I N S I G H T A Human Being Should be able to Change a Diaper contributing editor to   - Tribble

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance Accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

 --- Robert Heinlein
 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** ooops - FBI Admits Mistakes in Security Wiretaps http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050930/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_wiretap_errors contributing editor to   - Bob

["They have recorded the information, but they're saying, 'Trust us, we won't listen to what we recorded,"  TRUST US, not in this life.  --  Tribble]

By Mark Sherman, Associated Press WriterFri Sep 30, 7:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The FBI says it sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations, an admission critics say underscores a need to revise wiretap provisions in the Patriot Act.

The FBI would not say how often these mistakes happen. And, though any incriminating evidence mistakenly collected is not legally admissible in a criminal case, there is no way of knowing whether it is used to begin an investigation.

Parts of the Patriot Act, including a section on "roving wiretaps," expire in December. Such wiretaps allow the FBI to get permission from a secret federal court to listen in on any phone line or monitor any Internet account that a terrorism suspect may be using, whether or not others who are not suspects also regularly use it.

The bureau's acknowledgment that it makes mistakes in some wiretaps ,  although not specifically roving wiretaps ,  came in a recent Justice Department inspector general's report on the FBI's backlog of intercepted but unreviewed foreign-language conversations.

The 38,514 untranslated hours included an undetermined number from what the FBI called "collections of materials from the wrong sources due to technical problems."

Spokesman Ed Cogswell said that language describes instances in which the tap was placed on a telephone number other than the one authorized by a court.

"That's mainly an instance in which the telephone company hooked us up to the wrong number or a clerical error here gives us the wrong number," Cogswell said.

He had no estimate of how often that happens, but said that when it does the FBI is required to inform the secret court that approved the intercept.

The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.

Privacy activists said the FBI's explanation of the mistaken wiretaps was unacceptably vague, and that in an era of cell phones and computers it is easier than ever for the government to access communications from innocent third parties.

"What do you mean you are intercepting the wrong subject? How often does it occur? How long does it go on for?" said James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said technological advances have made it harder, not easier, to "conduct wiretapping in a surgical way" because digital communications often carry many conversations. "It's not like the old days when there was one dedicated line between me and you," Sobel said.

The FBI has acknowledged errors in the past. An FBI memo from 2000, made public two years later, described similar problems in the use of warrants issued by a court that operates in secret under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In 2002, an FBI official said the bureau averaged 10 mistakes a year in such cases.

These warrants are among the most powerful tools in the U.S. anti-terrorism arsenal, permitting secret searches and wiretaps for up to one year without ever notifying the target of the investigation.

The court approved 1,754 such warrants in 2004.

The Patriot Act, passed 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, gave the government sweeping powers in terrorism investigations, including allowing the use of roving wiretaps. The authority also applies to espionage and other foreign intelligence cases.

The FBI is not supposed to use material it collects either by mistake or from people who happen to use phones that are tapped legitimately, but that requirement doesn't satisfy some lawmakers.

"They have recorded the information, but they're saying, 'Trust us, we won't listen to what we recorded,'" said Rep. Bobby Scott (news, bio, voting record), D-Va. "People ought to be concerned."

Versions of the Patriot Act renewal that passed the House and Senate during the summer both contain the roving wiretap. It would expire in 10 years under the House-passed bill and four years in the Senate version. Congressional negotiators are expected to hammer out final details of the legislation starting in late October.

The Justice Department fought congressional efforts to require investigators to determine that the target of surveillance actually was using the tapped phone or computer before they listened in. Some lawmakers said such a requirement would reduce the chance that other conversations would be intercepted.

Administration officials argued that safeguards in the law already require the government to discard those conversations. "Such a restriction would make it harder to use multipoint wiretaps in terrorism and espionage investigations than in drug trafficking and other ordinary criminal investigations," assistant Attorney General William Moschella wrote Scott.

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Teens Fall Sick After Getting Meningitis Shot http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9546850/ contributing editor to   - Jeanne

Doctors don't know yet if cases are related to new vaccine, FDA reports

WASHINGTON - The government is investigating five reports of teenagers who came down with a serious neurological disorder after receiving a new vaccine against meningitis.

Doctors don’t yet know whether the cases of Guillain Barre syndrome are related to the shot, called Menactra, or are coincidence, the Food and Drug Administration emphasized Friday.

The government recommends the vaccine for adolescents and college freshmen living in dormitories, and FDA said there was no reason to change that advice ,  but it alerted the public as a precaution.
Story continues below ? advertisement

Menactra protects against rare but devastating cases of bacterial meningitis. The shot is particularly targeted to college students, because close contact is the biggest risk factor for its spread. While there are fewer than 3,000 cases of invasive meningococcal meningitis each year, and 300 deaths, people ages 15 to 24 have the highest mortality rates, and survivors can suffer mental disabilities, hearing loss and paralysis.

Menactra is a new vaccine approved last January; an older meningitis vaccine is available, too, but doesn’t provide as much protection.

Guillain Barre syndrome, or GBS, causes increasing weakness in the legs and arms, sometimes severe enough to cause paralysis. It can strike suddenly, either spontaneously or after certain infections.

The five cases reported two to four weeks after Menactra vaccination occurred in 17- or 18-year-olds in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, FDA said. All are reported to be recovering.

Studies of more than 7,000 Menactra recipients by manufacturer Sanofi-Pasteur showed no GBS cases, and more than 2.5 million doses have been administered since it hit the market, FDA said. The rate of GBS is similar to what is expected without vaccination, but the timing of the cases is of concern and warrants further investigations, FDA said.  
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Native-American Speaker Touts 2nd Amendment Rights http://athensnews.com/issue/article.php3?story_id=21703 contributing editor to   - Bob

By Angela Rito, Athens NEWS Campus Reporter, 2005-09-29

A Native-American professor from Oklahoma defended the Second Amendment in a speech at Ohio University's Bentley Hall on Tuesday night.

"Owning a weapon is a precious freedom," declared David Yeagley, a member of the Comanche Nation.

Yeagley's speech, entitled "He Who Takes My Weapon Is My Enemy: An American Indian View of the Second Amendment," was sponsored by the OU Second Amendment Club and Young America's Foundation.

Yeagley is a columnist for the Internet magazine Front Line, in which he advocates conservative ideas from a Native-American viewpoint. The liberal arts professor holds degrees from Oberlin, Yale, Emory, the University of Hartford and the University of Arizona and currently teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

The professor talked about the importance of owning a weapon in Native-American society, citing his recent visit with an American Indian friend on the reservation who had killed the deer that he and his family ate for dinner that night. "A gun is like a part of clothing for Indians today," Yeagley said.

Yeagley spoke of his Native-American heritage, citing the Comanche Indians as having once been considered the largest hunting empire in America. "They were not known for peace or tranquility," he acknowledged. However, Yeagley said that the Comanches were not a warlike nation that actively took over other territories; they merely intimidated other Indian nations in order to keep them off of their lands.

"Land and resources are valuable assets," said Yeagley. "If you have them, someone will want to take them."

The professor questioned why someone would want to take away another person's gun. "Do they want to prevent you from protecting what you have?" he asked.

Yeagley cited some statistics from the book "Seven Myths of Gun Control" by Richard Poe in his speech, including research that rejects the "myth" that the right to bear arms increases violent crime and the alleged misconception that guns pose a threat to children. He said that when guns are not being used for hunting animals, they are usually possessed for the sake of protection from criminals. "In most cases of criminal encounter the gun doesn't even have to be used," he said. "Merely brandishing it causes the criminal to flee."

The professor said that the surrender of arms suggests submissiveness to the government, which by definition should be "of the people, for the people and by the people." "Muslims? Mexicans? Egyptians? Who is the enemy on this land this day to protect yourself from?" Yeagley asked. "Could it possibly be the U.S. government?

"In modern history, every nation that has disarmed its people has turned into a tyrannical, oppressive government," Yeagley commented, repeating a common refrain among gun-rights advocates, "from Stalin to Castro and even Hitler."

Yeagley suggested that gun control "infantilizes" citizens. "It's like saying, 'You can't be trusted to take care of yourself. Give me your weapon and I will take care of you instead,'" he said.

The lecturer mentioned several 17th-century laws that actually required the possession of guns in Virginia and Connecticut, one of which even enforced bringing rifles to church. "Have we come full circle or what?" he asked.

Yeagley argued that no human should have such power over another as to take away his or her weapon (though most so-called gun control doesn't involve "taking" guns, but rather registering them or limiting their sale).

"Giving up your gun to someone else on demand is called surrender," Yeagley said. "It means that you have given up your ability to protect yourself to a power that is greater than you."

The professor closed by proclaiming his and other Native Americans' pride in the United States despite the gun-control issue. "America," he said, touching the U.S. flag, "what a great country."

Yeagley has appeared on Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" and has spoken at colleges and churches all over the country.
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Ike Was Right About War Machine http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/30/60minutes/main892398.shtml contributing editor to   - Bob

[For a look at Dwight Eisenhower speaking the quote mentioned in this article click here.  5.6 billion buck per MONTH.  That money comes first from the "income tax" you "volunteered" (since there is no law requiring you to pay an income tax).  Can you imagine this much and how it could better be used?  Let me see, that much could be given to 1 million people and they would get over 5 thousand bucks each month.  That much is above the poverty level.  --  Tribble]

Andy Rooney, Oct. 2, 2005

We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today.

Almost 2,000 Americans have died there. For what?

Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China.

Another way the government is planning to pay for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like Medicare prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments, AMTRAK, National Public Radio and loans to graduate students. Do these sound like the things you'd like to cut back on to pay for Iraq?

I'll tell you where we ought to start saving: on our bloated military establishment.

We're paying for weapons we'll never use.

No other Country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion. Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion.

We have 8,000 tanks for example. One Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford station wagon.

We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons ,  enough to destroy all of mankind.

We're spending $200 million a year on bullets alone. That's a lot of target practice. We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five enlisted soldier what to do. We have 40,000 colonels alone and 870 generals.

We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. …"

Well, Ike was right. That's just what’s happened.
 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** 96bit Technology is Coming to Underwear Near You contributing editor to   - Tribble

[96bit technology is what is coming to underwear near you.  That is the data size of the newest RFID devices which WILL be placed in and on nearly EVERYTHING - including your every pair of your underwear.  Past articles in   have discussed the matter of RFID's.  For reference those past articles are listed at the end of this article.  Each of these past articles has unique reports and links not contained in this article.  Here are some images of some RFID's. 
 

http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3607047&p1=0	http://cbn.com/
http://www.hitachi.com/Apps/hitachicom/home.jsp	http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/030902.html
Gillette razor packaging	RFID in Gillette razor packaging
http://www.matrics.com/products/tags.shtml	http://www.matrics.com/products/tags.shtml

The size of the largest of these RFID devices is about 1/4" in length.  The smallest is about the size of a "period" on a typed page of paper.  The following box has technical data for what these device can do.  One of the most difficult things for people to understand is that literally EVERYTHING made by man and everything in nature can now be tagged with a serial number.  This number is merely a key to a database file that is kept by several companies and the government.  Each shoe (both left and right) that you wear will be tagged with a number and detectable anywhere a "reader" is located.  These readers can be at doorways as you enter the workplace, a store, a government building, anywhere.  These readers can be in vans that go down the street and aim antennas at you or your home or anyplace.

There are people who think this is not happening and will not happen.  As of September 2005, IBM has a commercial on TV of a truck driver being stopped by a woman sitting at a desk in the middle of the highway.  She tells the driver he and his load is going the wrong way.  The driver wonders how she might know that.  The woman says his load knows it.  The load has RFID.  Is that nice?

Several audio interviews with Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director, CASPIAN Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering are available 

For more information, seehttp://www.spychips.comand  http://www.nocards.org
and
http://wireless.itworld.com/4985/040809craigrfid/page_1.html

Now to the fun stuff -- (and by the way, some of the number reported in previous editions of   were in some error)
 

This chart also shows the numbers for what surely will be the next stage in technology - 128bits.

The smaller device, which is about the size of a "period" on a typed page, would take fewer trips, but is still a BIG number.

Admittedly, there are many wonderful things that can and will be done with RFID's.  But if you bet that the technology will be used for nefarious purposes and for controlling the people, that is a bet you will not lose.

http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200507/issue.html#15  Retailing, the High-Tech Way
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200506/issue.html#11  IRS Considers Ditching Dreaded 1040
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200506/issue.html#08  You Bet Your Life, I Trust the Government because I am part of Government
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200505/issue.html#23  Spy vs. Spy
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200505/issue.html#15  Iris Scanning To Begin At Orlando International Airport
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200505/issue.html#10  What Is 'Real ID'?
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200502/issue.html#15  Taxing By The Mile
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200501/issue.html#08  Powerful Update on RFID's
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200412/200412index.html#07  Some Shoppers Find Fewer Happy Returns - Databases Limit 'Excessive' Exchanges
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200411/200411index.html#20  The FAIRTAX: A TROJAN HORSE FOR AMERICA?
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200410/200410index.html#18  Now, track your kid through mobile (and who is tracking you)
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200410/200410index.html#10  'smart' driver's licenses Computer chip's to be read from a distance
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200408/200408index.html#22  Biometric Tech Puts ID at Your Fingertips
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200405/200405index.html#12  Wal-Mart & Gillette lead the way for Big Brother
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200402/200402index.html#11  The Trouble with RFID
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200401/200401index.html#09  RFID
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200312/200312index.html#13  An ATM card under your skin
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/200304/200304index.html#22  CASPIAN Newsletter

  --  Tribble]

I N S I G H T Commerce Department tells National Weather Service Media Contacts must be Pre-approved http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Commerce_Department_tells_Nationa_1004.html contributing editor to   - Craig

by Larisa Alexandrovna

The Department of Commerce has issued a blanket media policy to employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), requiring that all requests for contact from national media be first approved by the Department, RAW STORY has learned.

According to a leaked Sept. 29 email memo sent out to NOAA staff, including employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) -- both of which are under the Department of Commerce -- employees must collect information from reporters and forward it to the Department.

The memo was leaked to RAW STORY last week.
Employees must obtain the following:

-The name of the reporter and their affiliation
-Their deadline and contact phone number
-The name of the individual being requested to give the interview
-The purpose of the interview
-The expertise of the requested interviewee on this subject.

“Prior to this policy change, if a media organization called our office (or any other National Weather Service office) and wanted an interview, we would do our best to accommodate the request as quickly as possible" said one NOAA employee who requested anonymity. "While often such requests are from local media, local offices do get requests from national media if a weather event is big enough to be a national story."

The policy requires that local weather offices forward media requests to the NWS press office, who in turn would forward the request on to the Commerce Department’s public relations office. The Department would then decide whether comment should be granted.

Under this new policy, the Department, rather than the weather agencies, would also determine who would then provide comment.

"There has been no explanation as to why this policy was issued. It does appear the intent of this policy is to restrict the flow of weather information to the national media" said the NOAA employee who also expressed concern over why Commerce is suddenly making blanket policy decisions for the NWS and deciding who can speak to the media.

Confusion over policy

NOAA’s public affairs director and the author of the recent memo say the policy has long been in place. Employees who spoke to RAW STORY, however, said they had never heard of such restrictions being in force before the memo was sent out last week.

NWS Regional Public Affairs Director Jim Teet -- who sent the policy email memo -- said the latest policy is merely a way to coordinate the message.

"I do not set the policies" Teet said. "All I was doing was passing it along. It's a coordination policy to make sure the most qualified people speak to an issue."

NOAA Public Affairs Director Jordan St. John said "the policy has been in existence all along" adding that he rewrote it in June 2004 with "several others" including lawyers and Commerce Department policymakers.

St. John asserts the media policy was simply "updated" and is not a mandatory directive. Rather, he says it is a set of guidelines to ensure that weather service employees report back to him "when they’ve spoken to someone."

He added that Mr. Teet is "new on the job and issued the [directive] just as an email reminder."

While Teet is new to NOAA’s press office, starting in June of this year, he is not new to the PR field, having served as Community Relations Chief and External Relations Chief at Laughlin Air Force Base directly prior to joining NOAA.

Teet provided support in 1999 for spokeswoman Karen Hughes’ defense of then Governor George W. Bush’s National Guard record, claiming that training constituted "active duty."

Some National Weather Service staff expressed surprise when RAW STORY recounted the media policy St. John articulated. Some employees stated that they had never seen the original media policy before, and find the timing of the reminder from Teet to be suspect given the recent political impact of hurricane Katrina.

"I have been worked for NOAA for roughly 15 years" said a NOAA employee speaking of both the Department media policy and the Teet email. " There has never been a blanket policy of needing approval before granting an interview with a national media outlet."

Another NOAA employee, also wishing to remain anonymous, concurred.

"This is a big change in our policy with the media" he said. "This comes all the way down from DOC" he added, indicating that such media decisions were formerly made at the local level.

St. John provided RAW STORY with both the original and his updated 2004 version of the Department's media policy. He said employees were aware of it.

The policy St. John provided differs from Teet's recent email reminder of media restrictions. For example, the emailed policy states that routine contact with national media outlets has to be pre-cleared with the Commerce Department, requiring extensive information about the journalist and media outlet.

The media policy St. John provided does not stipulate such restrictions on interacting with national media. Nor does it state that the Commerce Department must approve media requests.

Instead, the policy focuses on certain types of media interactions, including press conferences, news features and technical papers. These types of media requests simply require that a NOAA/NWS employee notify the NOAA Public Affairs office either prior to or after the media interaction.

Weather Service employees of NWS wonder why they were never told of the original policy. More importantly to some employees, they wonder why Commerce has to approve weather media requests.

The email memo follows.

From "Jim Teet" XXXXX@noaa.gov
Date Thu, 29 Sep 2005 12:04:34 -0600
To _NWS WR WFO MICs wr.wfo.mics@noaa.gov, _NWS WR WCMs wr.wcms@noaa.gov
Subject DOC Interview Policy

Good Day All:

I have been informed that any request for an interview with a national media outlet/reporter must now receive prior approval by DOC. Please ensure everyone on your staff is aware of this requirement.

Any request for an interview requires the following information to be forwarded to me immediately, so this process may begin:

The name of the reporter and their affiliation; Their deadline and contact phone number; Name of individual being requested for the interview and purpose of the interview; Additional background about the interview subject, and expertise of requested interviewee on this subject.

The request will be forwarded through NWS/NOAA to DOC; however, the individual to be interviewed ultimately will be determined by DOC.

If any requests for an update concerning the interview are received from the media, refer the individual to me for a response via my cell phone: (XXX) XXX-3516.
Thanks, Jim Teet   

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe Want to check your e-mail in Italy? Bring your passport. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1004/p07s01-woeu.html contributing editor to   - Alan

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT House arrest for terror suspects http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story111.htm contributing editor to   - Rodger

Suspected terrorists as young as 16 will face house arrest for up to a year without being convicted of an offence under sweeping laws agreed to by all Australian governments.

Police will also be able to pre-emptively detain people for up to 14 days, without charge, if they suspect they are planning a terrorist offence.

State premiers and chief met the Prime Minister yesterday and accepted the harsh new laws, which Queensland's Peter Beattie called draconian but necessary.

Suspects placed under house arrest would have no warning of the action until issued orders by federal police. The court orders would be issued in secret so any terrorist associates could not be tipped off about the investigation.

The premiers and chief ministers forced a sunset clause for the legislation on the Prime Minister, John Howard. This means the laws will last only 10 years unless extended by future parliaments. The premiers also won a five-year judicial review of the laws.

Meeting Mr Howard in Canberra yesterday, the political leaders were reassured by the judicial checks and balances, although they left lawyers aghast.

Mr Howard needed the states to agree because the Federal Government does not have the constitutional power on its own to bring in some of the changes.

At the heart of the legislative changes are the tough preventive detention rules and "control orders" - restrictions such as house arrest, electronic tagging and tracking, and bans on approaching certain areas or people.

A court will be able to issue a control order if it is satisfied "on the balance of probabilities" that it will substantially help in preventing a terrorist attack, or if the suspect has trained with a listed terrorist organisation. Suspects detained will be allowed to contact a lawyer. However, they will be allowed to tell only family members and their employer that they are safe but cannot be contacted. Preventive detention may also be imposed after a terrorist attack to preserve evidence.

Safeguards such as having a court approve the control orders and allowing suspects to challenge them will be built in.

Mr Howard said "these are unusual remedies for an unusual situation" to fight "this shadowy, elusive and lethal enemy".

"In other circumstances I would never have sought these new powers," he said. "But we live in very dangerous and different and threatening circumstances … I think all of these powers are needed."

The new powers will be introduced to the various parliaments over the next few months. Draft bills will be made available to the states in two to three weeks.

The NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, said: "Our overriding responsibility is to protect our citizens, to better secure our citizens, and that's what today's outcome will do."

The ACT's Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, was persuaded by briefings by ASIO, the Office of National Assessments and federal police that his concerns about the effects on liberty and the rule of law were unfounded.

Under the agreement each state will review the extent of its coverage of public transport with closed-circuit cameras. That information will be shared with other states. A $20 million search facility, attached to the Australian Federal Police, will investigate ways to counter chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorist strikes.

On control orders, Mr Howard said: "We're not going to put limits on that. It could [be house arrest] but it would have to be a very serious situation."

An Islamic community leader, Keysar Trad, said: "It's just going to cause greater antagonism among Muslims and ironically could be used to justify a terror act."

The president of the NSW Bar Association, Ian Harrison, SC, said: "These provisions have the potential to subvert entirely the conventional protections and established civil rights that our system of justice has put in place over the last 200 years."

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT The Flu: 1918 and Now http://educate-yourself.org/cn/flu1918andnow07feb04.shtml contributing editor to   - Rodger

Sent by Inge Hanle <hanle@uniserve.com>, Feb. 7, 2004

Forward from Inge Hanle <hanle@uniserve.com>: FEBRUARY 7, 2004. You may have noticed that researchers are now saying they have analyzed the virus that caused the 1918 global pandemic of flu. They are linking it to a bird virus, which stirs the pot on the current flap about avian flu in Asia. The PR goes this way: If this current bird virus mutates just a little bit in the wrong direction, we could see a replay of the 1918 disaster.

Here is another analysis, written about 25 years ago by Eleanor McBean. This excerpt, from chapter two of her book, Vaccination Condemned, makes a quite different observation:
 

Chap. 2: Vaccination Condemned
by Eleanor McBean

I WAS AN ON-THE-SPOT OBSERVER OF THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC
All the doctors and people who were living at the time of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic say it was the most terrible disease the world has ever had. Strong men, hale and hearty, one day would be dead the next. The disease had the characteristics of the black death added to typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox, paralysis and all the diseases the people had been vaccinated with immediately following World War 1. Practically the entire population had been injected "seeded" with a dozen or more diseases ,  or toxic serums. When all those doctor-made diseases started breaking out all at once it was tragic.

That pandemic dragged on for two years, kept alive with the addition of more poison drugs administered by the doctors who tried to suppress the symptoms. As far as I could find out, the flu hit only the vaccinated. Those who had refused the shots escaped the flu. My family had refused all the vaccinations so we remained well all the time. We knew from the health teachings of Graham, Trail, Tilden and others, that people cannot contaminate the body with poisons without causing disease.

When the flu was at its peak, all the stores were closed as well as the schools, businesses ,  even the hospital, as the doctors and nurses had been vaccinated too and were down with the flu. No one was on the streets. It was like a ghost town. We [who didn't taken any vaccines] seemed to be the only family which didn't get the flu; so my parents went from house to house doing what they could to look after the sick, as it was impossible to get a doctor then. If it were possible for germs, bacteria, virus, or bacilli to cause disease, they had plenty of opportunity to attack my parents when they were spending many hours a day in the sick rooms. But they didn't get the flu and they didn't bring any germs home to attack us children and cause anything. None of our family had the flu ,  not even a sniffle,  and it was in the winter with deep snow on the ground.

It has been said that the 1918 flu epidemic killed 20,000,000 people throughout the world. But, actually, the doctors killed them with their crude and deadly treatments and drugs. This is a harsh accusation but it is nevertheless true, judging by the success of the drugless doctors in comparison with that of the medical doctors.

While the medical men and medical hospitals were losing 33% of their flu cases, the non-medical hospitals such as BATTLE CREEK, KELLOGG and MACFADDEN'S HEALTH-RESTORIUM were getting almost 100% healings with their water cure, baths, enemas, etc., fasting and certain other simple healing methods, followed by carefully worked out diets of natural foods. One health doctor didn't lose a patient in eight years. The very successful health treatment of one of those drugless doctors who didn't lose any patients will be given in the other part of this book, titled VACCINATION CONDEMNED, to be published a little later.

If the medical doctors had been as advanced as the drugless doctors, there would not have been those 20 million deaths from the medical flu treatment.

There was seven times more disease among the vaccinated soldiers than among the unvaccinated civilians, and the diseases were those they had been vaccinated against. One soldier who had returned from overseas in 1912 told me that the army hospitals were filled with cases of infantile paralysis and he wondered why grown men should have an infant disease. Now, we know that paralysis is a common after-effect of vaccine poisoning. Those at home didn't get the paralysis until after the world-wide vaccination campaign in 1918.

End of excerpt
 

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT To What Extent Will Police Go? http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16837288%255E29277,00.html

[I know how it sounds.  You read this story and think it is meaningless and everyone makes mistakes or gets over zealous.  But, with cops ever increasingly looking for pretext to stop people, "in the name of drugs" or "in the name of terrorism" - and it is the cops who terrorize, it is not at all difficult to imagine how or why this happened.  --  Tribble]

Woman fined for 'walking slowly'
By Jade Bilowol, October 06, 2005

An 83-year-old Queensland woman with a walking stick was fined for "crossing the road too slowly", her friend said today.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** God told Me to Invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian Ministers http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml contributing editor to   - Rodger

President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq &hellip;" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

The series charts the attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from President Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999/2000 to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last August.

Norma Percy, series producer of The 50 Years War (1998) returns, with producers Mark Anderson and Dan Edge, to tell the inside story of another seven years of crisis.

Presidents and Prime Ministers, their generals and ministers tell what happened behind closed doors as peace talks failed and the intifada exploded.
   

D O    N O T drink the Kool-Aid* The Viruses Are Coming! The Viruses Are Coming! http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7487.shtml contributing editor to   - Rodger

Perhaps it's coincidence, but the Bush administration seems increasingly to see the military as a solution to domestic problems.

The administration is bandying about the idea of taking disaster relief out of the Department of Homeland Security and giving it to the Pentagon. This is getting rather far afield from the military's overriding mission -- winning wars.

Even further afield is what President Bush this week asked Congress to give him: The power to order the military to enforce quarantines in areas of the country infected with lethal disease. Implicit in the request is that the military could use force if necessary.

The worry is that avian flu, which still has killed only about 60 worldwide, might mutate into a killer flu and become a pandemic on the order of the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed perhaps 25 million to 50 million people. The threat so far is only speculative but one that scientists, public health officials and, to its credit, the Bush administration are taking seriously.

The United States is coordinating meetings among the major nations aimed at detecting, monitoring and preventing a lethal outbreak. Vaccines have been developed, but it is a laborious process and one still far from anything like mass inoculations.

One doomsday scenario under consideration is mass quarantines. At his Rose Garden press conference, Bush said, "It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move. So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."

With two wars on their hands and problems with recruitment and worn-out equipment, the Army and Marines do not need the distraction of planning and training for mass quarantines. If _ and let us hope it is a remote and improbable "if" _ the nation must use armed force to prevent Americans from traveling freely because of a public health crisis, the job properly belongs to law enforcement, the National Guard and, yes, FEMA.

In a country as developed and mobile as the United States, quarantines are unlikely to work except in isolated areas and in limited circumstances _ that is, where there is general and voluntary agreement among the people themselves not to go in or out of an infected area.

If we can't keep illegal immigrants from freely flocking across the border with Mexico, the 82nd Airborne isn't going to be able to stop people from going in and out of, say, Illinois. The solution to the menace posed by bird flu is in a laboratory, and not at a military roadblock.
 

D O    N O T drink the Kool-Aid* Pretext for more Martial Law: Bird Flu http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/100605Chin/100605chin.html contributing editor to   - Rodger

[How many angles are needed to find one that will be palatable enough that the people will willingly accept martial rule/law.  Since when do we need the military to do ANYTHING about a flu?  WHAT can the military do?  Can they make you take a shot that is not proved to do any good for flu?  Can they collect those who refuse to get a poisonous shot?  What is most important is that once under martial law, all the rules are out the window.  Martial law can be instituted on ANY pretense but implemented they can do most anything without explanation.  The previous article here in entitled "The Viruses Are Coming! The Viruses Are Coming!" is yet another hint at what the powers-that-be are thinking.  --  Tribble]

by Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

October 6, 2005, George W. Bush and his administration announced yesterday that they intend to dispatch federal troops to enforce quarantines in the event of an alleged bird flu outbreak, raising immediate prospect that in the not-distant future, soldiers will cordon off American communities suspected of flu outbreaks.

This followed a closed-door session in which the US Congress was propagandized about a bird flu pandemic scenario by the Bush administration's Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt. This session "scared the hell" out of Senator Harry Reid, and other congressional leaders, who are not only poised to grant Bush authority to call in troops when he chooses, but are in the process of introducing a new bill calling for the creation of a "flu pandemic coordinator" within the White House, placing yet more power directly into the hands of Bush and future presidents.

In response, Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, blasted Bush's "extraordinarily Draconian measure," and said it plainly:

"The translation of this is martial law in the United States."

The United States has been under martial law since the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11. Having sown fear throughout the world, further crippling the minds of (already deluded) masses, the administration has responded to calls to be "made safe" from "terrorists" with the blueprint for martial law and a full US police state, the USA PATRIOT Act, and increasing militarization and worldwide war and terrorism.

If the unprecedented federal militarization of New Orleans and the Gulf states did not provided ample enough grotesque proof that the Bush administration intends to seize every opportunity to impose a police state under any pretext, natural and real, as well as manufactured, the writing on the wall is now nightmarishly clear.

A mushrooming energy crisis has arrived. Bush's war-for-oil operations are failing. The US economy is on the brink of tipping over.

The Bush administration must now reach even deeper, more often, into its criminal trick bag, for new pretexts and justifications for its deepening criminal actions and "extraordinary Draconian measures." More fake "terrorism." More force (in response to resistance and opposition). More Supreme Court appointments ready to erase what is left of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

More manufactured pandemics. More militarization, more guns, coming to a neighborhood near you.

This administration, and the compliant and complicit US Congress that bows to its every lie and whim, knows that the coming post-Peak oil world will necessitate a police state, in order to preserve the hides, and loot, of its own elites. 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y The Police State Is Closer Than You Think http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts127.html contributing editor to   - Rodger

by Paul Craig Roberts

Police states are easier to acquire than Americans appreciate.

The hysterical aftermath of September 11 has put into place the main components of a police state.

Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.

These new "seize and hold" powers strip the accused of the protective aspects of law and give rein to selectivity and arbitrariness. No warrant is required for arrest, no charges have to be presented before a judge, and no case has to be put before a jury. As the police are unaccountable, whoever is selected for arrest is at the mercy of arbitrariness.

The judiciary has to some extent defended habeas corpus against Bush's attack, but the protection that the principle offers against arbitrary seizure and detention has been breached. Whether courts can fully restore habeas corpus or whether it continues in weakened form or passes by the wayside remains to be determined.

Americans may be unaware of what it means to be stripped of the protection of habeas corpus, or they may think police authorities would never make a mistake or ever use their unbridled power against the innocent. Americans might think that the police state will only use its powers against terrorists or "enemy combatants."

But "terrorist" is an elastic and legally undefined category. When the President of the United States declares: "You are with us or against us," the police may perceive a terrorist in a dissenter from the government's policies. Political opponents may be regarded as "against us" and thereby fall in the suspect category. Or a police officer may simply have his eye on another man's attractive wife or wish to settle some old score. An enemy combatant might simply be an American who happens to be in a foreign country when the US invades. In times before our own when people were properly educated, they understood the injustices that caused the English Parliament to pass the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 prohibiting the arbitrary powers that are now being claimed for the executive branch in the US.

The PATRIOT Act has given the police autonomous surveillance powers. These powers were not achieved without opposition. Civil libertarians opposed it. Bob Barr, the former US Representative who led the impeachment of President Clinton, fought to limit some of the worst features of the act. But the act still bristles with unconstitutional violations of the rights of citizens, and the newly created powers of government to spy on citizens has brought an end to privacy.

The prohibition against self-incrimination protects the accused from being tortured into confession. The innocent are no more immune to pain than the guilty. As Stalin's show trials demonstrated, even the most committed leaders of the Bolshevik revolution could be tortured into confessing to be counterrevolutionaries.

The prohibition against torture has been breached by the practice of plea bargaining, which replaces jury trials with negotiated self-incrimination, and by sentencing guidelines, which transfer sentencing discretion from judge to prosecutor. Plea bargaining is a form of psychological torture in which innocent and guilty alike give up their right to jury trial in order to reduce the number and severity of the charges that the prosecutor brings.

The prohibition against physical torture, however, held until the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. As video, photographic, and testimonial evidence make clear, the US military has been torturing large numbers of people in its Iraq prisons and in its prison compound at Guantanamo, Cuba. Most of the detainees were people picked up in the equivalent of KGB Stalin-era street sweeps. Having no idea who the detainees are and pressured to produce results, torture was applied to coerce confessions.

Everyone is disturbed about this barbaric and illegal practice except the Bush administration. In an amendment to a $440 billion defense budget bill last Wednesday, the US Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in US government custody. President Bush responded to the Senate's will by repeating his earlier threat to veto the bill. Allow me to torture, demands Bush of the Senate, or you will be guilty of delaying the military's budget during wartime. Bush is threatening the Senate with blame for the deaths of US soldiers who will die because they don't get their body armor or humvee armor in time.

It will be a short step from torturing detainees abroad to torturing the accused in US jails and prisons.

The attorney-client privilege, another great achievement, has been breached by the Lynne Stewart case. As the attorney for a terrorist, Stewart represented her client in ways disapproved by prosecutors. Stewart was indicted, tried, and convicted of providing material support to terrorists.

Stewart's indictment sends a message to attorneys not to represent too dutifully or aggressively clients who are unpopular or demonized. Initially, this category may be limited to terrorists. However, once the attorney-client privilege is breached, any attorney who gets too much in the way of a prosecutor's case may experience retribution. The intimidation factor can result in an attorney presenting a weak defense. It can even result in attorneys doing as the Benthamite US Department of Justice (sic) desires and helping to convict their client.

In the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a shield of the accused. This is necessary in order to protect the innocent. The accused is innocent until he is proven guilty in an open court. There are no secret tribunals, no torture, and no show trials.

Outside the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a weapon of the state. It may be used with careful restraint, as in Europe today, or it may be used to destroy opponents or rivals as in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

When the protective features of the law are removed, law becomes a weapon. Habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege, no crime without intent, and prohibitions against torture and ex post facto laws are the protective features that shield the accused. These protective features are being removed by zealotry in the "war against terrorism."

The damage terrorists can inflict pales in comparison to the loss of the civil liberties that protect us from the arbitrary power of law used as a weapon. The loss of law as Blackstone's shield of the innocent would be catastrophic. It would mean the end of America as a land of liberty.

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** The Israeli Spy Ring http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html contributing editor to   - Rodger

[But Israel is God's chosen people so we have to give them whatever they want.  If they want to spy on us and steal our top secret information and then sell it to Russia, why should we care?  Isn't Russia our buddies now also?  We should continue to give Israel 3 thousand million dollars a year while they control what we see in movies, control what we hear on the news media outlets, buy off and blackmail most, if not all this country's leaders, and flood our country with porn.  While they systematically destroy this country we should just pray for their safety and pray for those in authority.

I think the medication is working.  What do you think?  --  Rodger]

[Are you still wondering where the "income tax" you VOLUNTEER is going? "

Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.
 

What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when. Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America. Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well. Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers.

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government... It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now." -- Senator Graham as quoted in Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists

Let us be clear here. There is nothing benign about Israel spying on the United States. When Jonathan Pollard stole our nuclear secrets (which your taxes paid to develop) and sent them to Israel, Israel did not hesitate to trade those secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas.

The implication of these facts is that the billions of our tax dollars sent to Israel (while women and children sleep in America's alleys and eat out of trash bins) have bought and paid for a monstrous phone tracking and phone tapping system that can eavesdrop on almost any phone call in America. Even the White House phones were open to such tapping by listening in on the other end outside the White House itself.

This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself!

So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America.

That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.
 

"Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide." -- Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale

Since then, any and all mention of the Israeli spy ring and phone tapping scandal has resulted in a barrage of shrill screams of "hate" and "anti-Semite", two well worn and frankly over used devices to try to silence discussion on any topic unfavorable to the nation which owns the spy ring in question.  The story of the uncovering of the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States should be the story of the century, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That this spy ring helped drug smugglers evade investigators should be a major scandal, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That the spy ring includes companies able to track and tap into any phone in America, including the White House, should be a cause celebre', if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people.

But they are not. The media is trying to bury this story. They are spiking it, erasing it from their web sites in a chilling real-life Orwellian rewriting of history. The actions of the US media are those of people trying to protect this spy ring and those that the spy ring worked for.

"While I agree with you, if I say anything about US geopolitical interests with Israel, I might as well clean off my desk." -- Unnamed reporter as quoted in American Media Censorship and Israel

The actions of the US media are those of traitors to the American people.
 

-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.

Both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys were implicated in the sale of telephone data which compromised US investigations into drug running, and Comverse Infosys phone taps are suspected of being the means by which Bill Clinton's phone sex sessions were recorded, as reported in the Ken Starr Report. Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Towers, is the company which received a two hour advance warning of the attacks of 9-11.

Now, in a chilling real life version of the plotline from "The Net", it turns out that the majority of the firewalls on US corporate and government computer systems are provided by just one company, Checkpoint Systems, which like Amdocs, Comverse Infosys, and Odigo, is headquartered in Israel. 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Who Isn't against Torture? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101005Q.shtml contributing editor to   - Rodger

["Let's be clear: Mr. Bush is proposing to use the first veto of his presidency on a defense bill needed to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan so that he can preserve the prerogative to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In effect, he threatens to declare to the world his administration's moral bankruptcy." - Washington Post

Also, remember who the "Born again Christian who seeks God's face" and who is all for torture George W. Bush, believes the terrorist are. It's us. You and me and our families. According to the Patriot Act you and I are the terrorist. This is who he wants to preserve torture for.  --   Rodger]

By Bob Herbert , The New York Times,  Monday 10 October 2005

    Some people get it. Some don't.

    Senator John McCain, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq, has sponsored a legislative amendment that would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners in the custody of the US military. Last week the Senate approved the amendment by the overwhelming vote of 90 to 9.

    This was not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans, or left against right. Joining Senator McCain in his push for clear and unequivocal language banning the abusive treatment of prisoners were Senator John Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer who is also a Republican and an influential member of the committee. Both are hawks on the war.

    Also lining up in support were more than two dozen retired senior military officers, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili.

    So who would you expect to remain out of step with this important march toward sanity, the rule of law and the continuation of a longstanding American commitment to humane values?

    Did you say President Bush? Well, that would be correct.

    The president, who has trouble getting anything right, is trying to block this effort to outlaw the abusive treatment of prisoners.

    Senator McCain's proposal is an amendment to the huge defense authorization bill. The White House has sent out signals that Mr. Bush might veto the entire bill if that's what it takes to defeat the amendment.

    The Washington Post summed the matter up in an editorial that said:

    "Let's be clear: Mr. Bush is proposing to use the first veto of his presidency on a defense bill needed to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan so that he can preserve the prerogative to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In effect, he threatens to declare to the world his administration's moral bankruptcy."

    Last Wednesday, Senator McCain rose on the Senate floor and said:

    "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states simply that 'No one shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.' The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the US is a signatory, states the same. The binding Convention Against Torture, negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the Senate, prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

    "On last year's [Department of Defense] authorization bill, the Senate passed a bipartisan amendment reaffirming that no detainee in US custody can be subject to torture or cruel treatment, as the US has long defined those terms. All of this seems to be common sense, in accordance with longstanding American values.

    "But since last year's [defense] bill, a strange legal determination was made that the prohibition in the Convention Against Torture against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not legally apply to foreigners held outside the US They can, apparently, be treated inhumanely. This is the [Bush] administration's position, even though Judge Abe Sofaer, who negotiated the Convention Against Torture for President Reagan, said in a recent letter that the Reagan administration never intended the prohibition against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment to apply only on US soil."

    The McCain amendment would end the confusion and the perverse hunt for loopholes in the laws that could somehow be interpreted as allowing the sadistic treatment of human beings in US custody.

    Senator McCain met last week with Capt. Ian Fishback, a West Point graduate who was one of three former members of the 82nd Airborne Division to come forward with allegations, first publicly disclosed in a report by Human Rights Watch, that members of their battalion had routinely beaten and otherwise abused prisoners in Iraq. In a letter that he sent to the senator before the meeting, Captain Fishback wrote:

    "Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as al-Qaida's, we should not be concerned. When did al-Qaida become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."

    Senator McCain and Captain Fishback get it. Some people still don't.
 

I N S I G H T Radio Ham Arrested for Discussing Terrorism http://www.dailymail.co.uk contributing editor to   - Viv

[Why was this innocent radio ham locked up by police simply for discussing Islamic terrorism?

As published 05/28/05

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT The Tax Axe http://www.dailymail.co.uk contributing editor to   - Viv

I N S I G H T Lawsuit Demands Indiana School Excuse Student's Absence for Religious Event http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/8/242005c.asp contributing editor to   - Jeanne

By Jim Brown
August 24, 2005

(AgapePress) - The United States Justice Department is participating in a lawsuit to compel an Indiana school district to accommodate the religious beliefs of one of its Christian students. The Justice Department has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the youngster, who is suing for the right to be excused from school for the purpose of attending an annual religious festival.

Ruth Scheidt and her son are members of the United Church of God, a denomination formed in 1995 after its members split with the late Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God. The United Church of God does not celebrate Christmas or Easter but observes a weeklong event called the Feast of Tabernacles.

But when Scheidt's son missed five days of class at Lowell (Indiana) Middle School to attend last year's celebration, Tri-Creek school officials refused to excuse the absences. That is because, under the policies of the Tri-Creek School Corporation School District, only illness, death of an immediate family member, and certain court appearances are considered excused absences.

United Church of God attorney Larry Darden notes that in a similar case more than 20 years ago, a student sued the Amarillo School District in Texas and won. "The schools have a duty to accommodate the religious beliefs of the children," he says, "unless [school officials] can show an undue hardship, which in this case they can't, of course."

In the case of the Tri-Creek district, the school officials impose "no limit on the number of excused absences, for example, for being ill," Darden says, "but for some reason they want to limit excused absences for religious purposes." At present, the school district's policy permits only a one-day absence for religious observances, a rule that the church's legal representative believes constitutes an infringement on the student-plaintiff's right to worship.

"I don't see it as religious bigotry," the Church of God lawyer says. "I see it as a bureaucratic mentality, where they've got a rule, and they're going to follow it no matter what -- without due regard, I think, to the religious beliefs of their students."

Darden finds the U.S. Justice Department's involvement in the Scheidt lawsuit encouraging. The attorney says he is hopeful settlement negotiations will resolve the case before a September 9 hearing.
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Hate Bill Will Pass Senate Judiciary!! http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/billwillpassjudiciary.html contributing editor to   - Dan

[A crime is a crime is a crime.  There is only ONE reason to define and redefine any crime as "hate" is to acquire more power to the gubment.  Doing it this way gives it a look of legitimacy.  This can simply be said as - There is NO reason to have these so called "hate crimes" legislation.  --  Tribble]

Fight in Senate is Our Only Hope for Survival of Free Speech
By Rev. Ted Pike

Senate Judiciary members who support the federal "anti-hate bill" S.1145 outnumber opponents by at least 12 to 10. Two Republicans, Senator Arlen Specter (R., Pennsylvania) and Mike DeWine (R., Ohio), have declared their support for the bill.

Unless there is a miracle of Divine intervention or a senatorial change of mind, S.1145 will soon be on the floor of the Senate, voted upon by a Senate overwhelmingly inclined to pass it quickly. Such passage already occurred on June 15, 2004, with a vote of 65 to 33, although it was later overturned in conference.

It is imperative that all who love freedom call each of the 55 Republican members of the Senate toll free at 1-888-355-3588 or toll at 1-202-225-3121.

The list of Senate Republicans is posted on the home page of www.truthtellers.org. Download this list and call, stating this simple message: "I want to express my disapproval of the hate bill S.1145." Don't hang up but ask to be transferred to the next Senator and so on until you have left your message with all 55. The receptionist will either transfer you directly or send you back to the capitol operator. Calling these 55 will take about 20 minutes.

At www.truthtellers.org you will find several of my articles debunking the hate bill: "Don't Be Hoodwinked by &lsquo;Anti-Hate' Bill S.1145" and "New Federal &lsquo;Hate' Bill Means Funeral of Free Speech." Email or fax one or both of these articles to all 55 Republican members of the Senate. To visit each senator's website, click on their names and paste one or both of these articles into their online email form.

NOW IS THE DECISIVE MOMENT TO SAVE FREE SPEECH.
NEXT WEEK MAY BE TOO LATE!

TALK SHOW HOSTS: Rev. Ted Pike can help you generate a tsunami of calls to Congress, calls that can save your future on free speech talk radio. For an interview, call 503-631-3808.

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y It's Time to take Seriously a US-led Global Recession http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-10/06/content_482807.htm contributing editor to   - Rodger

Critics and skeptics are quite right that a Chapter 11 filing is only for reorganization. But it would also allow GM; if the courts permit it; to dump all of their pension obligations off on the US Treasury and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation which is already insolvent. Don't think of the damage caused by weakened GM shares. Think of what happens when millions of pension checks stop flowing. At least two airlines (Delta and Northwest) are dancing around that same move right now.; Michael C. Ruppert]

2005-10-06 07:37

I think it is time that we should take a serious look at the possibility that the US is going to take us down towards a worldwide recession in one or two year's time.

It is well known that the US is the world's biggest economy, taking up about 30 per cent of global GDP, but it is now also the world's biggest debtor country. According to the most authoritative person on this subject, the US Comptroller General David Walker, who audits the federal government's books, the tab for the long-term promises the US Government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor amounts to US$43,000 billion, US$145,000 per US citizen, or US$350,000 for every full-time worker.

And this figure does not even take into account all the personal debts such as credit card bills and mortgages. With a low interest rate of 1 per cent running for the past three years in a row, savings plummeted to just 1.8 per cent last year, below 1 per cent since January and at zero in the latest estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 2000, household debt broke 18 per cent of disposable income for the first time in 20 years. Credit card debt alone averages US$7,200 per household.

The US Government indebtedness is financed this way: The US now runs a trade deficit roughly 6.5 per cent of its GDP and the gap is widened every day. Its citizens are spending ever more on foreign goods, and with the US dollar as the international currency, the US Government just prints money to finance the deficit. And with this money, central banks in the surplus countries purchase most of the US Treasury bonds as currency reserve.

By now, Japan is the largest creditor of the US Government, and the Chinese mainland has been a fervent buyer for the last few years. As for Hong Kong, most if not all of our reserves are in US dollar denominated assets. The US Government in turn uses this foreign borrowed money to finance as much as 90 per cent of the federal deficit which stood at US$412 billion last year. The federal deficit is expected to be running at about US$2 billion a day at the moment.

Put it simply, the Americans have been living way beyond their means for much too long. On top of this, the Bush Administration is cutting tax at least three times while fighting an expensive war in Iraq, which has already cost the country US$700 billion, and currently progressing at US$5.6 billion per month. Now the US economy is dependent on the central banks of Japan, China and other nations to invest in US Treasuries and keep American interest rates down. The low rates keep American consumers snapping up imported goods.

Any economist worth his salt knows that this situation is unsustainable. This includes the country's economic guru driver Alan Greenspan, who recently warned his countrymen that the federal budget deficit would hamper the nation's ability to absorb possible shocks from the soaring trade deficit and the housing boom. Now he may have to add two more worries: soaring oil prices and cyclones.

The US is now clearly in huge trouble, economically, socially, politically, and internationally. The Bush Administration bungled big in cyclone Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans, and then a minor rerun from Rita in Houston, and this will trigger the general outburst of people's dissatisfaction with the government, leading to great internal turmoil lasting for many years. In all likelihood, long-term interest rates are going to rise, and the greatest property bubble the world has witnessed is going to burst in the next one to two years.

The countdown is in progress, and there is no way that anybody can do anything to reverse it either by short-term measures such as fiscal and monetary policy, or through long-term reform of tax policy, entitlement programmes and even the entire federal budget. This is as inevitable as gravity, and it will take place under a new and inexperienced chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I do not want to sound alarmist, but I see very bad omens.

To make things simple, let us just examine some key economic issues raised by some economists:

What if the dollar plummets? Do stocks follow? How about pensions?

What if interest rates soar? How would all the new homeowners, who stretched to buy with adjustable and interest-only loans, cover their mortgages?

How would consumers with record credit-card debt make their payments? Would they stop buying? Stop taking vacations? What will happen if they go bankrupt? New rules going into effect later this year make it harder on such debtors.

How would a government, which depends on the taxes of a strong economy to operate, keep all its promises?

To us, the good news is that when the country is in deep trouble, the US will not have the energy to pick on China. Even when it is necessary to start another war to divert people's attention, it would pick one much smaller in size and weaker in strength, like Iran. This will provide a much more amicable environment for China to make good use of its "period of strategic opportunity" till 2020 for the country to pass through a turbulent zone between per capita income of US$1,000-3,000.

But in the short term, now the US not only sneezes, and all symptoms indicate that it is going to suffer from a SARS-like trouble, the whole world should take extra precaution not to get infected. One thing is for sure, some time in the not too distant future, every central bank and institutional investor is going to dump US dollar and US Treasury bonds. Once, when a country like South Korea dumps the dollar, the still unsold US Treasuries in the asset column of Asian central banks - US$2,000 billion according to some estimates - will collapse. The cheapened dollar will cause a sudden jump in the US inflation, which forces the Fed to jack up interest rates. A giant leap in inflation will cause a severe recession, or perhaps a depression, in the US. These countries' exports to America will dry up, which in turn will spread the global economic downturn like wildfire.

After the stampede, everybody is going to get hurt, not least the central bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which are major US creditors and with the US as their number one export market. The recent currency reform of the RMB is most timely, and it is about time we should do something about the Hong Kong dollar. At the same time, China should make extra efforts to rekindle internal consumption, and diversify its market really fast before the great US bubble bursts.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Here Come the UN Army & Police http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/printer_2334.shtml contributing editor to   - Rodger

I N S I G H T What Does 2000 Look Like? http://theunitedamerican.blogs.com/Movies/2000A/2000.html contributing editor to   - Rodger

Ron Paul says avian flu martial law provisions are designed to destroy 2nd Amendment, Posse Comitatus

Inforwars Network / October 12, 2005  By Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
 

Congressman Ron Paul has accused the Bush administration of attempting to set in motion a militarized police state in America by enacting gun confiscation martial law provisions in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Paul also slammed as delusional and dangerous plans to invade Iran, Syria, North Korea and China. Ron Paul represents the 14th Congressional district of Texas. He also serves on the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, and the International Relations committee. Paul appeared on the Alex Jones show yesterday and raised some interesting points about the possibility of imminent indictments of top Bush administration figures.

Join Prisonplanet.tv to listen to the entire amazing Ron Paul interview
 

"I think there's a lot more excitement coming and it's not going to be good for the Republicans," stated Paul. "The things that I hear have to do with Karl Rove and Abramoff and that's much much worse than anybody would believe and it involves DeLay as well." "And that type of an indictment will be much more serious than the indictment of shifting campaign funds around.....there's some political infighting which could make that really interesting."

On the subject of the police state, Paul stated, "If we don't change our ways we will go the way of Rome and I see that as rather sad.....the worst things happen when you get the so-called Republican conservatives in charge from Nixon on down, big government flourishes under Republicans."

"It's really hard to believe it's happening right in front of us. Whether it's the torture or the process of denying habeas corpus to an American citizen."

"I think the arrogance of power that they have where they themselves are like Communists....in the sense that they decide what is right. The Communist Party said that they decided what was right or wrong, it wasn't a higher source."

Paul responded to President Bush's announcement last week that he would order the use of military assets to police America in the event of an avian flu outbreak.

"To me it's so strange that the President can make these proposals and it's even plausible. When he talks about martial law dealing with some epidemic that might come later on and having forced quarantines, doing away with Posse Comitatus in order to deal with natural disasters, and hardly anybody says anything. People must be scared to death."
 

Paul, himself a medical doctor, agreed that the bird flu threat was empty fearmongering. "I believe it is the President hyping this and Rumsfeld, but it has to be in combination with the people being fearful enough that they will accept the man on the white horse. My first reaction going from my political and medical background is that it's way overly hyped and to think that they have gone this far with it, without a single case in the whole country and they're willing to change the law and turn it into a military state? That is unbelievable! They're determined to have martial law." Paul opined that the martial law provisions now being promoted by the Bush administration were a direct response to people's unwillingness to relinquish their firearms, as was seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

"I think they're concerned about the remnant, the remnant of those individuals who don't buy into stuff and think that they should take care of themselves on their own, that they should have their own guns and their own provisions and they don't want to depend on the government at all and I think that is a threat to those who want to hold power. They don't want any resistance to their authoritarian rule."

Paul opined that the government was on a delusional power trip that threatened the country.

"These guys are ready to start a war with Iran, Syria, North Korea or China. They can't possibly do that, it's so insane, we don't have the money, we don't have the troops, we probably don't even have the ammunition."

"But, if they are truly delusional they just might do something that's totally irrational."

Paul expressed his hope that finally some conservatives are waking up to the fact that the Bush administration is a trojan horse, especially after arch-liberal Harriet Miers was chosen by Bush to supposedly move the Supreme Court to the right, even though her record is atrocious and she has been involved in the past covering up for the Bush crime family's activities.  

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Wal-Mart Turns in Student's Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him http://progressive.org/mag_mc100405 contributing editor to   - Rodger

Wal-Mart.  When you really care enough to destroy the best.  --  Rodger]

Do not trust Wal-Mart

By Matthew Rothschild
October 4, 2005

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that's what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights" she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High."At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster" Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

She says the student was upset.

"He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business" says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room" she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious" she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted" she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

"I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody" she says. "I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service."

A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, "You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that."

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period.

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, "We just handed it over" to the Secret Service. "No investigative report was filed."

Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, "We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee."

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: "ridiculous."
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Examples of Recurring Patterns are Always Good http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/ contributing editor to   - Craig

[Examples of recurring patterns are always good.  --  Craig]

[During the late 80's and through the 90's, we had a patter of events that actually continue through today, but it has taken on new dimensions.  In those years of the 80's - 90's, we had selected events which caused stalled legislation in D.C. to get passed.  Various gun control legislation was introduced and debated through that period.  Most every bill experienced a stall, but some event miraculously happens which either scared congresss to pass the stalled bill or the event gave them the excused they needed to do something the people did not want.

The alleged enemy was domestic terrorism.

Some of the events of that period are

-- Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho - circa August 21, 1992 numerous web links
-- Bomb in basement of WTC - circa Feb. 26, 2003 numerous web links
-- Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas - circa April 19, 1993 numerous web links
-- A single man shooting at the Whitehouse - circaOctober 30, 1994 http://prop1.org/history/1994/941030w1.htm
-- John Doe #2 at OKC - circa April 19, 1995 numerous web links (the evidence has shown gubment complicity or foreknowledge)
-- Sons of the Gestapo & Amtrak derailment - circa October 10, 1995 http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/amtrak/10-10/(Oh, you do not remember this one?  Not surprising)

Now we can look at the same pattern happening with the alleged enemy being "foreign" terrorism, if you believe that. --  Tribble]
 

The Nexus of Politics and Terror (Keith Olbermann) Secaucus - Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush's speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation. I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event" - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning. We figured we'd better put that list of coincidences on the public record. We did so this evening on the television program, with ten of these examples. The other three are listed at the end of the main list, out of chronological order. The contraction was made purely for the sake of television timing considerations, and permitted us to get the live reaction of the former Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson.

We bring you these coincidences, reminding you, and ourselves here, that perhaps the simplest piece of wisdom in the world is called "the logical fallacy." Just because Event "A" occurs, and then Event "B" occurs, that does not automatically mean that Event "A" caused Event "B."

But one set of comments from an informed observer seems particularly relevant as we examine these coincidences.

On May 10th of this year, after his resignation, former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge looked back on the terror alert level changes, issued on his watch.

Mr. Ridge said: "More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert)&hellip; there were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said &lsquo;for that?'"

Please, judge for yourself.

Number One:

May 18th, 2002. The first details of the President's Daily Briefing of August 6th, 2001, are
 

FREE VIDEO Launch • Nexus of politics and terror  Oct. 12: Keith Olbermann focuses on terror alerts over the past several years. Keith pulls together the political climate at the time of the alerts and allows viewers to determine for themselves if there is a political connection. MSNBC  [This is a java link to a site not on   ]

revealed, including its title - "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."  The same day another memo is discovered - revealing the FBI knew of men with links to Al Qaeda training at an Arizona flight school. The memo was never acted upon. Questions about 9/11 Intelligence failures are swirling.

May 20th, 2002. Two days later, FBI Director Mueller declares another terrorist attack "inevitable." The next day, the Department of Homeland Security issues warnings of attacks against railroads nationwide, and against New York City landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

Number Two:

June 6th, 2002. Colleen Rowley, the FBI agent who tried to alert her superiors to the specialized flight training taken by Zacarias Moussaoui, whose information suggests the government missed a chance to break up the 9/11 plot, testifies before Congress. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Graham says Rowley's testimony has inspired similar pre-9/11 whistle-blowers.

June 10th, 2002. Four days later, speaking from Russia, Attorney General John Ashcroft reveals that an American named Jose Padilla is under arrest, accused of plotting a radiation bomb attack in this country. Padilla had, by this time, already been detained for more than a month.

Number Three:

February 5th, 2003. Secretary of State Powell tells the United Nations Security Council of Iraq's concealment of weapons, including 18 mobile biological weapons laboratories, justifying a U.N. or U.S. first strike. Many in the UN are doubtful. Months later, much of the information proves untrue.

February 7th, 2003. Two days later, as anti-war demonstrations continue to take place around the globe, Homeland Security Secretary Ridge cites "credible threats" by Al Qaeda, and raises the terror alert level to orange. Three days after that, Fire Administrator David Paulison - who would become the acting head of FEMA after the Hurricane Katrina disaster - advises Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect themselves against radiological or biological attack.

Number Four:

July 23rd, 2003: The White House admits the CIA -- months before the President's State of the Union Address -- expressed "strong doubts" about the claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. On the 24th, the Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is issued; it criticizes government at all levels; it reveals an FBI informant had been living with two of the future hijackers; and it concludes that Iraq had no link to Al-Qaeda. 28 pages of the report are redacted. On the 26th, American troops are accused of beating Iraqi prisoners.

July 29th, 2003. Three days later, amid all of those negative headlines, Homeland Security issues warnings of further terrorist attempts to use airplanes for suicide attacks.

Number Five:

December 17th, 2003. 9/11 Commission Co-Chair Thomas Kean says the attacks were preventable. The next day, a Federal Appeals Court says the government cannot detain suspected radiation-bomber Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, and the chief U.S. Weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr. David Kay, who has previously announced he has found no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, announces he will resign his post.

December 21st, 2003. Three days later, just before Christmas, Homeland Security again raises the threat level to Orange, claiming "credible intelligence" of further plots to crash airliners into U.S. cities. Subsequently, six international flights into this country are cancelled after some passenger names purportedly produce matches on government no-fly lists. The French later identify those matched names: one belongs to an insurance salesman from Wales, another to an elderly Chinese woman, a third to a five-year old boy.

Number Six:

March 30th, 2004. The new chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer tells Congress we have still not found any WMD there. And, after weeks of refusing to appear before the 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice finally relents and agrees to testify. On the 31st:  Four Blackwater-USA contractors working in Iraq are murdered, their mutilated bodies dragged through the streets and left on public display in Fallujah. The role of civilian contractors in Iraq is widely questioned.

April 2nd, 2004.  Homeland Security issues a bulletin warning that terrorists may try to blow up buses and trains, using fertilizer and fuel bombs - like the one detonated in Oklahoma City - stuffed into satchels or duffel bags.

Number Seven:

May 16th, 2004. Secretary of State Powell appears on "Meet The Press." Moderator Tim Russert closes by asking him about the "enormous personal credibility" Powell had placed before the U.N. in laying out a case against Saddam Hussein. An aide to Powell interrupts the question, saying the interview is over. Powell finishes his answer, admitting that much of the information he had been given about Weapons of Mass Destruction was "inaccurate and wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading."

May 21st, 2004, new photos showing mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison are released. On the 24th - Associated Press video from Iraq confirms U.S. forces mistakenly bombed a wedding party - killing more than 40.
 

FREE VIDEO Launch • Coincidence?  Oct. 12: Keith Olbermann talks with the former Under-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Asa Hutchison about the connection between politics and the terror alerts over the past several years. MSNBC  [This is a java link to a site not on   ]

Wednesday the 26th. Two days later, Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller warn that intelligence from multiple sources, in Ashcroft's words, "indicates Al-Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard" and that "90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete." The color-coded warning system is not raised, and Homeland Security Secretary Ridge does not attend the announcement.

Number Eight:

July 6th, 2004. Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry selects Senator John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate, producing a small bump in the election opinion polls, and a huge swing in media attention towards the Democratic campaign.

July 8th, 2004. Two days later, Homeland Secretary Ridge warns of information about Al-Qaeda attacks during the summer or autumn. Four days after that, the head of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, DeForest B. Soaries, Junior, confirms he has written to Ridge about the prospect of postponing the upcoming Presidential election in the event it is interrupted by terrorist acts.

Number Nine:

July 29th, 2004. At their party convention in Boston, the Democrats formally nominate John Kerry as their candidate for President. As in the wake of any convention, the Democrats dominate the media attention over the ensuing weekend.

Monday, August 1st, 2004. The Department of Homeland Security raises the alert status for financial centers in New York, New Jersey, and Washington to orange. The evidence supporting the warning - reconnaissance data, left in a home in Iraq - later proves to be roughly four years old and largely out-of-date.

Number Ten:

Last Thursday. At 10 AM Eastern Time, the President addresses the National Endowment for Democracy, once again emphasizing the importance of the war on terror and insisting his government has broken up at least 10 terrorist plots since 9/11.

At 3 PM Eastern Time, five hours after the President's speech has begun, the Associated Press reports that Karl Rove will testify again to the CIA Leak Grand Jury, and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has told Rove he cannot guarantee that he will not be indicted.

At 5:17 PM Eastern Time, seven hours after the President's speech has begun, New York officials disclose a bomb threat to the city's subway system - based on information supplied by the Federal Government. A Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is "of doubtful credibility." And it later proves that New York City had known of the threat for at least three days, and had increased police presence in the subways long before making the announcement at that particular time. Local New York television station, WNBC, reports it had the story of the threat days in advance, but was asked by "high ranking federal officials" in New York and Washington to hold off its story.

Less than four days after revealing the threat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says "Since the period of the threat now seems to be passing, I think over the immediate future, we'll slowly be winding down the enhanced security."

While news organizations ranging from the New York Post to NBC News quote sources who say there was reason to believe that informant who triggered the warning simply &lsquo;made it up', a Senior U.S. Counter-terrorism official tells the New York Times: "There was no there, there."

The list of three additional examples follows.

Number Eleven:

October 22nd, 2004. After weeks of Administration insistence that there are terrorist plans to disrupt the elections, FBI, Law Enforcement, and other U.S. Intelligence agencies report they have found no direct evidence of any plot. More over, they say, a key CIA source who had claimed knowledge of the plot, has been discredited.

October 29, 2004. Seven days later - four days before the Presidential election - the first supposedly new, datable tape of Osama Bin Laden since December 2001 is aired on the Al-Jazeera Network. A Bush-Cheney campaign official anonymously tells the New York Daily News that from his campaign's point of view, the tape is quote "a little gift."

Number Twelve:

May 5th, 2005. 88 members of the United States House of Representatives send a letter to President Bush demanding an investigation of the so-called "Downing Street Memo" - a British document which describes purported American desire dating to 2002 to "fix" the evidence to fit the charges against Iraq. In Iraq over the following weekend, car bombings escalate. On the 11th, more than 75 Iraqis are killed in one.

May 11th, 2005. Later that day, an instructor and student pilot violate restricted airspace in Washington D.C. It is an event that happens hundreds of times a year, but this time the plane gets to within three miles of the White House. The Capitol is evacuated; Vice President Cheney, the First Lady, and Nancy Reagan are all rushed to secure locations. The President, biking through woods, is not immediately notified.

Number Thirteen:

June 26th, 2005. A Gallup poll suggests that 61 percent of the American public believes the President does not have a plan in Iraq. On the 28th, Mr. Bush speaks to the nation from Fort Bragg: "We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."

June 29th 2005. The next day, another private pilot veers into restricted airspace, the Capitol is again evacuated, and this time, so is the President.

-----
To summarize, coincidences are coincidences.

We could probably construct a similar time line of terror events and warnings, and their relationship to - the opening of new Walmarts around the country.

Are these coincidences signs that the government's approach has worked because none of the announced threats ever materialized? Are they signs that the government has not yet mastered how and when to inform the public?

Is there, in addition to the "fog of war" a simple, benign, "fog of intelligence"?

But, if merely a reasonable case can be made that any of these juxtapositions of events are more than just coincidences, it underscores the need for questions to be asked in this country - questions about what is prudence, and what is fear-mongering; questions about which is the threat of death by terror, and which is the terror of threat.

Comments?  E-mail:  KOlbermann@msnbc.com
 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Murder in the Medicine Cabinet contributing editor to   - Dan

[These matters of influenza and predicting them, and King George wanting to declare martial law for fighting flu, and shots that are really for purposes other than combating flu, are all elements of a bigger picture.  Is anyone paying attention?  --  Tribble]

MURDER IN THE MEDICINE CABINET - PART ONE
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/murdermedicine1.html

The Deadliest Killer of the 20th Century, With More Deaths Than All the World Wars, Lurks Right Inside Your House, and Threatens to Take You and Your Family. The Story No One Told You.

In 1918, a virulent, never seen before, form of influenza seemed to suddenly appear. It seemed to kill within hours,

and spread around the world within days. It seemed to appear simultaneously all around the world. Its spread was faster than any then known means of human travel.

In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization warned of repeats of such a rapid and deadly pandemic, through such variants of influenza as SARS and Bird Flu. But without knowing what caused the 1918 pandemic or how it spread, how can the CDC or WHO make such a claim? Unless they already know something they are not telling.

As yet no one has been able to identify the actual medical cause of the 1918 Flu, with only a few samples of a "bird-like" virus taken from only several cadaver tissue samples. But no sample is complete. And those are only one or two samples from among the estimated 20 to 40 million people who seemed to die mysteriously almost overnight. The 1918 Flu spread faster and was more deadly, killing more people than even the Plague and Black Death of the middle ages. Why does no one talk about it?

And even if the viral cause were identified, no one can explain the lightning fast spread of the disease. Maybe it wasn't a disease after all. Many researchers have even looked at some world-wide phenomena, such as extra-terrestrial biology filtering into the atmosphere from outer space. Or maybe, the jet stream spreading disease-laden dust from Asia all around the world in a matter of days. In an area of investigation where there seems to be no real facts and less logic, any "fringe theory" or "outre logic" is just as valid as any other. Maybe something about the 1918 Flu is being covered up. Something that we are not supposed to know.

Actually, there is another rather simple mundane solution to the medical mystery. There did exist in 1918 a then new technical invention by which the "disease" was spread almost at the speed of light. The "1918 Flu" was spread around the world almost instantaneously by telephone. Of course, that claim needs an explanation, and proof.

In the 1890's an American chemist made an improvement on an old home folk remedy called Willow or Aspen Tea. It seemed to relieve the pains of old-age gout, arthritis and other assorted pains. But the evil tasting tea containing acetylsalicylic acid was so strong that it caused many people to have nausea and vomiting, along with the pain relief if they could tolerate drinking the tea. This potion was later neutralized, synthesized and buffered, and then sold to the German Bayer company as a pain reliever.

I have researched the source and history of the name Aspirin and found no reasonable explanation has ever been found. I have found, instead, that the German Bayer company, in order to sell to both the American and European markets, used a name familiar in both markets. In America the common folk remedy form was called "Aspen Tea" made from boiling willow bark from the Aspen tree family. In Europe, the same home remedy was called "Spirain Tea" made from boiling the leaves of the common European shrub Spirae.

Both preparations were found to contain large amounts of natural acetylsalicylic acid, but unbuffered. Combining the common home-remedy folklore names Aspen and Spirain comes up with the Euro-American brand name Aspirin. My research is the sole source for the information about that unique derivation of the brand name.

The reason for the deep confusion and lack of any clear history about the trade name is that for almost a decade from 1905 to about 1915, the use of the trade name, and the source of the name Aspirin, was tied up in international courts. In the late 1890's when Aspirin became available as an easy to use "pop a pill" replacement to the sour tasting Aspen or Spirain Teas, many people used it to relieve the pain of joint arthritis. Many users also discovered, quite by accident, a unique side effect. If you had a fever when you took the Aspirin, it also made the fever suddenly go away. What a discovery! It appeared to be a cure for the the common cold and flu.

By 1905 many other drug companies were making acetylsalicylic acid preparations and calling it Aspirin, but they were selling it as a common cold remedy. Bayer took these other companies to court and sued over illegal use of their trademark. Many people believe that Bayer lost the decision and lost control of the name Aspirin. Most believe that Aspirin is now a generic name such as Kleenex, Scotch Tape or Xerox. Not so. It was an odd court decision and a confusing compromise. By 1915 it was decided in court that Bayer had the exclusive use of the tradename Aspirin, if it were sold as a pain-relieving analgesic.

The court also found that the other companies could also use the name Aspirin, if in their ads and packaging, they claimed that their product was an anti-febril agent or a fever reducer. This odd court decision is still in use today. You can still buy Bayer aspirin to relieve pain, and on the store shelf right next to it is Nyquil, Aleve, Tylenol, Motrin, Bufferin, Anacin and a whole long list of others, all containing aspirin or aspirin-like compounds and claiming to be treatments for Colds, Flu and Fever. Reducing fever was not in Bayer's original patent claim. Bayer didn't know in 1895 of the use of aspirin as a fever reducer and had not put that in their original trademark application.

And how does that strange court decision fit into the rapid spread of the 1918 Flu? The primary defense which the human body has, to stop the spread of viral infections is to produce a fever. The fever is not a symptom of disease, but is actually the body's primary anti-viral immune system. The fever stops the telomeres on the ends of viral RNA from making copies of itself.

The telomeres are like a zipper which unzips and separates the new RNA copy within miliseconds, but the telomeres are temperature sensitive and won't unzip at temperatures above 101F. Thus the high temperature of the fever, stops the flu virus from dividing and spreading. It is an immune system response which only mammals have developed to prevent the spread of viral flu infections, which mostly 99% come from the more ancient dinosaur-like earth life forms called birds. Almost all influenza is a form of "Avian Flu." A few influenza forms come from other dinosaur-like life forms, the modern reptiles, but these are usually classified as very rare tropical diseases, since that is where most reptiles live.

The doctors in the early 1900's didn't know about that, and even today few if any doctors are aware that fever is not a symptom of disease, but is the primary and only way for the human body to stop viral infections. If you stop or reduce the fever, viruses are allowed to divide and spread uncontrolled throughout the body. I have already described this process in detail in my articles posted in the Brother Jonathan Gazette in 2003, so I won't go into detail here. Do a search on "SARS" on the Gazette and you'll find the articles.

Normally the progress of a flu is that a virus enters the mucous membrane lining of the lungs, enters cells, then makes many copies of itself, which causes the cell to expand to such an degree that it bursts open. The new viruses then cloak themselves with a coating taken from the old damaged cell wall, thus hiding themselves from the human body's own T-cell antibody immune defense system. To the body's immune system the new viruses simply appear to be pieces of the body's own lung tissue.

By creating a fever, the viral infection is slowed down sufficiently so that the body's T cells can find the swollen infected lung cells, surround them and metabolize (literally eat) the damaged cell with strong acids which also breaks down the RNA viruses into basic amino acids. This effectively "kills" the viruses so that they can't reproduce. But viruses are not living things, and you can't kill something that's not alive. All the body can do is destroy or dissolve the RNA amino acid chain which makes up the virus.

Not knowing this, most doctors treat the flu with aspirin or fever reducers, as a palliative treatment to ease the aches, pains, and delerium fever effects. The result is that within hours, the fever goes down and the patient feels much better. What neither the patient nor the doctor knows is that with only a normal 98.6F body temperature, the viruses are allowed to reproduce unchecked. Within 72 hours, the viruses have grown from one or two virus bodies to millions or billions. The body is now completely overwhelmed. But while taking aspirin or cold medications, there are no symptoms or warnings of what is yet to come.

As a last resort the body tries to quickly flush the infection of billions of viruses from the lungs with massive amounts of T-cells, and fluid in the lungs to "cough out" the virus. This is called viral pneumonia. Soon within hours the patient is in the hospital. The doctors try to treat the now 105 degree fever with more anti-febril aspirins, or related medications to "treat the fever." Then within another 24 hours the patient, suffocating and gasping for breath, is dead.

You should note that the original infection did cause a mild fever, aches and pains, which the patient "self-medicated" with over-the-counter products. For the next several days, the patient seemed to have no symptoms, but was actually growing billions of copies of influenza virus in his lungs. Then days later, the patient and doctor seem to see a sudden rapid case of viral flu infection that is now overwhelming the body. Is that what really happened?

What caused the patient's death? Was it the original flu virus, or was it the use of Aspirin to lower the flu fever which then shutdown the patient's own immune system response? Obviously, the latter. So how did this cause the massive rapid spread of the 1918 Flu?

The Bayer court case had just been settled, and many companies other than Bayer, could now legally market aspirin to treat colds and fever. But then "The Great War to End all War" was on, and most aspirin products were going directly to the front lines in France to treat the soldiers in the diseased hell hole trenches of WWI.

The World War I medics knew that aspirin could quickly reduce a fever. If a soldier had a fever, the docs gave aspirin. Magically the fever went down, the soldier felt better and quickly went back to the fighting. Then three days later, the same soldier was back, now with severe pneumonia and died almost overnight.

No doctors then made the connection between aspirin and pneumonia death, since the trenches were filled with many other seemingly related diseases such as diphtheria or tuberculosis. Death and dying on the front line was common, so no investigation was done. Aspirin seemed to be a god-send since it allowed sick soldiers to swiftly get right back into the fighting.

After the Armistice of November 11, 1918 the fighting stopped and the soldiers went home. The soldiers around the world announced the good news to their families back home. Most of the low-ranked doughboys had to wait till they got back to their homebase in Kansas, or wherever, to call home. They couldn't afford the costly trans-Atlantic deep sea cable phone rates. But when the troop arrived in Kansas, the call from sergeant Tom was something like:

"Hey mom, I'm coming home. I'll see yu and dad next Tuesday in Chattanooga. How's everybody? Oh, Aunt Esther has a fever? Hey tell her to take some aspirin. Yeah, that stuff in the medicine cabinet for treatin' the aches and pains. Tell Esther, we used it in France. Works right away and the fever is gone. OK see yu Tuesday...."

So what does Esther do? She tries the aspirin, but the old Bayer label only says its for "aches and pains" and says nothing about fevers. She takes it and magically the fever is gone, and she feels much better, almost cured. She's so much better, she gets out the horse and buggy to go see her sister, Lucy in Mt Carmel, where Lucy and the kids are down with the fever. Mt. Carmel has no telephones and even no roads, only the buggy path to reach the outside world. But within hours of sergeant Tom's phone call home, by word of mouth, everybody in rural Mt. Carmel is now taking aspirin to treat fevers. Since the new information came from a soldier, from the US Army and the government, it must be true!

Within a week of the 1918 Armistice, by newfangled telephone, trans-oceanic telephone cables, and even the experimental ship-to-shore shortwave radios using Morse code, the message was flashed around the world -- "Have a fever? Take Aspirin. It worked in France, it'll work for you." That message spread at nearly the speed of light over millions of telephone lines all around the world. The news of the "miracle cure" even spread by word of mouth within a day or so, even to places with no phones nor roads.

Mysteriously, a week later, doctors round the world now had hundreds of sick and dying patients. Nobody could figure out why. The patients themselves never reported that just the week before they did have a mild fever. But it was so mild that when they took some aspirin, it simply went away. Nobody made the connection. The doctors only saw, by November 24, 1918 thousands of very sick patients with high fevers, lungs filled with fluid, and swift overnight death.

The medical profession had never seen anything like it before, nor since. It seemed to occur simultaneously all around the world and even reaching into such out of the way places like Mt. Carmel with no telephones nor roads. How could such a massive fast-spreading killer disease exist? It didn't. It wasn't a disease. It was a new use for an old home folk remedy which everybody already had in their medicine cabinet, Bayer Aspirin to reduce fever.

The medical profession, at a complete loss to explain it, simply called it the "Spanish Flu" or the "1918 Flu" or many similar names. It was a mystery with no known source, so it was assigned many place names. So far, nobody has been able to prove any single pathogen was responsible. And even if they did, they still can't explain how it seemed to spread world-wide at almost the speed of light, clear around the world within a week.

To this day there is no explanation. But, now you know. The "disease" was not a single pathogen, but many of the hundreds of similar types of flu which are always existing at any time around the world. What was different in November 1918 was the many hundreds of thousands of almost simultaneous phone calls from the millions of returning sergeant Toms saying, "...tell Aunt Esther to take the aspirin. It worked in France. It'll work for her..." Nobody traced the spread of the 1918 Flu to sergeant Tom. Nobody made the connection.

That very same source of disease still exists today. What is different today is that cold and flu products are sold and used all year long. This results in an estimated one million deaths from mysterious viral pneumonia reported every year, but also all around the year. In 1918, the new use of aspirin for treating colds and flu all started at the same time in November, thus creating the false impression of a sudden massive onset of a new disease. Even today SARS is not a disease. It is the improper use of a brand new high-tech flu fighter called Tamiflu. The FDA approved the use of Tamiflu several years ago. In 2003 it began to be used world-wide. But how is it used?

Many millions of people around the world still self-treat their own colds and flu with over-the-counter meds containing aspirin. Those are the most commonly sold medications in the world. The patient's mild fever quickly goes away. They forget about ever having felt sick. Then several days later the patient sees the doctor and now has a high fever, bad cough and fluid-filled lungs. The doctor, using the new CDC and WHO guidelines, treats the hospitalized "flu" patient with the new high-tech Tamiflu. But how often and at what dosage?

The doctors do what they've always done for the past 100 years. Tell the nurse to stick a thermometer in the patient's mouth, increase the Tamiflu dosage by 10cc's every hour until the fever starts to drop. Then maintain that dosage level until the patient dies. Then blame the death on some new highly contagious lethal virus. Nothing new here. It's the same old story, since 1918.

The only thing different is that they give it a new name like SARS, or Bird Flu or whatever sounds nifty and high-tech. Even today, each year about one million people world-wide die from the very same "disease" which first appeared in the fall of 1918. Has medicine, in the last 100 years, turned this "contagion" from Pandemic by Phone, into Illness by Internet? Is it the rapid and continuous spread of misinformation that is still killing millions?

So now, I have given you enough information that you are ready for Part Two. Coming next is a review of the curious scientific evidence, medical records and the biochemistry proof behind the Case of Murder in the Medicine Cabinet.

Marshall Smith
Editor, BroJon Gazette

The original wonder-drug

Pundita asked for my comments on this post in which she examines a web article in which the author puts forward the theory that there really was no flu epidemic of 1918 and, rather, it was treating flu with aspirin, reducing the fevers of the stricken and allowing the disease to take fatal hold, which caused the great loss of life. It strikes me as a case of post hoc propter hoc.

Aspirin, is of course, the original wonder-drug. The idea of using salicylic acid (extracted from willow bark) as medicine wasn't new. The Egyptians had done so almost 3,000 years ago. And the pure chemical had been known and used since the 1830's. But I believe the Bayer Company's account of German chemist Felix Hoffmann's acetylating salicylic acid to make it gentler on the stomach and creating acetyl salicylic acid, christened "aspirin" by the commerce-savvy Bayer Company.

Two events that happened close upon each other served to fix aspirin in the public mind: the end of the Great War, making the German Bayer Company's product politically acceptable in the United States and the United Kingdom and the Flu Epidemic. Aspirin treated the fever and ache symptoms of the flu like no other drug and it was the flu that gave aspirin its reputation.

Interestingly, the mechanism by which aspirin worked was unknown until the late 1960's when pharmacologist John Vane of the Royal College of Surgeons in London discovered that aspirin stopped the body's cells from manufacturing an important subclass of eicosanoids called prostaglandins by destroying a single cyclooxygenase enzyme, the enzyme which controls the manufacture of all prostaglandins. One molecule of aspirin destroys one molecule of cyclooxygenase enzyme.

Prostaglandins have all sorts of functions in the body from regulating the widening and narrowing of blood vessels, blood clotting, and temperature regulation. Oh, and Vane won part of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1982 for his discovery.

Back to the flu.

Did the use of aspirin cause what would otherwise have been a self-limiting epidemic into a fatal pandemic? The more virulent the disease, the greater the tendency for it to be self-limiting for a very simple reason: it kills the host and thereby limits the host's ability to transmit the disease to other victims. And it very well may be true that prolonged body temperature over 105°F may kill the flu virus. IIRC the optimal temperature for propagating flu viruses is 33°C-36°C which means normal body temperature (actually 98.2°F) is already sub-optimal for flu so reducing somebody's fever a little may render them more slightly more hospitable to the virus but probably won't make them any sicker. I suspect that's why the consensus view among physicians seems to be to reduce temperature.

It seems to me there are several ways we could test the hypothesis. Were there higher rates of fatality in areas where aspirin sales were higher? Were there higher rates of fatality in areas where the ambient temperature was lower (aspirin isn't the only way to lower body temperature)?

So my conclusion is a resounding "Maybe" (but I doubt it).

A close look at that video, with firsthand experience reveals the manner which cops incompetently or deliberately work a victim against each other.  An example of this would be one cop saying "stand" while another says "down", all the while it can look and sound like the victim is not cooperating.  This is part of what is happening in this altercation.

Listen to the audio and you will hear Davis exclaiming he will cooperate it they will let him up.

Watch and listen to how the people who are trying to help are ignored and treated.

Watch and listen to how some of the cops act and react regarding the camera and crew.

YOU MUST REALIZE this is the kind of thing that really happens nearly every day in all police departments.  This does not say that all cops do things things all the time, but the training is one of them against us.  If you do not believe it, get a copy of their training program.  Better yet, ask 10 of them if their job includes protecting your rights.  Then ask them about some law (which you have learned) which they are supposed to enforce.  When they tell you they do not know the law, then wonder why they are called "law enforcement".

You are probably one of those who do not believe this happens every day, but will cry foul when it finally happens to you or someone about whom you care.  Sadly, you will continue to think it was an isolated incident.

When the Sergeant or Captain, or Chief get wind of it, they publicly deny it happens, or they assert it is proper.  They know you are gullible enough to not question it and will think there must be something that makes it proper.  All this denial directly and indirectly gives approval to the cops to continue their trained conduct.  From generation to the next as cops come and go in the department, they pass on the training and approval, till as time passes, they believe their conduct is proper and allowed.  Like they wonder, why are you upset over a little beating?

The actors were --

You can see the video of the beating by selecting one of the following clips.

== fullbeatingvideo.wmv This is the full version of the video [10Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 30 minutes]==
== policebeat.wmv This is a shortened version of the video [4Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 12 minutes]==
== CNN 20051014 -police beat 64yr-old man 1.mpg   [22Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 70 minutes]==
== CNN 20051014 -police beat 64yr-old man 2.mpg   [12Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 36 minutes]==
== FOX 20051014 -police beat 64yr-old man 1.mpg   [29Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 90 minutes]==
== FOX 20051014 -police beat 64yr-old man 2.mpg   [4Mb] [download time in dialup maybe about 12 minutes]==

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Missouri Will Track Cell Phones for Traffic Data http://apnews.myway.com//article/20051015/D8D8ECKGA.html http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2005/10/15/missouri_may_tr.html contributing editor to   - Dale

By DAVID A. LIEB
 

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too. A congestion alert is issued, automatically updating electronic road signs and Web sites and dispatching text messages to mobile phones and auto dashboards. In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads. It's just one of a number of initiatives to more intelligently manage traffic flow through wireless data collection.

An electronic sign at I-35 and Johnson Drive in Shawnee, Kan., alerts motorists to traffic problems ahead, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005. The sign is part of the KC Scout system which uses cameras and road sensors to monitor traffic. Missouri is looking into a state wide cell phone system to do the same thing. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

ADVANCE FOR SAT. OCT 15; graphic shows technology behind monitoring traffic patterns through cell phones. (AP Graphic)

Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project - the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination. But privacy advocates are uneasy nonetheless. "Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous," said Daniel Solove, a privacy law professor at George Washington University and author of "The Digital Person.""It troubles me, because it does show this movement toward using a technology to track people." Cell phone monitoring already is being used by transportation officials in Baltimore, though not yet to relay traffic conditions to the public. Similar projects are getting underway in Norfolk, Va., and a stretch of Interstate 75 between Atlanta and Macon, Ga. But the Missouri project is by far the most aggressive - tracking wireless phones across the whole state, including in rural areas with lower traffic counts, and for the explicit purpose of relaying the information to other travelers. In fact, it would be the biggest system of its kind in the world, said Richard Mudge, a vice president at Delcan Corp., the Canadian company that won the Missouri bid.

The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that. The cell phone provider for Missouri hasn't been disclosed, but Delcan uses data from Cingular Wireless LLC phones in the Baltimore project. Governments have had the ability to measure traffic volumes and speeds for years. They can embed sensors in pavement, or mount scanners and cameras along the road. But those monitoring methods require the installation of equipment, which must be maintained, and can take only a snapshot of traffic at a particular spot. In contrast, "almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system," said Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Although most new cell phones come equipped with Global Positioning System capabilities that can pinpoint their exact locations, the tracking technology used for transportation agencies does not depend on that. Instead, it takes the frequent signals that wireless phones send to towers and follows the movement of the phones from one tower to another. Then it overlays that data with highway maps to determine where the phones are and how fast they are moving. Lumping thousands of those signals together can indicate traffic flow. A Delcan demonstration Web site developed for Baltimore uses various shades of green, yellow and red to show block-by-block whether vehicles are moving at or below the speed limits. As rush hour started on a recent work day, observers could watch as green turned to yellow and then red on roads heading out of downtown.

A KC Scout camera located above highway signs along Interstate 35 monitors traffic in Shawnee, Kan., Oct. 5, 2005. Missouri hopes to use a state wide cell phone system to do the same thing. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

The Baltimore project began this spring as a pilot program that monitors Cingular users over about 1,000 miles of road, but Maryland officials hope to eventually create a statewide version. (A Delcan competitor, Atlanta-based AirSage Inc., has an agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) to monitor phones for its projects in Georgia and Virginia.)

Pete Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, would like to make a similar Web site available to Missouri motorists, and to post estimated travel times on electronic road signs.

The Missouri and Maryland plans also assume that the contractor will market more detailed information to the private sector - automakers that offer onboard navigation systems, cell phone companies, shipping businesses or media that broadcast rush-hour traffic reports.

The private sector marketing helps drive down the states' cost. Missouri expects to spend less than $3 million a year on the service, Rahn said, although the exact price won't be known until the contract is finalized. Maryland is spending $1.9 million, although the entire Baltimore project costs nearly $5.6 million, said Mike Zezeski, director of real-time traffic operations for the Maryland Department of Transportation.

By contrast, the San Francisco Bay area spent about $35 million over several years to install roadside scanners and develop computer programs, Web sites and call centers for a real-time traffic service based on electronic toll passes, said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the region's Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Officials considered using cell phone monitoring but opted against it, partly because of privacy concerns.

"We felt very strongly we had a bullet-proof privacy policy" with toll-pass monitoring, Rentschler said. "On cell phones, we could never do that."

As with cell-phone monitoring, the information received from the Bay area's toll scanners is anonymous. It's also encrypted and destroyed daily. But the local transportation commission went a step further, mailing 250,000 metal bags into which motorists could place their toll devices to prevent them from being monitored along the roads.

Cell phone users could accomplish the same thing by turning off their phones.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suggests that someone should notify cell phone owners that their phones are being monitored for traffic data.

Privacy experts also worry that the traffic monitoring could later evolve into other uses - perhaps to catch speeders or fugitives.

That's because each cell phone has a unique serial number, in addition to its call number and a code that indicates its service provider. A cell phone company must always be able to track the location of its phones in order to know where to route a call.

"It's a mission creep issue that would be of most concern to consumers," said Lillie Coney, associate director of Washington, D.C.-based EPIC. "They may start out saying we want to know if there's a traffic problem and then take that information and start using it for different purposes."
 

Can you Say Red Herring*** California Wineries Targeted for Smog http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-13-california-wineries-smog_x.htm contributing editor to   - Rodger

[Soon enough you will be taxed on the air you breath.  Oh, you laugh?  --  Tribble]

By Traci Watson, USA TODAY

That glass of garnet-colored California merlot may caress the palate and delight the nose, but state officials say wineries also create a less agreeable byproduct: smog.

Now air-quality managers in California's San Joaquin Valley, where nearly two-thirds of domestic wine is produced, are cracking down. By year's end, local officials will propose the nation's first restrictions targeting pollution from winemaking.

"We have regulated virtually all other significant (non-vehicle) sources, some a lot smaller than wineries," says San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District planning director Scott Nester. Winemaking pollution "is significant, and it is completely uncontrolled."

Whether the end result is jammy, tannic or crisp, the fermentation of grapes to make wine creates pure alcohol, also known as ethanol, that is vented to the air. Ethanol vapors belong to a family of so-called organic chemicals that mix with others to form smog.

That might not be a problem if the valley's topography didn't trap organic chemicals and others, allowing them to fester. That leads to some of the nation's dirtiest air: Smog levels exceeded federal health limits on 109 days in 2004.

"We've got to do what we can to control emissions," Nester says. That means regulating wineries, even though they create only 0.3% of the valley's emission of smog-forming organic chemicals. Cars and trucks account for 37%.
 

The Wrath of Grapes  Proposed rules would crack down on pollution from the winemaking process in California's San Joaquin Valley. Red wine yields more pollution during production than white. How red wine is made: 1. Grapes are placed in a crusher, which separates the stems from the fruit.     * The "must" ,  a combination of juice, seeds, pulp and skin ,  is fermented.     * The largest wineries use stainless-steel tanks that hold up to 600,000 gallons. 2. Grapes and yeast stew in tanks for three to 10 days.     * The sugars in the grapes turn into ethanol, which is pure alcohol, and carbon dioxide.     * Ethanol fumes waft out of vents on the tanks. Ethanol can contribute to smog formation. 3. The wine is filtered and cleared of impurities, and sulfites are added as preservatives. 4. It then goes into oak barrels to age.

Oenophiles ,  wine lovers ,  shouldn't fear for their favorite $50 California chardonnays. For starters, other winemaking regions in the state and across the country are unlikely to follow the valley's lead, because none of them have nearly as much smog. And the new rule would exempt white wines, which yield less pollution during production than reds.

Although the valley boasts more than 100 winemaking facilities, the rule will apply only to those that churn out the equivalent of 25 million bottles or more per year. That's 18 wineries, owned by giants such as E. & J. Gallo. They make mostly bargain-priced stuff, not the type of drink that inspires high-flown prose from wine critics.

"These are major production facilities ... not boutique wineries," says Wendell Lee, general counsel of the Wine Institute, a trade group for California wineries.

Some scientists say the valley is looking in the wrong place to cut smog.

Ken Fugelsang, an oenologist at California State University, Fresno, said he and others found in the 1980s that winery emissions are an insignificant threat compared with auto emissions. University of California, Davis, oenologist Roger Boulton says there's no evidence that ethanol turns into smog.

Don Hunsaker of the valley air district responds that "there is indeed evidence" that ethanol forms smog.

Already, the air district has backed down under criticism. An earlier version of the wineries rule demanded that pollution controls be added to big fermenting tanks. Wineries protested the cost, which the district estimated at more than $100,000 for a 50,000-gallon wine tank, and said their profits would fall sharply.

The next version of the rule, due by the end of the year, will require wineries to cut pollution equal to what their fermentation tanks give off. But they can do so by cutting emissions from their vehicles and other sources, Nester says.

"It's only a matter of time before something economically feasible can be put forward," says Chris Indelicato, CEO of Delicato Family Vineyards. But "the technology is unproven at this point."

The air district is studying better ways to take the smog out of wine, he says. And officials already are eyeing their next target for regulation: the valley's brandymaking.
 

Can you Say Red Herring*** Ohio Police Arrest Woman For $1 In Unpaid Taxes http://www.kcra.com/irresistible/5093711/detail.html contributing editor to   - Rodger

["The laws have to be complied with. At what cost do you stop enforcing the law?"  "de minimus failure" is an maxim of law to answer the question posed by Loveland City Manager Fred Enderle  --  Tribble]

Unfiled City Tax Forms Also Cited In Case

LOVELAND, Ohio -- An Ohio woman was arrested after she didn't pay just more than $1 that she owed in income taxes, WLWT-TV in Cincinnati reported.

Deborah Combs owed the city of Loveland $1.16 last year, but she also hadn't filed her city income tax forms in five years, the television station said.

She said officers pulled her over and acted as though she were a violent criminal.

"One sheriff approached my car with his hand on his gun," she said. "Another from the other side of the car leaned in and said, 'Are you Deborah Combs?' He said, 'We have a warrant for your arrest.' I was absolutely shocked."
Click here to find out more!

Combs said she thinks the arrest and charges are over-the-top for the amount she owed.

"What they've spent in stamps is more than what I owe," she said.

She could also end up paying hundreds of dollars in fines for the unfiled tax forms, the television station reported.

Loveland City Manager Fred Enderle said the amount Combs owes isn't the real issue.

"Whether it's $1 they owe us or $1,000, it's not fair to the rest of the public to not pursue that person," he said. "There is some expense involved, but it goes back to the principle. We have laws. The laws have to be complied with. At what cost do you stop enforcing the law?"

Combs is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 20.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** CIA to Manage All US Human Spying http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/14/content_3616404.htm contributing editor to   - Rodger

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House has approved a plan to name Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Porter Goss as the manager of all US human intelligence-gathering, John D.Negroponte, director of national intelligence, announced Thursday.

    Negroponte also announced the formation of a new National Clandestine Services (NCS) group within the CIA to coordinate and evaluate intelligence.

    "I am confident that with the creation of the NCS, the US government will have a more cohesive and truly national human intelligence capability," said Negroponte, whose office would retain oversight of US human intelligence but not be involved in day-to-day management decisions.

    Human intelligence refers to information collected from people,rather than from technical sources such as electronic intercepts.

    The CIA reached separate agreements earlier this year on coordinating foreign intelligence with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon, which have intensified their intelligence activities abroad since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

    The plan was drafted by Goss based on recommendations made in March by President George W. Bush's commission on US intelligence capabilities regarding weapons of mass destruction.

    Under the plan, Goss will set the common standards for spying operations, whether they are conducted by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency or one of the 13 additional intelligence agencies in the federal government, news reports said.

    "This is another positive step in building an intelligence community that is more unified, coordinated and effective, and is better positioned to meet the increasingly complex intelligence challenges of the future," Negroponte said.

    The NCS would be under Goss's chain of command.

    A report in Thursday's edition of The Washington Post said the CIA's current deputy director for the agency's clandestine human intelligence operations, referred to as "Jose" because he is stillunder cover, would be the first NCS director.

    The decision represented "an expression of confidence in the CIA" from Bush and Negroponte, Goss said in a statement on Thursday.

    In a speech to CIA employees last month, Goss predicted that Negroponte would approve his plan and keep the agency as overall coordinator of US human intelligence. 

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT DHS and AOL: An Unholy Alliance http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=3688 contributing editor to   - Rodger

[We have repeatedly said"friends do not let friends use AOL".  While any company can do things we do not like or want, AOL has been the most obvious about giving private info to the gubment and for regulating what its customers may and may not get or do on the web.  --  Tribble]

by Martin McKinney; The Financial Reporter (U.K.) October 3, 2005

Washington - The American-based internet giant, AOL, wholly-owned by Time-Warner, has formed a working partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to permit unlimited surveillance of the millions of AOL online members, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"AOL works &lsquo;closely with the DHS' to supply information on any AOL customer and allows agents from these entities &lsquo;free and unfettered' access to AOL Hq at Dulles, VA for the purpose of &lsquo;watching over and keeping surveillance ' on the millions of AOL customers,' according to the report.

The legal basis for this is the recently Congress-approved Patriot Act which permits warrantless searches of persons and property. While information gleaned from delving into personal computer messages is supposed to be kept confidential, it appears that the DHS has exceeded their brief and obtained what appears to be strictly personal information which is then circulated to entities outside the DHS.

The Department of Commerce report also states that news of this surveillance has leaked out and is causing serious concern in the American, and European, business communities who are fearful that trade secrets may be given to other business entities, considered as "friendly" to the Bush Administration.
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1902.htm#002
 

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT US "private military contractors" already in-country to "deal with" Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias... http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46388 contributing editor to   - Rodger

INTELLIGENCE REPORT:

Intelligence agencies are revealing that US private military contractors, active in Colombia "under various contract umbrellas, including counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency" are building up to yet another attempted coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Carefully described as "private military contractors" (a.k.a. hired mercenary killers), the PMCs are known already to have conducted several incursions across the Colombia-Venezuela border to link up with rebel units of the Venezuelan military operating along the border badlands between the two countries.

Senior officials at the US Pentagon have authorized the intruder operation as part of a plan to make it appear that Chavez is militarily assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

    * The US mercenaries have also established close links with right-wing Colombian paramilitaries (AUC) and their associated drug cartels to smuggle weapons into Venezuela.

Attached to the Pentagon's Joint Staff, a Colombian General is participating in a joint foreign military "interaction plan" sponsored by the US Defense Department in Washington D.C. to coordinate "force development" and "scenario simulation" invasive techniques at the behest of the US Joint Staff Command.

Intel sources also say that an Opus Dei (Roman Catholic) espionage and political assassination team operating in the United States is in the background of a case where a former Marine aide, Leandro Aragoncilla ... a US Vice Presidential staffer and FBI agent ... has been accused of espionage at the White House.

Aragoncilla was arrested recently on charges of illegally obtaining classified documents from US Vice President Dick Cheney's office and FBI computer which were passed to Philippine opposition figures linked to Opus Dei in the Philippines in preparation for a coup d'etat against that country's President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Opus Dei elements are known also to have played a major role in supporting the April 2002 coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias which continues a wider espionage and political black bag operation with support and logistics approved by highest levels within the Pentagon and the FBI.

A classified intelligence report leaked to this e-publication shows that the espionage ring has operating out of US Vice President Dick Cheney's office with the implicit approval from within the Bush administration.

Intel sources are also revealing more paper trails linking George H. W. Bush to the now defunct Al Taqwa ("Fear of God") bank operated on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, his family, and some of his closest business associates.

The network of Swiss-based terrorist financiers is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent European fascist leaders. The Al Taqwa bank was headquartered in the Italian Swiss enclave Campione d'Italia and had offices in the Bahamas. It ceased operations after assets were blocked by a US Treasury Department order, its assets were frozen by the Swiss government, and its banking license was revoked by the Bahamas.

Al Taqwa subsequently changed its name to Nada Management Organization. Al Taqwa and a complex web of affiliate front companies and brass plates in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jersey, Isle of Man, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, the United States (Delaware and Texas), Germany, Belgium, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Liechtenstein were reportedly involved in funding terrorist operations around the world, including the procurement of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through Baltic intermediaries.

According to a EUROPOL diagram obtained by WMR, these companies included Iksir Holding, SA (Italy), Asat Trust (Liechtenstein), Iksir Ltd. (Bahamas), Gulf Center (Italy), NASCO (Turkey), Nasreddin International Group (Liechtenstein), Akida Bank (Bahamas), MIGA (Switzerland), and Nasreddin Foundation (Liechtenstein).

According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital.

Iranian fraudster and neocon Pentagon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital ... a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976.

    * Interestingly, it was George W. Bush, who, in November 2001, cited Al Taqwa as part of Al Qaeda's money-laundering activities.

However, Bush's neocon allies at The Washington Times and World Net Daily quickly altered course and drew attention away from Al Taqwa's Saudi and Kuwaiti investors and began to erroneously link Al Taqwa to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Further criminal investigations of Al Taqwa's principals were also quickly dropped.

Potomac Capital appeared on the radar screen of Federal investigators during the Iran-Contra investigation conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Al Taqwa connection to weapons of mass destruction proliferation, Bin Laden, and George H. W. Bush and his business associates stands as another reason the George W. Bush administration leaked the CIA's Brewster Jennings & Associates counter-WMD network. The CIA counter-proliferation team was getting uncomfortably close to tying members of the Bush family and their business associates to the same financial networks that fund Osama Bin Laden and his "Al Qaeda" network.

Intel sources have also traced a possible second connection between the Swiss network connected to George H. W. Bush and other 9/11 hijackers.

The first connection concerned hijacker Fayyaz Ahmed and a US$50,000 check he received from a tranche connected to the Swiss network. The second is the listing of Ahmed Mesfer Ahmed Alghamdi as a shareholder of Al Taqwa on a Central Bank of the Bahamas document dated April 15, 2000. Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi were two of the Saudi hijackers on board United Flight 175, which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Saeed Alghamdi was one of the hijackers on board United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after being shot down by US military fighter planes (according to an NSA employee who was on duty in the National Security Operations Center on the morning of 9/11).

According to the FBI, the Alghamdi hijackers used a number of aliases. Ahmed Alghamdi used the names Ahmed Saeed Saleh Alghamdi, Ahmed Mohammed Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Saleh, and Juan Poncho Bennett. Hamza Alghamdi used Saleh Alghamdi Hamzah. Saeed Alghamdi used Mohsalih Alghamdi, Mokhlidmazid Almotairi, Saeedayed Alghamdi, and Saeed H. Alghamdi. Other Alghamdis wanted by the FBI for involvement with "Al Qaeda" include Nora Alghamdi, Ali A. Alghamdi, Abdulrahman Alghamdi, Othman Alghamdi, Sadda Alghamdi and Tareqsaeed Alghamdi.

Now, more information has been gleaned from knowledgeable intelligence sources about the secret UNOCAL, Enron, and Taliban negotiations over the Central Asian Gas pipeline (CentGas). The source of the $10 billion was the Saudi Royal family and the recipient was Enron's LJM1 off-the-books partnership, also known as LJM Cayman, LP. LJM1 was primarily set up to finance the CentGas pipeline deal. Convicted Enron Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew J. Fastow was the managing member of the LJM1 partners. In addition to Barclays, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was also allegedly used to transfer the $10 billion to the Enron account.

Two criminal investigations in New York are getting close to exposing a major Bush family and associates' international money-laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund US elections since the Nixon era.

    According to CIA sources, most Bush family assets are tied up in off-shore accounts that are masked from investigators through the use of pass through companies and secretive interlocking board directorships.

The investigations of the secret Bush money tranches are coming to the fore as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer focuses in on the scandal involving Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and the inflation of the worth of American Insurance Group (AIG) through shady affiliates, including AIG reinsurer Coral Re of Barbados.

Greenberg was the CEO of AIG but was forced to step down amid the Spitzer probe. AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II.

AIG's largest shareholder is Starr International Company (SICO), an off-shore corporation incorporated in Panama with headquarters in Bermuda.

    * Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who prosecuted President Clinton, is the nephew of Cornelius Starr.

Greenberg inherited the CEO job and Chairmanship from Starr as well as the $3.5 billion Starr Foundation.

    Another probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is focused on long-time Bush backers Sam and Charles Wyly of Texas and a Bank of America off-shore account in the Isle of Man. According to intelligence sources, that probe is getting very close to an Isle of Man multi-billion dollar account controlled by the Bushes through an off-shore contrivance known as Five Star Trust.

Charles Wyly serves on the board of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). Critics have charged that hundreds of millions of dollars of UTIMCO's $11 billion in public funds have been steered to investment funds run by Bush family friends and supporters. A number of UTIMCO's past and current directors are members of George W. Bush's "$100,000 Club." These include, in addition to Wyly, former UTIMCO chairman Tom Hicks, a vice chairman of Clear Channel and head of Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc.; L. Lowry Mays, the chairman of Clear Channel; former Texas Representative and current lobbyist Tom Loeffler (who received illegal laundered campaign contributions from the failed Vernon Savings & Loan); A. W. Riter, a former chairman of NCNB Bank in Tyler, Texas; A. R. "Tony" Sanchez, Chairman of Sanchez-O'Brien Oil & Gas, owner of the Texas border-based International Bank of Commerce and the failed Tesoro Savings & Loan; and Woody Hunt, Chairman of Hunt Building Company. Some of UTIMCO's investments were directed to firms with close ties to Bush "Pioneer" contributors Lee Bass (Bass Brothers Enterprises), Henry Kravis (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), and Charles Wyly (Maverick Capital Fund), as well as George W. and H.W. Bush (The Carlyle Partners II Fund, managed by The Carlyle Group).

Texas money laundering is the tip of an Bush family financial iceberg that extends below the surface to shady financial deals around the globe. However, investigators who dare venture into Texas will have their jobs cut out for them. The Bushes have been major recipients of campaign cash from senior partners the largest law firms in Texas -- Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts (law firm of James Baker III), Andrews Kurth (the law firm of contentious US District Judge Priscilla Owen), Jenkins & Gilchrist, Haynes Boone and Bracewell & Patterson -- that have also been involved in defending those Texas companies and principals who have benefited from massive illegal financial flows.
 

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Not in My Water Supply http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118379,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118379-2,00.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118379-3,00.html contributing editor to   - Crystal

It hardens teeth and prevents cavities, but 60 years after it began, fluoridation is meeting new resistance

Somebody put a dead rat in Curtis Smith's mailbox. Someone else has made anonymous phone calls accusing him of trying to poison his neighbors. And all around the usually placid university town of Bellingham, Wash., activists from a group called Citizens Against Forced Fluoride have planted lawn signs adorned with skull and crossbones. "I had no idea it would get this intense," says Smith, 70, a retired dentist who is leading a Nov. 8 ballot initiative to add fluoride to the local drinking water. "These are very angry people."

Angry indeed: fluoridation to fight tooth decay, a hot-button issue from the 1950s--when it was attacked as a communist plot--is back on the front burner and not just in Washington State. Fueled by health concerns, cancer fears and a grass-roots campaign that has flooded the Internet with antifluoridation Web pages, citizens across the U.S. are increasingly suspicious of what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) considers "one of the 10 great public-health achievements of the 20th century." In the past three years, legislation to encourage fluoridation has been defeated or tabled in Oregon, Arkansas, Nebraska and Hawaii. New battles are brewing in New Jersey, Massachusetts and across the Canadian border in Montreal.

No one disputes the fact that fluoride, a natural element found in rocks and groundwater, protects tooth enamel. Since 1945, municipal systems serving 170 million Americans have added fluoride (mostly in the form of hydrofluorosilicic acid) to their water, and the prevalence of cavities in the U.S. has fallen dramatically. "A community can save about $38 in dental-treatment costs for every $1 invested in fluoridation," says William Maas, the CDC's director of oral health. "How many other investments yield that kind of return?"

But much has changed since 1945, starting with our toothpastes. Today fluoride is an ingredient in most brands of dentifrice on the market. Because toothpaste is designed to be spit out, it's a more efficient way to get the decay-fighting ingredient where it is needed and nowhere else. Even some dentists, who see firsthand the benefits of fluoridation, wonder whether people who get fluoride from toothpaste should get it in their drinking water as well.

What has also changed is how much toxicologists know about the harmful effects of fluoride compounds. Ingested in high doses, fluoride is indisputably toxic; it was once commonly used in rat poison. Hydrogen fluoride is regulated as a hazardous pollutant in emissions from chemical plants and has been linked to respiratory illness. Even in toothpaste, sodium fluoride is a health concern. In 1997 the Food and Drug Administration toughened the warning on every tube to read, "If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a poison-control center right away."

The most recent--and controversial--charge links fluoridation with bone cancer. In June the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a watchdog organization, petitioned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to list fluoride in tap water as a carcinogen. The group cited "decades of peer-review studies" on fluoride's "ability to mutate DNA and its known deposition on the ends of growing bones, the site of osteosarcoma"--a rare, often fatal cancer that affects mainly boys.
To read the remainder of the article goto the following links.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118379-2,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118379-3,00.html
 

I N S I G H T e-Meddling http://www.wsj.com/wsjgate?source=jopinaowsj&URI=/article/0,,SB112950445280770217,00.html%3Fmod%3Dopinion%26ojcontent%3Dotep contributing editor to   - Dan

October 17, 2005; Page A18

International bureaucrats and assorted countries are struggling to wrest control of "Internet governance" from that old unilateralist bogeyman, the United States. There's one big problem with this picture: Cyberspace isn't "governed" by the U.S. or anyone else, and that's the beauty of it. But if the United Nations gets its way in the coming month, the Web will end up under its control. Uh-oh is about right.

Internet governance, such as it is, currently falls under the purview of a California-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Better known as Icann, it was created by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 to administer the "root zone file," the master list of all Web addresses world-wide, which the U.S. has kept since the creation of the Internet in the 1970s. Ensuring that any given Web address, or domain name, is assigned to only one Web site is a key reason why the Internet has become such a powerful tool.

Maintaining the root zone file involves assigning -- or, more commonly, accrediting other companies to assign -- domain names, such as our OpinionJournal.com. Icann also manages the top-level domains such as .com and .org. This includes the 248 country-specific ones -- from .ca for Canada to .aq for Antarctica, and everything in between. Local authorities set policy for their country-specific extensions, conferring with Icann to make sure everything works smoothly.
And that's it. Real "governance," on the other hand, could bring oversight of content and even transactions by a new international body -- two jobs that Icann explicitly doesn't perform. For an example of how the Internet is governed, look no further than the strict limits China -- one of the main proponents of "internationalizing" the root zone file -- places on Web sites that promote or even discuss democracy.

But if China and other countries already do this now, why would they be pushing for change? Good question. So far, exactly what this new intergovernmental body would look like or do remains worryingly vague. According to a report of the U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance, this body could be a Global Internet Council to which Icann reports; or it could keep Icann in place and simply make recommendations; or it could take over Icann's duties and relegate the private sector to "providing advice."

The working group's report says the governing body would respect freedom of expression. At the same time, it holds as one of its "key principles" the "respect for cultural and linguistic diversity as well as tradition [and] religion." On the Internet, it says, "that translates to multilingual, diverse and culturally appropriate content" (our emphasis). And who decides whether content is culturally, or otherwise, "appropriate"? Today, no one. Tomorrow, Tehran, Beijing or Brussels.
One constant -- and this is where vagueness becomes an even bigger danger -- is that a U.N.-run oversight body would address "public policy issues that currently do not have a natural home or cut across several international or intergovernmental bodies." In other words, it could do darn near anything it wanted.
It's no surprise that supporters' bureaucratic web of choice is the U.N., which cloaks its designs on Internet control in language about such niceties as bridging the "digital divide." Spreading Web access is a worthy goal, but centralizing control runs directly at odds with that aim. The phenomenal growth of email, e-commerce and e-everything else is directly attributable to the Internet's decentralized nature. One area where a U.N.-run Web might very well expand its reach is into the taxpayer's pocket. Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac have long dreamed of a global "solidarity" tax on online financial transactions. This could be their vehicle for doing so.

By no means is Icann perfect. The main gripe is that the agency is subject to occasional political pressure from Washington. In August, Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher objected to Icann's plans to introduce a .xxx top-level domain for pornographic Web sites. This political misstep, while hardly the norm, undermined Icann's independence and gave ammunition to the multilateral-at-all-costs crowd. The Administration can neutralize its opponents by moving ahead quickly with plans to grant Icann its full independence next year.

Without U.S. support for the U.N.'s Web "governance" campaign -- withheld so far -- the current system can't be changed. But Washington doesn't hold all the cards here. Countries could create parallel Internets. The same Web address might take users in China and the U.S. to different Web sites -- a nightmare outcome for online business as well as the vibrant marketplace of ideas that the Internet has fostered. Perhaps our friends at the European Union, who last month turned against the U.S., will realize that their sudden push for "control" over the Net carries a high price
 

The Flat Earth Report Kicking Ass contributing editor to   - Dale

This may be a first...

A couple from Montana were out riding on the range, he  with his rifle and she (fortunately) with her camera. Their dogs always  followed them, but on this occasion a Mountain Lion decided that he wanted to  stalk the dogs (you'll see the dogs in the background watching).  Very,  very bad decision...

The hunter got off the mule with his rifle and decided  to shoot in the air to scare away the lion, but before he could get off a shot  the lion charged in and decided he wanted a piece of those dogs. With that,  the mule took off and decided he wanted a piece of that lion. That's when all  hell broke loose...  for the lion.

As the lion approached the dogs the mule snatched him  up by the tail and started whirling him around. Banging its head on the ground  on every pass. Then he dropped it, stomped on it and held it to the ground by  the throat.  The mule then got down on his knees and bit the thing all  over a couple of dozen times to make sure it was dead, than whipped it into  the air again, walked back over to the couple (that were stunned in silence)  and stood there ready to continue his ride...  as if nothing had just  happened.

Fortunately even though the hunter didn't get off a  shot, his wife got off these 4...
 

duh Nah, there is No Such Thing as Weather Control http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=THE20051008&articleId=1061 contributing editor to   - Craig

Weather War?
New evidence suggests US & Russia are embroiled in an illegal race to harness the power of hurricanes & earthquakes

by The Daily Express, October 8, 2005, The Daily Express (U.K.) - 2005-07-16

THE huge mushroom cloud soared skywards, the captain was gripped by fear, believing his plane was about to be engulfed by the fall-out from a nuclear explosion. After declaring mayday and ordering his crew to don oxygen masks, the experienced pilot had the presence of mind to record that the cloud measured an estimated 200 miles in diameter and was tipped by an eerie light, like nothing he had seen before. Eventually, it soared harmlessly into the atmosphere, leaving the passenger jet to continue safely on its journey from Anchorage, in Alaska, to Tokyo.

But far below, a fleet of fishing boats trawling the sea between Japan and the Soviet Union was drenched by a violent but short-lived downpour before the weather suddenly cleared. Nuclear tests and volcanic activity were later ruled out but scientists concluded that this was not a natural phenomenon. More than two decades later suspicion still exists that the stunned airline crew and fishermen in 1973 were witnessing a sinister Cold War experiment, in which water from the Sea of Japan was blown into the air to create clouds and rain.

British government papers, just released by the National Archives, show that throughout the Seventies there was deep mistrust between the two superpowers over environmental warfare. The documents reveal that both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret military programmes with the goal of controlling the world's climate. "By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, " one scientist is said to have boasted.

Since then, a United Nations treaty has been signed which bans environmental warfare, such as causing earthquakes, melting the polar ice caps and altering climate. But some experts believe that clandestine work to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction continues.

These claims are dismissed by sceptics as wild conspiracy theories and the stuff of James Bond movies but there is growing evidence that the boundaries between science fiction and fact are becoming increasingly blurred. The Americans now admit that they invested L12million over five years during the Vietnam war on "cloud seeding" - deliberately creating heavy rainfall to wash away enemy crops and destroy supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in an operation codenamed Project Popeye.

It is claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in targeted areas, making the weather-manipulation weapon a success. At the time, government officials said the region was prone to heavy rain.

However this sort of rain-making experiment was nothing new. In Britain, it has been alleged that before the devastating Lynmouth floods in Devon in 1952, the RAF had been conducting secret rain-making tests. Aircraft showered clouds with silver iodide, on which water droplets formed, became heavy and eventually fell to the ground as rain. In the next 12 hours nine inches of rain fell - 250 times the normal amount for August - and 35 people were killed.

Former North Devon MP Tony Speller, then a 22-year-old soldier who helped in the relief effort, sought answers from the MoD.

"I have no doubt they were seeding in the area because there were RAF log books to prove it, " he says now. "Of course the MoD denied any knowledge but that is not to say it did not happen."

Speller, now 76, adds: "I doubt we will ever know the truth."

Early work on climate control was crude and unpredictable but it is claimed that both the Americans and Russians continued to experiment behind closed doors even after the UN ban in the mid-Eighties, and both now possess sophisticated systems which are capable of controlling the weather - with potentially devastating results.

In the US, the technology was developed under the high-frequency active auroral research programme ( HAARP) - originally part of Ronald Reagan's controversial Star Wars defence system. Based in Gokoma, Alaska, the weapon operates by beaming powerful radio waves into the upper atmosphere to alter weather patterns. Some experts claim the system is already up and running, while others say it won't be ready for another 20 years.

Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who has studied official military documents about HAARP, is in no doubt that the weapon is ready.

"There are very clear statements by the US Air Force to the effect that weather modification technology is available. HAARP will be fully operational by next year and could be used in actual military situations, " he says.

(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20040927&articleId=319)

"To claim this system has any nonmilitary purposes is twisting the truth.

I don't think there are any peaceful applications - it is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of major climatic disturbance. Part of the beauty is that the enemy might never know that a weapon had been used. I believe the UN agreement is certainly being violated."

He claims that at least one British firm has been involved in its development.

"It is time people began focusing on these weapons instead of concentrating solely on global warming, " Chossudovsky adds. "Both are a serious threat."

The Russians are thought to have their own "weather steering" system, called Woodpecker, involving the transmission of low-frequency waves which are capable of disrupting the atmosphere and altering the path of the jet stream. It is claimed that a prolonged drought in California in the Eighties was caused by the blocking of warm, moist air for many weeks.

According to Damian Wilson, a physicist with the Met Office, controlling climate is a reality but not a precise science. "Clearing fog by dropping dry ice into clouds is a proven technique which has been around for decades, " he says.

"Large amounts of research have been invested in seeding clouds to generate rain and it is done in countries where there are water shortages. The problem is that it is unpredictable and you need clouds to start with. The technology does not exist to make rain fall from clear blue skies so it cannot be used in the desert to end droughts and famines."

WILSON believes it is possible to alter the course of a hurricane, which could have enormous life-saving potential. The current mayhem in the Caribbean and America's Eastern seaboard also shows what a destructive weapon a well-targeted storm could prove.

The Americans used cloud seeding to try to control a hurricane in 1947 but the tactic backfired when it picked up strength and hit Savannah, Georgia.

It is known that the US carried out further hurricane-manipulation experiments between 1962 and 1983, under the codename Project Stormfury, after it was calculated that a single hurricane contained as much energy as all the world's power stations combined. More recent projects have involved pouring tens of thousands of gallons of vegetable oil on to the sea.

"Hurricanes gather their strength from the warm sea surface, " says Wilson. "By spreading a large film of oil on the sea it would reduce the intensity by cooling the surface. In theory it is possible to change the path of the hurricane this way. It would not surprise me if military research into controlling the weather goes on. As we suffer more summer droughts in the south-east of England I would also expect to see pressure for cloud seeding to be introduced in this country."

It is not just the weather that has attracted the attention of the military.

Scientists have also researched ways of triggering earthquakes. By setting off small quakes, pressure could be released and a disaster averted. But military scientists believe it is also possible to direct powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the Earth's plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake. Along fault lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch devastating tsunamis.

Part of the problem in banning experiments involves agreeing a definition of what environmental warfare is. It has been argued that the famous Dambusters mission during the Second World War, when bouncing bombs were used to flood the German industrial heartland, were a form of environmental warfare.

Half a century later, the threat is still being taken sufficiently seriously.

Former US defence secretary William Cohen warns: "Terrorists are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts."

Owen Greene, director of research at Bradford University's department of Peace Studies, believes efforts are continuing in secret to develop weapons that harness nature.

"There is so much money within the Pentagon that it would surprise me if they were not looking into it, " he says. "I suspect it is going on in both the US and Russia. You can't stop people researching the weather. As for earthquakes, you don't even need to spend money on active military programmes because there is so much other work going on which could easily be adapted. Some of the ideas are quite credible."

Another defence source says: "The risk is that by fooling around with nature, we may unleash irreversible damage and change our entire planet's atmosphere."

Despite these stark warnings, such is the immense power of nature, it seems inevitable that Man will continue to play God. 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Historical Facts Exposing The Dangers And Ineffectiveness Of Vaccines http://www.vaccinationdebate.com/web2.html http://www.alternativehealth.co.nz/vacines/historicalfacts.htm contributing editor to   - Dan

- 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 a vaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (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 the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio 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 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 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 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 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)
-The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.
- 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)
- In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)
- In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990)
- In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association had an article on measles which stated " Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated children." (JAMA, 21/11/90)
- In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)
- In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over 80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been fully vaccinated.
- On November 2nd, 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced that its members voted at their 57th annual meeting in St Louis to pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccines. The resolution passed without a single "no" vote. (Report by Michael Devitt)
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Israel, Judaism and Zionism http://www.nkusa.org/activities/speeches/bham022603.cfm contributing editor to   - Rodger

[A little long, but for the many people who think that the 20th-21st century geopolitical region called "Israel" and it's inhabitants called "jews" are the descendants of the Biblical family called Israel or the ONE tribe called Judah, you have a rude awakening coming. At the end of the article (not part of the original article) take a look at the two page (cover and page 3, from the Jewish Almanac.   On page 3, under the heading of "A brief History of the Terms for Jew" in the 1980 Jewish Almanac is the following: "STRICTLY SPEAKING IT IS INCORRECT TO CALL AN ANCIENT ISRAELITE A 'JEW' OR TO CALL A CONTEMPORARY JEW AN ISREALITE OR A HEBREW."  Now read the article and enjoy.  --  Tribble]

My friends, it is an honour to have the opportunity of talking to you today.

I and my colleagues of Neturei Karta attend occasions such as this because we feel that we have both a religious and humanitarian duty to publicize our message as much as possible. So I hope and pray that with the Creator's help my words and our discussions here today may be correct and true in their content and conclusions.

As you have already been told, I am an orthodox Jew (that is a Jew who endeavours to live his life completely in accordance with the Jewish religion). I am involved in ecclesiastical duties within the Jewish Community and am particularly involved in educating our youth and in helping them to achieve healthy and correct attitudes. It is therefore of particular interest to me to be able to talk to you, a student body, today.

I have been asked to talk to you about Judaism and Zionism. This subject is of course tremendously relevant in the light of the current situation in Palestine, where you have - let's face it - one side, the Zionists (who are also Jews), wishing to impose a &lsquo;sectarian' State over the heads of an indigenous population, the Palestinians. A confrontation which has resulted in horrific bloodshed and brutality with no end in sight unless there is a very radical change.

My qualification to talk on this subject is by virtue of my being one of many orthodox Jews who absolutely sympathise with the Palestinian cause, and we protest vehemently against the terrible wrongs being perpetrated against the Palestinian People by the Zionist illegitimate regime in Palestine.

The spearhead group among us who are involved actively in this matter on a regular basis are called Neturei Karta, which can be loosely translated as Guardians of the Faith. We are not a separate party or organisation but basically a philosophy representative of a large section of orthodox Jewry.

Let me firstly state quite categorically that Judaism and Zionism are incompatible. They are diametrically opposed.

The question must surely arise in the minds of many of you here today that there appears to be a paradox. After all everyone knows that Zionists are Jews and that Zionism is for the benefit of Jews. The Palestinians are the enemies of the Zionists. How come then that I, a Jew, can sympathise with the Palestinian cause.

I would like to try to answer this question and to revert to the subject of my talk - Judaism and Zionism - on two levels, religious belief and humanitarianism. Bearing in mind that to be humanitarian is also a basic religious requirement.

Firstly from a Jewish religious belief point of view. One has to take a look at some aspects of the history of the Jewish people and at their basic belief in the Al-mighty's control of our destiny and what the Al-mighty wants of us. All as set out in our Religious teachings, our Toira, and as taught to us through the generations by our great religious leaders. Against this we also have to look at the history of Zionism, how it developed, what are its aims.

Our religion is for us a total way of life. Showing us how to live a life in the service of the Al-mighty. It affects every aspect of our life from the cradle to the grave. We are taught that it was revealed to us by Divine Revelation, as described in the Bible, some three and a half thousand years ago, and that is when the Jewish People came in to being. All of our religious requirements, practical and philosophical, are set out in the Torah which comprises the Bible (the old testament) and a vast code of Oral Teaching handed down to us through the generations.

As mentioned, our religion is a total way of life covering every aspect of our life. One area of our religion is that subject to certain conditions is that we will be given a land, the Holy Land, now known as Palestine, in which to live and carry out various parts of our service of the Al-mighty.

Now, before I go any further, I wish to point out something which is very basic to understanding the difference between Judaism and Zionism and that is that the orthodox Jewish concept of nationhood is very different to the concept of nationhood held by most peoples. Most peoples understand a nation to be a specific people living in a specific land. The land is essential for the identity of the nation. They may or may not have a religion, but the religion is immaterial to the national identity. The orthodox Jewish concept of nationhood however, is a specific people with a specific religion. It is the religion that establishes the national identity. They may or may not have a land, the land is immaterial to the Jewish national identity.

This is borne out by the fact that the Jewish nation has been without a land for 2000 years, but as long as they retained their religion they retained their identity.

Now I mentioned earlier that we were given a land but under certain conditions. The conditions were basically that we had to maintain the highest of moral, ethical and religious standards. The Jewish People did have the land for approximately the first one thousand five hundred years of their existence. However, regretfully, the conditions were not fulfilled to the required degree and the Jews were exiled from their land. For the last two thousand years or so the Jewish people have been in a state of exile decreed by the A-lmighty because they did not maintain the standards expected of them. This state of exile is the situation that exists right up to the present day. It is a basic part of our belief to accept willingly the Heavenly decree of exile and not to try and fight against it or to end it by our own hands. To do so would constitute a rebellion against the wishes of the A-lmighty.

In practical terms, although we have maintained our Jewish identity by virtue of our attachment to our religion, never the less exile for us means firstly that Jews must be loyal subjects of the countries in which they live and not attempt to rule over the established indigenous populations of those countries.

Secondly, that we may not attempt to set up a State of our own in Palestine.
This would apply even if the land would be unoccupied and it certainly applies when, as is the case, there is an existing indigenous population. This prohibition is a basic part of our teaching and we are forsworn not to contravene it and we are warned of the dire consequences of doing so.

It follows, therefore, that Jews have no right to rule today in Palestine.

Now let us consider the Zionist movement. This was founded approximately 100 years ago mostly by secular people who were discarding their religion but still retained what they considered as the stigma of being Jews in exile. They considered that our state of exile was due to our own subservient attitude - &lsquo;the Golus (exile) mentality' - and not by Divine Decree. They wanted to throw off the constraints of exile and to try and establish a new form of Jewish identity. Not religion based but land based. It was based on a typical, emotion driven, secular nationalistic aim, similar to that of most other nations. Their policy had as its centre pin the aim of setting up a Jewish State in Palestine. But they were forging a new kind of Jew. In fact not a Jew at all- a Zionist.

This Zionist movement was a complete abandonment of our religious teachings and faith - in general - and in particular an abandonment of our approach to our state of exile and our attitude to the peoples among whom we live.

The practical outcome of Zionism in the form of the State known as &lsquo;Israel' is completely alien to Judaism and the Jewish Faith. The very name "Israel" which originally meant what are known as the Children of Israel i.e. the Jewish People was usurped by the Zionists. For this reason many orthodox Jews avoid referring to the Zionist State by the name 'Israel'.

The ideology of Zionism is not to rely on divine providence but to take the law into ones own hands and to try to force the outcome in the form of a State. This is completely contrary to the approach to the matter of exile which our Toira requires us to adopt, as handed down to us by our great religious teachers.

I have spoken till now from the religious belief point of view. But let us consider the humanitarian point of view (and to do so is also a religious requirement as I mentioned earlier).The Zionist ideology was and is to force the aim of a State irrespective of the cost in life and property to anyone who stands in the way. The Palestinians stood in the way. We have a fact that in order to achieve an ill conceived nationalistic ambition, a shocking contravention of natural justice was committed by the Zionists in setting up an illegitimate regime in Palestine completely against the wishes of the established population, the Palestinians, which inevitably had to be based on loss of life, killing and stealing.

Most Orthodox Jews accept the Neturei Karta view to the extent that they do not agree in principle to the existence of the Zionist State and would not &lsquo;shed a tear&lsquo; if it came to an end. There are however a range of opinions as to how to deal with the fact that for the time being the Zionist State exists. These opinions range from positive cooperation to pragmatic acceptance to total opposition in every way. The latter being the Neturei Karta approach.

There was and is however, an additional Zionist phenomenon which confuses the picture. That is the Religious Zionists. These are people who claim to be faithful to the Jewish Religion but they have been influenced by the Zionist secular nationalistic philosophy and have added a new dimension to Judaism - Zionism, the aim of setting up now and expanding a Jewish state in Palestine. This they try to fulfil with great fervour. (I call it Judaism-plus) They claim that this is inherent in the Jewish religion. But the fact is as explained earlier that this is absolutely contrary to the teachings of our great religious teachers.

Furthermore, from a humanitarian point of view, their ideology too was and is to force their aim irrespective of the cost in life and property to anyone who stands in the way. The Palestinians are standing in the way. This is all the more shocking as it is done in the name of religion. Whereas in reality there is a totally contrary requirement of our religion and that is to treat all peoples with compassion.

To sum up. According to the Torah and Jewish faith, the present Palestinian > Arab claim to rule in Palestine is right and just. The Zionist claim is wrong and criminal. Our attitude to Israel is that the whole concept is flawed and illegitimate.

We have another problem and that is that the Zionists have made themselves to appear as the representatives and spokespeople of all Jews thus, with their actions, arousing animosity against the Jews. Those who harbour this animosity are accused of anti-Semitism. However, what has to be made abundantly clear is that Zionism is not Judaism. Zionists cannot speak in the name of Jews. Zionists may have been born as Jews, but to be a Jew also requires adherence to the Jewish belief and religion. So what becomes abundantly clear is that opposition to Zionism and its crimes does not imply hatred of Jews or &lsquo;anti-Semitism&lsquo;. On the contrary Zionism itself and its deeds are the biggest threat to Jews and Judaism.

The strife between Arab and Jew in Palestine only began when the first Zionist pioneers came to Palestine with the express aim of forming a State over the heads of the indigenous Arab population. That strife has continued until this very day and has cost and continues to cost thousands and thousands of lives. The oppression, abuse and murder in Palestine is a tragedy not only for the Palestinians but for the Jewish people as well. And is in fact part of the dire consequences of which we are warned if we transgress our religious requirement not to rebel against our exile.

I wish to add that the connection between Muslims and Jews goes right back into ancient history. Mostly the relationship was friendly and mutually beneficial. Historically, the situation frequently was that when Jews were being persecuted in Europe they found refuge in the various Muslim countries. Our attitude to Muslims and Arabs can only be one of friendliness and respect.

I would like to finish with the following words. We want to tell the world, especially our Muslim neighbours, that there is no hatred or animosity between Jew and Muslim. We wish to live together as friends and neighbours as we have done mostly over hundreds even thousands of years in all the Arab countries. It was only the advent of the Zionists and Zionism which upset this age old relationship.

We consider the Palestinians as the people with the right to govern in Palestine.

The Zionist State known as "Israel" is a regime that has no right to exist. Its continuing existence is the underlying cause of the strife in Palestine. 33. We pray for a solution to the terrible and tragic impasse that exists. Hopefully based on results brought about by moral, political and economic pressures imposed by the nations of the world.

We pray for an end to bloodshed and an end to the suffering of all innocent people - Jew and non-Jew alike - worldwide.

We are waiting for the annulment of Zionism and the dismantling of the Zionist regime, which will bring about an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people. We would welcome the opportunity to dwell in peace in the holy land under a rule which is entirely in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the Palestinian People.

May we soon merit the time when all mankind will be at peace with each other.
 

I N S I G H T The UN Gun http://www.un.org/Depts/UNPA/additional/05_pss/05index.html http://www.mindfully.org/tshirt.htm contributing editor to   - Bob

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Change In Status Of Gun Bill http://www.gunowners.org/a101705.htm contributing editor to   - Loretta

Monday, October 17, 2005

Last week, a bill containing a mandatory trigger lock requirement looked to be dormant on Capitol Hill. The prevailing wisdom was that the bill was dead for the year.

However, given the mercurial nature of legislation and legislative bodies, one can never be certain of what is going to happen as long as Congress is in session. One event that can always shake up the legislative calendar is experiencing a leadership change -- such as when pro-gun House Majority Leader Tom DeLay stepped down from his position recently.

What we do know at this point is that the bill is before the Rules Committee today, and will most likely reach the House floor sometime this week.

The underlying bill would help protect the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits brought by cities, municipalities, and radical anti-gun interest groups.

Unfortunately, the bill was amended on the Senate floor in July by anti-gun Democrat Senator Herb Kohl (WI), who added language requiring licensed gun dealers to supply a trigger lock device with every handgun sold.

House leadership is now being pressured to quickly adopt the Senate version of the bill instead of taking up its own bill, which contains no gun control.

While it is imperative that the Congress pass legislation to protect the firearms industry, this bill should not be used as a vehicle for a misguided gun control proposal.

The Kohl amendment would effectively impose a "gun tax" on all handgun purchases.

Worse, the amendment leads gun owners to the verge of mandatory trigger lock usage, which would actually endanger lives by rendering self-defense firearms useless. While the amendment does not require that gun owners use trigger locks at this point, it is easy to see how trigger locks, like automobile seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, can quickly become compulsory.

Mandatory trigger locks has long been part of the agenda of anti-gun zealots. Though masquerading as a modest step, the amendment will inevitably serve as a stepping-stone to more onerous legislation.

The House bill, introduced by Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns, could potentially help protect the gun industry, but it would do so without saddling American gun owners with yet another gun control law.

H.R. 800, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, garnered well over 250 cosponsors and would pass the House easily if the leadership would bring up this bill rather than its Senate counterpart. In that case, the bill would either go to a joint House-Senate conference, where the different bills would be reconciled, or back to the Senate, forcing that chamber to either pass a clean bill or explain to voters their refusal to protect the beleaguered gun industry.

ACTION: Please ask your Representative to urge the House leadership to take up H.R. 800, which contains no gun control proposals, rather than its Senate counterpart. As GOA is the only national gun lobby insisting on a completely clean bill, it would be very helpful if you would circulate this alert widely throughout the pro-gun community.

You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Representative a pre-written e-mail message such as the one below.

Or, you can call your Representative toll-free at 877-762-8762.

Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102
Springfield, VA 22151
(703)321-8585

--- Pre-written letter ---

Dear Representative:

I am saddened that the House is on the verge of passing gun control in the name of protecting the gun industry. The House should ditch S. 397 and use its own bill, H.R. 800, instead.

H.R. 800, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, garnered well over 250 cosponsors and would pass the House easily if the leadership would bring up this bill rather than its Senate counterpart.

But S. 397 is gun control pure and simple. The Kohl trigger lock amendment would effectively impose a "gun tax" on all handgun purchases. Worse, the amendment leads gun owners to the verge of mandatory trigger lock usage, which would actually endanger lives by rendering self-defense firearms useless.

While the amendment does not require that gun owners use trigger locks at this point, it is easy to see how trigger locks, like automobile seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, can quickly become compulsory.

Mandatory trigger locks has long been part of the agenda of anti-gun zealots. Though masquerading as a modest step, the amendment will inevitably serve as a stepping-stone to more onerous legislation.

Please tell the Speaker and the Majority Leader of the House that S. 397 is unacceptable to gun owners. Instead, send H.R. 800 to the Senate or tack it on as an amendment to some "must pass" legislation.

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Printers Output Secret Barcode http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002569690_code19.html contributing editor to   -Craig

WASHINGTON ,  It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.

Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox saying that the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals.

The content of the coded information was supposed to be a secret, available only to agencies looking for counterfeiters who use color printers.

Now, the secret is out.

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer-privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible barcode of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.

With the Xerox printers, the information appears as a pattern of yellow dots, each only a millimeter wide and visible only with a magnifying glass and a blue light.

The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard, though its team has so far cracked the codes for only one type of Xerox printer.

The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the markings, which are not visible to the human eye, are there, but it played down the use for invading privacy.

"It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity specific to counterfeiting," agency spokesman Eric Zahren said. "It's to protect our currency and to protect people's hard-earned money."

It is unclear whether the yellow-dot codes have been used to make an arrest. And no one would say how long the codes have been in use. But Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years old.

"It seems like someone in the government has managed to have a lot of influence in printing technology," he said.

Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed the existence of the hidden codes, but he said the company was simply assisting an agency that asked for help. McKee said the program was part of a cooperation with government agencies, competing manufacturers and a "consortium of banks," but would not provide further details.

HP said in a statement that it is involved in anti-counterfeiting measures and supports the cooperation between the printer industry and those working to reduce counterfeiting.

Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy.

"It's disturbing that something on this scale, with so many privacy implications, happened with such a tiny amount of publicity," Schoen said.
 

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Baby Yanked from Couple for Kisses on Belly Button http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45477 contributing editor to   -Rodger

[Have you EVER given a baby a "raspberry"?  You know what that is, it is when you put your mouth on the skin of another as if to kiss them, but instead you blow - a RASPBERRY.  When you did it to the baby, where did you usually put your mouth?  --  Tribble]
 

The ordeal is finally over, but for the past year, a North Carolina family has been torn apart after state officials claimed family photos of a father kissing his baby's belly button were some kind of child abuse. It began when Teresa Hamaty took impromptu party snapshots of her husband, Charbel, playfully embracing their naked, newborn son, Kristoff. After dropping the film off at an Eckerd store in North Raleigh, authorities were notified. "You see the back of the baby, and like if someone is kissing the baby's belly button," Teresa told WRAL-TV.

Kristoff Hamaty, now 16-months-old (courtesy: WRAL-TV)

But police saw the worst and arrested Teresa for taking sexually explicit photos, charged her husband with felony sexual assault, and put Kristoff and his half-sister in protective custody. "It was a nightmare," Charbel said, after spending half a year in jail. Teresa took months fighting to gain back custody of her children. "I think this was one of those times that they got the wrong people," Teresa said. "They were too quick to judge when they took one look at my husband."

Teresa and Charbel Hamaty (courtesy WRAL-TV)

Dozens of Hamaty supporters showed up for court appearances, claiming police overreacted. They raised some $140,000 in legal and living expenses for the Hamatys.

"[It] makes me feel, that's it; that's why I have to be strong for; to show everybody what the truth is," Charbel told the station.

The charges eventually were dropped when a report submitted by an expert said there was no criminal intent in the pictures.

"I hate cameras," Charbel now says. "I don't like taking pictures."
 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Eminent Domain in N.J. - Now They Just Steal Land http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/10/17/145458.shtml contributing editor to   -Rodger

[The premise of the recent eminentdomain court case used the principle of who would use the land more for commercial use, the owner who live there or the developer with ties to the local gubment?  In this case, we are seeing how that landmark BAD decision paved the way for further BAD uses of eminent domain.  Now we see it is not who will use the land for commercial purposes, but rather who has the better gubment connections.  That is a no brainer.  --  Tribble]

Eminent Domain in N.J. - Now They Just Steal Land

NewsMax.com Wires, Monday, Oct. 17, 2005

Union Township, N.J. -- Carol Segal has a problem: He wants to build townhouses on the six acres of land he owns in New Jersey's Union Township and has contracted with a developer to build 100 townhouses there.

But the township government wants to develop the property themselves, and - incredibly - they have voted to take his land through the eminent domain process and let a local developer with political connections do the job.

"They want to steal my land," Segal told the Newark Star-Ledger. "What right do they have when I intend to do the exact same thing they want to do with my property?"

According to the Star-Ledger, Segal, a 65-year-old retired electrical engineer, has spent about $1.5 million to acquire the property over the past 10 years and has been dickering with township officials over the past five years about his development plans. He claims negotiations fell apart after he refused to use the developers that township officials wanted him to use.

At that point, on May 24, the five-member township committee voted unanimously to authorize the municipality to seize Segal's land through eminent domain and name its own developer, AMJM Development, paving the way for the developer to build 90 or so townhouses on Segal's land, according to the Star Ledger.

After that vote, Segal sued the township, and on Sept. 7 a Superior Court judge in Union County issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the township from hiring its own developer. Six days later, the township committee unanimously voted to start negotiating - but not sign a contract - with AMJM Development.

In the meantime, Segal signed a contract last week to sell his property to Centex Homes for about $13 million, contingent upon local approval. The Star-Ledger described Centex as a nationally known developer with projects in New Jersey's Middlesex, Morris and Monmouth counties. Centex plans to build 100 townhouses on Segal's property, and expects to earn some $15 million to $20 million, Segal told the newspaper.

Township Mayor Joseph Florio and Deputy Mayor Peter Capodice, both members of the township committee, told the Star Ledger they were unaware of Segal's involvement with Centex when they voted Sept. 13 to negotiate with the Mauti family, who own AMJM Development. But a proposal Centex submitted to the township committee on Sept. 1 said the company "has been in negotiations with (Segal) for quite some time."

When the item came up at the Sept. 13 meeting, the committee did not allow Segal's attorney to speak before the vote was taken.

Florio and Capodice told the newspaper they preferred AMJM because it is a local company. "I've never heard of Centex," Capodice said. "They're not Union County people."

This is where it gets sticky. Segal charges that last May 21, Albert G. Mauti Jr. and his cousin Joseph hosted a fundraiser for Assemblyman Joseph Cryan at the Westmount Country Club in Passaic County. The two developers and family members picked up the $10,400 dinner tab, donated another $8,000 and raised more than $70,000 that night for Cryan, a powerful Union County Democrat, according to state election records. Three days later, the township officials -- all Democrats -- introduced their eminent domain land grab.

According to the Star-Ledger, Cryan, 44, is "a rising star in state Democratic politics." While he holds no official position in Union Township government, he has been chairman of the local Democratic Party since 1995. He told the newspaper there was no connection between the fundraiser and the committee's vote and described the Mautis simply as "good friends," insisting moreover that he had nothing to do with shaping the township's redevelopment plan.

"My involvement is zero," Cryan told the Star-Ledger. He said he met with Segal no more than five times, and it was always at his legislative office. All discussions, he said, were initiated by Segal, and insisted that at no time did he recommend developers.

He added that his message to Segal was, "I can't help you. I don't make those decisions; the governing body does." His claim was disputed by Union County GOP Chairman Philip Morin, who told the Star-Ledger "Joe Cryan is intimately involved in even the most mundane decisions in Union Township."

Moreover, both Florio and Capodice admitted to the Star-Ledger that they have discussed the development project with Cryan, but neither could recall whether he expressed an opinion on the matter. Cryan said his discussions with committee members about the property are best characterized as him asking about the project's status.

Cryan's name also surfaced in connection with a change of language in the first draft of the development proposal for Segal's property, submitted in January, which directed officials "to work with any property owner within the redevelopment area."

The Star-Ledger reports that this language was removed from the final plan introduced May 24, which authorizes the township to choose its own developer. Florio and Capodice said they don't know why the language was changed; but both versions were written by an outside engineering firm hired by the township, T&M Associates of Middletown, which contributed $1,000 to Cryan at the May fundraiser.

Stanley Slachetka, the T&M employee who wrote the plans, declined comment to the Star-Ledger. Segal told the newspaper the township first expressed interest in his property in 2000, when committee member Anthony Terrezza called to set up a meeting - the first of many over the years. Segal said that at times he met with Terrezza and Cryan together, other times separately.

During the meetings, Segal said, the two politicians would recommend people to either buy the land or develop it in partnership.

"They made it clear I needed them to get it done," Segal told the newspaper, adding that he didn't like the deals they offered, and said he told them he wanted to develop the land himself. Around April, Segal said, the meetings stopped.

"At first, I thought we were working together," Segal said. "Now I realize they were trying to steal my land the whole time."

Terrezza did not return the Star-Ledger's calls for comment - nor did Committee members Brenda Restivo and Clifton People Jr.

Albert Mauti, a Staten Island resident, also denied any connection between the country club fundraiser and the committee vote; he claims he was simply supporting a local politician he likes and admires. His development plan, he said, "has nothing to do with Joe Cryan" he told the Star Ledger. But Mauti originally had told the newspaper that he never spoke to Cryan about the development.

When pressed, however, he said he may have but doesn't recall. But Cryan said he did speak to Mauti about the project, but it was just him inquiring how Mauti was progressing.

Despite the ordinance taking the property from Segal, Cryan did admit that he disagreed with the township's attempt to use eminent domain in this case: "It would be hugely unfair if they go in and use eminent domain to take his property," he said.
 

The Flat Earth Report 9 Cases of Brain-Wasting Disease in Idaho http://start.earthlink.net/article/hea?guid=20051017/435321c0_3ca6_15526200510171358669942 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051018/ap_on_he_me/creutzfeldt_jakob_fears_5 http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=1224649&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 http://www.winktv.com/x466.xml?URL=http://localhost/APWIREFEED/d8da4sa80.xml contributing editor to   -Rodger

[Are you hearing any of this on the major news media? What they tell us is there has been 1 maybe 2 cows that have tested positive for Mad Cow and they were destroyed before anything could spread. If that's the case, how can all these cases, an average of 300 per year, of people catching it happen? -- Rodger]

BOISE, Idaho - From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: His recovery and to know what made him sick.

She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place.

State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from the permutation dubbed variant CJD, which is caused by eating mad-cow-tainted beef and has killed at least 180 people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the 1990s.

"One thing is very clear in Idaho - the number seems to be higher than the number reported in previous years," said Dr. Ermias Belay, a CJD expert with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So far, the investigations have not found any evidence of any exposure that might be common among the cases."

Normally, sporadic CJD only strikes about one person in a million each year, with an average of just 300 cases per year in the United States, or just over one case a year in Idaho. Over the past two decades, the most cases reported in Idaho in a single year has been three.

Until this year.

Of the nine suspected cases reported so far in 2005, three tested positive for an infectious disease of the nervous system, though more tests are pending to determine if the fatal illness was in fact sporadic CJD. Four apparent victims were buried without autopsies. Two suspected cases tested negative.

Still, federal and state health officials are stopping just short of calling the Idaho cases a "cluster," waiting for final test results from the victims who got autopsies.

The best tool of investigators to pin down the diagnosis - the autopsy - is sometimes hard to get, said Tom Shanahan with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Pathologists are often reluctant to perform the procedures, the cost of an autopsy can be high and some families are reluctant to give their consent, officials say.

Joan Kingsford wanted an autopsy done on her husband, but no mortician in the area would agree to handle Alvin's body after his brain cavity had been opened. They feared they would catch the rare disease, Kingsford said.

Ultimately, she opted to skip the autopsy and have a traditional funeral service.

"A week before he passed away, the funeral homes said they wouldn't take the blood out" if an autopsy was done on him, she said. "They just put some embalming in him and told me I had to have a funeral in three days."

CJD is transmitted through a malformed prion found primarily in the brain and spinal fluid of those infected, Belay said. Standard sterilization procedures don't eliminate the risk of infection; instead equipment must be soaked in a chemical solution for more than an hour and then heated, according to the World Health Organization.

Mortuary procedures - including embalming - can be done safely on intact bodies of CJD victims as long as extra precautions are taken, but the World Health Organization does not recommend embalming patients who have had autopsies.

Larry Whitaker, a Beaverton, Ore.-based regional salesman for the embalming chemical and equipment manufacturer Dodge Company, offers workshops to his clients on safe handling of CJD-infected bodies.

"When the brain has been removed, it is an extraordinary risk," Whitaker said. "This is one time I think that cremation has to be more than mildly considered."

A member of the Mormon Church, Joan Kingsford's church discourages cremation. She was thrown into making a decision about her husband's remains much sooner than she expected.

"It was two and a half months before we knew what was wrong with him, and by that time he was in the hospital," she said. "I wish we could have done the autopsy, because I think people need to know about this."

"We definitely have a problem in Idaho," she added.
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe Martial Law: Coming To A Neighborhood Near You? http://newswithviews.com/Craig/roberts8.htm contributing editor to   -Rodger

Craig Roberts, October 18, 2005, NewsWithViews.com

Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, famous for defeating Napoleon's Grande Armee at Waterloo, once said "I've spent my entire life trying to discover what the fellow on the other side of the hill was up to."

And so it is with intelligence gathering and analysis. As a former intel analyst, I've spent many years on various missions beginning in the mid-1980s and going beyond Desert Storm taking pieces of the "global threat puzzle" and trying to fit the pieces together to discover what the "other fellow" was up to, and what he would do next.

In the past two decades I have witnessed a series of events that are extremely disturbing. Events, that if put together as pieces of a puzzle, seem to form a picture that is most disturbing-and even terrifying. Taken alone, they mean little. But taken in whole, the mosaic forms more than just a pattern-one that is planned, mission-oriented, and taking place almost as if there were a list of events that must occur to accomplish the final mission.

The "final mission" is two-fold: destruction of nation-states, and establishment of a New Age global-socialist New World Order.

For those who think this is "conspiracy theory," or simply fear-factor-fiction, let me ask this: Do you think the US Constitution is intact, and is this the same country as it was fifty years ago? If not, why not? And what and who caused the change?

Let's all play intelligence analyst. We'll do this by examining the reports, putting the pieces on the wall and seeing what kind of picture it forms. Here are the clues:

At the end of World War I, a new idea was born that national governments could not be trusted to govern their indigenous populations in an effective manner, and help maintain international peace. Instead, due to the carnage of World War I-the Great War-national governments should become subservient to a global entity. This entity was formed and became the League of Nations. However, the world and most countries were not ready for such a "super-government" and refused to get on board. The globalists were furious, but did not give up.

In 1945, when World War II ended, a private "club" called the Council on Foreign Relations, which is not part of any government agency, but instead is the American faction of the Royal Society of International Affairs in London, was instrumental in creating a new globalist organization called the United Nations. This body's mission was to slowly reduce the authority of national governments and replace them with a world council of representatives, none of which were elected, and none of which were patriotic nationalists. Their mission was to establish a world government in which other nations were simply nation states in their "New World Order."

In 1950 two wars broke out in Asia: the Korean war and the French Indochina war. During these "conflicts" the French, who attempted to retain their pre-war colony, were defeated by Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh guerrillas (by using US supplied equipment and weapons provided from the surplus stock on Okinawa left over from World War II). Meanwhile the United Nations forces intervened in an invasion of South Korea by North Korea-who was quickly reinforced by the Communist Chinese army. The French eventually lost their colony after the debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The South Koreans retained their country, but the war never ended. A truce was called in 1953, and Korea has become the longest war in American history.

The bottom line here is that the world-and the American people-were mentally conditioned that a single country (like France) could no longer win a war by itself, and the combined efforts of the UN forces in Korea barely was able to stand up against Communist aggression. (In point of fact, all UN forces' plans had to be cleared by a general at UN headquarters, who just happened to be a Russian, and all plans were relayed to the Chinese well in advance of an operation.)

But the American people-who had just won a two-ocean war against two powerful enemies-had to be convinced that we could not longer fight a war alone or stand alone. The stage was set for Vietnam.

The US forces, along with the South Vietnamese Army, and Australian allies, were forced to fight a war that they were not allowed to win. Lyndon B. Johnson and his "whiz kids" in the White House micromanaged the war to the point that generals in the field could not pursue an operation to its maximum effect, and even had to give up terrain that we took with American blood, plus stay within the confines of South Vietnam and not attack or pursue the enemy into his safe havens in Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. The end result was that the North signed the Paris Peace Accords simply to give President Richard Nixon (and Henry Kissinger) a means of extracting our forces from South Vietnam with "peace with honor." Two years later the North invaded the South and the rest is history. The lesson to the American people, via our media, is that we should not use our military forces abroad in any affair that might turn into a "quagmire" or "another Vietnam." The media, controlled by members of the Council on Foreign Relations and other global socialists (including their Asian and European counterparts), successfully conditioned the American psyche that we "do not want any more Vietnam style entanglements."

After Vietnam our armed forces underwent what was called a "Reduction in Force" or RIF. At the same time the "draft" was put on the back burner and a "volunteer army" was created. All of this at the height of the Cold War when Russia and China were building their forces. By the early 1980s the threat envisioned by the Pentagon was an attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union through Germany. Known as the Fulda Gap scenario, where it was envisioned the Russians would push through with high speed armor assaults, it was theorized-and prepared for-that we would be forced to fight a fighting withdrawal through Europe while politicians decided if we would employ nuclear weapons. No one ever came up with a public answer to this threat, and in the end it never happened-yet.

There is an old military axiom that says that the military gains its best support when there is a barbarian at the gate. In other words, most people don't worry about supporting or funding the military unless they fear a threat that would affect them. By the mid 1980s a new threat was growing ever more frightening: Terrorism.

It actually gained U.S. attention during the Munich Olympics when the Black September terrorist gang of Palestinians kidnapped and killed members of the Israeli Olympic team. This was followed by many other "Arab Terrorist" attacks that often included American victims: skyjackings, an attack on a cruise ship, bombings, and kidnappings and assassinations. This new threat has been growing for over four decades and has become the current "barbarian at the gate." Don't get me wrong: it's real, it's there, and it's coming. But we have to ask how much of it was originally created or financed by our own intelligence services. We know that Osama bin Laden had CIA support in Afghanistan when the Russians occupied the country, and that Abu Nidal was a US intelligence asset. Who knows how many others?

Since the alleged "fall of the Soviet Union", the US and other western powers have undergone a political reduction in our armed forces. Beginning during the George H.W. Bush administration-up until Desert Storm when we were caught in a very vulnerable position militarily-our military has systematically been reduced in force structure, equipment destroyed or stored without proper maintenance, and numbers of personnel and equipment reduced to the point of being basically combat ineffective if committed to a major war.

In the 1990s, during the Clinton regime, when bases were being closed and Army divisions being cut, and tanks, planes and ships were being put in mothballs, a Pentagon general gave a speech to the CASQ officers command and staff class at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He said, paraphrasing, "&hellip;with the build down of our armed forces, should we become committed to a two-ocean war, or be deployed to more than two foreign campaigns, and should a national emergency occur inside the continental United States, we will be forced to call upon foreign assets to patrol our streets."

The thought of this at the time was terrifying. But during the Los Angeles riots Henry Kissinger stated that even though at that time US citizens would not stand for foreign troops on US soil, that some day we would welcome them with open arms.

For part two, click 2 below.
 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** How NSA access was built into Windows http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html contributing editor to   -Rodger

Duncan Campbell 04.09.1999
Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.

 A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" [local] trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.

Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:\Windows\system directory of your computer.

ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run crypographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.
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Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.

A second key

Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, [extern] Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".

Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.

A third key?!

But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.

Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.

Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".

"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked.

Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?

Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.

Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's [extern] website.

According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."

Then in the 3rd sub-article of this report is regarding Kamau Kambon, on C-SPAN, Oct. 14, 2005 when he said several things one of which was "We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve the problem."

Not only does it seem OK to slander whites, but you may even threaten them with death and get free publicity/promotion and praise from the media.  But, if you promote whites, (the same way blacks are promoted) then you are vilified.  I know there are some who condemn the black racist jargon (even blacks), but the tilt of the pendulum seems to favor non-white while supporting everything else.  --  Tribble]

sub-article #1
Young Singers Spread Racist Hate
Duo Considered the Olsen Twins of the White Nationalist Movement

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=2
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=3
 

Oct. 20, 2005 -  Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans. They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.

Known as "Prussian Blue" - a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes - the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white &hellip; we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."

April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs - specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

"Because it's provocative," explains April of the cattle brand, "to him he thinks it's important as a symbol of freedom of speech that he can use it as his cattle brand."

Teaching Hate

Songs like "Sacrifice" - a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer - clearly show the effect of the girls' upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up."

"It really breaks my heart to see those two girls spewing out that kind of garbage," said Ted Shaw, civil rights advocate and president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund - though Shaw points out that the girls aren't espousing their own opinions but ones they're being taught.

On that point, April Gaede and Ted Shaw apparently agree.

"Well, all children pretty much espouse their parents' attitudes," she said. "We're white nationalists and of course that's a part of our life and I'm going to share that part of my life with my children."

Since they began singing, the girls have become such a force in the white nationalist movement, that David Duke - the former presidential candidate, one-time Ku-Klux-Klan grand wizard and outspoken white supremacist - uses the twins to draw a crowd.

Prussian Blue supporter Erich Gliebe, operator of one of the nation's most notorious hate music labels, Resistance Records, hopes younger performers like Lynx and Lamb will help expand the base of the White Nationalist cause.

"Eleven and 12 years old," he said, "I think that's the perfect age to start grooming kids and instill in them a strong racial identity."

Gliebe, who targets young, mainstream white rockers at music festivals like this past summer's "Ozzfest," says he uses music to get his message out.

But with names like Blue-Eyed Devils and Angry Aryans, these tunes are far more extreme than the ones sung by Lamb and Lynx.

"We give them a CD, we give them something as simple as a stick, they can go to our Web site and see other music and download some of our music," said Gliebe. "To me, that's the best propaganda tool for our youth."

A Taste for Hate

Gliebe says he hopes that as younger racist listeners mature, so will their tastes for harder, angrier music like that of Shawn Sugg of Max Resist.

One of Sugg's songs is a fantasy piece about a possible future racial war that goes: "Let the cities burn, let the streets run red, if you ain't white you'll be dead."

"I'd like to compare it to gangsta rap," explained Sugg, "where they glorify, you know, shooting n****** and pimping whores."

Sugg shrugs off criticism that music like his should not be handed out to schoolyard children, arguing that "it's just music, it's not like you're handing out AK-47s."

Perhaps not, but Shaw says it's the ideas in the music that are dangerous.

"When you talk about people being dead if they're not white," said Shaw, "I don't think there is much question that that is hateful."

A Place to Call Home

Despite the success of Prussian Blue and bands like Max Resist within the White Nationalism movement, most Americans don't accept their racist message.

Like many children across the country, Lamb and Lynx decided to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina - the white ones.

The girl's donations were handed out by a White Nationalist organization who also left a pamphelet promoting their group and beliefs - some of the intended recipients were more than a little displeased.

After a day of trying, the supplies ended up with few takers, dumped at a local shop that sells Confederate memorabilia.

Last month, the girls were scheduled to perform at the local county fair in their hometown. But when some people in the community protested, Prussian Blue was removed from the line-up.

But even before that, April had decided that Bakersfield was not "white" enough, so she sold her home, and hopes that she and the girls can find an all-white community in the Pacific Northwest.

sub-article #2
Shocking Hateful Racist Rap Music Lyrics
- but that can't be, because only whites are racists

contributing editor to   -Dan

The following is an extract from a speech by black activist Kamau Kambon on the C-SPAN forum "Black Media Forum on Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media," which was broadcast on Oct. 14. "And we have to start thinking about a solution to the problem. So that these young sisters and brothers are here now, who are 15 16 17 are not here 25 years later talking about these same problems.

"Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem. I know it because they have retina scans, racial profiling, DNA banks, and they're monitoring our people to try to prevent the ONE person from coming up with the ONE idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve the problem. *tepid applause* Now I don't care whether you clap or not but I'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. And I will leave on that. So we just have to set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not get diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem and the problem on the planet is white people."   Source

[You can hear the 5:41 minute extracted audio at this cached location.  Or the last one minute of it here]

$$$ Follow the Money $$$ Bird Flu Introduced via Vaccine? http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1320 contributing editor to   -Rodger

Do you think the people will let "born again Christian who seeks God's face" George W. Bush force this pestilence on them?  I don't think we'll hear a whimper.  In fact I think the people will cry out FOR it.  Like lambs led to the slaughter.  For lack of knowledge, His people perish.  --  Rodger]

Thursday, October 13, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com

Little known but much too broad, Project Bioshield is a $5.6 billion program Bush signed into law in July 2004 that would apparently strip U.S. citizens of any recourse in the event that the feds decide on certain health-care remedies. These would presumably include the mandatory application of unproven vaccines to counter real or perceived health threats worldwide.

Recent reports use the term "Bio-Fascism" to characterize initiatives such as Project Bioshield, describing it as "the merging of the military medical establishment with public health bureaucracies, to enforce the will of the ostensible federal regulator (the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) and Big Pharma. The latter is a descriptive term for the gigantic transnational drug companies who have used their enormous clout to generate government programs that mandate the use of their products for so-called public safety purposes. Too often, as has been seen recently, what is initially perceived as a drug for the public good evolves into a danger because of unforseen side effects. Vaccines are usually rushed into production without prior testing, allowing side effects to manifest themselves only through broad application.

President Bush's recent remarks about mandating vaccinations for avian flu is further evidence of the militarization of public health care and would also seem to reflect a dangerous misunderstanding about disease and palliative methodologies. Medical science, especially in its initial stages, is replete with side effects and even ramifications that can carry over into the next generation. What is perhaps even more worrisome than Bush's plans to militarize public health care is his focus, one might say obsession, on martial law as a curative for almost every weighty issue of his second term.

According to an article recently posted on a major alternative news sight entitled Avian Flu Fright - Politically-Timed For Global 'Iatrogenocide,' Leonard G. Horowitz, DMD, MA, MPH writes that the current hysteria over Avian flu, which Bush seems to share, is actually resulting in its manufacture in military labratories in the United States and abroad. He points out that the Avian Flu, currently causing the slaughter of thousands of wild birds, has shown no propensity to "mutate" and jump to humans - and in fact such a mutation is highly unlikely. Rather, what will happen, he predicts, should the hysteria continue unabated is that the West will respond to public concerns by first creating and then making available a vaccine for which there is as yet no disease; in other words - since a vaccine is a weak form of what it is intended to combat - introduce into the real world the deadly virus that probably would not otherwise make its appearance.

"To make the human vaccine specific for the H5N1 mutant virus," he writes, "you must start with the human virus which does not yet exist, except in perhaps military-biomedical-pharmaceutical laboratories. In fact, this is precisely what is being prepared based on news reports. To produce the human pathogen, the avian virus must be cultured for lengthy periods of time in human cell cultures, then injected into monkeys and ultimately humans to see if these experimental subjects get the same feared flu. Thus, the flu virus the world currently fears most is either: 1) now being prepared in labs paid by industrialists with massive wealth-building incentives to "accidentally release the virus; or 2) has already been prepared in such labs to take advantage of this current fright and future sales following the virus's release. &hellip; Remember, to be effective against a virus, a vaccine is said to require specificity. If authorities were to now have the main H5N1 Avian flu strain feared to spread at some future date there's no assurance by the time they developed the vaccine the strain would remain sufficiently the same for the vaccine to be effective anyway due to expected viral mutations. Viral mutations over time is a function of the agent's newness. New man-made viruses, laboratory creations, like the ones currently being prepared for vaccine trials, are less stable not having evolved over the millennia. Thus, the entire vaccine effort is largely, if not entirely, a sham with ulterior motives."

And he adds, "Remember too, that a vaccine's reliability requires years, or at least months, of testing in the targeted population. Vaccine injury data must, or should, be meticulously collected over this period to assure the vaccine is not killing and maiming more persons than it is helping or saving. Can you seriously believe this assurance will be provided by government or pharmaceutical industry officials in this pandemic's wake? FEMA's failed Katrina response pales by comparison to this public health liability and vaccine-injury certainty." -ST
staff&nbspreports - Free-Market News Network

I N S I G H T Harper's Magazine: We Now Live in a Fascist State http://organicconsumers.org/Politics/harpers101205.cfm contributing editor to   -Rodger

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Brain Fingerprinting http://www.brainwavescience.com/counterterrorism.php contributing editor to   -Rodger

duh America the Beautiful, or so It Used to Be contributing editor to   -Rodger

The Flat Earth Report What does Love mean? contributing editor to   -Dan

$$$ Follow the Money $$$ Starbucks To Serve Up God With A Skinny Cappuccino http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1598086,00.html contributing editor to   -Rodger

D O    N O T drink the Kool-Aid* CIA, French Intelligence Kill 4, Capture 5 Israelis in NY Subway Attack http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/CiaFrenchIntell.htm contributing editor to   -Rodger

Health / nutrition How People Spend Their Time http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1746937,00.html?maca=en-rss_english_top-388-rdf contributing editor to   -Rodger

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Hate Bill Defeated In Senate Judiciary Committee - BUT http://www.rense.com/general68/but.htm contributing editor to   -Rodger

Health / nutrition Silver Kills Viruses http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1401 contributing editor to   -Dan

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe Brazilians Reject Proposed Gun Ban http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1401 contributing editor to   -Bob

I N S I G H T Jumping From the Sinking Ship of Empire: Vermonters Move to Secede From USA http://peakoilanarchy.blogspot.com/ contributing editor to   -Craig

James Howard Kunstler, author of the book about Peak Oil The Long Emergency, will be the keynote speaker at The Vermont Convention on Independence to be held in the House Chamber of the State House in Montpelier, VT on Friday, October 28th, 2005. Sponsored by the Second Vermont Republic, the convention, which will begin at 9 am and conclude at 5 pm, is open to the public and free of charge. This historic event will be the first statewide convention on secession in the United States since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861. Organizers of the convention say it has two objectives: First, to raise the level of awareness of Vermonters of the feasibility of independence as a viable alternative to a nation which has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable. And second, to provide an example and a process for other states and nations which may be seriously considering separatism, secession, independence, and similar devolutionary strategies. The Second Vermont Republic describes itself as "a peaceful, democratic, grassroots, libertarian populist movement committed to the return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic as it once was between 1777 and 1791."

Health / nutrition How Toxic is Your Bathroom? http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article321838.ece contributing editor to   -Rodger

$$$ Follow the Money $$$ Mexico, United States, Canada... One Nation, Under Socialism http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_2448.shtml contributing editor to   -Rodger

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** Sustainable Development vs. Private Property Rights http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/lamb102405.htm contributing editor to   -Rodger

The Flat Earth Report Who Will Watch the Watchers? http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_116.shtml contributing editor to   -Viv

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe 16 Year Old Anti-War Protester Arrested In Palm Harbor, Florida http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CFTMGroup/message/184 contributing editor to   -Rodger

The teenager was standing on the side of the road holding a sign that said "F*ck Bush".  Because of his age, the department cannot release the teenager's name. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Marianne Pasha told the St. Petersburg Times the arrest resulted from the disruption to traffic and the teen's refusal to move. When I contacted the department on Saturday they refused to discuss the case or any of the issues of the arrest. Deputies told me they were called to U.S. 19 and Curlew Road after a motorist called to complaint about the sign. "The complainant had to steer around (the teenager)," Pasha said. During the incident the deputies claimed to have recieved over 25 complaints and admitted people were using 911 to report the sign and also complaining about the demonstration in general.

Teenager being led away by deputies. PHOTO-MARK DUFF

I was standing right next to the teenager and recorded the verbal discussion between him and the deputies. I have listened to the tape over twenty times, and at no point did he ever use any profanity or abusive words towards the deputies. On the tape you can clearly hear Corporal Atkins asking for the teenager's identification, then making the statement "I was planning on arresting you anyway." He then said that he wasn't going to arrest the teenager if he put down the sign, but after asking myself and Chris Ernesto to turn off our recording devices and getting a refusal from us, he went ahead with the arrest. A heated argument ensued between the teen's mother and arresting deputies, but there were never any abusive or profane words exchanged between the teen and deputies.

Corporal Atkins holding the sign for approximately two minutes while passers by screamed and yelled at him to put it down. PHOTO-MARK DUFF

Chris Ernesto of St. Pete for Peace says the peace groups will return to the same corner to protest in the future. "They are not going to use something like this to keep us from doing what we have a right to do," he said angrily. "This is a bunch of crap, they are just trying to keep us from having free speech where it might offend some Republicans. We'll be back, and we'll have our lawyers ready to enforce our rights to be here." When I called the sheriff's department today, 10/25, to discuss what I had recorded on tape and personally observed, they refused to talk to me about it. The claim there is an ongoing investigation and that there is no reason to have any doubt's about deputies reports and details of the incident.

Corporal Atkins threatening to arrest the teenager's mother. All photos courtesy of Mark Duff

Here is the St. Pete Times article:

Protester accused of disrupting traffic

http://sptimes.com/2005/10/23/Northpinellas/Protester_accused_of_.shtml

 Here is a personal account from the protester who was arrested: http://stpeteforpeace.org/palmharbor.firstperson.html

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT Senate Bill 1873 Bans Drug & Vaccine Damage Claims http://www.newswithviews.com/Dean/carolyn17.htm contributing editor to   -Rodger

In between news broadcasts of hurricane disasters and relief efforts we have all heard the hysteria surrounding the avian flu. Is this slated to be the next disaster that distracts us from a hundred other pressing concerns in our world? Probably. There is just too much money to be made selling drugs and flu shots as we give governments more power to herd us into doctors’ offices to force us to use some medication we don’t want. It’s Big Pharma’s dream come true.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain** RFID Promoter Shamed into Removing Misleading Claim from Website www.spychips.com // www.nocards.org contributing editor to   -Katherine

D O    N O T drink the Kool-Aid* Imagine You Send a Mailing Raising Money for a Plan to Reform Social Security & get Arrested for it http://www.downsizedc.org/ contributing editor to   -Valtaree

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I N S I G H T Super-Soldiers may get Brain-Chip http://www.news.com.au/story/0%2C10117%2C17013218-13762%2C00.html http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/?from=ni_story contributing editor to   -Rodger

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe Bush Administration Pushing Domestic Surveillance Envelope http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin268.htm contributing editor to   -Viv

By Pastor Chuck Baldwin, October 28, 2005

Secret wiretaps. Seized bank records. Unconsented physical searches. Secret computer tracking. Enter the ever-growing government world of domestic spying.

A recent Washington Post report (Monday, Oct. 24, 2005; A01) stated, "The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

"Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations."

The report also said, "[FBI] agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper 'unconsented physical search,' according to the documents.

"Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easer for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups."

The Post report quotes David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center as saying, "We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community. It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

This writer has previously attempted to warn his readers regarding the way this administration seems obsessed with trampling America's basic liberties under the rubric of national security. Americans should be very concerned when any administration, Republican or Democrat, is willing to disregard or even suspend the Constitution and Bill of Rights-for any reason! And that is exactly what the Bush administration seems determined to do!

However, the Bush administration does not seem content to routinely abuse our right to privacy. It has also publicly called for the suspension of Posse Comitatus and for the U.S. military to take charge of domestic emergencies. (Source: The Washington Times, "Bush seeks to federalize emergencies," Sept. 27, 2005)

I believe it is urgent that the American people, especially people calling themselves conservatives, become cognizant of the many attempts by the Bush administration to eviscerate the constitutional protections of our liberties. We must not allow this, or any, administration to undo this remarkable experiment in liberty.

It is incumbent upon all Americans to remember that any government that is unwilling to conduct itself according to the enumerated principles contained within the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution is a rogue government deserving neither our submission nor support!

I urge my readers to listen to my radio interview with former Georgia congressman Bob Barr. [Click here for interview]

At this very moment, House and Senate conferees are meeting to resolve differences with each chamber's version of the just-passed Patriot Act. The Senate version is preferable to that of the House. The truth is, the House version is nightmarish, as it contains almost no safeguards against further governmental abuse of power.

Congress is given oversight of the executive branch but heretofore has done little to exercise this important responsibility. It is time for people to let their congressmen know that they will tolerate no more infringements upon their liberties and privacy! Or have we become so sheepish that what previous generations of Americans found valuable enough to fight and die to obtain we now find too cheap to keep?

It is the responsibility of each generation of Americans to pass down to the next generation of Americans a nation that is both strong and free. This is not accomplished by laxity or indifference.

Claiming it is protecting America by fighting terrorism abroad, this administration sends US forces to Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, this same administration invades our privacy, attempts to expunge Posse Comitatus, and routinely ignores our own laws and Constitution. This, they say, is necessary to protect us from terrorism at home.

However, if in the quest for national security, Americans are subjected to ubiquitous surveillance, the loss of our right to privacy, and the abridgement of personal liberties, who is going to protect us from our own government?

duh Your Time is Valuable contributing editor to   -Dan

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y Twenty-Five Faithful Conservatives http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/cwarchive_04feb05.html contributing editor to   -Dan

*  What does "do not drink the kool-aid" mean? [click this line]  or goto this link http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/kool-aid/do not drink the kool-aid.html

**  As the &lsquo;Great And Powerful Oz' once said to Dorothy, "Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!" because appearances can be deceiving.  You HAVE TO look behind to curtain to learn the truth.
*** Red Herring.  The name of this fallacy comes from the sport of fox hunting in which a dried, smoked herring, which is red in color, is dragged across the trail of the fox to throw the hounds off the scent. Thus, a "red herring" argument is one which distracts the audience from the issue in question through the introduction of some irrelevancy. This frequently occurs during debates when there is an at least implicit topic, yet it is easy to lose track of it. By extension, it applies to any argument in which the premisses are logically irrelevant to the conclusion.

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