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SALT WATER AS FUEL, Energy from tap water- whatever next? Why use dirty oil?
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
SALT WATER AS FUEL, Energy from tap water- whatever next? An Engine that runs off GRAVITY? Well - YES! Check it out.
Have you seen the sensational TV-news video running around YouTube? A test tube full of salt water is blasted with radio waves and ignites with an orange flame that powers a small sterling engine. Power from salt water, the most abundant substance on earth — Eureka!
http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/112_0711_technologue/
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6170810824086226301
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-402416601018668534
Engine that runs off Gravity?:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8294928602279039059
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DEPLETED URANIUM Outrage is Sweeping Hawai’i
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
| Lindafaye Kroll
The inhabitants and the land of the Marshall Islands and the Bikini Islands were poisoned in the forties due to nuclear testing. Look at Kaho’olawe, still polluted despite over $400 million in cleanup efforts. |
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| “The Strykers and the legacy they would leave are not welcome on Hawai’i.”
Krisztine Samu is an outraged Hawai’i resident and tells the Army so during public testimony at the U.S. Army Stryker Brigade Public Hearings in Waimea, on September 26, 2007. She is outraged by the military’s shameless and continued contamination of her home, Hawai’i Island… Please help us Protect Hawai’i. Write the Army before October 30, 2007. Army at: No Stryker Brigade build-up in Hawai’i. Clean-up all live-fire artillery ranges. Cc comments to This statement written by Krisztine Samu and is reprinted with permission and submitted by Lindafaye Kroll RN BSN as follows… PLEASE accept my statement of OPPOSITION to the presence of the Stryker Brigade on the island of Hawai’i. Being familiar with the U.S. military’s legacy in the Pacific Islands, there is no reason to expect anything different this time. The inhabitants and the land of the Marshall Islands and the Bikini Islands were poisoned in the forties due to nuclear testing. Look at Kaho’olawe, still polluted despite over $400 million in cleanup efforts. Look at the Vieques Puerto Rico where the bombing practice resulted in a bomb being dropped on a civilian by mistake; the Navy was eventually forced to leave due to public opposition. DEPLETED URANIUM contamination is comfirmed at Schofield Barracks, Oahu and at Pohakuloa Training Area, Hawai’i Island. The Army has admitted the presence of this toxin, and further training/detonations will simply stir more of this dust into the air, blow it downwind into Kona with serious health implications for residents and soldiers alike. Kona already has higher than normal rates of cancer, diabetes and birth defects. We cannot allow the Strykers to aggravate the situation any further. We need cleanup, not buildup. Private citizens on the island of Hawai’i are independently monitoring airborne radioactivity spikes and this will continue in an even greater capacity if the Strykers are stationed here. If the radioactive spikes continue the citizens will surely not stand for it. We can guarantee a grave media backlash and local activism to stop the destruction. The Strykers and the legacy they would leave are not welcome on Hawai’i. Krisztina Samu READ WHY the Stryker Brigade must not stay in Hawaii! Ten Reasons to Oppose the Stryker Brigade in Hawaii Army Regulation AR 700-48 “Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities,” Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002, Section 2-4 of United States Army Regulation 700-48 dated Sept. 16, 2002, specifies these requirements. Hawaiian Islands Are Radioactive Depleted Uranium Contamination By Strykers In Hawaii Death By Breath Hawaiian Islands Contaminated With Ballistic Uranium Army’s Environmental Impact Statement for the Stryker Brigade Invasion of Hawaii: Go to Demilitarize Hawaii website: Go to Protect Hawaii website: |
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Amid Pakistan carnage, a ‘nightmare scenario’ for U.S. policy
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
The recent scenes of carnage in Pakistan conjured what one senior administration official called “the nightmare scenario” for President George W. Bush’s last 15 months in office: political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and nuclear weapons are all in play.
White House officials insisted in interviews that they had confidence that their longtime ally, General Pervez Musharraf, would maintain enough control to keep the country stable as he edged toward a power-sharing agreement with his main rival, Benazir Bhutto.
But other current and former officials cautioned that six years after the United States forced Musharraf to choose sides in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, American leverage over Pakistan is now limited. Although Musharraf seems likely to survive a multifront challenge to his authority, he is weakened.
His effort at conciliation in Pakistan’s tribal areas, where Al Qaeda and the Taliban plot and train, proved a failure. His efforts to take them on militarily have so far proved ineffective and politically costly. Almost every major terror attack since Sept. 11 has been traced back to Pakistani territory, leading many who work in intelligence to believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Bush should consider the “central front” in the battle against terrorism.
Pakistan was also the source of the greatest leakage of nuclear arms technology in modern times.
After years of compromises and trade-offs, there are questions inside and outside the administration about whether Bush has invested too heavily in a single Pakistani leader, an over-reliance that may have prevented the administration from examining longer-term strategic options in dealing with a country Bush designated, somewhat optimistically, a “major non-NATO ally.”
“It never stitched together,” Daniel Markey, a State Department official who dealt with Pakistan until he left government this year, said on Friday. “At every step, there was more risk aversion - because of the risk of rocking the boat seemed so high - than there was a real strategic vision.”
Even some senior administration officials said privately, echoing views contained in recent intelligence assessments, that U.S. influence over events in Pakistan may be ebbing fast.
Some officials worry aloud that a year of unrest, violence and political intrigue in Pakistan may undercut Bush’s last chance to root out Osama bin Laden from the lawless territory where Al Qaeda has regrouped, and could cripple a renewed administration effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s military, they could also threaten the security of the country’s potent nuclear arsenal, something that Bush administration officials worry about far more than they let on publicly.
Over the past year, the Musharraf government has quietly sent officials to Washington to assure Bush administration officials that even if the general were ousted or assassinated, the mechanisms for controlling both weapons and nuclear technology - safeguards that Pakistan acknowledges it has put together with aid from other countries - are unbreakable.
Several officials who have left the administration say they are less than sanguine about the prospect that Pakistan’s troubles will just settle down.
“We have to remember that the U.S. doesn’t have very much capability to affect internal developments” in Pakistan, said Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. ambassador to India and a senior official in the National Security Council during Bush’s first term.
“What I am struck by are the trends we see today: The North-West Province is ungovernable and a sanctuary for terrorists,” he said. “The politics are fractured and deeply unstable, Musharraf is weaker and the army is uncertain which way it will go.”
A senior administration official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issues, argued in an interview on Friday that U.S. steps to coax Musharraf toward democracy had worked. Instability and paralysis in Islamabad “is certainly one scenario, but hardly the only one,” he said.
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BBC rakes in adverts cash as heads roll in cost cuts
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
The corporation’s rivals and detractors are up in arms over claims of commercialisation
Just as the corporation’s director-general Mark Thompson was revealing details of 2,500 job cuts that will hit hardest in news and factual programming, the BBC’s money-making arm was celebrating a windfall.
After being granted approval from its governing body, the BBC Trust, the BBC announced that its news content, due to be generated by some 370 fewer staff, will later this year be beamed online around the world � adorned for the first time with advertising.
The new commercialisation of BBC.com is very much in keeping with thrifty Thompson’s mantra of making less go further � forced on him by a shortfall of £2 billion on the licence fee. Users of BBC.co.uk will not notice any difference as banner ads will be seen only by overseas readers.
But critics fear the move puts the BBC’s hard-won international reputation for impartiality under threat � even though a portion of the new income will be ploughed back into the BBC newsroom. On top of that, the advertising will cover the loss of the £4m annual grant the international website gets from the Foreign Office. The grant is being reallocated to World Service radio.
Moreover, the BBC’s commercial rivals are again up in arms that an institution supported by a £3 billion annual bursary is chasing a slice of their income stream.
David Moody, BBC Worldwide’s director of strategy, retorted: “They should welcome this as the nature of competition. Users will get more choice. And for us this is a chance to earn money from an international business site to reinvest in the BBC’s core journalism. It seems eminently logical to me.”
This is the BBC’s second notable attempt at making money from its cyberspace operations. Its first, Beeb.com, an online shop for viewers, was shut down in 2002 because it was insufficiently different from the corporation’s free sites.
This time the BBC seems to be more confident. In April, it struck a deal with You Tube to set up a channel of television clips that can be viewed in Britain, with advertising alongside.
Commercials have also appeared since 1991 on BBC World, the international news channel that loses £15m a year.
Support for the controversial BBC.com plan is the latest development at BBC Worldwide, whose tentacles are quietly but inexorably spreading.
Not only is it Britain’s third-largest magazine publisher, with titles including the Radio Times and Top Gear, but abroad it publishes Hello! magazine under contract in India and makes television shows in Hollywood for the American networks.
There is more to come. Eyebrows were raised by the recent purchase of a controlling stake in the Lonely Planet travel-guide business, not least at Penguin, which owns the rival Rough Guide imprint.
Armed with a £350m loan facility, BBC Worldwide’s chief executive John Smith is aiming for two more such deals in the next year.
He wants to build up a clutch of online “communities” round themes such as parenting, cars and travel. As an example of what could be achieved, the Lonely Planet’s website has 4m users.
The target is to plough £200m a year back into the BBC by 2012, with 10% of income coming from digital sources.
Worldwide’s ownership was last assessed three years ago, when the corporation opted to sell off smaller, noncore divisions instead of the whole shooting-match. Of these, only BBC Resources, which owns the corporation’s studios and outside-broadcast trucks, remains. A sale process, led by Ernst & Young, has been kicked off. In addition, the corporation is selling its famous Television Centre headquarters in west London in 2013.
Meanwhile, strong exports of Doctor Who DVDs and the sale of the Strictly Come Dancing format around the world sent BBC Worldwide profits up 24% last year to £111m.
Unsurprisingly, it argues that such expansion benefits the licence-fee payer. A chunk of its profits is handed back to the corporation, in effect depressing the licence fee by £9 a year.
Moody said: “We have a very robust business that is producing a lot of profit that can be reinvested. Our shareholders want us to take a long-term view so we can deliver ever larger profits back to them.”
Perhaps he has a fair point. But as they prepare to bid farewell to hundreds of colleagues, the argument is unlikely to cut much ice with Humphrys and Paxman.
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Slavery in my backyard and a thousand points of light
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Local slaves from Mexico, Russia, and…
(At the lecture) Coonan also said that it’s happening within the Chinese community as well, with traffickers promising young women a better life in America. According to Coonan, in nearby Quincy, a Chinese restaurant has Hispanic women working there and living in a small shed behind the restaurant. Many of these restaurants also have their employees living in the kitchen after hours as well.
“I think the most shocking thing is that everything is close to home,” said Danielle May, who attended the lecture. “This is not something that you see on the international news being in Cambodia, or Thailand. This issue is happening at home. I think it’s scary. Quincy is 45 minutes away and people are being enslaved. This is shocking that this is 2007 and slavery is still going on.”
According to the lecture, countries lose U.S. aid if they do not enforce trafficking laws. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, stipulates that if a victim testifies on being trafficked, they receive a Traffic Visa (T-Visa), which allows them permission to work in the U.S. for about three years and then they are eligible to apply for a green card.
Most Americans are stunned to find slavery still exists in the United States, let alone the rest of the world. Unlike the state-sanctioned, race-based crime of the past, modern-day slavery is largely an illegal, global phenomenon, fueled primarily by commercial gain.Some are slaves in factories and farms. Others-primarily women and girls-are slaves in brothels in Mumbai, Amsterdam or Las Vegas. Still others are held in domestic servitude. Children are kidnapped as child soldiers, forced to become street beggars, or lured and abused as slaves to an underground industry known as child sex tourism.
Government alone can’t stop the international slave trade. That’s why a coalition of private citizens, nonprofit organizations and civic leaders are nurturing and leading a 21st century abolitionist movement by spotlighting the issue, increasing public awareness, pushing countries to do more, and producing programs to help throw the traffickers in jail and protect the survivors.
We are beginning to understand the tricks of today’s human traffickers, which are the same tactics as those used by the slave masters of old: deception, fraud, coercion, kidnapping, beatings and rape.
Victims obtained from a foreign country are often lured by deceptive schemes. They usually arrive indebted to their handlers, seldom know where they are, rarely speak the local language and have no one to turn to after the traffickers seize their passports and documentation.
Under the control of the traffickers, victims are subjected to overwhelming physical and mental pressures. Confined by beatings and threats against their families back home, trafficking victims surrender their dignity to poor living conditions and long hours in order to enrich their captors.
…
Trafficking victims-whether from across the ocean or the street-learn to trust no one, not even the police. Coerced to cooperate, trafficking victims become skilled at hiding in plain sight, disguising their shame from society, ever wary of discovery and fearful of retribution.
There’s a movement afoot. It asks each of us to be responsible, find out what is happening, pay attention to the signals, and insist on nothing less than abolition.
Categories of slavery are listed by the Department of State.
1-888-373-7888 is a number to call to ask for advice and report concerns:scared, foreign, unable to leave premises, demeanor is not natural might indicate employment is not voluntary.
Funding for a two year study of and help for slaves in the US under the The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 was won in 2003 in the area and then not renewed. Grants are notoriously fleeting.
The idea that there are 100,000 actual ‘domestic servitude’ slaves in the US is so stunning for most of us that in my opinion it simply slips away in denial rather than outrage, even for me.
Aside from the psychological aspects of slavery, 90% in one study of ‘freed slaves’ report that sending money home (meaning most of the money) was more important, as the perception was the money sent was needed to help avoid catastrophe at the slaves’ home of origin, or local traffickers would harm family that remained behind if trouble was caused. Powerful forces indeed.
Another point of view regarding US slavery is expressed in WAPO.
… Congress passed a law, triggering a little-noticed worldwide war on human trafficking that began at the end of the Clinton administration and is now a top Bush administration priority. As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million — all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.
But the government couldn’t find them. Not in this country.
…
The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.
…
“The discrepancy between the alleged number of victims per year and the number of cases they’ve been able to make is so huge that it’s got to raise major questions,” Weitzer said. “It suggests that this problem is being blown way out of proportion.” The Department of Health and Human Services “certifies” trafficking victims in the United States after verifying that they were subjected to forced sex or labor. Only non-U.S. citizens brought into this country by traffickers are eligible to be certified, entitling them to receive U.S. government benefits.
…
Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response — 50,000 victims a year — was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers……
Yet the government spent $28.5 million in 2006 to fight human trafficking in the United States, a 13 percent increase over the previous year. The effort has attracted strong bipartisan support.
Steven Wagner, who helped HHS distribute millions of dollars in grants to community groups to find and assist victims, said “Those funds were wasted.”
“Many of the organizations that received grants didn’t really have to do anything,” said Wagner, former head of HHS’s anti-trafficking program. “They were available to help victims. There weren’t any victims.”
. . .
Few question that trafficking is a serious problem in many countries, and the U.S. government has spent more than half a billion dollars fighting it around the world since 2000.
. . .
In the past four years, more than half of all states have passed anti-trafficking laws, although local prosecutions have been rare.
…
But information was scarce, so a CIA analyst was told to assess the problem in the United States and abroad. She combed through intelligence reports and law enforcement data. Her main source, however, was news clippings about trafficking cases overseas — from which she tried to extrapolate the number of U.S. victims.
…
Bipartisan passion melted any uncertainty, and in October 2000, Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, significantly broadening the federal definition of trafficking. Prosecutors would no longer have to rely on statutes that required them to prove a victim had been subjected to physical violence or restraints, such as chains. Now, a federal case could be made if a trafficker had psychologically abused a victim.
. . .
Just as the law took effect, along came a new president to enforce it.
Bell, with Prison Fellowship Ministries, noted that when Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly in 2003, he focused on the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the war on trafficking.
Soon after Bush took office, a network of anti-trafficking nonprofit agencies arose, spurred in part by an infusion of federal dollars.
. . .
The CIA’s new estimate, which first appeared in a 2004 State Department report, has been widely quoted, including by a senior Justice Department official at a media briefing this year. It’s also posted on the HHS Web site.But at a meeting of the task force this year, then-coordinator Sharon Marcus-Kurn said that detectives had spent “umpteen hours of overtime” repeatedly interviewing women found in Korean- and Hispanic-owned brothels. “It’s very difficult to find any underlying trafficking that is there,” Marcus-Kurn told the group….
The article is heavily edited to shorten to blog format and eliminated some of the history of the efforts to assess the situation, except to point out it is ‘bi-partisan’.
Of course I have a response, but am awaiting answers from experts I can contact. Stay tuned.
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THE RAPE OF EUROPE
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
EUObserver: “The European Union has overnight agreed the precise text of its new ‘Lisbon Treaty’ to be formally signed off on 13 December in the Portuguese capital.
At around 02:00 local time on Friday morning - following shorter-than-usual discussions - Portuguese prime minister Jose Socrates announced that a deal has been struck, describing it as ‘victory for Europe’.
The new treaty will be formally signed by all European leaders in Lisbon on 13 December and subsequently go for ratification next year, with a view to coming into place by mid-2009, ahead of the next European elections.”
The only reason this ‘treaty’ was drawn up was to break down the sovereignty of all participating nations in order to give free reign to the neoliberals, the neocons, the privatization-and-deregulation gurus and big corporations, who will be able to dictate their terms for everything. Wages, social welfare, health care, taxes, ‘defence’ (read ‘war’) will eventually be taken from the national governments and the citizen will have much less influence on laws and regulations.
In short, the treaty is an attempt to impoverish and subdue the European population.
Because it is important and far-reaching the whole population should be able to vote on this treaty. Those in power don’t want you to have any influence whatsoever. This treaty is the beginning of an undemocratic Europe. It’s a coup d’état.
Telegraph: “Gordon Brown has steadfastly ignored a growing British campaign for a referendum on the European Union Treaty that was agreed in the early hours of this morning.”
Petitions
European referendum
Referendum in the Netherlands
Just one example of the things they have in store for us:
“Commissioner Frattini has stated that the Commission intends to propose, in the framework of a package of anti-terrorism measures foreseen for November, the blocking of Internet searches for bombmaking instructions, adding that the Commission will also ask the private sector to make it possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like ‘bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism’ (Reuters, 10 Sept. 2007). Privacy organisations and the private sector, including Google, have already stated that the blocking of Internet searches with these words would be contrary to the freedom of expression and would not be an efficient tool against terrorism.”
This measure is intended to prevent you from researching genocide, terrorism, prevent you from getting information on the number of killings and bombs gone off, and that includes the killings done by European forces. It’s as simple as that. It is typical for the new wave of totalitarian thinking that is gaining momentum in neocon Europe.
Do you think Europe would act to denounce all instances of genocide and war crimes? Think again:
“Today Council and Commission were summoned to explain the follow-up on Parliament’s report adopted in February 2007 and the report from the Council of Europe from 08 June dealing with clandestine CIA operations in Europe. Liberal and Democrat members remain very critical of the lack of action by Member States to follow up on the conclusions drawn from the investigations.”
The motor behind it all is corporate power.
“From Bengal to Baghdad: Three Centuries of Corporate Warriors.”
Neocons thrive on poverty and war.
Have Your Say: THE RAPE OF EUROPE
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U.S. Asserts State Secrets, Seeks to Dismiss CIA Case
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
The U.S. asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit claiming a Boeing Co. unit falsified flight plans to disguise the Central Intelligence Agency’s transporting of terrorism suspects to secret prisons overseas.
The Justice Department today asked to intervene in the case to protect state secrets. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in May, claims Jeppesen Dataplan helped to transport terrorism suspects on more than 70 flights to countries where they weren’t protected by U.S. law and were tortured during interrogation.
“Although the president and other officials have acknowledged that the CIA operates a terrorist detention and interrogation program, these officials have specifically refused to confirm or deny any operational details concerning that program,” the Justice Department said in court filings. “This information remains properly classified as sources and methods of intelligence gathering.”
President George Bush acknowledged the program in 2006 and has defended its legality, ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said in a phone interview. U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose, California, who’s handling the case can separate “legitimate secrets” from other evidence in the suit and “permit the case to go forward,” he said.
`Extraordinary Rendition’
“When it suits the Bush administration they acknowledge the extraordinary rendition program and even defend it,” Wizner said. “But when they’re challenged in a court of law, they insist that the cases must be dismissed.”
The ACLU, citing a Council of Europe report, claims Englewood, Colorado-based Jeppesen, a provider of navigation charts, refueling plans and route planning, misled European officials on the flights’ destinations.
Natalya LaBauve, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Scott Schools in San Francisco, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
John Dern, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
The ACLU sued under a law allowing non-citizens to bring claims against the U.S. government for violating laws of other nations or American treaties.
The case was filed on behalf of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni living in Indonesia who the ACLU argues was flown to, and tortured at Bagram air base in Afghanistan; Italian citizen Abou Elkassim Britel, who it claims was kidnapped in Pakistan and sent to be tortured in Morocco; and Ahmed Agiza who it says was transported to and tortured in Egypt after applying for asylum in Sweden.
The ACLU also represents Binyam Mohamed, who it argues was kidnapped in Pakistan, tortured in Morocco and sent to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Also named as a plaintiff is Bisher al-Rawi, who the ACLU claims was kidnapped in Africa, transferred to Guantanamo and released without being charged.
The case is Mohamed v. Jeppesen, 07-2798, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
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US needs more jaw and less war with Iran: analysts
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
AFP
The United States must stop “posturing” and start negotiating if it wants to avert President George W. Bush’s “World War III” scenario of a nuclear-armed Iran, Middle East experts say.
The doomsday warning by Bush, and bellicose remarks by White House contenders on the campaign trail, contrasted with a newly emerging argument that the United States must find ways of living with a nuclear Iran.
That argument was put forward last month by General John Abizaid, the recently retired commander of US forces in the Middle East, who said that the Cold War containment of the Soviet Union showed a way to handle Iran.
But at a press conference on Wednesday, Bush said that he had told world leaders “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
The comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin became the first Kremlin chief to visit Tehran since World War II. Putin backed Iran’s right to nuclear energy and emphasized Moscow’s differences with the West.
The White House later characterized Bush’s remark as just “a rhetorical point” and not a prelude to Armageddon.
Iran, which insists it only wants peaceful nuclear energy, brushed aside the warning and announced Saturday that its top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani was being replaced by an ally of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, backed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is said to be resisting administration hardliners led by Vice President Dick Cheney who favor a military option against Iran.
Cheney was due to deliver a speech to a Middle East think tank Sunday, five months since warning from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf that the United States would not let Iran acquire nuclear weapons.
But for Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iranian scholar at Syracuse University in New York state, Bush’s tone revealed frustration over the inability of the United States and its European allies to curtail Iran’s enrichment of uranium.
“The Bush administration has issued red lines and deadlines for Iran to meet and every single one of them has come and gone without any sort of follow-up action,” he said.
“Surely you’re not going to bring the Iranians to the table with this kind of implicit threat,” Boroujerdi said, calling Bush’s language “both unnecessary and counter-productive” but also indicative of US anger over Iran’s alleged meddling in Iraq.
“All this did was fuel speculation and anxiety. It was an unfortunate choice of words at an unfortunate time,” said John Calabrese at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“The nub of the issue is to how to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table. The political season and the competitive posturing about who would be toughest on the Iranians is just unhelpful,” he said.
“One hopes that in the internal debate in the administration, some cooler heads like Defense Secretary Gates will prevail and the foolishness of attacking Iran will be realized.”
Campaigning for the 2008 White House nomination, top Republicans and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton insist that they will never tolerate Iran being in a position to menace its neighbors and Israel with atomic arms.
Clinton last month voted for a Senate resolution that declared Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards a terror organization — a step that Democratic rival Barack Obama said represented a “blank check” for Bush to wage war.
The United States believes that Iran has only been emboldened by its dealings with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. The alternative espoused by Abizaid and others is to contain Iran.
“But what makes this different from the Soviet situation is how to guard against the reactions of Iran’s neighbors,” Calabrese said.
He warned of the potential for a nuclear arms race involving Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and highlighted Israel’s response as a major unknown after the Jewish state reportedly bombed a Syrian nuclear site last month.
“The United States could take care of Iran militarily in short order,” said Alex Vatanka, Iran analyst at Jane’s Information Group.
“But it’s still not useful for policymakers to use this kind of alarmist talk, even if Bush feels that Iran is an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with in his remaining time in office,” he said.
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Nukes Over America: All a Stupid Mistake. Sure It Was
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
The Air Force’s Friday report on the August 29-30 nuclear weapons incident which saw six armed cruise missiles flown across the continental US in launch position on a B-52H bomber leaves all the big questions unanswered, attempting to shuck the whole thing off as an “unacceptable mistake.”
To be sure, Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, said that after a six-week investigation, five officers, including Col. Bruce Emig, commander of the Fifth Bomb Group at Minot AFB in North Dakota, where the flight originated, have been relieved of duty, and 65 other Air Force personnel were also removed from their duties, and both Barksdale and Minot were decertified for their strategic nuclear responsibilities. But that’s still pretty small beer for an incident so serious it’s never happened before in half a century of nuclear weapons handling.
There are, at this point, no court martials being contemplated, and nobody’s been discharged from the military.
Put simply, six 150-kiloton warheads were improperly attached to six Advanced Cruise Missiles, all loaded onto a wing launch pod, and then mounted on the wing of a B-52 H Stratofortress at Minot, along with six similar missiles with dummy warheads, which were loaded onto a launch pod on the plane’s other wing, an all 12 were improperly and illegally flown across the country to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
The Air Force, following its “investigation,” is saying the same thing it said before the investigation: it was all a big “mistake”—the result of “widespread disregard for the rules” regarding handling of nuclear weapons.
A few guys at Minot “inexplicably” screwed up and loaded the nukes and then there were a chain of mistakes because no one else treated the nuclear-tipped missiles as if they were armed with nuclear weapons.
The trouble with this theory, or story line if you will, is that while nobody at Minot, supposedly, noticed what was happening—even though ground crew workers spent eight hours laboring to get the pod with the six nuke-tipped missiles mounted on the plane’s wing. This despite the warheads are clearly visible and identifiable by the silver coating they exhibit when viewed through a little window in each nosecone cover, and because there are red coverings on the nuke nosecones—once the plane got to Barksdale, the ground crew there, which had no reason on earth to suspect it was looking at nuclear warheads, spotted them immediately upon going to the plane.
They had no reason to expect nukes because for 40 years it has been illegal for the military to carry nuclear weapons on bombers over US territory, and indeed since 1991, it has been illegal to even load nuclear weapons on a plane, period, even for training purposes on the ground.
How can it be that Air Force ground crew people at Barksdale could spot the nukes in a flash while nobody at Minot—not the workers who mounted the warheads on the missiles in the heavily guarded bunker, not the guards who are supposed to guard those weapons with their lives and prevent any unauthorized removal from the bunkers, not the ground crew that loaded them onto the plan, and not the pilot and crew of the bomber, who are supposed to check every missile before they take off—noticed they were nuclear warheads? (The weapons went unnoticed for 10 hours in Barksdale, but that’s only because no groundcrew visited the plane for that long, but when they did go to it, they reportedly spotted the nukes right off the bat.)
The Air Force, at a press conference announcing the results of its investigation, didn’t answer this question. It appears they reporters at the session didn’t ask it either.
Certainly the AP reporter didn’t ask it, because if she had, she would surely have included the Air Force’s answer, or it’s non-answer, in her story.
Nobody, apparently, asked the Air Force either about six mysterious violent deaths of Air Force personnel from Minot and Barksdale, and from a mysterious Air Force Special Commando Group, all of which occurred in the days and weeks immediately before, during and after the incident. Two of those deaths—of the Special Commando Group officer and of a Minot weapons guard—were reportedly “suicides.”
In an article in the current issue of American Conservative magazine, currently on newsstands, I report that incredibly, no federal investigators from the Pentagon or the federal government even bothered to contact the police investigators or medical examiners who investigated those six deaths—an remarkable failure of due diligence, given the seriousness of this incident.
One retired Navy officer who contacted me during my investigation, who worked in electronic warfare, told me it would be simply impossible for those weapons to have been moved out of the storage bunker. He claims to know for a certainty that all nuclear weapons in the US arsenal are equipped with high-tech tags (“like they have at WalMart and Kmart only better”) that would instantly trigger alarms when the weapons are moved, unless they were deliberately disarmed.
So what we have is pretty clearly a cover-up here.
A cover-up of what though?
Here we’re into speculation.
One thing we need to keep in mind is that Barksdale AFB, on its website, advertises itself proudly as the base that prepares B-52s for duty in the Middle East Theater.
Another thing we need to keep in mind is that Vice President Dick Cheney is trying hard to gin up a war against Iran, against the better judgment of top military leaders and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
And a third thing to remember is that these particular six warheads, called M80-1 warheads, are able to be adjusted to have a power of anywhere from 150 kilotons down to just 5 kilotons—a so-called “tactical” size.
Perfect for a tactical strike on an Iranian nuclear processing or research site, or for a “false flag” type attack that could be blamed on a fledgling nuclear power…like Iran.
Of course this is all speculation.
What we do know is that for 36 hours, six nuclear warheads went missing. Nobody at the Pentagon in authority knew they were gone or where they were. And when they were discovered, the initial Pentagon response was to cover it all up. The only reason we know about this incident is that three Air Force officers became whistle-blowers and contacted a reporter at Military Times, a private newspaper trusted by and popular with the rank-and-file military.
And what we know is that this couldn’t have been what the Air Force, six weeks and one “investigation” late, is calling a “mistake.”
Have Your Say: Nukes Over America: All a Stupid Mistake. Sure It Was
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VIDEO: 9/11 Truthers Disrupt Bill Maher’s Show
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Bill Maher: Corporate Media Gatekeeper and Security Guard
Activist from We Are Change LA gets under the skin of corporate shill
After HBO employee Bill Maher lent a hand in evicting a “rowdy protester” from his show on Friday, the Associated Press wasted no time characterizing him as a “security guard” for the effort. “Maher on Friday night helped security remove a rowdy protester from the studio during his weekly HBO show ‘Real Time with Bill Maher,’ and it was all captured on live television,” including the point made by the so-called protester. “Maher was talking science during one of his weekly panel discussions when a protester in his audience stood up, held up a smuggled-in sign reading ‘9/11 is a cover up fraud’ and shouted comments to the same effect.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5BJzEshMes
“Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I’m the one who’s being naive,” Maher averred last month. “How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think ‘Well, if you believe that was the cause…’ Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on the show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJJIYWMZlY
In other words, for Bill and his employer, the very topic of what really happened on September 11, 2001—or simply broaching the subject—is strictly verboten. For some time now the corporate media, as a dutiful handmaiden of government—that is to say, a government purchased by multinational corporations, including HBO’s “parent,” Time Warner—has repeatedly insisted that merely asking how it is an oxygen-starved kerosene fire weakens steel and initiates the collapse of two massive buildings makes one insane, never mind that buying into the absurd Grimm Brothers story that cave-dwelling terrorists ensconced in a medieval backwater were capable of suspending the laws of physics on that day is the very definition of insanity.
On Friday, Maher was so determined to please his employer and make amends for displeasing the government in the past—when he declared the imaginary 9/11 terrorists were not cowards—he rushed from the stage to make sure the protester was man-handled and quickly ushered from the studio. “When security reached the man’s aisle and the man resisted leaving, Maher ran into the seats and helped them push him out the door, shouting ‘Out! Out! Out!’” the Associated Press continues. “Several other protesters, sprinkled throughout the audience, then stood up and shouted… ‘This isn’t the Iowa Caucus, OK, we’re not here to debate,’ Maher shouted with most of his audience cheering him on. ‘This is the problem with live television.’”
Indeed, this is “the problem with live television” and it will continue to be a problem so long as corporate shills such as Bill Maher refuse to acknowledge legitimate questions and label the questioners as mental patients.
It is not so much Bill’s refusal to address the official 9/11 fairy tale—thus rendering him a de facto neocon supporter—but rather his obvious determination to go after those who question the official fish story. Bill Maher is not so much a comedian as an apologist and advocate for the criminal cabal guilty of launching the predetermined “catastrophic and catalyzing event” cynically used as an excuse to decimate what remains of our beleaguered Constitution and foment the “clash of civilizations,” otherwise known as the neocon-neolib global domestication project, determined to reduce the planet to a slave labor gulag based on the China Model, hailed by one-worlders as a miracle.
http://noworldsystem.com/2007/10/20/bill-maher-throws-911-truth-seekers-out-of-the-audience/
Have Your Say: VIDEO: 9/11 Truthers Disrupt Bill Maher’s Show
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VIDEO: Poison in the Mouth
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Startling documentary shows evidence of brain damage from Mercury in silver amalgam fillings.
Most dentists who deny mercury is harmful, will remove them without precautions and can cause a relapse or an equivalent of over 10 years mercury exposure in one go if they drill them out, so if you think you need to remove and replace them, be sure to search out a qualified dentist who uses correct procedures to remove & replace them with safe alternatives like ceramic fillings, or else leave them in until they need replacing if you have had them for ages, and get ceramic ones or a safe alternative to mercury amalgam.
The IAOMT gives guidelines for the removal of mercury amalgam fillings in a safe way, as you will need to go on a mercury detox program before and after taking them out to rid your body of the amount of mercury you will absorb during extraction, as no matter how many precautions taken, you will still be exposed to very high levels, so will need detox, but be careful, research this well if you decide to take action, as you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you are doing, you have been warned.
‘Humet-R’ detox formula is used by many dentists as they say it’s a natural safe detox formula. Their website is here, and you should ask them about directions and amalgam removal advice if you feel you need and are thinking of removing mercury amalgams; http://www.fulcrumhealth.co.uk/page%
Check the link below for dental protocals on removing mercury amalgams safely, though there is always going to be some exposure and risks which is why detox needs to be done prior to and after removals. http://www.iaomt.org/articles/
It’s a very serious matter and some who have had them removed by irresponsible dentists or quacks cashing in on this, have suffered greatly!
I can’t be responsible and so assume no responsibility for people who get their mercury amalgam fillings removed and suffer serious consequences, as you must do your research, and find out, & ask questions to safeguard your health. This research is made public to help others as I can’t just sit on this stuff.
Have Your Say: VIDEO: Poison in the Mouth
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Removing Mercury From the Body - Are You Being Poisoned?
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
By Lauana Lei
Mercury is probably the most toxic non-radioactive metal in the environment. It is a poison! It is highly toxic to humans and ANY AMOUNT is harmful to the cells and tissues of human beings, according to Roy B. Kupsinel, MD, author of A Patient’s Guide to Mercury-Amalgam Toxicity - A Major Common Denominator of Degenerative Disease. The World Health Organization declared there is no safe level of mercury for human beings - in other words, mercury is so poisonous that no amount of mercury absorption is safe. (1992). Dental amalgams (fillings) are classified as a hazardous material by OSHA and recommend a “no-touch” technique in handling amalgams. A facemask should be used to avoid breathing amalgam dust, and hazardous waste instructions used for disposal!
On December 16, 1990, 60 MINUTES aired a program on dental mercury amalgam, which brought the issue forcefully to public attention. In 1992, Germany banned the use of certain forms of amalgam. In December 1992, the American Medical Association passed a resolution advocating the elimination of mercury, and benzene from all household products, citing their harmful effect on the environment and on human health. (12/92). In August 1993, a Federal Court ruled that California’s Proposition 65 is valid with regards to dental amalgam. This means that any dentist who has 10 or more employees must provide “clear and reasonable warning” to both employees and patients that amalgam is a potentially harmful substance. In February 1994, the Swedish parliament passed a bill banning all use of dental amalgam by 1997. On July 11, 1994, the BBC aired a 40-minute documentary on dental amalgam called “The Poison In Your Mouth.” In early 1995, a legal brief was discovered filed the American Dental Association in a civil lawsuit in Santa Clara, California that denies any responsibility for the safety of the general public when the public seeks and receives dental care! Practicing dentists are generally unaware that they have been inadequately informed about amalgam’s toxic properties by their professional association.
Sources of Mercury
The toxicity of mercury is not only from the major source of dental amalgams, but is also found in a natural state in soil and has been processed and used in a wide variety of industrial applications from the manufacture of wood pulp to agricultural fungicides and pesticides and is found in most plastics. Other sources of mercury contamination are from pharmaceutical medicines including vaccinations and laxatives, cosmetics, large ocean fish such as swordfish and tuna, film, plastics, and paint. We ingest or inhale inorganic mercury through our air, food, water, and soil—our bodies can even absorb it through our skin and convert it into even more highly toxic methyl mercury. Additional sources are inks, in some printing and tattoos, refined grains and seeds may test for methyl mercury, chlorine bleaches, contact lens solutions (antibacterial mercury compound is found in contact lens cleaning solutions and injectable vitamins and drugs), felt, fabric softener, floor waxes and polishes, film, broken thermometers and barometers, antiseptic creams and lotions, and nasal sprays.
“Mercury is a cytotoxin,” (The Mercury In Your Mouth, by Quicksilver Associates. “It is poisonous to all living cells. It also states in the book that it has the capacity to bond with any chemical, which contains a particular type of molecule called “sulfhydryl”, found in most proteins. The human body contains an enormous number of protein compounds; they are the building blocks for all body tissue, and many have one or more sulfhydryl groups. As a result, mercury can interfere with virtually any process or organ in the body.”
Forms of Mercury
There has been controversy of the toxicity of elemental mercury vapor versus methyl mercury. According to Swedish and Canadian studies and research (courtesy of Woodlands Healing Research Center, Dr. Harold Buttram, MD in Quakertown, PA). The following is some of their findings.
“Elemental Mercury Vapor is more rapidly transmitted throughout the body than other forms of mercury and has much more toxic effects on the central nervous system and other parts of the body than inorganic mercury according to the World Health Organization and other studies. Mercury vapor rapidly crosses the blood-brain barrier accumulating in the brain and pituitary gland causing neurological and endocrine system damage. Elemental mercury vapor also rapidly crosses cellular membranes including the placenta of pregnant women with inorganic mercury accumulating in the brain, pituitary gland, kidneys, etc. of the developing fetus.” The research continues to say in the situation of the fetus of the pregnant woman that,“there is evidence that indicates that mercury vapor is 10 times more toxic to the fetal brain than methyl mercury.”
The studies found that mercury vapor and organic mercury have independent and synergistic toxic and developmental effects, and that additionally conversions of the mercury occur in the body between the various forms of mercury. It was found that elemental mercury (vapor) was documented to be methylzed in the body to the organic state and was a significant source of methyl mercury.
Organic Mercury -(Methyl Mercury) “Mercury vapor is oxidized or converted to inorganic forms which bioaccumulates in the brain, the central nervous system, liver, kidneys, heart, and oral mucus. The level of mercury in the brain and heart is higher after exposure to mercury vapor than for other forms.”
Inorganic Mercury - Substantial research findings is alarming….”While mercury vapor and methyl mercury readily cross cell membranes and the blood-brain barrier, once in cells they form inorganic mercury that does not readily cross cell membranes of the blood brain barrier readily. Thus inorganic mercury in the brain or spinal cord has a very long life, often over 20 years.”
There are numerous sources stating that the major source of mercury in most people has been well documented to be coming from amalgam fillings. This is especially true for mercury in saliva. Much mercury in the saliva is organic since mouth bacteria and other organisms in the body methylate inorganic mercury to organic mercury. In the research, some people tested who do not eat fish have been found to have high levels of methyl mercury. Mercury from amalgam is methylated by bacteria and candida albicans in the mouth and intestines. Once mercury vapor or methyl mercury are converted to inorganic mercury in cells or the brain, the mercury does not readily cross cell membranes or the blood-brain barrier. The mercury has a very long life in the brain, often as much as 20 years according to the Swedish Medical Journal (1986).
Testing For Mercury
Patient’s Health History
This form is one of the simplest and least expensive ways for evaluation. It helps the patient and the doctor or practitioner decide of a very good probability of a mercury hypersensitivity problem.
Laboratories
There are numerous laboratories across the country that specialize in the area of metal and chemical analysis. Great Smokies National Laboratories in Asheville, NC (1-888-891-3061 Body Balance Division EXT #5) and Dr.’s Data in Chicago (1-630-231-3649) are two popular ones. They can do hair analysis for reasonable costs and urine analysis is another way of testing. See the addresses and phone numbers listed.
Hair Analysis
The hair analysis shows effectiveness usually when the client is in the process of detoxifying the mercury. A high mercury level often indicates the unloading process, so it can indicate that the mercury is there and the body is trying to unload it.. The hair test may not show the hidden layers of mercury toxicity so that a low mercury level in the hair may not indicate the true state of the body that has a load of mercury in deeper layers of tissues and organs.
Urinalysis
Urine analysis is usually done over an 18 hr or 24 hr process. A base line mercury excretion level may be obtained from this analysis. A provocative test is with a chelating agent. The most conservative approach is with intravenous Vitamin C. It is least likely to cause detoxification illness. Other challenge tests are EDTA and DMPS and an oral one is DMSA.
DMPS - EDTA & DMSA Challenge
There has been quite a bit of controversy in recent years of the DMPS challenge as it seems to “dump” the poisonous mercury too fast and had some serious detrimental effects. The detoxification process of the poisonous substances need to be released only to the point that the client can bear. When nausea, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, etc. occur, this is a strong indication that the toxins are coming out too fast and the release of poisons perhaps need to be done more slowly! There are now organizations forming, such as DMPSBACKFIRE out of Pennsylvania, against the use of DMPS (check www.dmpsbackfire.com) before making a final decision. It is worth checking into. Another note: “DMPS excretes metals in the following order: zinc, tin, copper, arsenic, mercury,” according to, Heavy Metal Bulletin, Editor, Monica Kauppi, March 1995, issue. The EDTA challenge test works for some and not for others, while DMSA, the oral challenge test, seem to be the SAFEST of these three. Check our new product listing for the latest in this area.
Complete Blood Count
White cell elevation or depression has been found in cases of known mercury poisoning. After amalgam removal the count often levels off from 5,000 to 5,500. A CBC test may be done before and then after removal and offers a comparison. Many laboratories provide this type of test.
Jerome Mercury Vapor Analyzer.
This instrument is used by governmental agencies for mercury vapor analysis. The patient is tested before and after chewing sugarless gum without aspartame -a chemical- in it, for ten minutes. Usually this test provides some noticeable increases and give the patient an increased awareness of the mercury problem from vapor.
BIOCOMPATIBILITY & BIO-FEEDBACK Testing
Biocompatibility testing is to check out what replacement composites to use AFTER the amalgams have been removed. There are numerous safe composites used for fillings to replace the mercury. It is very important to have this test done to find out what specific composites are compatible with your body chemistry. These can be tested on instruments such as the Dermatron, Computron, Interro, Vega, Xxroid, and B.E.S.T (the latter is FDA approved).
Another way of testing is through live cell or dry cell analysis with a blood sample. The materials selected in this form of testing will be in harmony with your body. These instruments uses frequency-testing by having a person hold a device connected to the instrument that monitors their frequency rates and can check out the substances that are compatible. These instruments also can be used as BIO-FEEDBACK analysis to test which metals and chemicals are present in your body and the advanced technical machines will balance frequencies that are “out of balance”. The Xxroid instrument and the latest equipment of B.E.S.T. have the “frequency balancing” capacity.
The Patch Test
This test is a highly sensitive test for the hypersensitive patient. It will produce an exacerbation of mercury-related symptoms within 24 hours. The highly hypersensitive patient will react in an hour or less, so for this reason all patients are kept in the office for one hour after application of the patch. A reaction within one hour means that the test is over. The patch is removed, the reaction is neutralized and usually within twenty minutes the exacerbation is over. The patients that react within one hour are considered highly hypersensitive and could definitely be considered for amalgam removal.
(See Hal Huggin’s book, It’s All In Your Head, for more information.
Symptoms & Diseases Of Mercury Toxicity
The symptoms of mercury toxicity are lengthy, but we will attempt to bring you a list derived from several different sources: They include: Gastrointestinal problems, nervous system problems, fever, chills, fatigue, headache, insomnia, loss of sex drive, depression, numbness and tingling in hands, irritability, tremors, learning difficulties, irregular heartbeat, chest pains, sore and bleeding gums, immune suppression, birth defects, infertility, kidney/brain damage, anxiety, sensitive tongue, metallic taste in the mouth, allergies, dizziness, cataracts, insomnia, kidney damage, memory loss, nervousness, paralysis, seizures, vision loss, weakness, hearing loss, heart problems, chronic constipation, recurring diarrhea, parasites and fungus disorders, abnormal blood readings (MORE red blood cells than needed, lesions of the skin, hypersensitivity, restlessness, inability to relate to other people, poor coordination, brain fog (memory problems), monologue talking -sometimes for extremely long periods of time, difficulties in breathing, retinal bleeding, loss of interest in life, reduced capacity for work, vertigo, facial paralysis, a painful pull at the lower jaw towards the collar bone, joint pains, pains in lower back, weakness of muscles, pressure, pains, “needles” at lymph nodes under arms and in groin -also in the liver region, increased need for sleep, a gray ring around the cornea of the eye, feeling of being old, emotional problems, lack of concentration, a feeling of being disconnected from God.
Diseases related to mercury poisoning are: Alzheimer’s, all kinds of cancer, epilepsy, arthritis, pneumonia, bronchitis, gingivitis, neuralgia, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, lupus, lymphoma, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), leukemia, sinusitis, chronic asthma, hypertension, ADD (attention deficit disorder), Chrohn’s Disease, Candidiasis (binds to mercury), glomerulonephritis (disease of the kidneys), autism (from mercury in vaccines), SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), anemia, dermatitis, eczema, psoriaisis, Bruxism (grinding teeth), Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFIDS), insomnia, Epstein Barr.
The following is from the Journal of Advancement in Medicine, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1998 by James P. Frackelton, MD, FACAM, and R. Lyle Christensen, PhD. taken from their table,
Signs and Symptoms of Toxicity from Mercury Exposure
Acute:
Interstitial pnemonitis, bronchitis, tightness or pain in chest, coughing, metallic taste, nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting diarrhea, headache, dark line of mercury sulfide on gums, teeth loosen ulcers on lips and cheeks, develop psychopathologic symptoms and muscle tremors
Chronic:
Mouth and face: inflammation, tender gums, gingivitis, teeth loosen with alveolar destruction, increased or decreased salivation, stomatitis and tongue tremors, nasal irritation, epistaxis, disturbances of taste and smell, loss of appetite, facial pallor.
Neuralgic:
tremor of eyelids and extracular muscles, fingers, arms and legs; neuralgia, paresthesias, ataxia, exaggerated knee jerks and altered plantar reflexes, vasomotor: perspiration and blushing, personality changes, erethism, irritability, irascibility, criticalness, excitability, melancholy, depression, shyness, timidity, moroseness, fatigue, weakness, drowsiness, memory defect.
Test your Mercury Levels online.
Testing for Corrosion of Amalgam:
The rate of corrosion occurring in fillings can be estimated by measuring the electrical current generated by the fillings in the mouth. The higher the electrical currents are indicated, the greater the chemical reactivity. There are some aggravating factors in the process of amalgam corrosion.
- High temperature from foods and drinks. Higher temperatures increase the rate of corrosion which in turn increases the vapor pressure of mercury.
- Salty and acidic foods. These can contribute to or accelerate chemical reactions.
- Rinsing the oral cavity with hydrogen peroxide. This considerably increases the oxidationrate over simple dissolved oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide can even oxidize gold.
- Voluntary vomiting. This is a method of weight control practiced for centuries and probably more prevalent that suspected. This leaves high HC1,SH and elevated electrical conductivity in the mouth. The resultant increased reactions (ten times greater in aerated digestive juice) produce a marked increase in corrosion even though the length of time is relatively short. It has been noticed in studies that extremely detrimental effects of voluntary vomiting on solubility of composites in these patients.
- Multitudinous bacteria capable of oxidation, reduction and methylation.
Mercury & Related Issues
The Domino Effect
According to Dr. Bruce Shelton, MD (H), Di.Hom, director of the Allergy Center in Phoenix, Arizona, “Mercury amalgams are as close as you can get to the center of the illness universe, their use in dentistry has set us up for most of the health problems we see today.”
In his practice, Dr. Shelton frequently observes a domino effect of illness that begins with mercury toxicity. He reports that 90% of his patients who come in with allergies have an over-growth of the yeast-like fungus, Candida Albicans. This overgrowth can be due to heavy metals in the body, principally from mercury in the teeth, continually draining in minute amounts into body tissues.”
“The next stage” he says of the domino effect, “is that patients in this predicament typically develop leaky gut syndrome. If we do not totally digest and absorb our foods before they are broken to basic chemicals, then we have a ‘leaky gut.’… He says the “leaky gut syndrome s, in turn, to food allergies.” He remarks the soon the person becomes a universal reactor, allergic to multiple chemicals, to almost everything. Environmental illness is then at hand.
“Although dental work tends to be very expensive, if you can get a patient to have their teeth corrected, they will get well,” reports Dr. Shelton. Other contributing factors that are prevelant in this domino effect can also be an under-active thyroid, which is generally associated with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He says that, “Specifically, in thyroid cases, the fifth tooth from the midline of the mouth (between the two front teeth), upper and lower, in both directions, frequently has a mercury filling or a root canal, or is in a state of degeneration in this situation. In other words, “potentially four different teeth can have a thyroid connection.”
Another situation in the domino effect is the parasites, usually associated with the yeast or fungus infection. Patients or clients can have everything from tapeworms, pinworms, hookworms, etc. and these can be expelled naturally through various supplements or frequency equipment instruments, and colonics.
“Mercury then works on the Central Nervous System and damages the myelin sheath around the nerves. Heavy metals such as mercury act as free radical which are highly reactive, charged particles that can cause damage to body tissues. This cumulative poison builds up in the body with repeated exposure having devastating effects. It then can prevent nutrients from entering the cells and wastes from leaving, and block enzymes necessary for the body’s detoxification processes,” says Dr. Shelton.
Again, he says, “Mercury can bind to the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of cells, as well as to the cell membranes, distorting them and interfering with normal cell functions. When this happens, the immune system no longer recognizes the cell as part of the body and will attack it. This is the basis of an autoimmune disease.”
Note: “Free radicals are formed when molecules within cells react with oxygen (oxidize) as part of normal metabolic processes. Free radicals then begin to break down cells, especially if there are not enough free radical quenching nutrients, such as vitamins C and E, in the cell. While free radicals are normal products of metabolism, uncontrolled free-radical production plays a major role in the development of degenerative disease, including cancer and heart disease. Free radicals harmfully alter important molecules, such as proteins, enzymes, fats, even DNA. Other sources of free radicals include pesticides, industrial pollutants, smoking, alcohol, viruses, most infections, allergies, stress, even certain foods and excessive exercise.” Dr. Bruce Shelton, M.D.(H), Di.Hom.
Also Available is the Chart of Diseases Relating Specific Diseases to Specific Metals/Chemicals.
How Mercury Affects The Nervous System
We mentioned before how the different forms of mercury develop in a conversion process. Dr. Bruce Shelton says, “After elemental mercury from amalgam fillings is inhaled or ingested, it is converted to methyl mercury, the organic form of mercury. Methyl mercury, because it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, has been associated with neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It is important to mention that as toxic as elemental mercury is, methyl mercury is 100 times more toxic!
Once it infiltrates the body, mercury becomes a neurotoxin, according to Dietrich Klinghardt , M.D., Ph.D. a specialist in neural therapy, a process using local injections of anesthetics, such as lidocaine or procaine, to remove interferences in the body’s electrical network and thus relieve chronic pain, reverse injury, and clear energy blockages. He says, “that a neurotoxin is a substance the nerve cells voluntarily absorb, even though it is poisonous. They do this out of curiosity.”
Nerve endings in the peripheral nervous system constantly scan their environment, engulfing foreign particles and bringing them across the cell membrane for inspection. These substances may then travel all the way up from the foot to the spinal cord and get presented to the nerve cells there,” Dr.Klinghardt says. Further, “If the substance is judged to be harmful, the body tries to produce an antitoxin to neutralize it and eliminate it from the body.”
There are two problems when it comes to mercury according to Dr. Klinghardt. “First, as it travels up the nerve, mercury destroys the body’s mechanism, a substance called tubulin, for transporting along nerves. Burning the bridges behind it, it effectively destroys the nerve. Second, he says, the body has not yet learned how to make an anti-neurotoxin against mercury.”
According to Dr. Klinghardt, mercury levels can slowly dissipate over time from body tissues and from the teeth but it takes a much longer time period to get it out of the brain and the nervous system. There it binds firmly to a specific chemical compound that happens to exist there in the body’s highest concentrations. He says, that “the main devastating effect of mercury in the nervous system is that it interferes with the energy production inside each cell”. “The nerve cell is impaired in its ability to detoxify itself and excrete the mercury and in its ability to nurture itself. The cell becomes toxic and dies, or lives in a state of chronic malnutrition. A multitude of illnesses, associated with neurological symptoms, usually results. These are usually chronic viral, fungal and bacterial infections.
These chronic diseases are not a cause of the failure of the immune system, but by a conscious adaptation of the immune system to deal with a lethal/toxic heavy metal environment. Some practitioners and doctors refer to this situation as, “environmental polluted body terrain.
Since the nerves are usually damaged or compromised by mercury, it seems necessary to find something to help repair that damage. An Ayurvedic product (an herbal formula) called, Herbal Balance, ReGen Nerve helps promote healthy growth of nerves and is available through the product list in this report. Also, lecithin is known to not only repair the nerve endings but to help with the memory and neutralize toxins as they are moving. Both of these seem essential in any detoxification process. Lecithin, a food, may be found at any health store in capsule or granulated form.
QUOTES
In his research of mercury Dr. Zamm says, “It led me to the fact that the biggest environmental poison facing our country is the river of mercury running down your throat. That’s the number one environmental problem they could do something about now.”
Dr. Alfred Zamm, M.D., F.A.C.P. practiced for many years in Kingston, New York.”
You wouldn’t take a leaky thermometer, put it in your mouth, and leave it there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Yet that’s what happens when an amalgam filling is installed in your mouth.”
Dr. Michael Ziff, D.D.S and Researcher and Publisher of BioProbe, a newsletter about dental amalgams.
“Mercury poisoning is impaired oxidation. It’s like having an invisible cord around your neck that’s strangling you, but you can’t feel that the cord is there. (The strangulations) is biochemical, but the principal is the same: mercury reduces the amount of oxygen that you get.”
Dr. Alfred Zamm, M.D., F.A.C.P. “.
“…mercury caused the smooth muscles in the walls of arteries to contract, thereby causing hypertension….Inorganic mercury caused blood vessel constriction and subsequent hypertension within minutes after exposure… minutes after exposure..”
Researchers at St. Louis’ Washington University (book, The Mercury In Your Mouth, by Quicksilver Associates.
Researchers at the Temple University Medical School and the Harvard Medical School found that “inorganic mercury caused actual pathological damage to the heart muscle tissue, which in turn severely decreased heart function to a point that results in a dramatic drop in blood pressure.”
The Mercury In Your Mouth, by Quicksilver Associates
“Slow healing” is in part a result of zinc deficiency. Mercury interferes with zinc metabolism.”
“Chronic fatigue” is a result of insufficient oxygen to the cells. Mercury interferes with the ability of hemoglobin to transport oxygen” and “…..ringing in the ears” is related to manganese deficiency. Mercury interferes with manganese metabolism.”
It’s All In Your Head, by Hal A. Huggins, DDS
“After he underwent a root canal at the age of 15, Earl suffered severe fatigue and anxiety. At 28, he had a nervous breakdown. At the age of 32, suffering from fatigue, anger, anxiety, back problems, low blood sugar, nervousness, ringing in his ears, concentration loss, and prematurely graying hair, he consulted acupuncturist. Dr. David J. Nickel, O.M.D., L.Ac. of Santa Monica, California performed a mercury vapor analysis on Earl’s teeth and found that the level of toxic fumes from Earl’s six mercury amalgam fillings was 42 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum allowable limit.
He was put on supplements and there was significant improvement in his metabolic rate and blood sugar levels, he had all six mercury amalgams and his root canal tooth removed. Earl said, “I don’t remember when I have ever felt so good.”
“Mercury is associated with 258 different symptoms and copper with over 100. Almost all my patients who had their mercury-based fillings removed show moderate to dramatic improvement in their health in usually less than one month.”
Dr. David J. Nickel, O.M.D., L.Ac of Santa Monica California (from Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia & Environmental Illness, by Burton Goldberg.
“Research has demonstrated that the body’s tissues - especially in the brain, kidneys, jaw, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, and liver -absorb and store mercury.”
Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia & Environmental Illness, by Burton Goldberg
Have Your Say: Removing Mercury From the Body - Are You Being Poisoned?
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HOW AMERICA’S democracy is being stolen
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
With record low approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney regime and the albatross of an unpopular war hanging from the GOP’s neck, do you think that a Democratic presidential candidate will win the White House, get us out of Iraq, and end our long national nightmare?
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8468131166712136810&q=caging&total=120&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
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http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6757612420128645563
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2387698570177187417
Think again – the mighty election theft machine Karl Rove used to steal the US presidency in 2000 and 2004 may be under attack, but it is still in place for the upcoming 2008 election.
With his usual devious mastery, Rove has seized upon the national outrage sparked by his electoral larceny and used it as smokescreen while he makes the American electoral system even MORE unfair, and even EASIER to rig. Thus the administration has fired federal attorneys when they would not participate in a nationwide campaign to deny minorities and the poor their access to the polls. It has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to install electronic voting machines that can be “flipped” with a few keystrokes. And under the guise of “reforming” our busted electoral system, it is setting us up for another presidential theft in 2008.
Thus it should come as no surprise that our exclusive investigations into the firings of eight federal prosecutors who refused to execute Rove’s plans for massive disenfranchisement of Democratic voters reveal a pattern of illegalities and fraud aimed at reducing the number of minority, poor and young voters at the core of Democratic support. In the wake of major news breaks, two felony convictions have come from the rigging of the illegal Ohio 2004 vote count and recount that gave George W. Bush a second illegitimate term. Stunning new admissions from county election boards that illegally destroyed voter records will almost certainly lead to new convictions. And the multi-million-dollar electronic voting machine scam that made possible the biggest electoral frauds in US history is under massive new attack, with key states moving to scrap the machines altogether in a desperate attempt to restore American democracy – but with the job far from done.
Rove, Ney and the undead
Indeed, the Rovian theft engine is far from dead. The media groundwork has already been laid out for the Republicans to claim that hordes of illegal aliens have registered to vote. The Bush administration has been caught ordering public agencies – possibly in violation of the law – to cease registering voters. In an April, 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, Rove openly alluded to the strategy of demanding photo ID and purging voter roles of poor, minority voters just as had been done in 2000 and 2004. And, as always with Bush/Rove, there is much more beneath the surface.
All that has happened to challenge the GOP death grip on the American vote count has been reported in the pages of Hustler and on the internet at freepress.org, bradblog and elsewhere, and is being seized upon by a national grassroots movement determined to restore American democracy next year.
Nowhere has that movement been more in evidence than with the high profile firestorm surrounding Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of eight federal prosecutors without legitimate cause.
Evidence continues to surface from throughout the United States about this blatant Bush abuse of executive power. But we have traced the roots of the firings to an obscure Congressional hearing held at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on March 21, 2005, and to a shadowy GOP operative named Mark F. “Thor” Hearne.
The hearing was conducted by none other than former US Rep. Bob Ney (R-18th OH). The once-powerful Ohio Congressman (who is now behind bars) was the godfather of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the national boondoggle that mandated electronic voting machines for the American electoral process.
That the machines would cost taxpayers billions was a big plus for Ney. They would come from Diebold and other companies that poured money into Republican coffers. Thanks largely to the manipulations of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, these e-voting machine companies would help guarantee the GOP’s ability to steal elections.
Ney’s hearing featured a marquee appearance by J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State responsible for delivering Ohio’s decisive 2004 electoral votes to Bush. Blackwell was a key operative for the Bush election campaign in Florida in 2000 and co-chaired the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign in Ohio.
“Haul butt!”
Congressional protocol required that Ney allow Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Cleveland) to question Blackwell. Soon Blackwell and Jones were yelling at each other in a legendary exchange that ended with Jones telling Blackwell to “haul butt” out of the chamber.
Not quite so high profile was the ensuing testimony by Hearne, who identified himself as the head of the American Center for Voting Rights. Hearne is a long-time GOP dirty trickster, with a Rovian rap sheet dating to the 1970s. He did not explain that the ACVR had a post box in a Dallas mall, but no office, few staff, a board stacked with GOP operatives, no grassroots mailing list or much else to confirm the functioning of a real organization. Nor did Ney clarify that Hearne had served as election counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and had founded ACVR the previous month, at the urging of Karl Rove.
While the press corps rushed to report the Jones-Blackwell dust-up, Hearne laid out for Ney and the few of us left listening the essential template for the new GOP strategy for disenfranchising millions of suspected Democrats from voting in future elections. In classic Rovian terms, Hearne bemoaned a litany of “voter fraud” abuses allegedly committed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Association for Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) and other multi-racial coalitions working to register millions of new voters across the United States.
Among other things, Hearne told Ney the voter registration campaigns were using “crack cocaine” as an “incentive” for registering new voters. Adding the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio to his list of evil-doers, Hearne warned that millions of “fraudulent” ballots would be cast in future elections unless something was done to curb the ability of ordinary citizens to vote without extensive identification papers.
Hearne’s testimony drew little press. But it has led directly to the national Bush/Rove push for new laws requiring voters to show picture IDs at the polls and other methods of mass disenfranchisement – and the firing of eight US prosecutors who apparently refused to go along.
The cover-up
References to Hearne’s ACVR have now mysteriously disappeared from the internet. But the McClatchy Newspapers have reported that Hearne’s ACVR and the Republican Lawyers Association have actively campaigned – with a war chest of at least $1.5 million – in at least nine battleground states. They stump for voter ID laws and rigid registration restrictions and other tactics aimed at radically reducing the ability of Democrat-leaning organizations to register new voters.
The ACVR agenda embraces the Administration’s illegal demand that public agencies stop registering new, mostly poor voters. And the pressure to rid our democracy of such voters has carried over to the offices of the nation’s federal prosecutors, even in the face of widespread investigations showing the numbers of people illegally trying to register and vote have been miniscule.
Emblematic of the firings is the case of David Iglesias of New Mexico. Iglesias has testified to Congress that Albuquerque lawyer Patrick Rogers pressured him to prosecute alleged vote fraud perpetrators. When he resisted, Iglesias was fired by Gonzales.
Rogers is listed as “secretary” of Thor Hearne’s American Center for Voting Rights, as well as a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party.
Meanwhile, the Bush Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has reversed its mandate by fighting to narrow rather than broaden the voting rights of minorities, and to prosecute voter registration operations without just cause. An ACVR director, Cameron Quinn, is now the Division’s voting counsel.
A key target has been Project Vote, which registered 1.5 million voters in 2004 and 2006. Five days before the 2006 election, Bush’s interim US attorney in Kansas City issued indictments against four ACORN workers under contract with Project Vote. Prosecutions that close to election day have traditionally been discouraged by the Justice Department. Acorn officials had notified the federal officials when they noticed the doctored forms. But ACVR’s “job was to confuse the public about voter fraud and offer bogus solutions to the problem,” said Michael Slater, the deputy director of Project Vote, They used “deception and faulty research” to help Rove’s GOP.
The common denominator in the firings of the federal attorneys has been an unwillingness to pursue prosecutions on the basis of such research. Iglesias, for example, told Newsweek magazine he “had been repeatedly pushed by New Mexico GOP officials to prosecute workers for ACORN” who were registering voters.
Media missed it again
The media has missed what DID happen when the attorneys complied with the Bush/Rove game plan. Just four days prior to the 2004 vote, Assistant Attorney-General Alex Acosta, the civil rights chief of the Bush Justice Department asked a federal judge in Ohio to sign off on policies that would disenfranchise thousands of black voters. The move almost certainly had a significant impact on Bush’s subsequent victory in the Electoral College. Joseph Rich, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section, has called the Ohio scheme “vote caging,” which is illegal.
The case arose when Republicans allegedly sent “caging” letters to thousands of registered voters in inner city districts. The letters had “do not forward” stamped on them, with a return receipt requested. When some 23,000 came back as undeliverable, GOP operatives demanded the right to get the names removed from voter rolls. Acosta argued in his letter that restricting such challenges would “undermine” the electoral process.
But an exclusive investigation by freepress.org found that at least 25% of the people being removed from the voter rolls were in fact still living at their registered address. Greg Palast has reported that the GOP deliberately targeted black soldiers still fighting in Iraq.
Acosta says his letter endorsed the GOP challenges as “permissible” as long as they were not racially motivated, and that anyone whose eligibility was challenged could still get a provisional ballot.
But due to the actions of former Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell, more than 16,000 provisional ballots from the 2004 election remain uncounted. Independent observers have testified that thousands more may have been discarded right at the polling stations. (Bush’s official margin of victory in Ohio was less than 119,000 votes.)
Robert Kengle, who served under Acosta at the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section, says Acosta’s unsolicited letter to the courts was “cheerleading” for the GOP. “It was doubly outrageous,” he said, “because the allegation in the litigation was that these were overwhelmingly African-American voters that were on the challenge list,” precisely those whose right to vote the Justice Department was charged to protect.
Acosta was not among the attorneys fired by Bush. In fact, he is now the federal attorney in Miami.
Eyewitness testimony from throughout the state confirms that scores of GOP activists did challenge voters in numerous inner city polling stations. Many carried Blackberries and used sophisticated lists that may have included those illegally garnered caging rosters. The challenges did lead to numerous voters being turned away, and increased the long delays suffered by inner city voters throughout the state.
Surveys show it took blacks nearly an hour to vote on average in Ohio in 2004, while whites voted in less than fifteen minutes. In the inner city of Columbus, black voters waited between three and seven hours to vote, while in the nearby suburb of Bexley it took just five minutes. The delays in Columbus alone may have cost Kerry up to 60,000 votes.
Similar challenges were also endorsed by White House operative Tim Griffin, who has been widely accused of trying to cage mostly black voters in Florida. Rich says the scheme became public before the election, and the GOP apparently dropped the idea.
But as he was firing the federal attorneys who refused to cage, Bush appointed Griffin to be US attorney for Arkansas. Griffin has since resigned the post under fire. But along with Ohio, the administration used similar tactics in the key swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. Bush’s Justice Department also supported former California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s rejection of 20,000 voter registration forms, a move later reversed in court. And it has helped push photo ID requirements – again rejected in court – devised by Georgia to restrict black and poor voter access.
A 35-year veteran of the Justice Department’s Voting Right Sections, Rich told the McClatchey papers that he quit over political appointees who “skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of the elections.” Thus Thor Hearne’s original blueprint for disenfranchising minorities and the poor is now established administration policy, supported by Bush’s Justice Department, and backed by his firing of federal attorneys – illegal or otherwise – who refuse to go along. Whether the Democrats in Congress do anything about it, and whether the GOP successfully uses these tactics again in 2008, remain to be seen.
New cyber-thuggery
Alongside the Bush/Rove commitment to mass disenfranchisement, the key to the outcome of the 2008 election may be the rise and incomplete fall of electronic voting machines.
Unmonitorable DRE (Direct Record Electronic) voting machines have been center stage at every Bush-era stolen election. In Florida 2000, some 16,000 votes that “disappeared” from Al Gore’s tallies in Volusia County helped turn the tide for Bush at a key election night moment, even though they were later reinstated. In 2002, fraudulent electronic vote counts in Georgia almost certainly deprived Vietnam war hero Max Cleland of his US Senate seat in a race which all credible polls showed him winning by a substantial margin.
The spread of DREs is at the core of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) pushed through by then-Congressman (now jailbird) Bob Ney. High-powered studies from the likes of the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center on Voting Rights, the Carter-Baker Commission on Voting Rights, Princeton University and US Representative John Conyers all conclude that DRE’s can be easily manipulated, with entire elections illicitly shifted by a few keystrokes.
The GOPs HAVA means to put the nation on DREs as thoroughly as possible by 2008. But a public rebellion has slowed that plan. In Ohio, grassroots campaigners stopped Blackwell from giving Diebold an unbid $100 million contract to put virtually the entire state on DREs. Elsewhere, state and local election boards rebelled against the high cost of maintaining the machines, which often must be kept air conditioned around the clock, resulting in huge electric bills. Programming and other costs make administering elections on DREs far more expensive than doing it on paper ballots. The DREs have become infamous because of widespread testimony in Ohio that 2004 voters were pushing John Kerry’s name, only to see George Bush’s name light up, or to have their Kerry vote simply disappear moments later.
In response to nationwide opposition, US Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) proposed federal legislation that would have forced all electronic voting machines to be fitted with devices that would produce a paper trail. An accredited scientist, Holt also wanted to force manufacturers to make public the software that ran their machines.
Holt’s proposed House Bill 811 divided the election protection movement, much of which saw it as an endorsement of DREs. And as the bill progressed, the GOP gutted it, killing the software transparency requirements and settling for unworkable paper trail provisions.
The governors of Florida and Maryland have already moved to ban DREs in 2008, and to use paper ballots instead. Grassroots confrontations over how to cast and count votes will rage right up to election day.
The need for electronic safeguards has been confirmed to the hilt by an astonishing flood of revelations from Ohio. To report Ohio’s 2004 election-night vote count, Blackwell contracted with the same GOP computer programmer who created the Bush-Cheney web site in 2000. Those GOP-programmed results were then run through servers housed in the basement of a bank in Chattanooga, Tennessee which also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee (through which Karl Rove ran his off-the-record e-mails, now being sought by Congress).
Supervised by Blackwell, those results showed a substantial victory for John Kerry until about 12:20 at night, when reporting inexplicably stopped. When it resumed about 90 minutes later, Ohio’s margin – and the presidency – suddenly switched to Bush.
After the election, a citizen-based federal lawsuit (in which we are attorney and plaintiff) was filed, aimed at preserving all of Ohio’s 2004 election materials for further investigation. Those materials were protected by federal law until September 2, 2006, when Blackwell intended to destroy them. But a week prior, we won a federal court decision barring the counties from destroying any of these materials. Ohio’s new Secretary of State (SOS), Jennifer Brunner, then ordered the boards of election to deliver this evidence to her.
But in July 2007, 56 of Ohio’s 88 county BOEs admitted to illegally destroying all or some of their records. John M. Williams, Director of Elections in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) told Brunner he was “…unable to transfer the unvoted precinct ballots and soiled ballots” essential to an accurate audit because they “…were inadvertently shredded between January 19th and 26th of ’06 in an effort to make room for the new Hart voting system.”
In Clermont County, a key Republican stronghold permeated with election irregularities, Director Mike Keeley told Brunner that “in interviewing the staff, no one could remember the disposition of said ballots,” meaning the actual number of votes cast remains a mystery. In neighboring Butler County, Director Betty L. McGary informed the SOS on May 9, 2007 that they had lost the “ballot pages” thus making it impossible to confirm how votes were counted.
Delaware County, where the last 359 votes cast in one precinct were all counted for Bush, informed Brunner that they had 29 boxes of ballots, but then delivered only 26. The Delaware BOE initially reported 1872 provisional ballots, but the official number is now 1462, feeding suspicions the boxes were stuffed.
Two election officials in Cleveland have thus far been convicted of felonies stemming from rigged recount procedures after 2004. Now a solid majority of Ohio’s election boards face potential federal criminal action. They have made a reliable reconstruction of the true 2004 outcome virtually impossible.
Brunner has pledged to preside over a fair election in Ohio 2008. Like Debra Bowen, California’s new Secretary of State, Brunner is running extensive tests on the state’s electronic voting machines. Most or all of California and Ohio’s DREs could be gone by 2008, possibly to be replaced by paper ballots counted by electronic scanners.
But even those are not immune to fraud. In 2004, Diebold technicians provided inner city precincts with malfunctioning opti-scan machines. Throughout the state, more than 90,000 ballots were never counted because of voting machine malfunctions. At a mostly Democratic precinct in Toledo, poll workers handed out pencils whose marks could not be read by the electronic counters, thus voiding the votes cast there.
Overall, our nation’s history has been filled with stolen elections. Most have been robbed with paper ballots and stuffed ballot boxes. But under Bush/Rove, electronics are at center stage.
High tech Tammany
Bush/Rove stole the 2000 and 2004 elections by intimidation, vote caging, rigged machines, rigged recounts, and much more. Bush’s firing of the eight federal attorneys only underscores the fraud perpetrated by those who weren’t fired.
Whether Congress gets to the bottom of those firings remains to be seen. But there is little doubt the Democrats were able to retake the House and Senate in 2006 only because of the increased vigilance of a national grassroots voter protection movement.
Though Democrats carried Ohio in the off-year elections of 2006, our research indicates that the GOP still stole as much as 12% of the vote, and is still intent on disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of minority, poor and young voters. In a single election in Franklin County in 2006, a magistrate found that more than 83% of all the precincts were miscounted on the DRE machines.
And though DRE machines are under intense attack, their presence in 2008 will still be substantial, and will still subject the election to GOP theft.
The lessons of 2000 and 2004 are in the terror imposed on the registration process and the error perpetrated in the vote count. Only by saying “never again” can Americans hope to see a return to actual democracy.
Have Your Say: HOW AMERICA’S democracy is being stolen
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Detective questioned over honours obstruction
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
By Patrick Hennessy and Andrew Alderson
The detective who led the failed cash-for-honours investigation is to be challenged by MPs over allegations that his inquiry was “obstructed” by Downing Street in an attempt to protect Tony Blair.
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Assistant Commissioner John Yates will be put on the spot when he appears before the all-party public administration select committee in the Commons on Tuesday.
MPs will press him on claims, first revealed in The Sunday Telegraph, that Scotland Yard was informed by sources close to Downing Street that Mr Blair would resign as prime minister if he was questioned as a suspect rather than as a witness. In the end, Mr Blair was not spoken to under caution and his status remained that of a witness during the 16-month, £1 million investigation, at the end of which no criminal charges were brought.
Downing Street initially denied the story, although it was subsequently confirmed by other sources close to Mr Blair. The police have never commented on it – and MPs will use the Commons hearing to demand answers from Mr Yates.
Paul Rowen, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said last night: “I want to know whether Assistant Commissioner Yates and his team got all the co-operation they were entitled to during their investigation.
“Was there obstruction from Downing Street or Mr Blair and why at the end of the day, when it was clear that Mr Blair had driven a coach and horses through the honours regulations, were they not able to do anything about it? The public has a right to know.
“Tony Blair has made a mockery of public life. We have heard allegations that he even threatened to resign if he had been forced to answer questions under caution.
“These are the things we need to ask and we are going to be asking: what pressures were put on, how co-operative was Downing Street and why did it take so long for them to get nowhere?”
Mr Yates is refusing to comment this weekend. However, his colleagues at Scotland Yard are eager to see how much he reveals about the evidence that was thrown up and, more intriguingly, about the lack of co-operation from Downing Street.
“John is keeping his own counsel but, this week’s meeting promises to be very interesting,” said one senior colleague.
“John is a guy of real integrity and he may now feel he can be open and straightforward about some of the things that he and his team found out. I don’t think he will throw accusations about loosely, but he might point out that there were unnecessary delays in obtaining some evidence.”
Those at the centre of the investigation – Lord Levy, the party’s chief fund-raiser, Ruth Turner, Tony Blair’s “gatekeeper”, and Sir Christopher Evans, the multi-millionaire Labour donor – are said to be concerned that Mr Yates’s comments to MPs might prove controversial. All three were arrested but were never charged.
During the hearing Mr Yates is expected to assert that Sir Christopher’s diaries contained evidence seen as vitally important to his investigation. They are thought to refer to alleged conversations between the biotechnology tycoon, who loaned Labour £1 million, and Lord Levy, about the possibility of an honour.
Have Your Say: Detective questioned over honours obstruction
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Book tells of foul-mouthed rows between Brown and Blair
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Speculation over tensions between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before this year’s handover of power at 10 Downing Street was reignited today with the publication of a book detailing allegations of foul-mouthed rows between the two men.The book by Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon names close Brown ally Ed Balls - now Britain’s schools secretary - as a key driving force behind the reported clashes.
Serialised in the Mail on Sunday, it claims Blair complained of being treated “like an abused and bullied wife” after one row with Balls about when he would leave No 10.
And it alleges that Balls egged Brown on to foment rebellion against the PM following Labour’s poor showing in the 2006 local elections.
After Brown failed to trigger open revolt in a radio interview, Balls supposedly told him that he had “bottled it” - something the schools secretary told the Mail on Sunday he “categorically denies”.
Seldon’s book, Blair Unbound, draws on interviews with many Blair loyalists, including ex-Cabinet ministers Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn, Tessa Jowell, Patricia Hewitt, Lord Falconer, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett, as well as former aide Baroness Morgan.
By contrast, only a handful of Brown allies are named as sources, which will inevitably lead to speculation that it presents a partial view of events.
The timing of the serialisation is likely to frustrate Brown, who is trying to haul Labour out of an opinion poll trough following the debacle of the snap election that never was.
The book reports supposed arguments between Brown and Blair in which the then chancellor lost his temper over what he saw as attempts to undermine him.
After Milburn was put in charge of Labour’s 2005 general election campaign, Brown supposedly shouted: “You’ve appointed that f… Milburn! Is it about cooking the manifesto against me?”
And when Blair refused to stop Milburn and Byers speaking out in favour of a Blairite challenger for the succession, the book claims Brown threatened: “If you don’t do what I ask, then there’ll be big trouble.”
Seldon also asserts that Blair regretted his reduced majority after the 2005 election because it prevented him from sacking the chancellor. After one row with the Treasury, it is alleged the then PM told aides: “I’m going to take no more shit from over the road, I’m going to do it.”
The book claims that Balls regarded Blair as a “moron” and took an increasingly aggressive role in stoking up moves to oust him.
Seldon wrote: “His increasingly assertive role at the Treasury struck some as echoing the 1963 film The Servant, in which the butler, played by Dirk Bogarde, progressively takes over as the dominant force from the owner of the house, James Fox.”
LONDON
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=29&ContentID=44152
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