prestigious scientific journal.
According to an article in the Argentine press, after news about the study broke, Dr. Carrasco was the victim of an act of intimidation, when four men arrived at his laboratory in the Faculty of Medicine and acted extremely aggressively.
Two of the men were said to be members of an agrochemical industry body but refused to give their names. The other two claimed to be a lawyer and notary. They apparently interrogated Dr. Carrasco and demanded to see details of the experiments. They left a card Basílico, Andrada & Santurio, attorneys on behalf of Felipe Alejandro Noël.
Carrasco was firm in his response: “When one is dealing with a subject of limited public interest, one can keep the study secret until all the last details have been resolved. But when one uncovers facts that are important for public health, one has an obligation to make an effort to publish the results urgently and with maximum publicity.” Even so, he was clearly taken aback by the strength of the reaction. “It was a violent, disproportionate, dirty reaction”, he said. “I hadn’t even discovered anything new, only confirmed conclusions that others had reached. One has to remember, too, that the study originated in contacts with communities that have suffered the impact of agro-chemicals. They are the undeniable proof of the impact.” He is not intimidated: “If I know something, I will not shut my mouth.”
Seventy years after The Grapes of Wrath, Chris McGreal recreates John Steinbeck’s famous fictional journey to reveal life in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
Looking back on the past few weeks, Johnnie Levy can see how she was driven to the brink of death and didn’t care.
The sharpest economic downturn of her 63 years stripped Levy of her beloved job as a seamstress and unravelled her world until she found herself sitting in a church hall in the black end of Tulsa waiting to see a nurse with a syringe in one hand and a Bible in the other.
Tulsa has seen its share of poverty and desperation over the years. In the 1930s, it saw a tide of hundreds of thousands struggling west along Route 66 to escape economic collapse in the north and the notorious dustbowl of drought and wind across the Midwest. Whether they had lost their land or their jobs, that flow of desperate humanity – chronicled so devastatingly through the fictional Joad family in John Steinbeck‘s Grapes of Wrath – struggled hard to find enough to feed and clothe their children as they trekked towards an illusory dream of prosperity in distant California.
To travel the old road today – stumbling across crumbling ghost towns and half-abandoned communities, across the sprawling Native American desert reservations, through cities where people work all the hours they aren’t sleeping and still cannot afford to go to the doctor – is to encounter new despair, some of it still recognisable to the Joads.
The banks are once again evicting. Foreclosures plague the parts of northern Arizona and New Mexico traversed by the evicted 70 years ago.
But the monster – as Steinbeck described the financial system – has spawned modern beasts unknown to the Joads, such as the vast multinationals discarding American workers in favour of cheaper labour in Mexico and the health insurance companies that cut off the medical lifelines to the gravely ill.
U.S. banks face a tsunami of home foreclosures soon, says David Karsbol, chief economist at Saxo Bank.
Homeowners may be faced with no choice and will just stop paying their mortgages, he warns.
“I believe we are about to see a tsunami of foreclosures in the U.S. A lot of homes have been held back because if the banks are foreclosing on them they will have to do a writedown on the mortgages they have on their balance (sheets),” Karsbol told CNBC.
“That’s why they have been reluctant to do so.”
Soon homeowners may be looking around their neighborhoods and realizing that their neighbors have opted to stop paying their mortgages and are living scot free, he said.
“The fact that many homeowners are allowed to stay in their houses without paying on their mortgages begs the question: Why should you pay on your mortgage when your neighbor doesn’t?” Karsbol said.
Rising unemployment in the United States is the main cause behind foreclosures, economists and bankers told the Washington Post. Subprime mortgages are becoming less of a culprit.
“It’s a much harder nut to crack, unemployment,” says Mark A. Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute.
“It’s much easier to bash lenders than to create jobs.”
In 2009, the first three months reported the largest share of foreclosures moved to prime loans from subprime loans, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
“Rising unemployment, for the sake of this downturn, has magnified things considerably,” notes John Snyder, manager of foreclosure programs for NeighborWorks, a large housing counseling group.
Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power.
Aug 25, 2009
By Lauren Schenkman
Inside Science News Service
WASHINGTON — A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system’s vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.
A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the “backbone” of each country’s financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country’s market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.
“You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense,” Glattfelder said. “From that you’re able to … unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn’t at all important.”
The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston’s analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.
“If you would look at this locally, it’s always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it’s the same guys, [which] is not something you’d expect from the local view.”
Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston’s approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.
“It’s clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. “Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there’s some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there’s a big difference between having an impression and actually having … more explicit numbers to put behind it.”
Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership — owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company — in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market.
The results raise questions of where and when a company could choose to exert this influence, but Glattfelder and Battiston are reluctant to speculate.
“In this kind of science, complex systems, you’re not aiming at making predictions [like] … where the tennis ball will be at given place in given time,” Battiston said. “What you’re trying to estimate is … the potential influence that [an investor] has.”
Glattfelder added that the internationalism of these powerful companies makes it difficult to gauge their economic influence. “[With] new company structures which are so big and spanning the globe, it’s hard to see what they’re up to and what they’re doing,” he said. Large, sparse networks dominated by a few major companies could also be more vulnerable, he said. “In network speak, if those nodes fail, that has a big effect on the network.”
The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review E.
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