2008 January 24

One of the many things I love about Donald Rumsfeld is that he’s totally unrepentant. Back in 2001, the Pentagon under his leadership created the controversial Office of Strategic Influence, which was closed down just a few months later after its existence became public. Rightly or wrongly, the Pentagon was accused of creating a propaganda office. Now, the former defense secretary has a bigger vision: he is advocating a “21st century agency for global communications.”

This was one of the major themes in one of Rumsfeld’s first post-Pentagon public comments at a conference today on network centric warfare sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement. According to Rumsfeld, the United States is losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, and the answer to that, in part, is through the creation of this new government agency.

During the the Q&A after the speech, I asked Rumsfeld what this new agency might entail (he was pretty clear it wouldn’t be a resurrected U.S. Information Agency, which was merged into State Department in 1999), and why, when there is an abundance of media available in the private sector, the government needs to get involved.

What would this agency actually do? Hard to say, but Rumsfeld referred approvingly back to when the Army paid reporters to plant stories in the local press in Iraq. He still thinks that was a good idea (and blames the U.S. press for screwing it up).

In Rumsfeld’s view, the free press can co-exist with government sponsored/produced/paid news. “It doesn’t mean we have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that’s fine,” says Rumsfeld. “Well, it’s not fine, but it’s what it is, let’s put it that way.”

Bush Justice Nominee Authorized C.I.A. Torture

The Justice Department lawyer who wrote a series of classified legal opinions in 2005 authorizing harsh C.I.A. interrogation techniques was renominated by the White House on Wednesday to a senior department post, a move that was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who have long opposed his appointment.

The lawyer, Steven G. Bradbury, who has run the department’s Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, has been repeatedly nominated to the job of assistant attorney general for legal counsel.

But the earlier nominations stalled in the Senate because of a dispute with the Justice Department over its failure to provide Congress with copies of legal opinions on a variety of terrorism issues. Under Senate rules that place a time limit on nominations, Mr. Bradbury’s earlier nominations expired.

Late last year, Democrats urged the White House to withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s name once and for all and find a new candidate for the post after it was disclosed in news reports in October that he was the author of classified memorandums that gave approval to harsh interrogation techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

Mr. Bradbury’s memorandums were described by Democrats as an effort by the Bush administration to circumvent laws prohibiting torture and to undermine a public legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in 2004 that declared torture to be “abhorrent.”

The department and the White House have insisted that there are no contradictions between Mr. Bradbury’s legal opinions, which are still secret, and laws and rules governing interrogation techniques. A department spokesman, Peter A. Carr, said Wednesday that the department remained eager to see Mr. Bradbury confirmed.

“Steve Bradbury is a dedicated public servant and a superb lawyer, who has led with distinction the department’s Office of Legal Counsel,” Mr. Carr said. “He has proven invaluable to the department, and we will continue to work with the Senate to get him confirmed.”

Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said that by putting Mr. Bradbury’s name forward again as a nominee, “the president has thumbed his nose at Congress and chosen an individual who has been involved in authorizing some of the most controversial policies of this administration.”

Mr. Durbin led the previous efforts to reject Mr. Bradbury’s nomination and sits on the Judiciary Committee, which would have to approve the nomination.

Mr. Bradbury’s new nomination is almost certain to be a focus of questions next week when Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee for his first public hearing since his confirmation to the job in November.

Mr. Mukasey has suggested that he is a firm supporter of the Bush administration’s tough anti-terrorism policies, and his nomination was nearly derailed over criticism of his refusal to condemn as torture the interrogation practice known as waterboarding. He has since said he is studying its legality.

Mr. Durbin and the nine other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee joined in a letter on Wednesday asking Mr. Mukasey to clarify his views on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. The letter noted there had been “ample time for you to study this issue and reach a conclusion” and asked him to respond to the question: “Is the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including terrorism obligations?”

Also Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney offered a broad and impassioned defense of the administration’s antiterrorism efforts as he urged Congress to act quickly in reauthorizing broad wiretapping powers for the National Security Agency and in giving broad immunity to phone companies involved in the wiretaps.

The vice president, who was closely involved in the N.S.A.’s program of eavesdropping without warrants from its inception weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, depicted the vote in the Senate as a matter of national security.

“It is a fact,” Mr. Cheney told a friendly audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, “that the danger to our country remains very real, and that the terrorists are still determined to hit us.”

Democrats concede that they probably lack the votes to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone carriers that assisted in the N.S.A. program, and they urged President Bush anew on Wednesday to agree to a one-month extension in the law to allow time for a full debate.

Firefighter: Giuliani ‘ran like a coward on 9/11′

Families of firefighters killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center rallied in Orlando Tuesday in anticipation of the state’s upcoming Republican primary. Unfortunately for Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, the firefighters are not in his corner.

“We want America to know that [the Giuliani campaign] is lying to America and to the American pubic,” said Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York Fire Department, “telling all of Florida that the New York City Fire Department backs him, when that’s another lie.”

Firefighters and their families vowed to dog the former New York mayor at all of his Florida campaign stops because the state figures prominently in Giuliani’s big-state primary strategy. The protesters think that Giuliani was aware that firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attack were carrying defective radios and did not hear the order to evacuate.

Giuliani has campaigned strongly on his leadership during the attacks on New York, claiming he is the best suited to prevent an “Islamic terrorist war against us.” But the firefighters were quick to question that courage.

“Yeah, the decision he made was, which direction he was going to run,” says Riches. “And he ran north, and that’s all he did.”

The Giuliani campaign labeled the display a misleading, partisan attack. The former mayor is also emphasizing his ability to deal with the economy, distancing himself from the 9/11 pitch.

9/11 Contradictions

When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?

With regard to the morning of 9/11, everyone agrees that at some time after 9:03 (when the South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck) and before 10:00, Vice President Dick Cheney went down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), sometimes simply called the “bunker,” under the east wing of the White House. Everyone also agrees that, once there, Cheney was in charge—that he was either making decisions or relaying decisions from President Bush. But there is enormous disagreement as to exactly when Cheney entered the PEOC.

According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney arrived “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58” (The 9/11 Commission Report [henceforth 9/11CR], 40). This official time, however, contradicts almost all previous reports, some of which had him there before 9:20. This difference is important because, if the 9/11 Commission’s time is correct, Cheney was not in charge in the PEOC when the Pentagon was struck, or for most of the period during which United Flight 93 was approaching Washington. But if the reports that have him there by 9:20 are correct, he was in charge in the PEOC all that time.

The most well-known statement contradicting the 9/11 Commission was made by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta during his public testimony to the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003. Saying that he “arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 AM,” Mineta reported that he then overheard part of an ongoing conversation, which had obviously begun before he arrived, between a young man and Vice President Cheney. This conversation was about a plane coming toward Washington and ended with Cheney confirming that “the orders still stand.” When Commissioner Timothy Roemer later asked Mineta how long after his arrival he overheard this conversation about whether the orders still stood, Mineta replied: “Probably about five or six minutes.” This would mean, Roemer pointed out, “about 9:25 or 9:26.”

This is a remarkable contradiction. Given the fact that Cheney, according to Mineta, had been engaged in an ongoing exchange, he must have been in the PEOC for several minutes before Mineta’s 9:20 arrival. If Cheney had been there since 9:15, there would be a 43-minute contradiction between Mineta’s testimony and The 9/11 Commission Report. Why would such an enormous contradiction exist?

One possible explanation would be that Mineta was wrong. His story, however, is in line with that of many other witnesses.

Richard Clarke reported that he, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had a brief meeting shortly after 9:03, following which the Secret Service wanted Cheney and Rice to go down to the PEOC. Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White House’s Video Teleconferencing Center, where Clarke was to set up a video conference, which began at about 9:10. After spending a few minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: “You’re going to need some decisions quickly. I’m going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need.” At about 9:15, Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke “suggested he join the Vice President” (Against All Enemies, 2-5). Clarke thereby implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15.

In an ABC News program on the first anniversary of 9/11, Cheney’s White House photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came into Cheney’s office and said, “Sir, you have to come with us.” During this same program, Rice said: “As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in and said, ‘You have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President’s already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House.’” ABC’s Charles Gibson then said: “In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta” (“9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, September 11, 2002).

The 9/11 Commission agreed that the Vice President was hustled down to the PEOC after word was received that a plane was headed towards the White House. It claimed, however, that this word was not received until 9:33. But even then, according to the Commission, the Secret Service agents immediately received another message, telling them that the aircraft had turned away, so “[n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time.” It was not until “just before 9:36” that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go below (9/11CR 39). But even after he entered the underground corridor at 9:37, Cheney did not immediately go to the PEOC. Rather:

Next, after Lynne Cheney “joined her husband in the tunnel,” the Commission claimed, “Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room” after the call ended, which was not until after 9:55. As for Rice, the Commission added, she “entered the conference room shortly after the Vice President” (9/11CR 40).

The contradiction could not be clearer. According to the Commission, Cheney, far from entering the PEOC before 9:20, as Mineta and others said, did not arrive there until about 9:58, 20 minutes after the 9:38 strike on the Pentagon, about which he had learned in the corridor.

The 9/11 Commission’s account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press only five days after 9/11, Cheney said: “[A]fter I talked to the president… I went down into… the Presidential Emergency Operations Center… [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon’s been hit.” Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim.

How did the 9/11 Commission deal with the fact that its claim about the time of Cheney’s arrival in the PEOC had been contradicted by Bohrer, Clarke, Mineta, Rice, several news reports, and even Cheney himself? It simply omitted any mention of these contradictory reports.

Of these omissions, the most important was the Commission’s failure to mention Norman Mineta’s testimony, even though it was given to the Commission in an open hearing—as can be seen by reading the transcript of that session (May 23, 2003). This portion of Mineta’s testimony was also deleted from the official version of the video record of the 9/11 Commission hearings in the 9/11 Commission archives. (It can, however, be viewed on the Internet.)

During an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006, Hamilton was asked what “Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 AM.” Hamilton replied: “I do not recall” (“9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton,” CBC News, 21 August 2006). It was surprising that Hamilton could not recall, because he had been the one doing the questioning when Mineta told the story of the young man’s conversation with Cheney. Hamilton, moreover, had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: “You were there [in the PEOC] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President.” And Mineta’s exchange with Timothy Roemer, during which it was established that Mineta had arrived at about 9:20, came immediately after Hamilton’s interrogation. And yet Hamilton, not being able to recall any of this, simply said, “we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock.”

To see possible motives for the 9/11 Commission’s efforts to obliterate Mineta’s story from the public record, we need to look at the conversation he reported to the Commission. He said:

Mineta’s story had dangerous implications with regard to the strike on the Pentagon, which occurred at 9:38. According to the 9/11 Commission, the military did not know that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36, so that it “had at most one or two minutes to react to the unidentified plane approaching Washington” (9/11CR 34). That claim was essential for explaining, among other things, why the Pentagon had not been evacuated before it was struck — a fact that resulted in 125 deaths. A spokesperson for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when asked why this evacuation had not occurred, said: “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way” (Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001). Mineta’s testimony implied, by contrast, that Cheney and others knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12 minutes before that strike.

Even more problematic was the question of the nature of “the orders.” Mineta assumed, he said, that they were orders to have the plane shot down. But the aircraft was not shot down. Also, the expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any nonmilitary aircraft entering the “prohibited” airspace over Washington, in which “civilian flying is prohibited at all times” (“Pilots Notified of Restricted Airspace; Violators Face Military Action,” FAA Press Release, September 28, 2001). If those orders had been given, there would have been no reason to ask if they still stood. The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusual — not to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reported Cheney’s confirmation of stand-down orders.

That Mineta’s report was regarded as dangerous is suggested by the fact that the 9/11 Commission, besides deleting Mineta’s testimony and delaying Cheney’s entrance to the bunker by approximately 45 minutes, also replaced Mineta’s story with a new story about an incoming aircraft. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, here is what really happened:

The 9/11 Commission thereby presented the incoming aircraft story as one that ended with an order for a shoot down, not a stand down. And by having it occur after 10:10, the Commission not only disassociated it from the Pentagon strike but also ruled out the possibility that Cheney’s shootdown authorization might have led to the downing of United Flight 93 (which crashed, according to the Commission, at 10:03).

Given the fact that the 9/11 Commission’s account of Cheney’s descent to the bunker contradicted the testimony of not only Norman Mineta but also many other witnesses, including Cheney himself, Congress and the press need to launch investigations to determine what really happened.

U.S. to use Spy Evidence against Citizens?

Determining what NSA electronic surveillance can be used by police or introduced into court by Government, may be the next battle Americans have to fight.

It is not surprising the Telecom Industry wants “Retroactive Immunity” from at least forty law suits after they helped government spy on Americans’ personal phone calls, faxes and emails? But Not so obvious or discussed by major media is what happens to NSA’s millions of illegally collected emails, faxes and phone call information that belong to U.S. Citizens? Will that information be deleted or copied? Or Used In Court against Americans?

Depending on the legal scheme the U.S. Government devises to let the phone companies off the hook for spying on its Citizens, could set NSA free—to share its “illegally collected wiretap information” with local, state and federal police in order to initiate almost any kind of criminal investigation.

Determining what NSA electronic surveillance can be used by police or introduced into court by the Government, may be the next battle Americans have to fight.

Previously prosecutors were not allowed access to the Justice Department’s “intelligence files” for domestic criminal prosecutions. In 2003 a court ruling lowered that barrier, allowing prosecutors to review old surveillance. In 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked government prosecutors to review thousands of old intelligence files including wiretaps to retrieve information prosecutors could use in “ordinary criminal prosecutions.”

It is problematic Law enforcement agencies will want to use NSA’s old illegal wiretap evidence and other surveillance to go back perhaps decades to arrest Americans and/or civilly forfeit their homes, inheritances and business using only a “preponderance of evidence” under Title 18 of the United States Code. The Patriot Act specifically mentions provisions passed in Rep. Henry Hyde’s bill HR 1658 “The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000.” HR 1658 included a “retroactive asset forfeiture provision” that applies retroactively to assets already subject to government forfeiture, meaning “property already tainted by crime” provided “the property” was already part of or later connected to a criminal investigation in progress” when HR.1658 passed.

In 2000 after HR1658 passed the “old statute of limitations” died that gave government “five years” to seize property from the actual date a “property” was involved in crime. Police now have five-years to seize property from “whenever police claim” they learned a “property” was made subject to civil asset forfeiture. There are over 200 U.S. laws that can subject property to civil asset forfeiture.

Imagine NSA sharing its illegal-domestic surveillance information with countless police agencies that are dependent on forfeiting Citizens’ property to pay their department’s operating costs. Police can too easily take an innocent person’s hastily written email or phone call out of context to allege a crime was committed. Imagine Police using the Patriot Act’s low standard of proof “a preponderance of evidence” to judge NSA illegal domestic wiretap information, perhaps to go back before 2000 to civilly seize a Citizen’s home, business or other property. No conviction is required for the U.S. Government to civilly forfeit a Citizen’s home or business.

Under the Patriot Act, witnesses can be kept secret while being paid part of the assets they cause to be forfeited.

Immunization Programs Under Scrutiny

For many decades, leading scientists and doctors have vehemently promoted the idea that immunization of children is necessary to protect them from contracting such diseases as diphtheria, polio, cholera, typhoid, or malaria. Yet evidence is mounting that immunization may not only be unnecessary but even harmful. Pouring deadly chemicals into a lake doesn’t make it immune to pollutants. Likewise, injecting the live poisons contained in vaccines into the bloodstream of children hardly gives future generations a chance to lead truly healthy lives. American children often receive some 30 vaccinations within the first 6 years of their lives and children in the U.K. can expect to be vaccinated about 25 times.

Within the first 15 months of life, vaccinations including nine or more different antigens are pumped into the immature immune systems of babies. Despite the colossal efforts and large sums of money spent on vaccine research, medicine has never been able to devise a cholera vaccine that works and the drugs for malaria aren’t as effective as a single herb.

Diphtheria is still combated with toxic immunization programs even though it has almost completely disappeared from the earth. When diphtheria broke out in Chicago in 1969, 11 of the 16 victims were either already immune or had been immunized against diphtheria. In another report, 14 out of 23 victims were completely immune. This shows that vaccination makes no difference when it comes to protection against diphtheria; on the contrary, it can even increase the chances of being infected.

Immunization against mumps is also highly dubious. Even though it initially reduces the likelihood of becoming infected, the risk for mumps infection increases after immunity subsides. In 1995, a study conducted by the U.K.’s Public Health Laboratory Service and published in the Lancet showed that children given the measles/mumps/rubella shot were three times more likely to suffer from convulsions than those children who didn’t receive it. The study also found that the MMR vaccine increased by five times the number of children suffering a rare blood disorder.

It is interesting to note that the mortality rate from measles declined by 95 percent before the measles vaccine was introduced. In the United Kingdom, despite widespread vaccination among toddlers, cases of measles recently increased by nearly 25 percent. The United States has been suffering from a steadily increasing epidemic of measles, although (or because) the measles vaccine has been in effect since 1957. After a few sudden drops and rises, the cases of measles are now suddenly dropping again. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that this could be related to an overall decrease in the occurrence of measles in the Western Hemisphere.

In addition to this evidence, many studies show that the measles vaccine isn’t effective. For example, as reported in a 1987 New England Journal of Medicine article, a 1986 outbreak of measles in Corpus Christi, Texas found 99 percent of the victims had been vaccinated. In 1987, 60 percent of the cases of measles occurred in children who had been properly vaccinated at the appropriate age. One year later, this figure rose to 80 percent.

Apart from not protecting against measles and possibly even increasing the risk of contracting the disease, the MMR vaccine has been proven to produce numerous adverse effects. Among them are encephalitis, brain complications, convulsions, retardation of mental and physical growth, high fever, pneumonia, meningitis, aseptic meningitis, mumps, atypical measles, blood disorders such as thrombocytopenia, fatal shock, arthritis, SSPE, one-sided paralysis, and death. According to a study published in the Lancet in 1985, if children develop “mild measles” as a result of receiving the vaccine, the accompanying underdeveloped rash may be responsible for causing degenerative diseases such as cancer later in life.

In reality, measles is not a dangerous childhood illness at all. The belief that measles can lead to blindness is a myth that finds its roots in an increased sensitivity to light during illness. This problem subsides when the room is dimmed and vanishes completely with recovery. For a long time, measles was believed to increase the risk of a brain infection (encephalitis) which is known to occur only among children who live in poverty and suffer from malnutrition. Among upper class children, only 1 out of 100,000 will become infected. Besides, less than half of children given a measles booster are protected against the disease.

In a report issued by German health authorities and published in a 1989 issue of the Lancet, the mumps vaccine was revealed to have caused 27 specific neurological reactions, including meningitis, febrile convulsions, encephalitis, and epilepsy. A Yugoslavian study linked 1 per 1,000 cases of mumps encephalitis directly to the vaccine. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal in the U.S. reported in 1989 that the rate varies from 1 in 405 to 1 in 7,000 shots for mumps.

Although mumps is generally a mild illness and the vaccine’s side effects are severe, it is still included in the MMR vaccine. And so is the vaccine for rubella, although it is known to cause arthritis in up to 3 percent of children and in up to 20 percent of the adult women who have received it. In 1994 the Department of Health admitted to doctors that 11 percent of first-time recipients of the rubella vaccine will get arthritis. Symptoms range from mild aches to severe crippling. Other studies show a 30 percent chance of developing arthritis in direct response to the rubella vaccine.

Research confirms that the whooping cough vaccine is only effective in 36 percent of children. A report by Professor Gordon Stewart, which was published in 1994 in World Medicine, demonstrated that the risks of the whooping cough vaccine outweighed the benefits. The whooping cough or pertussis vaccine is by far the most dangerous of all the vaccines. DTP, the whooping cough vaccine that was used in the U.S. until 1992, contained the carcinogen formaldehyde, and the highly toxic metals aluminum and mercury. Both this vaccine and its “improved” version DTaP have never been tested for safety, only for efficacy.

The new vaccine has proved to be no better than the old one. Both versions cause death, near-death, seizures, developmental delay, and hospitalization. DTaP (formerly DTP) is given to babies as young as six weeks old, although the vaccine has never been tested on this age group. Among the 17 potential health problems caused by the whooping cough vaccine is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). According to an estimate from the University of California at Los Angeles, 1,000 U.S. infants a year die as a direct result of receiving the vaccine.

Immunization programs against polio have no benefits other than economic ones for vaccine producers. The scientist who eliminated polio now suspects that the handful of polio cases which have occurred in the U.S. since the seventies are caused by the live viruses that were used as vaccines. In Finland and Sweden, where the use of live vaccines for polio is prohibited, there has not been a single case of polio in ten years. If live viruses used as a vaccine can cause polio today when hygiene is generally high, it may well be that the polio epidemics 40 to 50 years ago were also caused by immunization against polio while hygiene, sanitation, housing, and nutritional standards were still very low.

In the United States, cases of polio increased by 50 percent between 1957 and 1958, and by 80 percent from 1958 to 1959 after the introduction of mass immunization. In five states, cases of polio doubled after the polio vaccine was given to large numbers of the population. As soon as hygiene and sanitation improved, despite the immunization programs, the viral disease quickly disappeared. Whatever may have been the reason for polio outbreaks in the past, it is highly questionable today to immunize an entire population against a disease that does not even exist any more. It raises major questions about the motives behind polio vaccination.

Further, the history of some simian virus 40 (SV40) infections in humans is linked to the use of polio vaccines. According to the American Journal of Medicine, many studies have reported the presence of SV40 from the polio vaccine in human brain tumors and bone cancers, malignant mesothelioma, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The polio vaccine seems ever more linked to cancers, especially in children. The cancers caused by the use of the polio vaccine in the past still kills 20,000 people a year in the United States. This is quite outrageous given the fact that polio itself hasn’t killed anyone for a long time.

About the author

Andreas Moritz is a medical intuitive; a practitioner of Ayurveda, iridology, shiatsu, and vibrational medicine; a writer; and an artist. He is the author of The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush, Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation, Lifting the Veil of Duality, Cancer Is Not a Disease, It’s Time to Come Alive, Heart Disease No More, Diabetes No More, Simple Steps to Total Health, Diabetes — No More, Ending the AIDS Myth and Heal Yourself with Sunlight. For more information, visit the author’s website (www.ener-chi.com).

Is the 2008 Election Rigged?

Charismatic democratic leader, Barack Obama had a stunning lead going into the New Hampshire primary, with a huge media blitz, and a lot of energy behind him. Then all of a sudden, despite exit polls showing huge leads for Senator Obama, despite no big moves for Hillary Clinton, Senator Obama looses the New Hampshire primary.

The Zogby poll released Tuesday January 8th, 2008, the day of the election, gives Senator Obama a stunning 42% of votes over 29% for Hillary Clinton. The poll states, “Obama’s margin over Clinton has opened up. He leads among all groups except women and voters over 65.” (www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1417)

What is of grave concern is that these polls and other similar polls, which usually have a fairly decent margin of accuracy, stating an error rate of plus or minus 3.4%, predicted accurately the outcome of the republican race, for Senator McCain, but were totally inaccurate regarding the votes for only one candidate, Senator Clinton.

Does it surprise you to know that a majority of voting machines in New Hampshire are the infamous, Diebold optical-scan voting systems. Which is “wholly controlled and programmed by a very bad company named LHS Associates.” (www.bradblog.com/?p=5530#more-5530)

“Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today,” reports award winning documentary film Hacking Democracy, which shows among other things how voting machines can be tampered with (www.hackingdemocracy.com) .

During the primary election count, with 63% of the precincts reporting, MSNBC reported Senator Obama still had a solid 3% point lead. Yet when the election tallies were over, rather than staying ahead 3%, Senator Obama fell behind by 3%, a 6% change in just a short period.

Another website (ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS) , compares the hand vote tally, to the machine vote tally in New Hampshire. Assuming that the hand votes represent a non-biased cross section of the state, the hand votes would accurately predict the winner of the election, and should match up to the machine votes representing another random cross section of the state. However this alignment does not exist, it appears that Hillary Clinton gained 5.419% or (15,584 votes) from the machines. Meanwhile, this page estimates that the Diebold voting machines took away votes from Barack Obama (-8,711 votes), John Edwards (-2,437 votes), and Bill Richardson (-3,478 votes) and gave them to Hillary Clinton for the victory. It seems strange that the counties that vote with Diebold machines just happen to significantly prefer Hillary Clinton with 4.5% more votes over Barack Obama. Whereas the counties where the vote is counted by hand, Barack Obama is the winner, giving him a 4% victory over Hillary Clinton.

A huge red flag came up for me, when I heard a news announcer report that Senator Clinton’s comeback was much like former president Clinton’s comeback in the 1992 election. The reason being is that part of me has bought into the belief that many presidential candidates, but not all, whether Republican or Democrat, has some ties to private special interest groups that influence how our government runs. If you don’t believe me that elite private groups have infiltrated our government for devious means, let me say two words for you, “Iraq War.” Which is not so much a war, but now a mass murder, with documented reports of at least 81,000 civilian Iraqi deaths (www.iraqbodycount.org) and in October, 2006 Lancet medical journal suggested that about 655,000 people had died in Iraq as a result of the 2003 invasion. Our country has also sacrificed approximately 3900 US soldiers in order to create a “democracy” in Iraq. I wonder if the democracy in Iraq comes complete with Diebold voting machines to ensure that nobodies vote will really be counted.

Independent journalists and authors have noted that in more recent times, candidates who have won the US presidency have had connections with The Council Of Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and The Bilderberg Group.

“President Carter was a member from mid-1973 until his election, President Bush was invited to join in early 1977 after he left the government. He resigned in late 1978, two years before he became Vice President. Richard B. Cheney was a Commission member from 1997 until he became a candidate for the Vice Presidency and resigned in 2000.” (www.trilateral.org/moreinfo/faqs.htm)

Would it surprise you to learn that Bill Clinton was also a member of the Trilateral Commission?
Perhaps that is all circumstantial, but I can tell you one thing for sure - something rotten is going on here.

Why in our freedom loving country are we using some electronic voting systems that are easily tampered with and created by suspect corporations?

Outer world injustice only happens because we are all asleep. Too many people choose to be sponges for absorbing media “reports” without reflection. The reports are many times biased and meant to convince the listener of something, rather than to objectively report the facts. And I let myself be so daring as to state it as if it is a fact, that Hillary Clinton’s miraculous vote lead, is a clear implication of tampering.

How is it that we have allowed our voting systems in some states to become so suspect? Are there any residents in our country who support using voting machines that can be tampered with? I doubt it. So why does our government allow their use? Let’s face it, in some instances the federal and even state government attempts to manipulate the public opinion for the gain of private interests. As a result, rather than a government that listens to and honors the will of the people, we have a government that many times tries to manipulate the people so it can go out and do stupid and harmful things.

The people of this country have a lot of power to make a change, provided that they claim that power and take effective action, which some people do, and most do not. Ordinary people who have a passion can easily make and change laws, and gain the support of the public and convince legislators on the state and federal levels to do good things.

Effective action requires truth, compassion and integrity, it means acting and living with purpose and conviction for what you know is right.

Let’s seriously investigate these issues of election fraud so that we can find the people behind it. The evidence is staring us in the face, it only takes an ear to listen to it and recognize it. Somehow, the truth has a way of releasing itself into the world.

About the author

Rami Nagel is the author of “Cure Tooth Decay: Heal And Prevent Cavities With Nutrition,” which teaches readers how to reclaim their dental health. Learn the real cause and cure for cavities and root canals at: www.curetoothdecay.com
Rami is a father who cares about the way we affect each other, our children, and our planet through our lifestyle choices. His health background is in hands-on energy healing, Hatha & Bhakti yoga and the Pathwork.
Rami is author of several health resources:
www.healingourchildren.net - Learn the Cause and Prevention of the Diseases of Pregnancy and Childhood
www.preconceptionhealth.org - A Program for Preconception Health based on Indigenous Wisdom
www.curetoothdecay.com - Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition!
www.yourreturn.org - The cause of disease and the end of suffering of humanity.

Neocons Lied 935 Times to Sell Iraq Invasion

Bush and his top officials waged a campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, “independent” validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.

The “ground truth” of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: “It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual “ground truth” regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who’s Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation’s allies on their way to war.

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government’s pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Amid record losses, Wall Street awarded itself $39 bil

The five largest Wall Street banks doled out a record $39 billion in bonuses last year, according to data collected by the Bloomberg news service. After driving hundreds of thousands of families into foreclosure, causing a financial crisis affecting hundreds of millions, and pushing the US and world economies closer to recession, it appears Wall Street is rewarding itself for a job well done.

The banks announced record losses in the fourth quarter, wrapping up the financial industry’s worst year since 2002. All in all, Wall Street wrote off more than $90 billion in bad debt for the year, and the five largest banks saw their profits drop more than 60 percent. Three of the five firms posted losses in the fourth quarter.

For all that, the bankers made out like bandits. Despite the firms’ abysmal performance, Wall Street buffered its traders from any shocks to their incomes by increasing the ratio of compensation relative to revenues. Typically, banks try to keep compensation below 50 percent of revenues; in 2006, when the five firms paid out some $36 billion in year-end bonuses, the figure was approximately 45 percent. In 2007, it jumped to more than 60 percent, according to figures released by the New York State Comptroller’s office.

While the $39 billion was divided among 186,000 workers at the five firms—averaging $211,849—the lion’s share was reserved for a few thousand high-level managers, traders, and senior executives, who took in multimillion-dollar bonuses in addition to their salaries. Rank-and-file clerical workers took home a few hundred dollars. Bonuses for traders in subprime-related securities are reported to be about 30 percent lower this year in comparison to other sectors.

Morgan Stanley wrote down some $10.3 billion in bad debt in 2007, but increased its bonus pool by 18 percent all the same. Its CEO, John Mack, declined his bonus last year after collecting a $40 million bonus in 2006.

E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, collected a severance package worth some $161 million, or 3,500 times the yearly income of a typical US household, after losing his job in October. Merrill Lynch wrote down some $20 billion in subprime debt during the fourth quarter of 2007, and saw its value reduced by some 43 percent.

Charles O. Prince II, the former CEO of Citigroup, which announced similar losses, will walk away with some $68 million. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs CEO, set a new record with his bonus of $60.7 million. The firm put its chips on different numbers than the other banks and had a good year overall. The firm’s two co-presidents, Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried, each collected a stock bonus of about $40 million, in addition to as-yet undisclosed amounts of cash.

Ike Suri, the managing director of a Finance Executive recruitment firm, told the Los Angeles Times that “compensation in the brokerage industry is increasingly tied to volatility—so the more volatility in the markets, the more investors are trading and the more they make.” He continued, “The marked increase in volatility in the markets in 2007 really benefited the brokers.” Volatility, we might add, which bankers created themselves by gambling—and losing—on risky securities.

The absurdity of this standard is self-evident. But, for all that, no major public figures have called for the leaders of these banks to be held liable for the destruction they caused, much less even called for hearings into their massive pay. Executive compensation, we are told, is a private affair between shareholders and executives, whatever its effect may be on the rest of the population.

Outside the mass media, however, these issues are being hotly debated. In a widely discussed Financial Times column dealing with the issue of banker pay, former IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan writes that executive compensation practices among Wall Street firms “probably contributed to the ongoing crisis” in the financial sector. Rajan goes on to explain the means by which bank managers systematically underpriced and hid risk with the intent of inflating their personal compensation.

Securities trading, according to Rajan, rests on the ability of funds managers to generate returns over and above market expectations, while minimizing overall risk. Rajan notes that differences between a security’s real yield and its evaluated growth potential “are quite hard to generate since most ways of doing so depend on the investment manager possessing unique abilities—to pick stocks, identify weaknesses in management and remedy them, or undertake financial innovation. Such abilities are rare. How then can untalented investment managers justify their pay? Unfortunately, all too often it is by creating fake alpha—appearing to create excess returns but in fact taking on hidden tail risks, which produce a steady positive return most of the time as compensation for a rare, very negative, return.”

The boom of Collateralized Debt Obligations and other risky mortgage-based securities was probably exacerbated by bankers’ attempts to, in Rajan’s words, “create fake alpha,” that is, to buy securities whose risk was nominally underrated and therefore paid disproportionately high returns. The foreseeable prospect of the real estate market cooling down, resulting in the writing off of billions of dollars of bad debt, massive losses for shareholders, and turmoil in the wider economy, paled alongside the bankers’ own grasping for massive amounts of compensation.

For the bank managers themselves, it made perfect sense. Once the racket that they had been running came to light and the securities they bought rendered worthless, the managers would simply lose their jobs, collect millions in compensation, and move on to some other firm. This is exactly what happened at Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and others.

The more farsighted representatives of the establishment recognize—at least in part—the dangers posed by unmitigated greed to the long-term stability of the capitalist system. Martin Wolf, the associate editor of economics at the Financial Times, recently wrote in response to Rajan’s article: “I now fear that the combination of the fragility of the financial system with the huge rewards it generates for insiders will destroy something even more important—the political legitimacy of the market economy itself—across the globe.”

Wolf proposes that the US government step in to regulate banker pay so as to prevent such discrediting spectacles as those seen on Wall Street in 2007. But such action would require an unimaginable sea change in the policies of the US ruling elite, which has sought for the past three decades to break any restrictions on its own blind pillaging of society.

As the Wall Street speculators raked in their bonuses, recent government statistics demonstrate that, for average working people in the US, 2007 spelled a further decline in living standards as consumer prices driven by fuel and food rose sharply and the paltry growth in wages recorded the previous year stalled. Average weekly wages last year fell approximately 1 percent.

The combination of record bonuses for Wall Street’s wealthiest and a drop in real wages for hundreds of millions recorded in 2007 is only the latest episode in the protracted process of transferring wealth from masses of working people to a tiny financial elite. The outcome is a level of inequality that is politically and socially unsustainable and which makes open class struggle inevitable. This is what is meant by the destruction of “the political legitimacy of the market economy itself.”

Louisiana GOP: Ron Paul stands 2nd

The Louisiana Republican Party says the state’s preliminary results indicate that presidential hopeful Ron Paul has come in second.

Louisiana Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere said Wednesday in a statement that Senator John McCain has captured the first place and Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney finished third.

Party officials are reportedly verifying provisional ballots for newly registered voters, which may boost Paul’s numbers since most of them support his candidacy.

“I applaud the supporters of Congressman Paul for their enthusiasm and superior organizational ability,” Villere said.

While the 72-year-old Air Force veteran has yet to win a primary, the Louisiana result is yet another indication that Paul’s ‘message of freedom’ in line with the Constitution is being heard by voters across the United States.

Political pundits believe while the Louisiana contest is not a major battleground for the Republicans, Paul’s second place finish will further boost the anti-war politician’s campaign.

Because the mainstream media keeps a low profile on the popular libertarian-leaning Texan, this is considered a great victory for the 10-term congressman’s supporters.

Cheney demands ‘permanent’ wiretaps

The US Vice President, Dick Cheney calls on Congress to ‘permanently’ allow warrantless wiretaps on foreign electronic communications.

During a speech to the Heritage Foundation in Washington on Wednesday, Cheney said it is ‘urgent’ to renew and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ‘immediately and permanently’.

The 30-year-old FISA is a federal law allowing physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of ‘foreign intelligence information’ coming from and going to territories under US control.

In a modification made last year that will expire on February 1, the Congress empowered intelligence agencies to tap into telephone conversations and emails, without first obtaining the permission of a special FISA court.

Cheney warned of ’serious consequences’ if the Congress fails to provide protection for telephone and Internet carriers from lawsuits for alleged complicity in privacy rights violations in the US ‘war on terror’.

“The challenge to the country has not expired over the last six months,” he said, referring to the so-called war on terror launched in the aftermath of the 9/11.

“It won’t expire anytime soon, and we should not write laws that pretend otherwise,” said the US Vice President.

British Government Censoring The Web

When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt you’d think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith’s speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence today, you really should.

Smith’s headline-grabbing proposal, to use the same tools against “extremist” websites as are currently used against child pornography, should worry us all. Few hard details are available, but if we take her at her word this is a dangerous extension of government powers, with a dangerous lack of oversight. Press talk of extremist websites being taken down is foolish and betrays a lack of understanding of the internet. Just as with child pornography, web servers within the UK, maintained by UK ISPs or not, can be dealt with legally and technically relatively easily. Those outside our borders - ie, the vast majority, in both cases - are beyond our laws and technical reach, but the content they supply is not. Blocking traffic from servers that host child porn - effectively at our geographical borders - has been a UK government goal for some time, and in 2007 they made a huge step towards that. Good news? Not the way they went about it.

The technical approach was simple enough, based on a system devised by BT and known as Cleanfeed. A list of IP addresses is drawn up by the industry watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation, supplied to and then augmented by the Home Office, and then handed to ISPs with the simple instruction “block traffic to and from these addresses”. The problems are twofold.

First, the government, in the person of Home Office minister Vernon Coaker, simply demanded that all UK ISPs “voluntarily” sign up for the system - there is no legislative backing for this at all. And second, no doubt only because no open discussion took place, no parliamentary debate occurred, and therefore no real examination of the dangers of such a process were exposed, no one except the Home Office knows what’s on that final list. We’re led to believe that it’s purely a list of child pornography sites. But no one outside government knows. Not even the ISPs. They block; they don’t look.

As of December 31 last year, all UK ISPs duly agreed to adopt the system. You’re now viewing a state-mandated subset of the internet. How do you feel about that? Like to vote against it? You can’t. Like your MP to sit on a committee to oversee implementation? He can’t. Like to know if the Google results you’re seeing are a full representation of Google’s actual results? You can’t. Censorship at this level - above even ISPs, is all but invisible to the end user. It’s a secret that they’re keeping these secrets from you.

Now, this isn’t China you might say, we trust our government to only censor material that needs censoring. Sure? This is the same government that has leaned on ISPs inside the UK, and outside, not with the intention of blocking illegal or obscene material, but simply sites that irritated, embarrassed, or offended the government. Not using legal methods either - a court order, say - but bullying and threats. And this is the same government that was only beaten by one vote in the House of Lords, on their 2006 proposal to force UK ISPs to drop sites on the say-so of a single police officer. This is, remember, that same government that’s constantly telling us, with regard to ID cards, that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Why then, do they hide this list?

Now, OK, most will feel with regard to child pornography a bit of overkill may be justified, but with “extremism” we start a whole new ball game. It’s a truism that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, what should also be understood is that what is inflammatory and incendiary material to one, is the simple truth to others. Can we really accept that a few pen pushers in the Home Office should have absolute veto over our online browsing habits?

If the government is determined to pursue this path - and I’d stress I’d really rather they didn’t (the best answer to poisonous speech is non-poisonous speech) - then the very least they must do is introduce transparency. There is no reason why the list supplied to ISPs should not be reviewed and questioned by a parliamentary committee at the very least and, unlike child porn, there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be in open session. Better would be a wider consultation, perhaps along the lines of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, where government could put its case to interested parties, including representatives of ISPs, civil liberties groups, and the public. You bet I’d volunteer. We cannot allow a power like this to operate, unchecked and unobserved, even if it is currently used benignly. Can those who’d say they would trust this government to act proportionately, really say they’d trust all future governments also? Future Spycatcher episodes will invariably happen online and in the UK, if the government of the day chose to act, we’d know nothing about it. We may even be in that situation right now.

The manner in which the government has grasped this power, the way in which they are already wielding it, and their resistance to introducing transparency to the process, suggests they think imposing invisible and opaque censorship, with no legal process, is a proper way for the state to behave. I reckon the Chinese government feels that way too. Censors generally feel their censorship is in a good cause too. It makes no difference.

We need a proper legal footing for these measures, proper oversight, and a proper understanding that free speech is not a trivial principle the government can simply ignore, but a cornerstone of any state that claims to be democratic. If they’re going to slice off chunks of the internet, then the rest of us need to be damn sure that what’s going is going for a good reason, and that Jacqui Smith isn’t both judge and jury, in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the world wide web.