The End of Antibiotics

http://www.naturalnews.com/z022892.html

Eventually antibiotics are going to be seen as one of the worst things to ever come out of pharmaceutical science because in the end, they have made us only weaker in the face of ever increasingly strong super bugs that are resistant to all the antibiotics doctors have at their disposal. When we look at how deep the rabbit hole goes with antibiotics, we will get sick in our souls. Antibiotics have fulfilled their anti­biotic anti-life role leaving a long trail of death and suffering in the wake of their use.

Diseases include measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. All were in decline for several decades before the introduction of antibiotics or vaccines - Dr. Lawrence Wilson.

Antibiotics do not kill yeast. Many women find after taking antibiotics, they get vaginal yeast infections (because their normal bacterial balance has been lost). Antibiotics bring on fungal and yeast infections thus will eventually be seen as a major cause of cancer since more and more oncologists are seeing yeast and fungal infections as an integral part of cancer and its cause. With upwards of 40 percent of all cancers thought to be involved with and caused by infections, the subject of antibiotics and the need for something safer, more effective and life serving is imperative.

It may be some time before we really enter the predicted “post antibiotic era” in which common infections are frequently untreatable – Dr. Marc Lipsitch et al. (Harvard School of Public Health).

Antibiotics kill all bacteria in the body, including the ones we need.

An antibiotic is a substance produced by certain bacteria or fungi that kills other cells or interferes with their growth. In nature, these substances help some microbes survive by limiting the multiplication of other microbes that share the same environment. Antibiotics that attack pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes without severely harming normal body cells are useful as drugs but there does not seem to be any from the pharmaceutical companies that do not do damage. Dr. Lisa Landymore-Lin wrote all about this in her book Poisonous Prescriptions asking, ‘Do Antibiotics Cause Asthma and Diabetes?’ We are now beginning to question the role of antibiotics as a cause of cancer since they do lead to pathogen overgrowth especially in the area of yeast and fungi. Chris Woollams writes, “It is estimated that 70 per cent of the British population have a yeast infection. The primary cause of this is our love of antibiotics. Swollen glands? Take antibiotics. Tonsillitis? Take antibiotics.”

Two studies in the recent past have shown an association between the use of antibiotics with higher incidence of breast cancer.

In one study the increased risk was small, and the importance of the link has been played down by UK breast-cancer experts, but the findings add weight to recent studies that have found links between antibiotics and other diseases. In the past few years, heavy antibiotic use has been linked to the inflammatory bowel disorder, Crohn’s disease, and to children developing allergies such as Hay fever and asthma. And as we shall see below, antibiotics play a hidden role in autism and other neurological diseases.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported a study on 10,000 women in which women who took over 500 days of antibiotics in a 17 year period (dubbed 25 plus doses) had twice the risk of breast cancer as those that took none at all. Even women taking just one had a statistical risk increase to 1.5 times.

The consequences of resistance in some bacteria can be measured as increases in the term and magnitude of morbidity, higher rates of mortality, and greater costs of hospitalization for patients infected with resistant bacteria – Dr. Marc Lipsitch et al.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics are undiscriminating: in addition to “bad bacteria,” they also kill healthy bacteria which normally live in the intestines and the vagina, and which are a necessary part of the indigenous flora to keep the body healthy. When the “good” bacteria are killed with antibiotics, then yeast, which is part of the normal flora of the body, can begin to overgrow because the antibiotics have altered the body’s healthy terrain (internal ecological balance) allowing the yeast to hyperproliferate and cause many far-reaching, toxic symptoms.

But modern medicine so far continues to believe that antibiotics have played an important role in staving off bacterial infections since Alexander Fleming first discovered them in 1927. Many doctors are finally beginning to see that the effectiveness of these so-called miracle drugs has waned as some of the very bacteria they are meant to control have been mutating into new forms that don’t respond to treatment. Many medical experts blame this phenomenon on both the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in recent years in both human medicine and in agriculture.

According to several studies, obstetricians and gynecologists write 2,645,000 antibiotic prescriptions every week. Internists prescribe 1,416,000 per week. This works out to 211,172,000 prescriptions annually in the United States, just for these two specialties. Pediatricians prescribe over $500 million worth of antibiotics annually just for one condition, ear infections. Yet topical povidone iodine (PVP-I) is as effective as topical ciprofloxacin, with a superior advantage of having no in vitro drug resistance and the added benefit of reduced cost of treatment.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, taking properly prescribed medical drugs was listed as the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Antibiotics were listed in this category because antibiotics can be deadly.

A 17-year-old St Margaret’s College student in New Zealand has exposed multiple antibiotic-resistant bugs in fresh chicken sold in supermarkets? Jane Millar’s discovery of a range of resistant bacteria in chickens that could compromise antibiotic treatment in humans is an important finding that the bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics not used in the poultry industry but important for treating serious infections in humans.

We can create resistance to medically important antibiotics by using antibiotics that are presumably safe in agriculture - Jane Millar.

Jane bought six fresh chickens – free-range, barn-raised and organic ­ from a supermarket. She took samples from each bird and grew bug colonies, which she used to test different antibiotics. Apramycin is an antibiotic used sparingly by the New Zealand poultry industry to treat infections. The bacteria of two chickens tested resistant to apramycin. They also proved resistant to another two antibiotics from the same family – gentamicin and tobramycin – used for serious human infections. Gentamicin is not used by the poultry industry; tobramycin is restricted to human use only.

A recent risk assessment study commissioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has estimated that about 8,000-10,000 persons in the U.S. each year acquire fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter infections from chicken and attempt to treat those infections with a fluoroquinolone.

Every day, new strains of bacteria, fungi, and other pathogenic microorganisms are becoming resistant to the antibiotics that once dispatched them with extreme prejudice.

“We know that antimicrobial resistance will follow antimicrobial use as sure as night follows day,” said Dr. John A. Jernigan, deputy chief of prevention and response from the Center of Disease Control. “It’s just a biological phenomenon.” It turns out that the indiscriminate killing of harmless microbes damages the body in complex ways we are only beginning to understand. Powerful antibiotics introduced into the complex environment in our intestines cause mayhem, much like a series of bombs tossed into a market square. Antibiotic resistance is a widespread problem, and one that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “one of the world’s most pressing public health problems.”

One of the deadliest germs is a staph bacteria called M.R.S.A., short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which lives harmlessly on the skin but causes havoc when it enters the body. Patients who do survive M.R.S.A. often spend months in the hospital and endure several operations to cut out infected tissue. Hospitalizations associated with a drug-resistant form of a Staphylococcus bacterium doubled over six years in the U.S. to nearly 280,000 cases in 2005. The death toll rose from 4,700 in 1999 to about 6,600 in 2005. It estimated that 94,000 Americans suffered invasive MRSA infections in 2005 and that about 19,000 died.

One out of every 20 patients contracts an infection during a hospital stay in the US. Hospital infections kill an estimated 103,000 people in the United States a year, as many as AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. The vast majority of lethal cases occur in hospitals and nursing homes, where open wounds and punctures provide the opportunistic staph a ready path to the bloodstream and organs. The dangers of infection are worsening as many hospital infections can no longer be cured with common antibiotics.

More than half the time, doctors and other caregivers break the most fundamental rule of hygiene by failing to clean their hands before treating a patient.

“Recently there has been an alarming epidemic caused by community-associated (CA)-MRSA strains, which can cause severe infections that can result in necrotizing fasciitis or even death in otherwise healthy adults outside of healthcare settings,” is the word coming from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) research team, headed by Dr. Michael Otto.

Necrotizing fasciitis is the so-called flesh-eating disease that can destroy healthy tissue and even kill patients. The team found that some strains on MRSA secrete a compound called phenol-soluble modulin or PSM. It attracts immune system cells called neutrophils, the researchers found, and then blows them up in a process called lysis. Neutrophils are key immune cells involved in clearing bacterial infections, so destroying them would allow the bacteria to thrive almost unmolested. “In the United States, CA-MRSA is now the cause of the majority of infections that result in trips to the emergency room. It is unclear what makes CA-MRSA strains more successful in causing human disease compared with their hospital-associated counterparts,” they add.

When the peaceful activities of a normal microbial population are disrupted, malevolent bacteria may take full advantage of the opportunity to strike. The intestinal infection C. difficile colitis, now rampaging through hospitals around the world, is one of the worst such complication of antibiotic use.

Clostridium difficile was first recognized as a hospital microbe in 1978. By 1996, it had increased to 31 cases per 100,000 people discharged from U.S. hospitals. In 2003, the most recent year for complete statistics, prevalence had risen to 61 per 100,000. C. diff is part of the natural flora, or bacteria, in the colon. “We’re seeing all of the warning signs that this is the next MRSA,” said former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, a Manhattan-based nonprofit. “It spreads like wildfire in hospitals.”

Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming toxin-producing bacterium that is overtaking peoples’ large intestines from which it mounts an attack on the bloodstream. Like MRSA, Clostridium difficile has become multi-drug-resistant. Although once a bacterium that mostly affected elderly, hospitalized patients, a bolder strain is crippling the robust. In emergency efforts to save some patients’ lives surgeons remove the entire large intestine to prevent overwhelming infection.

One case had been treated by a dermatologist for an ingrown hair on his back and prescribed an antibiotic. He took only a few pills, but quickly became ill. Based on what his doctors told him, the short course of antibiotics proved sufficient to destroy virtually all the natural bacteria in his intestine – except C. diff, which was freed to ravage his colon.

Frequently, stethoscopes, blood-pressure monitors and other equipment are contaminated with live bacteria. Yet doctors and nurses almost never clean the stethoscope before listening to a patient’s chest.

“It strikes precisely those hospitals which are more ‘high-tech’, and handle more serious illnesses. Applying more disinfectant is not the answer; some strains of germs have actually been found thriving in bottles of hospital disinfectant! The more antibacterial chemical ‘weapons’ are being used, the more bacteria are becoming resistant to them,” writes Dr. Carl Wieland.

Health-care officials are increasingly concerned about emerging new forms of drug-resistant Tuberculosis (TB). According to the WHO, outbreaks of drug-resistant tuberculosis are showing up all over the world and threaten to touch off a worldwide epidemic of virtually incurable tuberculosis. An October 1997 survey by the WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease estimates that 50 million people are infected with a strain of TB that is drug-resistant. Many of those are said to carry multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, incurable by two or more of the standard drugs.

New DNA technology has found hundreds of previously unrecognized species in the traditional stomping grounds of the mouth and intestine, and traces of bacteria even in tissues previously thought to be sterile.

Lessons from Autism

Medical scientists at Arizona State University tell us that antibiotic use is known to almost completely inhibit excretion of mercury in rats due to alteration of gut flora. Thus, higher use of oral antibiotics in the children with autism may have reduced their ability to excrete mercury. Higher usage of oral antibiotics in infancy may also partially explain the high incidence of chronic gastrointestinal problems in individuals with autism.

Many physicians are unaware of lasting adverse effects caused by routinely prescribed medications such as antibiotics. Antibiotic therapy for minor colds and runny noses is a common practice. People routinely receive multiple courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics throughout life or are injected with long-acting corticosteroid medicine for joint or muscle pain. Once established, sub-clinical colonization with yeast in the body may persist unrecognized for many years. Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, can greatly increase yeast in the colon after only a few days.

The extensive use of antibiotics will make the condition of Candida much worse because it reduces heavy metal excretion, which is a food source for the yeast like organism and also killing the beneficial bacteria at the same time.

Normally, candida albicans lives peacefully in our intestines and elsewhere, in harmony with other flora that keep the yeast in check. Take an antibiotic and all this changes. By suppressing the normal flora, candida takes over and problems begin. In its mild form, the result is diarrhea or a yeast infection. Dr. Elmer Cranton says that, “Yeast overgrowth is partly iatrogenic (caused by the medical profession) and can be caused by antibiotics and cortisone medications. A diet high in sugar also promotes overgrowth of yeast. A highly refined diet common in industrialized nations not only promotes growth of yeast, but is also deficient in many of the essential vitamins and minerals needed by the immune system. Chemical colorings, flavorings, preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, etc., add more stress on the immune system.”

Children with autism had significantly (2.1-fold) higher levels of mercury in their baby teeth but similar levels of lead and similar levels of zinc. Children with autism also had significantly higher usage of oral antibiotics during their first 12 to 36 months of life. Reporting in the July 11, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers say the use of antibiotics as prevention boosts risks for drug resistance while doing nothing to shield kids from future urinary tract infections (UTIs). Giving antibiotics to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections in small children not only will not help but will hurt these children. Prior use of antibiotics to prevent infection did boost the likelihood of developing a drug-resistant infection by nearly 7.5 times. Indeed, 61 percent of recurrent urinary tract infections were caused by a pathogen with antibiotic resistance, the researchers pointed out.

In a 2005 study, the antibiotic Augmentin TM has been implicated in the formation of autism. The study strongly suggests the possibility of ammonia poisoning as a result of young children taking Augmentin. Augmentin has been given to children since the late 1980’s for bacterial infections.

Many physicians seem to be unaware that birth control pills comprised of the hormones estrogen and progesterone can also make the body more susceptible to fungal infections. If antibiotics are prescribed, it acts as a double whammy to ensuring a fungal infection will take hold by diminishing the protective bacteria in the intestines. Many pregnant women seek medical treatment for minor problems and are indiscriminately given antibiotics and this begins a long decline into problems that are complicated at each turn by OBGYN doctors at birth and by pediatricians who just love to poison children with the toxic chemicals found in vaccines. In many places in the world they still give mercury shots at birth.

Microforms poison us with their waste products.

The waste products are acetylaldehyde, uric acid, alloxin, alcohols, lactic acid, etc.

Antibiotics may be to blame for hundreds of children developing autism after having the controversial MMR jab. More than two-thirds of youngsters with the condition received four or more antibiotics in their first year, a British survey has revealed. It is thought the drugs weakened their immune systems, leaving them unable to withstand the impact of the triple jab. Allopathic medicine has been stubborn and slow to look at its abusive use of antibiotics. It’s the same with vaccines, the holy grail of medicine. But with last-line-of-defence antibiotics failing on increasingly drug-resistant superbugs and young children’s systems being destroyed by them you would think they would wake up and find some alternatives.

Antibiotics are mostly derived from fungi and are therefore classified as mycotoxins. Mycotoxins Are Poisons.

About the author
Mark A. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA). Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and in the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla, in México, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus’s IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book The Terror of Pediatric Medicine is a free e-book one can read. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites.

He has most recently released his Survival Medicine for the 21st Century compendium (2,200 page ebook) and is racing to finish his Winning the War Against Cancer book. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and is fathering in a new medical approach that uses sea water and different concentrates taken from it for health and healing. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions.
(see all articles by this author)

International Medical Veritas Association: http://www.imva.info/

The Fed on Steroids

http://www.usadaily.com/article.cfm?articleID=309513

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
–P.J. O’Rourke

So the Treasury Department wants Congress to gift the Federal Reserve with broad new authority and power to ride rough shod over financial market stability (or lack thereof). The New York Times described it as “allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.”

Giving the Fed more power is like giving crack cocaine to jihadists…it’s NOT a good idea.

This latest bureaucratic brain flatulence is part of a far reaching master plan to overhaul the nation’s mishmash of financial regulatory agencies. This ‘slamming the door after the horse is out of the barn’ is a result of what braniacs say is needed to mitigate the failure to recognize wild excesses in mortgage lending until after they sparked what is now allegedly the worst financial calamity in decades.

Before passing the buck (BIG bucks) to the Fed to solve problems Congress should be, and is required, to address, a few basics need to be reiterated.

I have interviewed Eustace Mullins several times, and he has been screaming for decades the empirical reality that,

·        The Federal Reserve System is not Federal; it has no reserves

·        From November, 1910 the maneuverings of the Federal Reserve bankers have been shrouded in secrecy.

·        That secrecy has cost the American people trillions of dollars in debt, with annual interest payments to these bankers amounting to over three hundred billion dollars per year.

·        When I filed this column the outstanding public debt was $9,416,953,744,070.69. 

·        National Debt increases an overage of $1.66 BILLION per day.

o       You can see the current debt at http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

·        Donald J. Winn, Assistant to the Board of Governors in response to an inquiry by Congressman, Norman D. Shumway, on March 10, 1983.

o       Mr. Winn states that “The Federal Reserve System was established by an act of Congress in 1913 and is not a ‘private corporation’.”

o       On the next page, Mr. Winn continues, “The stock of the Federal Reserve Banks is held entirely by commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System.”

o       He offers no explanation as to why the government has never owned a single share of stock in any Federal Reserve Bank, or why the Federal Reserve System is not a “private corporation” when all of its stock is owned by “private corporations”.

Read More http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm.

Thomas Jefferson expressed his opinion about the concept of an entity like the Fed when he wrote, “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground–that all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, or to the people (12th amend.). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

“The incorporation of a bank…have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.” Of course that was before the evisceration of the Constitution in 1913.

Meanwhile, Democrat lawmakers (the same malfeasant cowards who shirk their responsibility to declare war, and now want to create another scapegoat to take their heat) are all but certain to say the steroid shot for the Fed does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis.

So what is behind the headline about this ‘new’/old plan?

·        The plan would consolidate a gaggle of banking and securities regulators into “a powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.”

·        It artfully avoids a call for tighter regulation.

·        The plan would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis.

·        The plan gives the Fed ‘some’ authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the entire financial system.

·        The plan does not recommend tighter rules over the huge and mostly unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging.

     ·        The plan could reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One red flag should be that Paulson’s pitch for the Fed mirrors the ideas of Representative Barney Frank, who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

The Bear Stearns flap is instructive. For the first time since the 1930s, the Fed agreed to allow investment banks to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars.

This plan would ‘consolidate’ a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.

In Lewis V. United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stateded, “the Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities…but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations”. That is the Fox Congress wants to guard our financial hen house.

Our Learned Helplessness

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/152054-Our-Learned-Helplessness

©William Kentridge

“[...] the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you [...]” Character V, from V for Vendetta

Yes, V is right. There is something terribly wrong with this country – and this could be referring to almost any country on the globe, since Pathocracy has taken global control. It actually makes sense for psychopaths to act as they do as such is their nature. But what about the rest of us? How is it that “fear got the best of us”, and why is it that a paralyzing fear descends upon us when we consider resisting? Why is it that thoughts of “them” coming for us and locking us away, overshadow our truest human desires for Freedom, Love, Truth?

There is, in fact, a reason. It is called Learned Helplessness. One can find various websites on the respective experiments with dogs done by psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues in the 60s. But I’ll quote from Clarissa Pinkola Este’s book, Women who run with the Wolves, which sums up the experiment quite nicely.

We all were conditioned to this helplessness from our earliest days, and it is possible that those of us with the innate need to know and the ability to resist, defend and actually do something at some point in the future were particularly targeted in order to really embed this helplessness so as to keep us frozen in inaction.

In my daily life I interact with so many people who are confident, mobile, and intelligent, people who have ideas and speak up for themselves, but I always wonder why it is that they are not out there voicing their opposition to the corruption and criminality of big government. These people can’t be blind to the state of the world because the evidence is all around them, yet still they remain complacent in the face of a very grave threat to us all. They are content to live out their lives within the restrictive limits set them by the political and corporate elite of this world.

So the task of speaking out is left to us ‘neurotics’, despite all our fears and scars, we still have that burning desire to know, to understand, to see, and then see what we can do about it – to DO something about that which is causing our fear is the only way to alleviate it. And once we discover, once we understand something, we feel the need to share it, to pass it on to those who, like us, are searching.

Because frankly, what are we going to do with everything we learn if we keep it to ourselves? There’s a Greek folk song that says “life not shared is a stolen life”. I would argue that also “knowledge not shared, is stolen knowledge”.

If you think about it, it’s the not speaking up, the submission, the not sharing of our discoveries, the not pointing out that the emperor is naked that allows the psychopaths in power to continue their predatorial ways and for the situation to continue on its downward spiral. As with so many problems in life, the problem here is one of fear-based faulty thinking. People fear that “they” will come for them if they speak out, but the paradox is that by not speaking out and facilitating our continued slide towards “Armageddon”, people vastly increase the chances that a jack booted agent of the Pathocrats will one day kick down their door. Because when “they” seek to imprison us, defame or attack us in one way or another, their first targets of choice are always those who speak out against “them”.

But I digress, here is the experiment:

In the early 1960s scientists conducted animal experiments to determine something about the “flight instinct” in humans. In one experiment they wired half the bottom of a large cage, so that a dog placed in the cage would receive a shock each time it set foot on the right side. The dog quickly learned to stay on the left side of the cage.

Next, the left side of the cage was wired for the same purpose and the right side was safe from shocks. The dog reoriented quickly and learned to stay on the right side of the cage. Then, the entire floor of the cage was wired to give random shocks, so that no matter where the dog lay or stood it would eventually receive a shock. The dog acted confused at first, and then it panicked. Finally the dog “gave up” and lay down, taking the shocks as they came, no longer trying to escape them or outsmart them.

But the experiment was not over. Next, the cage door was opened. The scientists expected the dog to rush out, but it did not flee. Even though it could vacate the cage at will, the dog lay there being randomly shocked. From this, scientists speculated that when a creature is exposed to violence, it will tend to adapt to that disturbance, so that when the violence ceases or the creature is allowed its freedom, the healthy instinct to flee is hugely diminished, and the creature stays put instead. [Estes, 1995]

This is the case with every single feeling person on this planet. We’ve been so battered emotionally, physically, mentally; we are so injected with terror and fears since day one, that all our natural instincts for survival have vanished. We no longer are able to stand up, speak up, and defend that which matters most in our hearts. We are scared to even dream or hope for anything better than ponerized world that “they” have crafted for us. So passivity becomes our modus operandi.

Restin Wells and Barbara O’Brien in their published personal accounts of the psychological journey to healing, Deep Therapy in the Fast Lane and Operators and Things (both invaluable reading for every person honestly searching to understand their inner world), found and shared the fact that what saved their sanity, ultimately, was feeling angry at their condition and its causes.

If you see yourself in the same position as one of these dogs in the experimental cage, receiving the administered shocks and staying put while the cage door is open, can you not feel angry at those administering the shocks, for making you like this? Would you not want to inform the other “dogs” in the cages of what is really going on as soon as you figured it out?

It is true that we are not many and we are all scared, but by uniting and combining our efforts in this battle we may overcome our fear and present a force for freedom in this world that is much greater than the sum of its parts. In doing so we give our selves the chance to carve out a new and different future. But as you sit there, reading these words, if you understand nothing else, understand this: if we do not act and give a voice to the Truth in this world, our future and the future of all decent human beings on this planet will be dictated by the psychopaths that have brought us to the edge of the precipice on which we now stand. Understand, make a choice and then act, in however small a way. Do it for yourself, for others, for the Truth.

Bread, milk, egg prices spike, draining locals’ wallets

Comment from WRH.com:

That is the whole point; to drain the wallets of the common people.

The big lie of capitalism is that everyone can be rich. This is just not so. Capitalism requires an imposed wealth differential to function. Only a few people can be allowed to be rich. The vast majority of people must be kept poor in order to keep them working at the thousands of distasteful jobs society required to operate. If everyone were a millionaire, who would take out the trash, fix the sewers, pick the crops, or bury the dead? Choosing who is allowed to be rich and who is not is what politics is for.

There is a second reason governments wish to keep their people poor. It keeps them helpless. Throughout the modern age, all revolutions have come from the middle class, which has the resources to mount a revolution and the time necessary to plan and conduct one. Even here in the United States, the push for Independence was carried out by the middle class. Paul Revere was a silversmith, Ben Franklin a publisher and inventor, John Hancock an insurance salesman, Thomas Jefferson a lawyer, Josiah Bartlett a doctor, and so on and so on. As the lies told by the government become known to the general public and distrust of the government continues to spread, the government out of a desire for its own survival and perpetuation sees impoverishment of the people as key to survival.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/186/story/119284.html

EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP – Courtney Murray’s first child – a girl – is due Friday.

Plenty of first-time parents re-examine their spending habits as they prepare to take on the responsibility, and financing, of another life. But the enormity of that responsibility weighs on Murray, 29, who said she has been “feeling the pinch” during the past six months, with the prices for eggs, milk, bread and other essentials spiking.

“I’m usually fine with using coupons to buy what I need,” Murray said Saturday as she left Pathmark clutching a couple plastic bags. “But you really don’t find as many in the paper anymore for groceries. There are more for dumb stuff that nobody needs.”

Rising fuel, wheat and soybean oil prices have caused the cost of food production to spike, and product prices are expected to jump another
3 percent in 2008 after they rose nearly 5 percent in 2007, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. People are also paying 57 cents more for a pound of coffee and $1 more for a carton of large, grade A eggs than they did at this time last year, data show, although the increase in the price of eggs is expected to dwindle by at least 2 percent in 2008.

The average price of bread – $1.32 per loaf – has increased by nearly 32 percent during the last three years. Goods that contain wheat and soybean oil will continue to rise in 2008 by between 5.5 percent and 6.5 percent, according to the Economic Research Service, a service offered by the USDA.

Scott Bilker, a financial advisor who has written four books and founded www.debtsmart.com., said he gets at least five e-mails per day from people seeking solutions to their financial problems. Like Murray, most say they’re feeling the crunch, said Bilker, of Barnegat Township.

“People are writing in and saying that the cost of those essentials is just driving up their debt,” Bilker said Saturday. “As the cost of everything goes up, people who are on the edge are living off their credit cards. That’s not something to recommend, but what are you going to do sometimes, so some people are just in a really bad situation.”

Murray, of Pleasantville, said she’s managed spend the same amount on groceries by abstaining from entertainment: She said she can’t remember the last time she went to the movies or out to dinner, or the last time she’s treated herself to a new handbag or pair of shoes.

“Anything extra is out of the question because you have to pay for gas so that you make it to work so that you can afford to buy groceries,” said Murray, who works as a dispatcher for Comcast.

While cutting spending on nonessentials is a good idea, Bilker pointed out that people “need to live and enjoy your life within your means.”

“You can cut out certain things, but what good is it to have nothing? Then you’re not going to be happy at all,” he said. There are ways to be more efficient with one’s money, he said.

Birdie Cody, a county government worker, said she and her husband, a recently retired pastor, can enjoy movies and other extras, thanks to their stable and ample salaries. But recent price hikes have forced the 62-year-old to pay attention to her spending on groceries for the first time. To balance out the growing expense, the Atlantic City resident has cut out snack foods and sticking to “meat-and-potatoes type things.”

Cody and Murray each reported spending $400 per month on groceries for single or two-person households. The USDA reported the national average for a four-person family is $904 per month.

Other ways to save at the grocery store include never going to the store hungry and always sticking to a list, Bilker said. If the paper’s coupon offerings are paltry, Bilker recommended hitting the Internet, which he pointed out is offered at public libraries for those who do not have home access. The Web is also great for comparison shopping, he added.

“What you don’t want to do is buy a lot of stuff just because it’s on sale,” he said. “People spend too much money because it’s a low-volume price, and they just don’t have a need for it. Instead, team up with coworkers and neighbors to get volume discounts.”

And although convenience stores are notorious for jacking up prices, getting a credit card through a frequently visited chain makes sense, especially for busy professionals who cannot avoid them, Bilker said.

“I’m not saying go out and spend more than you would normally, but if you have to spend anyway look to use reward cards in ways to benefit you – it’s a great way to save money,” Bilker said.

He recommended locals get one through Wawa, which gives 10 percent cash back to cardholders. He said he has one, and has found it especially useful because the chain’s gas prices are competitive.

Bilker also recommended finding creative ways to make more money, like selling old or used stuff on eBay.

Mike Haines, 42, of Pleasantville, said he’s managed to hold the line on spending by simply buying less, with no pattern or plans to switch to generic brands of food and other essentials.

“I haven’t really noticed,” Haines said of the recent price increase. “To me, everything is high. I do notice I spend a lot at the register. It’s the way the economy is. but I like what I like.”

How the Fed Buys an Ounce of Gold for 10¢

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/ounce_of_gold129.html

A primer on how the bankers’ policies—and greed—have led us to the brink of disaster By Pat Shannan IN 1992, POLITICAL ADVISOR James Carville launched Bill Clinton toward the White House with the slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” posted on the walls of every campaign office. He was on target but missed the bullseye. In reality, “It’s the Legal Tender, Stupid.” A friend wrote that when his first great-grandchild arrived a few weeks ago, he thought, “Gotta start a little education fund for the tyke,” just as he had done with all his grandchildren. Then he reminded himself that the Federal Reserve had just promised to turn up the money-inflating machine, making any conventional savings program a waste of time—not to mention the money. The weakness of the dollar makes any saving of dollar-denominated paper assets pointless. Why would any rational person, unless totally ignorant of what is happening, save a dollar in an account that pays less than 3% a year when the rate of inflation is 10% or more? Disregarding the “official” annual rates that are continual, boring lies, just reach back in your own mind to only one year ago. How much did you pay for eggs? Bread and other food items? Gasoline? And if you can buy any of those today for less than a 10% increase from 12 months ago, please tell me where to do it, because I can’t. These are the true inflation indicators— at your lunch counters, gasoline stations and supermarkets —not some figures from a government-funded, bureaucratic deceiver. On my first sales job in the 1960s, I was traveling through 11 states throughout the southeast, and my daily lunch always cost between 65 and 75 cents of lawful money (silver coin), depending upon where I was and how much I wanted to splurge that day. (Oh, how wonderful it was to blow an extra dime and sit in a first class joint.) And I filled the tank of my old Chevy for four bucks. A few years ago, when your average plate lunch of an entrée and two or three veggies, with iced tea included went to exactly ten times the 1960s figures, I began to talk and write about it, remembering that nothing had changed about the meal except the price. The buildings were just as modern, the floors and tables were just as clean, the restrooms still needed attention and the waitresses were just as sassy. Only the price had gone up. But then I remembered my independent education about lawful money and realized that the price of lunch and everything else was still the same. A dollar of lawful money now required ten Fed “dollar” notes to obtain. So anyone with knowledge of lawful money realized that the plate lunch was still costing the same as in the 1960s. It was just that the banksters had hoodwinked us into using their paper scrip, issued by their privately owned Fed bank. [Which isn’t federal and has no reserves. Ed.] Now put the same yardstick to today’s price of lunch and you will find that it matches in real cost of 40 years ago. A $1,000 (face value) bag of pre-1965 silver coin now goes for $16,000 in Fed notes. How much did you pay for lunch today? I paid $10.40, with no dessert. Divide that by 16 and see what you get: 65 cents. This should help you realize that nothing has increased in cost in your whole life, but what you have been using to make purchases has continually decreased in value, thereby requiring more of it. The nation’s founders had a similar problem in the 1780s and solved it with hard (metal) money. That lasted for some 125 years, until the banksters schemed a way around the constitutional mandate (never been amended and still on the books), “No state shall make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” Now George Bush, wallowing in a fool’s paradise, says he’ll perk up the economy this summer by sending $158 billion back to the people. Should that happen, take whatever paltry part is yours and pay off some debt or buy some silver or gold coins. Do not spend this “rebate” on a vacation trip or anything you don’t absolutely need. Of course, if you use this to extinguish debt, it won’t have the desired (by the government) effect of stimulating the economy, but that is only a politician’s way of temporarily staving off the inevitable hyperinflation. Ultimately it will prove to be the financial equivalent of dumping gasoline on a forest fire. After all, the $158 billion band-aid will be created out of nothing. Remember, every economic boom, fueled chiefly by debt, always implodes into a deflationary spiral. Buying stocks and real estate with other people’s money when inflation is roaring is almost a guaranteed winner, but it is lethal with the turnaround into deflation, a situation already evident in real estate foreclosures in Florida and elsewhere. Bear Stearns had a market value of $20 billion only a year ago. Last week it sold out for $236 million—two bucks a share. The current housing crisis and all that flows from it comes from two main sources, both deriving from Washington. In 1977, Congress passed the “Community Reinvestment Act” compelling financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government’s goals for fostering home ownership in poor communities. Next, the Federal Reserve started making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates. Then, the lenders combined to make cheap housing loans available to people who previously could not have afforded or qualified for them. This caused an increased demand for housing that sent real estate prices spiraling upward. Now mortgage lenders began managing the risk involved in making these loans by selling their mortgages to other companies, believing that they were accomplishing this with a wide variety of mortgages in their portfolio. However, these decisions were all in error, because the Fed’s policy of “easy money” had falsely inflated the value of all homes. This meant that good mortgages could not be used to manage the risk involved in questionable mortgages, because the value of all homes was inflated. Finally, as with all inflationary booms, increases in home prices absorbed the increased purchasing power provided by the Fed, leading to a slowdown in home purchases. When this moment arrived everyone realized that the homes they had purchased weren’t really worth what they had paid for them. The defaults and foreclosures then began, along with the collapse of the financial institutions that owned these unsound mortgages. Now the complicated, multipart scenario described above has been simplified in popular reporting to just two words: “subprime loans.” These two words, combined with the idea that lenders took advantage of poor. unsuspecting customers, are supposed to explain everything. Perhaps this will explain it better. On Labor Day of 1984, my longtime friend Martin “Red” Beckman sat in a seminar in Orlando, Fla., squirming in his seat as many of the highly publicized and oft-quoted hard money advocates spoke of the soon to come $3,700 an ounce price of gold. Finally, the meeting was opened to questions, and Red began to speak from the floor. He gently chided the “experts” about their predictions before launching into an explanation of why they were wrong. When he finished, not one could disagree. Red said to them: “The problem is, you are asking the wrong questions. What you need to ask is, who is buying all this gold. The Federal Reserve Bank buys gold at 10 cents an ounce, so why would they want to push the price to $3,700?” Gold was at $400 at the time, and the cost of production was $187 to the mining companies. By keeping the price reasonable, Red explained that it also kept the mining companies operating. Hearing the mumblings of disbelief in the audience, Red said, “Oh, you didn’t know that the Fed bought gold for 10 cents an ounce? Well, let me tell you how they do it.” He then reminded them of something that everyone in that audience already knew: that the Fed printed paper bills—from $1 to $100 denominations. The price of ink and paper was the same—at a cost of 2.5 cents each. So four $100 bills were created at a cost to the Fed of 10 cents, and these could then be traded for one ounce of gold. “Now, if you had control of this printing press,” Red said, “and could purchase anything you wanted, what would you want more than the gold? Wouldn’t you go after that first?” A quarter-century later we would ask: “And why would you stop?” It’s the legal tender, stupid. Pat Shannan is the assistant editor of American Free Press. (Issue # 13, March 31, 2008)

One in 6 West Virginians is on food stamps

http://www.dailymail.com/News/statenews/200803260077

About one in every six West Virginians gets food stamps, the highest level of participation in at least 30 years.Amid rising food and fuel costs, the assistance is becoming worth less and less. And supplemental food programs for poor families are struggling to keep up with the added demand as donations are on the decline.

Last month, 274,487 state residents received food stamps. That’s up from 246,890 just five years ago, according to data from the state Department of Health and Human Resources.

A total of 122,877 of the state’s estimated 743,064 households currently receive food stamps. That’s up from 105,365 households in 2003.

But while the number of people on the program has jumped sharply, the federal government has raised the average per-person monthly benefits over that time by just $12 to $85.

Meanwhile, the cost of food is expected to jump by up to 4 percent this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Food costs have been increasing by at least 2.4 percent each year since 2004.

Added to that budget strain are record gasoline prices.

Nationally, the average cost of a gallon of regular gas today is $3.26, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report. A year ago, the average cost was $2.59 a gallon.

Sarah Young, a policy specialist with the Department of Health and Human Resources, says the agency is seeing more of the state’s working poor applying for food stamps in order to make ends meet.

“Even those eligible for lower amounts are coming back onto the program because they have less to spend on food,” Young said. “These are historically higher rates. I think even nationwide, we’re at our highest rates.”

Nationally, more than 26 million Americans were on the food stamp program last year, according to the federal agriculture department.

The food stamp benefit is based on income and the number of people in a household, Young said. Monthly benefits range from a minimum of $10 to $1,219 for a 10-person household with little to no income.

Young said the benefit was always meant to supplemental a family’s income, not to totally cover a month’s worth of groceries.

Increased demand on food pantries and soup kitchens seem to indicate that poor families are running out of resources to buy food earlier and earlier each month, officials said. Carla Nardella, executive director of the Mountaineer Food Bank, said demand around the state is up, while food donations are decreasing.

“We never have enough food to totally give everybody what they really want,” Nardella said.

Nardella said in 2006, the organization distributed 5.7 million pounds of food to pantries in the 48 counties it serves. Last year, they were only able to distribute 3.9 million pounds.

Both food and financial donations to the organization are down, Nardella said. She blames high food and fuel costs. People who usually donate don’t have the money to do it as much anymore, she said.

And those who visit the food pantries are feeling the pinch.

“What happens is, when everything else raises, they can only get so much for the dollar value they have,” Nardella said. “So they end up knocking on the door.”

Nardella said she’s also seeing an increased demand for new pantries to open in communities across the state.

“That is even another struggle,” she said. “It’s hard to have enough food for the ones we already serve.”

To help pantries maximize the money they have to buy food, Nardella said her organization is using its financial donations to make more deliveries.

That saves the pantries from having to drive to the food bank’s Gassaway location.

“We do everything we can to try to stretch their dollars,” Nardella said.

The ‘Rogue Entity’ – Twenty Questions Radio/TV interviewers avoid asking about Israel….

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m42547&hd=&size=1&l=e

Stuart Littlewood

 

March 29, 2008 The abysmal performance of western TV and radio interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding Israel – that ‘Rogue Regime’ or ‘Zionist Entity’, as many now call it – is not only embarrassing but a blot on the escutcheon of journalism. Even the most fearsome inquisitors purr like a pussycat. Their rottweiler instincts evaporate, their investigative skills desert them, objectivity takes a nosedive. Penetrating questions are seldom asked, lies go unchallenged. Any Israeli spokesperson or cheerleader is guaranteed an easy ride. Have the nation’s truth-seekers fallen under some wicked Zionist spell? Are their researchers on strike? Did somebody nobble the programme editors? While we wait with mounting frustration for our broadcasters to get their act together, here are 20 simple questions the BBC and others seem anxious not to ask…… On Rockets and Sieges (1) The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how many sophisticated munitions have Israel’s F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, armed drones, tanks, occupation troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told. (2) Why should we believe the claim that the siege of Gaza is about rockets “raining down” on Sderot? Palestinians in the West Bank don’t fire rockets yet the Israelis are still in occupation after 40 years, still stealing their land and water, and now dumping their toxic waste there. (3) Israelis say that if the rockets stop, things will be OK…. Does that mean Gaza will be able to trade freely with the outside world like any other country, and people will be able to come and go freely? Will you and I be able to visit Gaza without Israeli hindrance? On the Collective Punishment of Gazans (4) Why can’t Gaza’s 3,000 licensed fishermen put to sea and earn their living without being harassed and fired on? What is the status of Palestinian territorial waters under international law? Why are half the hospitals’ dialysis machines out of action and the chronically sick dying in agony for want of proper medication? (5) Which parts of the Declaration of Human Rights and Geneva Conventions don’t Israelis understand? On the War on Christianity (6) Israelis use ‘administrative’ controls to disrupt the life and work of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places in the Old City without special permission. Christian priests, many of whom are Jordanian, cannot go home to see their families because Israel’s new visa policy would prevent them returning to their parishes. The Catholic priest in Gaza has been trapped there for 9 years knowing that if he visits his folks the Israelis won’t allow him back into the Strip. “We seek a life of freedom—a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live,” he says. What should be our response to attempts by Israel to paralyse the Church? (7) Is it not shameful that our elected politicians, who are mostly Christian themselves, show so little concern? Is it not doubly shameful how the leaders of western Christendom seem oblivious to the Israeli government’s war against Christian communities? Beware those pseudo-Christians in high places, who talk the talk but won’t walk the walk. How many top brass have visited Gaza to show solidarity with the flock? At the present rate there will soon be no Christians left in the place where Christianity began, and churchmen will wake up one morning to find the Holy Land, from which their whole power and purpose are derived, stolen from under their noses. On illegal Settlements (8) Israel has expropriated agricultural land and key water resources in the Palestinian West Bank for its own use. More than 38% of the territory now consists of Israeli settlements, outposts, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli-declared nature reserves or other infrastructure that’s off-limits to Palestinians. Jews-only highways linking settlements to Israel, and the 580 checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities, blocked access to their lands and severely restricted movement. How can this be right? (9) The freezing and dismantling of Israeli settlements are a cornerstone of major peace initiatives. The most recent, the Quartet’s 2003 ‘roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council, is perfectly clear on the question of illegal settlements. Israel is under an obligation to…. a) immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001, b) freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) consistent with the Mitchell Report, c) take “no actions undermining trust, including confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property”. Why have none of these obligations been met? (10) A year ago the General Assembly reaffirmed that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, “are illegal and an obstacle to peace” and demanded “the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities”. Why is Israel still stealing Palestinian land for more illegal construction? By vowing to press ahead with settlement building, Israel’s prime minister Olmert again signals contempt for international law and world opinion… further proof (if ever it were needed) that Israel isn’t interested in peace. On the Evil of the Wall (11) In 2004 the International Court of Justice, sitting at the request of the UN General Assembly, concluded that the route chosen for the Separation Wall “gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements”. The ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and declared that it should be dismantled where it encroaches onto Palestinian land. Why hasn’t this been done? Why is Israel still building it? If Israelis feel a wall is necessary for security reasons why don’t they build one on their own territory? On House Demolitions and the Right of Return (12) In 1948 the newly established state of Israel began demolishing the homes of Palestinian refugees to prevent their return. More than 125,000 houses were systematically destroyed. Since 1967 18,000 more have been demolished, making another 100,000 Palestinians homeless. Demolishing homes is a deliberate Israeli strategy to…. inflict collective punishment and break the Palestinians’ will to resist the occupation achieve a silent ethnic transfer ensure that Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories and their resources becomes permanent Apart from the fact that these acts breach every rule in the book, every convention and every declaration governing civilised conduct, how would the Israelis like it if they were the victims? (13) Why can any Jew from anywhere in the world, who has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors have never lived in Israel, go and live in Israel – or ’squat’ in an illegal outpost in Palestine with Israel’s blessing – while Palestinians who can prove title to their former houses may not? On Imprisonment (14) Nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, have been abducted and languish in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial. 30+ Palestinian parliamentarians, democratically elected, are also imprisoned. What civilised country would do this? On Ethnic Cleansing (15) The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, begun in the months before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is still going on in and around Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger argues for an ethnic cleansing programme to transfer Gazans out and dump them in the Sinai desert. Haaretz reports that he wants Britain, the EU and the US to assist in the construction of a Palestinian state in the middle of nowhere. “They will have a nice country, and we, the Jews, shall have our country and we shall live in peace.” This leading advocate of ethnic cleansing says Muslims should recognize that “our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to us”. Do we in Britain wish to associate with people who hold such views? On Terror (16) Since the land occupied by Israel was taken by terrorist means, employing gangs such as the one that blew up the British mandate government in the King David Hotel in 1946 killing 90, by what moral yardstick do British and other western leaders ‘do business’ with the Israeli Government but not with Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas leadership? (17) Remembering that most Israeli prime ministers have been responsible for authorising war crimes against the Palestinian people, why are the words ‘terrorist’, ‘militant’ and ‘extremist’ applied only to Palestinians? They fit successive Israeli governments like a glove, and given Israel’s lawless and inhuman conduct in Palestine and Lebanon, which has outraged world opinion, why isn’t it branded a terrorist state? On our (uncritical) Support (18) For decades Occupied Palestine has received British and European aid. If Palestinians had been left in peace, free to trade and develop in the normal way, there would no need for aid. In effect British and EU taxpayers are subsidising Israel’s illegal occupation and the economic strangulation it imposes. Why should we think this acceptable and continue to pick up the tab? (19) Why is there such strong support for Israel at the heart of British government? Why have so many MPs and MEPs allowed themselves to be drawn into the ‘Friends of Israel’ web? How can supposedly bright people with information at their fingertips still be ignorant of Israel’s apartheid practices, wholesale land thefts, careless slaughter of children and other atrocities? Can we take it that they approve of the slow genocide inflicted on defenceless civilians, the middle-of-the-night snatch squads, the house demolitions, the torture and assassinations, and the crushing of Christian and Muslim communities? Is it not foolish and insulting for them to claim we share Israel’s beliefs and values, and should even share foreign policy? A well-respected Jewish MP recently called the Israeli government “a gang of amoral thugs”. Isn’t that about right? On the Two-State solution (20) Israel and its Zionist stooges are pushing for a two-state solution… eventually, when it suits them and their land grab is complete. To warped minds this will give the racist regime and its supremacist ideals some kind of seal of approval. By that time the shrunken and shredded remnants of Palestine will have become a permanently impoverished and ghettoized mini-state, trashed and raped of its resources, traumatised, subservient, easy to control and never capable of prospering. Israel’s scheming allies, who include western governments (though not western peoples), go along with this grubby plan. Can someone please explain why we, the citizens of a Christian democracy once mandated with responsibility for Palestine’s future wellbeing, would wish to soil our hands with it? The ethical choice, surely, is a single state with Jews living alongside their Arab neighbours as equal citizens and sharing the land within a common legal and democratic framework. That, after all, was the original intention, and the developments of the last 60 years are a gross perversion and betrayal. Only the Palestinians themselves have had the courage to resist it. When the Day of Reckoning comes to the Middle East – and engulfs the meddlesome West – much of the blame will rest squarely on the lack of journalistic rigour here and in the US, which has allowed a delinquent political élite to work their evil too long. -ends- Stuart Littlewood 28 March 2008 Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk

The Voice of the White House

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2827.htm

Washington , D.C. , March 27, 2008 : “Any number of interesting subjects today. First, we have incoming gen that the top Clinton people have been holding “substantive talks” with the McCain people, trying to stop Obama’s lead. Much speculation on how they plan to do this, in stupid defiance of Obama’s unquestioned popular support. If they pull off a typical back door coup, they could risk a serious public explosion from millions of people who are sick to death of their lies and thieving manipulations.

But even of more interest is the subject of a trip the nutty Cheney made to Saudi Arabia recently. While there, he told the Saudis that there was an “excellent chance” that the U.S. would “launch aerial strikes against Tehran and that nuclear weaponry could not be ruled out.” The Saudis at once sent out warnings to their various diplomatic missions, warnings intercepted by the Army’s special unit. This is the same unit that has broken Israeli diplomatic codes and reads their incoming and outgoing mail.

The Pentagon is furious over this because Cheney or Bush never bothered to mention this putative attack to them. Cheney is a flaming nut and the sooner his pump gives out, the better the world will be. Bush is only a hand puppet for Cheney and the neocons but he is very stupid and very stubborn, hence very dangerous. The Army and the Marines have too much on their plate to get involved in any kind of a military adventure but the Air Force is unscathed. Cheney told an aide yesterday that if we did nuke Tehran , he hoped the large staff at the Russian embassy there “got fried” for daring to oppose American policies.

None of this means that the United States is going to attack Iran but shows the mindsets of the nuts running the country. The Monkey Palace rumor is that McCain was told about this and just loved it.

Aren’t these wonderful people? Hillary is a nasty, spoiling bitch, McCane is a stone nut (pre-Alzheimer’s), Bush a small-minded and vicious asshole and Cheney a monster. And these are our leaders? I think the American people deserve far better than these losers and I am sure the, at least, 4,000 dead soldiers ought to have a better memorial than to be known as Cheney’s executioners.”

Can Vaccines Cause Autism? CDC: “We Don’t Know”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/can-vaccines-cause-autism_b_94040.htmlby David Kirby

It was a big morning in Atlanta today. In case you missed CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding this morning on CNN’s “House Call with Dr Sanjay Gupta,” it was rather interesting:

TRANSCRIPT: here

VIDEO: here

If I have read the transcript below correctly, Dr. Gerberding is saying that, yes, in some mitochondrial disorder cases, vaccines can be the trigger that causes “symptoms that have characteristics of autism.” So, Dr. Gerberding admits a link — but then denies that it is a link to autism.

The only problem with this line of argument is that I know for a fact that Hannah, as well as the kids in the new unpublished mito study were, as one doctor told me, “plucked right from autism clinics. They all have autism, there is no question of that.”

JULIE GERBERDING, DR., CDC DIRECTOR: “Well, you know, I don’t have all the facts because I still haven’t been able to review the case files myself. But my understanding is that the child has a — what we think is a rare mitochondrial disorder. And children that have this disease, anything that stresses them creates a situation where their cells just can’t make enough energy to keep their brains functioning normally. Now, we all know that vaccines can occasionally cause fevers in kids. So if a child was immunized, got a fever, had other complications from the vaccines. And if you’re predisposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage. Some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism.”

So, complications from vaccines can set off damage that causes characteristics of autism (just not autism itself). I don’t believe I have ever heard that from a CDC official before, though that doesn’t mean they never said it.

At the same time, this language does not quite jive with what Director Gerberding told reporters just over three weeks ago on a conference call:

“Let me be very clear that (the) government has made absolutely no statement about indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism. That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case, and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today. So I think we need to set the record straight on that.”

I guess it all depends on what the meaning of the word, “cause,” is.

The CNN interview this morning with Sanjay Gupta continues:

GUPTA: Are we ready to say right now that childhood vaccines do not cause autism? GERBERDING: We can say absolutely for sure that we don’t really understand the causes of autism. We’ve got a long way to go before we get to the bottom of this.

GUPTA: And you are comfortable saying that with everything we know?

GERBERDING: I’ll never be comfortable with everything we know. I mean, I think we have to have an open mind about this. We know that there is very little chance that something related to a vaccine is going to cause a serious problem for a child.

Amid the usual “vaccines save lives” answer to questioning if it’s possible that childhood vaccines could cause autism, there is some new and interesting rhetoric in the CDC Director’s statements:

To wit:

“Set off some damage”

“Have an open mind”

“Get to the bottom” of vaccines and autism.

“I’ll never be comfortable”

“Very little chance” – instead of “there is no evidence”

“Something related to A vaccine” – (as opposed to several vaccines at once)

This seems like news to me, but I could be wrong. At the least, I think it is interesting, and worthy of follow up, should anyone in the media be able to talk with Dr. Gerberding. For some reason, she doesn’t return my calls.

Flashback: Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7550

Man who blew the whistle on Gladio tells Italy’s largest newspaper attacks were run by CIA, Mossad

Former Italian President and the man who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, Francesco Cossiga, has gone public on 9/11, telling Italy’s most respected newspaper that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies.

Cossiga was elected President of Italian Senate in July 1983 before being winning a landslide 1985 election to become President of the country in 1985.

Cossiga gained respect from opposition parties as one of a rare breed – an honest politician – and led the country for seven years until April 1992.

Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio – a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they coined “false flag operations,” terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.

Cossiga’s revelations contributed to an Italian parliamentary investigation of Gladio in 2000, during which evidence was unearthed that the attacks were being overseen by the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony, “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

Cossiga’s new revelations appeared last week in Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper, Corriere della Sera. Below appears a rough translation.

“[Bin Laden supposedly confessed] to the Qaeda September [attack] to the two towers in New York [claiming to be] the author of the attack of the 11, while all the [intelligence services] of America and Europe … now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the CIA American and the Mossad with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”

Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9/11 in 2001, and is quoted in Webster Tarpley’s book as stating that “The mastermind of the attack must have been a “sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel. I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”

Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies is highly unlikely to be mentioned by any establishment media outlets, because like the hundreds of other sober ex-government, military, air force professionals, allied to hundreds more professors and intellectuals – he can’t be sidelined as a crackpot conspiracy theorist.

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Excerpt from:

http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_novembre_30/osama_berlusconi_cossiga_27f4ccee-9f55-11dc-8807-0003ba99c53b.shtml

Osama Bin Laden in esso ‘confessa’ che Al Qaeda sarebbe stato l’autore dell’attentato dell’11 settembre alle due torri in New York, mentre tutti gli ambienti democratici d’America e d’Europa, con in prima linea quelli del centrosinistra italiano, sanno ormai bene che il disastroso attentato è stato pianificato e realizzato dalla Cia americana e dal Mossad con l’aiuto del mondo sionista per mettere sotto accusa i Paesi arabi e per indurre le potenze occidentali ad intervenire sia in Iraq sia in Afghanistan

Paul Joseph Watson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Joseph Watson