Neocon Panic Attacks

Election Integrity: Where It Isn't, Who Can Help, HCPB Locations, Potential

2012-01-27T23:49:00.002-05:00

View Election Integrity: Where It Isn't, Who Can Help, HCPB Locations, Potential Failures in a larger map

To Believe That Bush Won In 2004 You Must Also Believe...

2011-11-21T21:38:00.000-05:00

To Believe That Bush Won in 2004, You Must Also Believe …

Richard Charnin

Updated Oct. 8, 2011

Do you believe the Final 2004 National Exit Poll (13,660 respondents)?

Then you must also believe there were 6 million more returning Bush 2000 voters than were alive in 2004 – a 110% turnout.

And you must NOT believe…

- the unadjusted NEP (13,660 respondents) in which Kerry had a 51.7% vote share.

- the unadjusted State Exit Poll aggregate (76,192 respondents) in which Kerry had a 51.1% share.

The Final NEP was forced to match the recorded vote.

Given the 2000 recorded vote, 12:22am NEP (13047 respondents) vote shares and a 98% turnout of living Bush 2000 voters, Kerry needed just a 73% turnout of Gore voters to TIE Bush. For Bush to win his 3.0 million recorded vote "mandate”, there had to be a 64% turnout of Gore voters. If you believe that, there is a great Chinese restaurant in lower Manhattan near a famous old bridge that is for sale. Assuming an equal 98% turnout of Gore and Bush voters, Kerry wins by 9 million votes with a 52.9% vote share.

Final NEP – forced to match the recorded vote: Bush by 3.0 million votes

	Cast	Recorded	Alive	Voted	2004	Cast	Vote shares required to match recorded vote
2000	2000	2000	2004	2004	Turnout	Mix	Kerry	Bush	Other	Turnout/Alive
DNV	-	-	-	-	20.79	17.0%	54%	44%	2%	-
Gore	55.06	51.00	48.45	47.48	45.25	37.0%	90%	10%	0%	93.4%
Bush	51.76	50.46	47.93	46.97	52.59	43.0%	9%	91%	0%	109.7%
Other	4.01	3.96	3.76	3.69	3.67	3.0%	64%	14%	22%	97.5%
Total	110.83	105.42	100.15	98.14	122.30	100%	48.27%	50.73%	1.00%	-2.46%
	Cast	Recorded				Total	59.03	62.04	1.22	-3.01
Gore	49.68%	48.38%				Recorded	48.27%	50.73%	1.00%	-2.46%
Bush	46.70%	47.86%				122.30	59.03	62.04	1.23	-3.01

No, Kerry won in a landslide: 9.0 million votes

True Vote

		Cast	Recorded	Alive	Voted	2004	True Vote	12:22am NEP Vote shares
2000	2000	2000	2000	2004	2004	Turnout	Mix	Kerry	Bush	Other	Turnout/Alive
True Vote	DNV	-	-	-	-	22.56	15.6%	57%	41%	2%	-
49.53%	Gore	54.89	51.00	52.14	51.10	51.10	41.8%	91%	8%	1%	98.0%
46.71%	Bush	51.77	50.46	49.18	48.20	48.20	39.4%	10%	90%	0%	98.0%
3.76%	Other	4.17	3.96	3.96	3.88	3.88	3.2%	64%	17%	19%	98.0%
	Total	110.83	105.42	105.28	103.18	125.74	100%	52.9%	45.8%	1.33%	7.15%
		Cast	Recorded				Total	66.5	57.5	1.68	8.99
	Gore	49.53%	48.38%				Recorded	48.27%	50.73%	1.00%	-2.46%
	Bush	46.71%	47.86%				122.30	59.03	62.04	1.23	-3.01

Sensitivity Analysis

Bush		Kerry Share
Turnout		Gore Turnout
52.9%	64%	73%	80%	96%	98%
90%	49.5%	50.8%	51.8%	54.1%	54.4%
92%	49.1%	50.4%	51.4%	53.8%	54.0%
94%	48.7%	50.0%	51.1%	53.4%	53.7%
96%	48.4%	49.7%	50.7%	53.0%	53.3%
98%	48.0%	49.3%	50.3%	52.6%	52.91%

Bush		Kerry Margin
Turnout		Gore Turnout
9.0	64%	73%	80%	96%	98%
90%	0.7	3.9	6.4	12.2	12.9
92%	(0.3)	2.9	5.4	11.2	11.9
94%	(1.3)	1.9	4.5	10.2	10.9
96%	(2.3)	1.0	3.5	9.2	10.0
98%	(3.2)	0.0	2.5	8.3	9.0

And you must also believe that …

1- Myth: The media provided state and national pre-election and/exit poll data and documented evidence of vote suppression and miscounts.

Fact : The pollsters focused on Likely Voter (LV) pre-election polls, a subset of Registered Voter (RV) polls. The LVs failed to account for the tremendous gain in 2004 Democratic new voter registration. There were 22 million new voters (a combination of newly registered and others who did not vote in 2000). The National Election Pool is the mainstream media consortium which funds the exit polls. The FINAL exit polls are always forced to match the recorded vote. It is standard operating procedure. Unadjusted, pristine exit poll precinct data has never been made public.

2- Myth: There are many explanations as to why the exit polls were wrong (see the Edison-Mitofsky Exit Poll Report).

Fact: But they are myths; none are supported by the evidence. Here are a few of the most common: Kerry voters were more approachable to be exit polled than Bush voters who were reluctant to be interviewed; biased interviewers sought out Kerry voters; returning Gore voters misspoke and said that they voted for Bush in 2000; exit polls are not random samples; U.S. exit polls are not designed to catch election fraud; early exit polls overstated Kerry’s vote; women voted early; Republicans voted late; Gore voters defected to Bush at twice the rate that Bush voters defected to Kerry; the exit polls “behaved badly”; there was a massive Christian fundamentalist turnout; if there was a conspiracy, someone would talk (many have). But the myths were not just from the “liberal” mainstream media. Even Democrats such as Bill Clinton said that Bush won “fair and square”.

3- Myth: The votes were fairly counted (according to Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Michael Moore) and other “liberal” media gatekeepers and conservatives).

Fact: There is no way to prove that the Touchscreen (DRE) machines were not rigged; there are no paper ballots. And historical census voting data indicates that 125.7 million votes were cast as opposed to the 122.3m recorded. Investigative reporter Greg Palast presented government data which documented 3 million uncounted votes. And now we know about the Ohio/Chattanooga “man-in-the-middle” – and the unverifiable vote (mis)counts in all the other states.

4- Myth: Democrats failed to attract first-time voters.

Fact: According to the National Exit Poll (NEP), Democrats have won first-time voters in every election by solid margins since 1992. In 2008 Obama won new voters by 71-27%. The 2004 NEP timeline indicated that Kerry had 62% of new voters at 730pm, 59% at 9pm, 57% at 1222am. But the Final NEP is always forced to match the recorded vote. It indicated that Kerry had just 54% of new voters, a massive 8% decline from the earlier share.

5- Myth: Bush’s 48% Election Day approval rating was not a major factor.

Fact: In every election since 1976, presidential incumbents with less than 50% approval lost re-election (Ford, Carter, Bush I) while those above 50% won (Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton). There was a near-perfect 0.87 correlation between Bush’s monthly approval rating and the average national pre-election poll. The correlation was confirmed when Kerry won the 12:22am National Exit Poll by 51-48%.

6- Myth: Bush gained 9% over 2000 in heavily Democratic urban locations and lost 3% in highly Republican small towns and rural areas.

Fact: That is an Urban Legend. Bush lost 3% in Republican small towns and rural areas.

7- Myth: There is no evidence that the vote count was corrupted.

Fact: Bush won 51.5% of the first 116m recorded votes. Kerry won 54.6% of the final 5 million.

8- Myth: Final pre-election polls did not match the exit polls.

Fact: After undecided voters were allocated, weighted pre-election state (Kerry 47.9-Bush 46.9%) and national (Kerry 47.2-Bush 46.9%) polls closely matched the national (50.8-48.2%) and state (51.8-47.2%) exit polls. Final Zogby Battleground polls showed Kerry leading in 9 critical states.

9- Myth: Bogus assumptions were used in the pre-election 2004 Election Model.

Fact: The model was based on final state LV pre-election polls; the only base case assumption was that Kerry would capture at least 60% of the undecided vote. The model used a 5000 election trial Monte Carlo simulation. It determined that Kerry would win 337 electoral votes (with a 99.8% probability of winning at least 270 EV). Kerry’s projected 51.3% national vote share and electoral vote were confirmed by the Interactive Election Simulation Model.

10- Myth: There is no evidence that undecided voters break for the challenger.

Fact: Historical evidence indicates that undecided voters break for the challenger over 80% of the time - especially when the incumbent is unpopular - and Bush had a 48% average approval rating. World-class pollsters Harris and Zogby reported their late polling indicated Kerry would win 60-80% of the undecided vote. Gallup gave 90% of undecided voters to Kerry. The National Exit Poll low-balled Kerry’s share: 55-60%.

11- Myth: Bush was leading in the final pre-election polls.

Fact: Kerry led Bush by 1% in the state-weighted pre-election average and by 3% after allocating undecided voters. Kerry and Bush were tied at 47% based on the final national 18-poll average.

12- Myth: Non-response bias in the exit polls was the reason why 43 states red-shifted to Bush.

Fact: Approximately 3 million votes (most in heavily Democratic minority districts) were never counted. Response rates were lowest in Kerry urban strongholds.

13- Myth: It was just a coincidence that Oregon was the only battleground state that shifted to Kerry (in an exit pollster telephone poll).

Fact: Oregon was the only state which voted by mail or hand-delivered paper ballots AND mandated hand counts of randomly selected counties - a powerful election fraud deterrent. Kerry did worse than Gore in the other battleground states because none had an equivalent fraud deterrent. Unverifiable DRE touch screen computers were used to calculate 30% of the votes .

14- Myth: The exit polls did not indicate that electronic voting machines are fraudulent.

Fact: All voting methods had high average discrepancies - except for paper ballots. Lever machine precincts had the highest (11%) discrepancies. Unverifiable touch screen (DRE) and optical scan precincts had 7%. Paper ballots just 2%. There were 88 reported touchscreen vote switching incidents - 86 switched votes from Kerry to Bush (a zero probability).

15- Myth: The exit polls behaved "badly".

Fact: Final state and national exit polls are ALWAYS FORCED TO MATCH the recorded vote. It's standard operating procedure. But the premise is false: a fraud-free election is assumed. Uncounted votes alone prove that elections have been anything but fraud-free. And millions of phantom voters indicated by the Final 2004 National Exit Poll proves that it cannot be correct.

16- Myth: Kerry led in the early exit polls, but Bush passed him in the final.

Fact: Kerry led the National Exit Poll (NEP) by a constant 51-48% from start to end. He led at 4pm (8349 respondents), 730pm (11027) and 1222am (13047). He led the state aggregate unadjusted exit polls by 52-47%. Bush won the Final NEP (13660) by 51-48%. It is a mathematical impossibility that 613 additional exit poll respondents could cause Kerry's 51-48% margin (at 12:22am after the polls closed) to flip to Bush. The Final was forced to match the recorded vote.

17- Myth: The margin of error used to calculate probabilities of exit poll discrepancies were too low.

Fact: Even assuming a 60% “cluster effect”, the probabilities were near zero. Assuming zero cluster, WPE-adjusted state exit poll discrepancies exceeded the MoE in 29 states for Bush and just one for Kerry. For 30%, the MoE was exceeded in 24 states for Bush. Composite (12:22am) exit poll discrepancies exceeded the margin of error in 16 states for Bush; none for Kerry.

18- Myth: There is nothing suspicious about the fact that all 21 Eastern Time Zone states red-shifted from the exit poll in favor of Bush.

Fact: The probability of the shift is 1 in 2 million. But 14 exit polls shifted beyond the MoE - a ZERO probability.

19- Myth: Exit polls are not true random samples.

Fact: Pollsters Edison-Mitofsky stated that respondents were randomly-selected (1% MoE) in National Exit Poll notes and in the NEP Methods Statement.

20- Myth: Bush voters were reluctant to respond to exit pollsters.

Fact: this was contradicted by the Final Exit Poll, which stated that Bush 2000 voters comprised 43% of the respondents, as compared to 37% for Gore voters. It was also contradicted by a linear regression analysis: non-response rates increased going from the strongest Bush states to the strongest Kerry states, indicating that non-responders were Kerry voters.

21- Myth: Ohio, Florida and National exit polls show that Bush won.

Fact: FINAL State and National exit polls are ALWAYS forced to match the recorded vote, even if its is miscounted – as it was in 2004. Unadjusted state and national exit polls showed Kerry winning by 52-47% and 51-48%, respectively.

22- Myth: The Final NEP 43/37 Bush/Gore returning voter mix is possible. After all, it's just a poll.

Fact: The 43/37 mix was not a polling result. It was contrived to force a match to the recorded vote. This is the incontrovertible proof: Kerry had 7074 (51.71%) of the unadjusted 13660 NEP respondents. Bush had 6414 (46.95%). Of the 13660, 3182 were asked who they voted for in 2000: 1257 (39.50%) said Bush, 1221 (38.37%) said Gore. When the 39.5/38.37 mix is applied to the 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry has 51.74%, exactly matching the unadjusted NEP. This exposes the Final NEP (Bush 50.7-48.3%) 43/37 returning Bush/Gore voter mix. Note that 13660 is the Final NEP sample size. This is proof that the Final NEP 43/37 mix was forced – not an actual sample.

Fact: The mix could not have from changed from 41/39 at 12:22am to 43/37 with just 613 additional respondents. Bush 2000 voters could not have comprised 43% (52.6 million) of the 122.3 million votes recorded in 2004 since he only had 50.5 million votes in 2000. Approximately 2.5 million Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election. Therefore, there were at most 48.0 million returning Bush voters in 2004 - assuming an impossible 100% turnout. If 98% turned out, there were 47.0 million returning Bush voters. That means there had to be 5.6 million (52.6-47.0) phantom voters.

23- Myth: The Democratic Underground “Game” thread showed that Bush won with a feasible 39/39% mix.

Fact: In order to force a match to the recorded vote, NEP vote shares also had to be adjusted to implausible levels far beyond the margin of error. The scenario required a) Kerry's share of new voters reduced from 57% to 52.9%, b) Bush's share of Gore voters increased from 8% to 14.6% and c) Bush 2000 returning voter defection reduced from 10% to 7.2%.

24- Myth: The near-zero a correlation between vote swing (from 2000 to 2004) and 2004 exit poll red-shift “kills the fraud argument”.

Fact: “Swing vs. Red-shift” is based on twisted logic by using fraudulent 2000 and 2004 recorded votes to prove no fraud in 2004. There is a strong correlation when the unadjusted state exit polls are used as proxies for the True Vote.

These graphs display Recorded (flat regression line) and True Vote swing vs. Red-shift (sloped line):

Swing Redshift 1992 , Swing Redshift 1996 , Swing Redshift 2000 , Swing Redshift 2004 .

These graphs display Recorded and True Vote Swing vs. Red-shift by partisanship state groupings:

2004 Battleground Swing Redshift , 2004 Democratic States Swing Redshift , 2004 Republican States Swing Redshift

25- Myth: False Recall in the part of Gore voters explains the Final NEP 43/37 Bush/Gore returning voter mix.

Fact: This will put the 43/37 argument to eternal rest and close the book on the False Recall argument. In the unadjusted 2004 NEP (13,660 respondents) Kerry had 7,074 (51.71%) and Bush 6,414 (46.95%). Of the 13,660 respondents, 3,182 were asked who they voted for in 2000: 1,257 (39.50%) said Bush and 1,221 (38.37%) said Gore. When the 39.5/38.37 mix is applied to the 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry has 51.74%, exactly matching the unadjusted NEP. This puts the lie to the published Final NEP (Bush 50.7-48.3%) and the 43/37 returning Bush/Gore mix. We have just proved that the Final NEP 43/37 mix is a forced result – not an actual sample.

26- Myth: An NES survey indicates that "a slow drifting fog" caused Gore voters to say they voted for Bush.

Fact: NES used 2000 and 2004 (105.4m and 122.3m) recorded votes as a baseline for the survey, rather than True Votes cast (110.8m and 125.7m). There were nearly 6 million uncounted votes in 2000, approximately 4.5 million were Gore votes. Therefore, Gore won the True Vote by 2-3 million - not the 540,000 recorded. Kerry won 3 of 4 million uncounted votes. Using the True Vote a baseline shows that the NES respondents did not misstate who they voted for in 2000.

Fact: Only 25% of respondents were asked how they voted in 2000. The other 75% 10,000 were asked who they just voted for minutes before. Voters do not forget who they voted for in the previous election, much less how they just voted a few minutes ago. False recall was obviously not a factor in the pre-election polls which matched the exit polls after undecided voters were allocated.

27- Myth: Returning Gore voters misrepresented their 2000 vote because they wanted to be associated with a winner - Bush.

Fact: Bush had a 48% approval rating on Election Day. The majority of new voters were Democrats and Independents who gave him 25-30% approval. It was Gore, not Bush, who was the popular vote winner in 2000 by 2-3 million True Votes. So why would Gore voters want to be associated with Bush? It makes no sense.

28- Myth: Bush gained 12 million new voters in 2004.

Fact: Simple arithmetic shows that Bush needed more than 16 million new voters. He had 50.5m recorded votes in 2000. Approximately 2.5m died and 1.0m did not return to vote in 2004 (assuming 98% turnout). Therefore, approximately 47 million Bush 2000 voters returned to vote in 2004, so he needed 15m (68%) of 22 million new voters to get to 62 million. But according to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, he had just 41% (9 million) of new voters, a full 27% less than what he needed. The probability that he had 68% of new voters is ABSOLUTE ZERO.

29- Myth: Bush won a 3 million vote "mandate".

Fact: Gore won by 540,000 recorded votes over Bush (actually he won by 2-3 million True votes) so Kerry had a head-start. According to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, Kerry had 57% of new (DNV) voters (first-timers and others who did not vote in 2000). He won returning Nader voters by 64-17% and 10% of Bush voters. Just 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush. So how could Bush have won? He needed a massive net defection of Gore voters. No way.

30- Myth: The sensitivity analysis showing that Kerry won all plausible scenarios is not a mathematical proof.

Fact: But it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt when the WORST CASE (implausible) scenario indicates a Kerry win probability GREATER THAN 90% and the BASE CASE (plausible) scenario indicates a win probability GREATER THAN 99%.

31- Myth: Bush’s share of females increased by 4.2% over his 2000 share.

Fact: That's implausible; his share of male voters declined by 0.2%. In the 12:22am NEP, females voted 54-45% for Kerry.

32- Myth: Bush won Ohio.

Fact: There is plenty of documented evidence of uncounted and switched votes and massive voter disenfranchisement. Two election workers were convicted of rigging the recount. In direct violation of standing federal election law, 56 of 88 Ohio counties destroyed all or part of their 2004 election data. The final Zogby Election Day poll had Kerry leading by 50-47%. Kerry led the pristine Ohio exit poll by 54.1-45.9% (based on the average 10.9% precinct WPE). He even led the adjusted 12:22am Composite (which used final pre-election polls) by 52.1-47.9%.

33- Myth: Bush won Florida by 52-47%, a 368,000 vote margin.

Fact: The Democrats had a 41-37% registration advantage in Touch Screen (TS) counties and a 42-39% edge in Optical Scan (OS) counties. Florida pre-election polls were trending to Kerry. After allocating the undecided vote, Kerry led the final 10-poll average by 51.1-48.8%. Kerry was on track to a 200,000 vote win. But Kerry won TS counties (3.86mm votes) by 51-47% and Bush won OS counties (3.43mm votes) by a whopping 57-42%. The final Zogby election day poll had Kerry leading by 50-47%. Kerry won the exit poll by 50.9-48.3%. In 2000, Gore won 70% of 180,000 uncounted under/over votes. If counted, he would have won by at least 60,000 votes. Dan Rather's expose on voting machines proved that poor-quality paper used in Florida punch card machines was a major cause of spoilage in heavily Democratic precincts.

34- Myth: NY pre-election and final exit polls (Kerry 58.5-40.2%) were correct. The unadjusted exit poll (Kerry 64.1-34.4%) was wrong.

Fact: New York and California were rigged to inflate Bush’s popular vote margin and provided at least 2.0 million of his 3.0 million vote "mandate".

1- In 2000, NY voted 60.5% for Gore, 35.4% for Bush and 4.1% for Nader. This is just one example of the impossible scenarios that are required to match the NY vote: a) 100% of returning Nader voters had to break for Bush (he had 17% nationally), b) Bush needed 50% of new voters (he had just 41% nationally), c) Bush needed 11% of returning Gore voters (he had 8% nationally). The clincher: Kerry's NY share was 10% higher than his national share. How could Bush have done so much better in heavily Democratic NY with returning Gore, Nader and new voters than he did nationally? It is extremely counter-intuitive and makes no sense.

2- Pre-election likely voter (LV) polls did not factor in the heavy turnout of new Kerry voters. The pre-election LV poll had a 4% margin of error (MoE); there was a 95% probability that Kerry ‘s share would be in the 54.5-62.5% range.

3- The NY exit poll 3.2% MoE indicates a 95% probability that Kerry's vote was between 60.9-67.3% and also within the MoE of the LV poll (which low-balled projected Kerry turnout).

4- Bush gains from 2000 to 2004 in the 15 largest (Democratic) New York City and suburban counties is an Urban Legend.

35- Myth: Unlike touchscreens and optical scanners, NY lever voting machines cannot be programmed to switch votes.

Fact: Levers are highly vulnerable to fraud. Like touch screen DREs, there is no verifiable paper ballot. Levers did not produce paper ballots; vote counts could not be verified. Defective levers were placed in urban precincts; many voters left the precincts without voting. NY lever advocates refuse to consider this fact: Votes CAST on levers are COUNTED on unverifiable central tabulators. There were many incidents of Lever voting machine failure.

36- Myth: Polling data was cherry-picked and assumptions biased for Kerry.

Fact: The following models all used the exit poll data from 1250 precincts provided by exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky. The data included partisan response rates and corresponding average within precinct discrepancies. The models produced equivalent results, confirming the USCV simulation which had previously debunked the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) hypothesis.

a) 1250 precinct Exit Poll Response Optimizer: Strong Bush, Bush, Even, Kerry, Strong Kerry.

Kerry won the 2-party share: 52.1-47.9%.

b) Location-size response: Big Cities, Small Cities, Suburban, Small Towns, Rural.

Kerry also won this category by 52.1-47.9%.

c) State exit poll response: Kerry 52.3-47.7%

d) 12:22am NEP “Voted in 2000” demographic: Kerry by 51.9-48.1%

e) Unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (70,000 respondents): Kerry by 52.5-47.5%.

2011-10-14T10:58:00.002-04:00

Save this link, ALL streams, great app http://occupystream.com/

Paltalk Chat

2011-09-28T00:35:00.002-04:00

Industrial Hemp Panel Movie April 2011

2011-09-15T01:02:00.000-04:00

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31358145/Industrial-Hemp-panel-Elaw.wmv

www.votescam.org

2011-09-07T00:17:00.003-04:00

Montana PBS Positive Intelligent Expose' On Medical Marihuana

2011-08-25T11:31:00.000-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more MontanaPBS Presents.

Pain and Cannabinoids from Wikipedia

2011-08-13T15:17:00.000-04:00

Synthesis and degradation

The human body synthesizes anandamide from N-arachidonoyl phosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE), which is itself made by transferring arachidonic acid from lecithin to the free amine of cephalin through an N-acyltransferase enzyme.[14][15] Anandamide synthesis from NAPE occurs via multiple pathways and includes enzymes such as phospholipase A2, phospholipase C and NAPE-PLD.[3]

Endogenous anandamide is present at very low levels and has a very short half-life due to the action of the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), which breaks it down into free arachidonic acid and ethanolamine. Studies of piglets show that dietary levels of arachidonic acid and other essential fatty acids affect the levels of anandamide and other endocannabinoids in the brain.[16] High fat diet feeding in mice increases levels of anandamide in the liver and increases lipogenesis.[17] This suggests that anandamide may play a role in the development of obesity, at least in rodents.

Paracetamol (or acetaminophen in the U.S.A.) is metabolically combined with arachidonic acid by FAAH to form AM404.[18] This metabolite of paracetamol is a potent agonist at the TRPV1 vanilloid receptor, a weak agonist at both CB1 and CB2 receptors, and an inhibitor of anandamide reuptake. As a result, anandamide levels in the body and brain are elevated. In this fashion, paracetamol acts as a pro-drug for a cannabimimetic metabolite. This action may be partially or fully responsible for the analgesic effects of paracetamol.[19][20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandamide

Paltalk chat and voice

2011-04-08T21:25:00.011-04:00

*An open letter to journalists on the comparison of/Gasland/ to Nazi

2011-03-17T23:39:00.001-04:00

*An open letter to journalists on the comparison of/Gasland/ to Nazi
propaganda by a member of the Corbett Administration*

by GASLAND http://www.facebook.com/gaslandmovie on Wednesday, March fa
16, 2011 at 11:13am

An open letter to Journalists on the Comparison of GASLAND to Nazi
Propaganda by a member of the Corbett Administration

by Josh Fox / GASLAND

March 16, 2011
This week, Teddy Borawski, the chief oil and gas geologist for the
Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR)
and a member of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's administration,
serving in an official capacity, and on the record, compared my
Sundance award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film GASLAND to
Nazi propaganda stating "Goebbels would be proud." The slander was
the latest in a series of smears and misinformation about the film and
character attacks on me.
This kind of hateful speech shows a contempt for history, for truth,
for science and sets a dangerous precedent in our state's government.
Such slanderous mudslinging has no place in any rational or adult
debate on ANY topic, let alone the most important issue facing the
state in decades-natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
When one speaks violence, he degrades himself and his fellow man.
When that person represents the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he
violates the fabric of our civic trust, delegitimizes the government
he represents and opens the door to madness. The Corbett
administration has thrown the dialogue on Marcellus drilling into the
gutter and it is it up to the Corbett administration to get it out.

I made the film GASLAND out of a geniune care and love for the state
of Pennsylvania. The film was designed to bring to light something
that we were by and large overlooking -- the extreme harm and danger
of Fracking for Natural Gas, as it was taking place across the
nation. To make the film, myself and a dedicated team of five people
were working for no pay, day and night, without a major media company
behind the film and without any assurances that anyone would see the
film outside of the Delaware River basin.

The film GASLAND has been thoroughly vetted, fact checked, verified
and backed up by true journalistic review and science and we stand
behind it and the incredibly brave Americans in it 100%.

GASLAND has helped forge a movement in Pennsylvania, New York, and
increasingly worldwide. Millions of people saw the film when it aired
on HBO. In addition, I have toured to over 100 cities in the United
States. Everywhere I go, I hear the complaints, concerns, outrage and
dismay of the citizens facing the driller's invasion.

But instead of engaging in a real dialogue on the issues, the
Pennsylvania government and the gas industry have mounted successive
attacks against the honest journalism of the film. I and my team have
been branded terrorists, extremists, communists, traitors, liars and
now, Nazis. NAZIS!!!!!!

The state deserves better.

If the Corbett administration fails to fire Borawski and fails to
begin a real assessment of the effects of gas drilling on the state,
then certainly the Corbett administration has lost all credibility and
legitimacy.

Does slandering a documentary filmmaker as a Nazi constitute the level
of dialogue that the Corbett administration believes is good
governance? Do you call someone a Nazi just because they don't agree
with you?

Apparently, the whole world knows there is something terribly wrong
with Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas, everywhere except the dark
cave of the Corbett administration. New York state has moved into a
bi-partisan moratorium on fracking, Quebec has imposed a de-facto
moratorium on shale drilling, the Maryland state house is on the verge
of passing a similar moratorium, 20,000 protesters marched in France
last week against shale drilling, Austrailian farmers are revolting
and locking their gates against gas exploration, the New York Times
reported that radioactive gas drilling waste was being dumped directly
into Pennsylvania"?s drinking water sources, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning Pro-Publica news organization reported thousands of
cases of contamination across the country, CNN and 60 minutes has
reported numerous case studies on families whose health have been
harmed and whose water has become undrinkable due to drilling and yet
there is one dark corner of the world that refuses to acknowledge the
threat posed by gas drilling, the ruling party of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.

Is there any excuse for employing this kind of hate speech?

More disturbingly perhaps is Borawski's (and this the Corbett
administration's) apparent enthusiasm for industry's projection of
130,000 to 180,000 gas wells in Pennsylvania.

By the Pennsylvania DEP's own account, one well out of 32 wells in
Dimock caused an area of contamination that was nine square miles
wide. From my experience and from the detailed reports of thousands
of contamination cases across the country, and the industry's own
track record of failure, Dimock is no exception. What does it mean
for Pennsylvania if you replicate Dimock across the state? Do the
math--If you multiply this contamination rate in Dimock by 130,000 gas
wells, you have contaminated 35,000 square miles, more than three
quarters of the state. In other words, you have contaminated the
entire area covered by the Marcellus shale. Permanently.

Calling people Nazis has no place in our civic dialogue whatsoever.
What we need is a real scientific review of the harmful effects of gas
drilling on the state and a statewide moratorium on new drilling,
leasing, permitting and fracking until all of the problems can be
addressed, not race baiting remarks.

Is it impossible to imagine that the Corbett administration could
engage in a serious rational debate on the issue. Corbett could call
for a substantive independent cost-benefit analysis of what this much
drilling would mean to our state. Corbett could pay attention to the
fact that both the U.S. Congress AND the U.S. EPA are now
investigating Hydraulic Fracturing due to the massive public outcry
across the nation. Could the state legislature investigate the
possible collusion between the state DEP and DCNR and the gas industry?

When Pennsylvania's homeland security director James Powers was
found to be responsible for the characterization of people protesting
gas drilling in the state as "?terrorists."? he resigned under
great pressure. Borawski should resign. But more importantly,
Corbett should fire him. Immediately. Otherwise it is clear that
Corbett condones this kind of slander, bigotry and hate.

I was born into a mixed religious family. My father is Jewish and my
Italian mother was raised Roman Catholic. My father and his parents
were survivors of the holocaust. Everyone in his extended family was
killed by the Nazis except for his two brothers and his mother and
father and a few distant cousins. He grew up with the shadow of the
Nazi genocide hanging over his head for his whole life. The first
place the family went after fleeing Europe just after the war, was
Pittsburgh. In my family, we know what this kind of rhetoric can do,
if left unchecked and unpunished.

My father, Michael Fox, was so upset at Borawski's comments that he
wrote the following statement:

"When I was young I spent so many years trying to overcome the
devastation of the holocaust that engulfed my mother and our home. My
grandparents, my aunts and uncles and so many of my cousins perished.
I was robbed of my heritage as they were robbed more cruelly of their
lives. My seven year-old brother was shot and lost sight in his eye in
front of me when I was two by a youth who wanted to get himself a Jew.
Living with the weight of hatred that hung suspended above and through
my life, I needed to know that there were indeed good people left in
the world, that there was hope for kindness and justice in the future
of the world. Otherwise, how could I go on? It took me such a long
time and so much struggle to believe my constant mantra that the world
could be good. To have my son called a Nazi after what happened to our
family, and when what he did was to raise the alarm to the poisoning
of our water and our people, is heart-rending and it highlights how
quickly and callously some forget man's inhumanity towards man and how
some resort to cruel name calling and hatred when they have no other
resources to justify their untenable and greedy positions."?

Since the release of GASLAND, we have been subject to many kinds of
attacks, not only in writing, but in action. Our family home in
Pennsylvania has been vandalized several times since the premiere of
the film. Windows have been broken while I have been away touring the
state, property has been looted and articles on the property have been
set on fire. This kind of hateful despicable, demonizing speech can
encourage the most vile impulses within people. To call my work
"?Nazi propaganda"? is to dehumanize me and those working on the
issue with great care and love for our community. I can only think
that this kind of dehumanization makes us that more susceptible to
attacks of every kind. No apology can make that alright.

It is up to the Corbett administration to try to put this genie back
in the bottle, fire Borawski and begin to entertain a rational
dialogue on the issue. If Corbett fails to dismiss Borawski and put
and end to the nose dive his administration seems hell bent on, we
must conclude that he condones and indeed promotes this kind of
behavior. If he fails to address this, we will be forced to
acknowledge that this act of thuggery, bullying and despicable
insensitivity is a hallmark of his approach to those who challenge his
positions

Josh Fox

GASLAND

Milanville, Pennsylvania

3/16/11

Nutritionist, DAVID AVOCADO WOLFE FUKUSHIMA AND RADIATION

2011-03-16T21:33:00.001-04:00

From Ben Carnes, I was tagged in a note and thought this was interesting to consider. I know there will be multiple factors involved, but it seems to be something people should be aware of. The author is a nutritionist. Thoughts anyone?

LETTER FROM DAVID AVOCADO WOLFE RE FUKUSHIMA AND RADIATION
March 15, 2011 It looks like two or three of the reactors at Fukushima are in the process of melting down. In case you haven’t heard, reactor 1 literally blew up. I flew within several hundred miles of Tokyo last nite when we left Seoul, South Korea. It… was all over Seoul TV. American television is covering it up, but that won’t last for long. It is bad. Probably the worst disaster in history. And the fallout is heading beyond the greater Tokyo region and being pulled into the jet stream heading to the West Coast of America and Canada with Oregon and Northern California likely to get the worst of it. I put this together (as a guide) for thebestdayever.com members and all my friends: In light of the meltdown of Fukushima: How to protect yourself and your thyroid against radiation: kelp, ginseng, ashwaganda (recently found to regrow nerves), chlorella, zeolites, fulvic acid, nascent iodine, reishi mushroom, sea salt (also salty miso), botanical (plant-derived) or lipo-vitamin C, magnesium (chlorophyll), selenium (brazil nuts), coconut butter (coconut products), Megahydrate, Crystal Energy. Spread the word. Start small, but increase your dosages rapidly and dramatically if you live in Hawaii, Western Canada, and the Western USA. Start now. Fallout will descend upon North America sometime around March 22. If you live in Japan, start taking massive doses of these foods, superfoods, superherbs, and supplements immediately. These are all safe for children. Radioactive fallout lingers longest in medicinal mushrooms. If you live in North America, pick your mushrooms NOW. I wouldn’t recommend picking any medicinal mushrooms in the fallout zones (after the fallout begins) for several years, if not a decade depending on how bad the radiation is. If you live in North America, stock up on food NOW because fresh food may be contaminated for several months after the fallout comes down from the jet stream into the fallout zones. We all have to band together to stop nuclear power once and for all. All attention of all scientists should move to a total focus on free energy devices (solar, wind, implosion, etc.). David “Avocado” Wolfe

New Pathogen Discovered in Genetically Engineered Crops

2011-03-01T18:03:00.021-05:00

USDA Approved Monsanto Alfalfa Despite Warnings of New Pathogen Discovered in Genetically Engineered Crops
Friday 25 February 2011

by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Photo: Julia Frost / Flickr)

Just two weeks before the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) fully deregulated Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa, a senior soil scientist alerted the department about a newly discovered, microscopic pathogen found in high concentrations of Roundup Ready corn and soy that researchers believe could be causing infertility in livestock and diseases in crops that could threaten the entire domestic food supply.
Dr. Don Huber, a plant pathologist and retired Purdue University professor, wrote in a letter to the USDA that the pathogen is new to science and appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals and probably humans.
"For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks," Huber wrote in his January 16 letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman's terms, it should be treated as an emergency."
Also See: Why Monsanto Always Wins Huber called for an immediate moratorium on approvals of Roundup Ready crops, but on January 27, the USDA fully deregulated Roundup Ready alfalfa after nearly five years of legal battles with farmers and environmental groups. The USDA partially deregulated Roundup Ready sugar beats on February 4.
The pathogen is about the size of a virus and reproduces like a micro-fungal organism. According to Huber, the organism may be the first micro-fungus of its kind ever discovered, and there is evidence that the infectious pathogen causes diseases in both plants and animals, which is very rare.
"The World According to Monsanto: From Agent Orange to Genetically Modified Crops" (DVD) is yours with a donation to Truthout. Click here to make a donation and receive your gift.The pathogen is prevalent in soy crops suffering from a disease called sudden death syndrome and corn crops suffering from Goss' wilt disease.

Laboratory tests show that the pathogen is present in a "wide variety" of livestock suffering from infertility and spontaneous abortions. Huber warned that the pathogen could be responsible for reports of increased infertility rates in dairy cows and rates of spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45 percent.
Huber is concerned that the pathogen could be spreading because of overreliance on Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops systems, which have come to dominate American agribusiness during the past decade.
Monsanto's Roundup Ready corn, soy, cotton and alfalfa are genetically engineered to be resistant to glyphosate-base herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup. Farmers can blanket fields of Roundup Ready crops with glyphosate knowing that unwanted weeds will be killed and the genetically engineered crops will not.
"We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of alfalfa," Huber wrote. "Naturally, if either the Roundup Ready gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity."
Critics like Huber have long criticized glyphosate products like Roundup for weakening crops' natural defense systems and promoting the spread of glyphosate-resistant "superweeds" that have developed their own tolerance to glyphosate and infested millions of acres of farmland in the US alone.
"We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders," Huber wrote. "This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure."
Huber is a longstanding critic of biotech crops and coordinates a committee of the American Phytopathological Society as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System.

Investigate/Freeze Mubarack'S Billions, F. Wisner

2011-02-07T15:47:00.001-05:00

Tell Congress to Investigate/Freeze Mubarack'S Billions, F. Wisner

Set an example for Crooks Worldwide

"Wisner was involved in a diplomatic gaffe during the pro-democracy uprising in Egypt in early 2011. The Obama administration asked Wisner to carry views to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, including advice that Mubarak should resign to defuse the crisis. Wisner was not successful in convincing the dictator of the wisdom of the administration's suggestions. Just 4 days later, after a day in which Mubarak allies took violent reprisal against democracy activists, Wisner spoke to a security conference in Europe and called it "crucial" that Mubarak stay on in the interest of "stability", in direct contradiction of the American policy he had been asked to convey. The State Department immediately disavowed his comments and disparaged his previous role, saying he had not served as envoy, but merely as an available conduit for certain administration views [5] Adding fuel to the furor over Wisner's comments was the fact that after retirement from the diplomatic corps, he had been a highly placed official of a firm that has lobbied on behalf of the dictator, as well as serving on the board of the largest Egyptian bank. [6]"

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_G._Wisner

tree frog?

2011-01-08T01:10:00.000-05:00

Hyla verisicolor

2010-12-26T22:18:00.002-05:00

allow use with credit to this link

In Honor Of John Wilson

2010-12-15T23:46:00.003-05:00

John was chief auditor for the Sierra Club not so long ago.
He enjoyed his trips to California and his involvement with nature.

He regularly met with local Sierra members for the Friday evening walk when they could have them. He and they shared a common respect for the environment and the planet.

Black Walnut Was The Bed Bug Cure Before DDT

2010-12-05T14:48:00.003-05:00

This is from a bedbug forum 2007: here
http://bedbugger.com/forum/topic/black-walnut-dust
Thanks Buggywoe

buggywoe

Posted 3 years ago
Sun Jul 22 2007 11:25:52
#

I had actually ordered the black walnut dust a few months ago to use as a hair dye. I had quite a bit left when the bedbugs hit. I heard that before the good ol' days of DDT, people used to place black walnut branches and leaves beneath their beds to avoid bedbugs. I also came across a website that mentioned in brief that the National Park Service recommends black walnut as a natural insecticide (the chemical is called "juglone"). So I decided to give it a try until the pesticides I ordered arrived. I sprinkled it in every crack and crevice. And, as I mentioned in my post, I discovered a number of dead bugs around the dust. They were extremely dried up. Black walnut also serves as an astringent, so I wonder if that also played a role...

And I would be very careful with it. People unlucky enough to be allergic to it can suffer a nasty rash. Just do a patch test 24 hours before you decide to sprinkle it in your sheets, around your apartment, etc. Also, because it is a natural dye, it can stain when wet. So don't sprinkle it on your white couch...

I also believe neem oil to be somewhat effective. Supposedly it interferes with the bedbugs' ability to molt and move on to the next stage of adulthood. It also supposedly disrupts their ability/desire to feed. You have to spray it once a day because it is sensitive to light and loses its effectiveness. Once again, too much of this oil can be a bad thing. Use it with caution. It is an insecticide, albeit a "natural" one...

I hope this helps! These things are driving me mad, but, because of these various treatments, I've experienced great relief. I just can't wait until the "real" insecticides arrive. I'm all for natural cures, but I'd rather be safe than sorry...

buggywoe

What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths

2010-11-11T22:20:00.002-05:00

Coincidence? We have industrial chemicals all around. Silent Spring is over the horizon unless we clear out our chemicals and boycott/protest the onslaught to the environment.

By Katherine Eban, contributor
October 8, 2010: 1:42 PM ET

FORTUNE -- Few ecological disasters have been as confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- in which disoriented honeybees die far from their hives -- has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately seeking the cause. After all, the honeybee, nature's ultimate utility player, pollinates a third of all the food we eat and contributes an estimated $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the U.S. economy.

The long list of possible suspects has included pests, viruses, fungi, and also pesticides, particularly so-called neonicotinoids, a class of neurotoxins that kills insects by attacking their nervous systems. For years, their leading manufacturer, Bayer Crop Science, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG (BAYRY), has tangled with regulators and fended off lawsuits from angry beekeepers who allege that the pesticides have disoriented and ultimately killed their bees. The company has countered that, when used correctly, the pesticides pose little risk.

2056Email Print CommentA cheer must have gone up at Bayer on Thursday when a front-page New York Times article, under the headline "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," described how a newly released study pinpoints a different cause for the die-off: "a fungus tag-teaming with a virus." The study, written in collaboration with Army scientists at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center outside Baltimore, analyzed the proteins of afflicted bees using a new Army software system. The Bayer pesticides, however, go unmentioned.

What the Times article did not explore -- nor did the study disclose -- was the relationship between the study's lead author, Montana bee researcher Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science. In recent years Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer to study bee pollination. Indeed, before receiving the Bayer funding, Bromenshenk was lined up on the opposite side: He had signed on to serve as an expert witness for beekeepers who brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer in 2003. He then dropped out and received the grant.

Reporter: scientist "did not volunteer" funding sources

Bromenshenk's company, Bee Alert Technology, which is developing hand-held acoustic scanners that use sound to detect various bee ailments, will profit more from a finding that disease, and not pesticides, is harming bees. Two years ago Bromenshenk acknowledged as much to me when I was reporting on the possible neonicotinoid/CCD connection for Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, which folded before I completed my reporting.

Bromenshenk defends the study and emphasized that it did not examine the impact of pesticides. "It wasn't on the table because others are funded to do that," he says, noting that no Bayer funds were used on the new study. Bromenshenk vociferously denies that receiving funding from Bayer (to study bee pollination of onions) had anything to do with his decision to withdraw from the plaintiff's side in the litigation against Bayer. "We got no money from Bayer," he says. "We did no work for Bayer; Bayer was sending us warning letters by lawyers."

A Bayer publicist reached last night said she was not authorized to comment on the topic but was trying to reach an official company spokesperson.

The Times reporter who authored the recent article, Kirk Johnson, responded in an e-mail that Dr. Bromenshenk "did not volunteer his funding sources." Johnson's e-mail notes that he found the peer-reviewed scientific paper cautious and that he "tried to convey that caution in my story." Adds Johnson: The study "doesn't say pesticides aren't a cause of the underlying vulnerability that the virus-fungus combo then exploits...."

At least one scientist questions the new study. Dr. James Frazier, professor of entomology at Penn State University, who is currently researching the sublethal impact of pesticides on bees, said that while Bromenshenk's study generated some useful data, Bromenshenk has a conflict of interest as CEO of a company developing scanners to diagnose bee diseases. "He could benefit financially from that if this thing gets popularized," Frazier says, "so it's a difficult situation to deal with." He adds that his own research has shown that pesticides affect bees "absolutely, in multiple ways."

Underlying cause of bee deaths still unclear

Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the health group at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that while the Bromenshenk/Army study is interesting, it fails to ask the underlying question "Why are colonies dying? Is it because they're getting weak? People who have HIV don't die of HIV. They die of other diseases they get because their immune systems are knocked off, making them more susceptible." In other words, pesticides could weaken the bees -- and then the virus/fungus combination finishes them off. That notion, however, is not explored in the new study.

In 2008 the NRDC sued the Environmental Protection Agency after it failed to release Bayer's underlying studies on the safety of its neonicotinoids. The federal agency has since changed course, and NRDC researchers are being allowed to sift through the Bayer studies, an NRDC spokesman says.

The EPA has based its approval of neonicotinoids on the fact that the amounts found in pollen and nectar were low enough to not be lethal to the bees -- the only metric they have to measure whether to approve a pesticide or not. But studies have shown that at low doses, the neonicotinoids have sublethal effects that impair bees' learning and memory. The USDA's chief researcher, Jeff Pettis, told me in 2008 that pesticides were definitely "on the list" as a primary stressor that could make bees more vulnerable to other factors, like pests and bacteria.

In 1999, France banned Imidacloprid after the death of a third of its honeybees. A subsequent report prepared for the French agricultural ministry found that even tiny sublethal amounts could disorient bees, diminish their foraging activities, and thus endanger the entire colony. Other countries, including Italy, have banned certain neonicotinoids.

Bayer v. beekeepers

As for the Bayer-Bromenshenk connection, in 2003 a group of 13 North Dakota beekeepers brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer, alleging that the company's neonicotinoid, Imidacloprid, which had been used in nearby fields, was responsible for the loss of more than 60% of their hives. "My bees were getting drunk," Chris Charles, a beekeeper in Carrington, N.D., and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told me in 2008. "They couldn't walk a white line anymore -- they just hung around outside the hive. They couldn't work."

Charles and the other North Dakota beekeepers hired Bromenshenk as an expert witness. Bayer did not dispute that Imidacloprid was found among the bees and their hives. The company simply argued that the amount had not been enough to kill them.

As the North Dakota lawsuit moved forward, an expert witness for the beekeepers, Dr. Daniel Mayer, a now retired bee expert from Washington State University, traveled to 17 different bee yards in North Dakota and observed dead bees and bees in the throes of what looked like Imidacloprid poisoning, he told me in 2008. He theorized that after foraging in planted fields where the seeds had been treated with Imidacloprid, the bees then brought the pesticide back to the hive, where it built up in the wax combs.

The beekeepers tried to enlist more expert witnesses, but others declined, according to two of the beekeeper plaintiffs, in large part because they had taken research money from Bayer and did not want to testify against the company. One who agreed -- Bromenshenk -- subsequently backed out and got a research grant from Bayer. Bromenshenk insists the two actions were unrelated. "It was a personal decision," he says. "I, in good conscience, couldn't charge beekeepers for services when I couldn't help them." He adds, "Eventually, the lawyers stopped calling. I didn't quit. They just stopped calling."

In June 2008 a district court judge in Pennsylvania defanged the beekeepers' lawsuit by siding with Bayer to exclude Mayer's testimony and the initial test results from a laboratory in Jacksonville, Fla., that had found significant amounts of Imidacloprid in the honeybee samples.

That same year Bromenshenk brokered a meeting between Bayer and beekeepers. When I interviewed Bromenshenk that year, he said that increasing frustration with the accusations against Bayer, which he described as a "runaway train," led him to contact the company in an effort to create a dialogue between Bayer and the beekeepers. Because of his efforts, in November 2008, Bayer scientists sat down in Lake Tahoe, Nev., with a small group of American beekeepers to establish a dialogue. The issues discussed were "trust and transparency," Bromenshenk told me. "How did Bayer do its testing, and do we trust the results?" Generally beekeepers and scientists have been highly critical of the design of Bayer's studies and deeply suspicious over who is or isn't on Bayer's payroll.

After the meeting, Bayer tentatively agreed to appoint a beekeeper advisory board to help redesign studies so that beekeepers could trust the results. But many beekeepers see the advisory board and grant money as a ruse on Bayer's part to silence its enemies by holding them close. "They have the bee industry so un-united," says Jim Doan, once New York State's busiest beekeeper until CCD decimated his business. "Even the researchers are off working on anything but the pesticide issue."

Bromenshenk's study acknowledges that the research does not "clearly define" whether the concurrent virus and fungus, which were found in all the afflicted bee samples, is "a marker, a cause, or a consequence of CCD." It also notes uncertainty as to how, exactly, the combination kills the bees, and whether other factors like weather and bee digestion play a role. Scientists like Sass at NRDC believe the mystery is far from resolved: "We're even concerned that based on this, beekeepers will use more pesticides trying to treat these viruses," says Sass.

Welcome Your Freshman Class Of Climate Deniers

2010-11-03T11:00:00.002-04:00

Kevin Knobloch

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Dear friend,

Our New Freshman Class
In Their Own Words

"With the possible exception of Tiger Woods, nothing has had a worse year than global warming. We have discovered that a good portion of the science used to justify "climate change" was a hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologues with an agenda."
—Todd Young, new congressperson from Indiana

"I absolutely do not believe that the science of man-caused climate change is proven. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate." —Ron Johnson, new senator from Wisconsin

"I think we ought to take a look at whatever the group is that measures all this, the IPCC, they don't even believe the crap." —Steve Pearce, new congressperson from New Mexico

"It's a bigger issue, we need to watch 'em. Not only because it may or may not be true, but they're making up their facts to fit their conclusions. They've already caught 'em doing this." —Rand Paul, new senator from Kentucky

"There isn't any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth." —Roy Blunt, new senator from Missouri

Last night an unprecedented number of climate contrarians were swept into office.

How did we get to such a place where attacking scientists and their work is not only acceptable, but helps win elections? And more importantly, what is UCS going to do about it?

First, we must acknowledge that these people didn't get into office on their own. They are backed by big oil, the coal industry, and electric utilities—opponents who have deep pockets and a singular goal of protecting their own interests.

UCS is going to continue to expose these polluting industries and their cronies who knowingly mislead the public about climate science. And we're going to challenge them to get their facts straight.

Because when it comes right down to it, the public's confidence in science and scientists remains high. In fact, just last night in California we saw a tangible example of science trumping industry spin, when voters thwarted an aggressive attempt by out-of-state oil companies to kill the state's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act.

It's examples like this that give me hope and remind me that we can—and will—still achieve concrete victories.

The truth of the matter is that it's been difficult to move Congress for months. The people who are supposed to be representing our interests in the nation's capitol have been too busy carrying water for narrow corporate interests rather than coming together to make real, positive change.

So we're moving forward, with them or without them. As the victory in California yesterday reminds us, there are plenty of other ways to effect change on the issues you and I care about. In the coming months, UCS will:
Defend the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to reduce power plant, transportation, industrial, and agricultural global warming emissions;
Push state utility commissions to shut down the oldest and dirtiest coal power plants;
Pressure the administration to further boost fuel economy for cars and trucks and decrease tailpipe pollution, and cut our nation’s oil use in half by 2030;
Advocate for strong, science-based state and regional climate programs that can reduce heat-trapping emissions at the local level;
Bring agricultural experts and scientists together with government officials to build support for scientifically sound, forward-thinking farming practices that can improve our air, water, and climate; and
Reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy, further reduce their numbers, and prevent the development of new weapons.
No matter what changes happen in Washington, D.C., UCS will continue to do what we do best: develop and advance science-based solutions to major environmental and security issues.

I am deeply grateful for your support of our work and look forward to tackling the challenges we have ahead of us together!

Sincerely,

Kevin Knobloch
President

Assume Questioning the Supreme Court; Justice Stephen Breyer

2010-10-13T13:03:00.004-04:00

SCOTUS, Justice Stephen Breyer via News Hour, Jeffrey Brown, "JEFFREY BROWN: Well, speaking of attitudes, one of the things that you hit over and over again here is the notion that public acceptance of the court and its rulings shouldn't be taken for granted. Now, that's an unusual idea. These days, we sort of take it ...for granted. But you're saying we shouldn't and we might not. STEPHEN BREYER:.... What is he trying to say? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec10/breyer_10-07.html

2010-08-04T12:02:00.002-04:00

http://www.ratical.org/renewables/hempseed1.html

From: Hemp Line Journal, July-August 1992, pp. 14-15, Vol. I No. 1

HEMP SEED: THE MOST NUTRITIONALLY
COMPLETE FOOD SOURCE IN THE WORLD
Part One
by Lynn Osburn

Seeds of the plant cannabis sativa, hemp seed, contain all the essential amino acids and essential fatty acids necessary to maintain healthy human life. No other single plant source has the essential amino acids in such an easily digestible form, nor has the essential fatty acids in as perfect a ratio to meet human nutritional needs.
The importance of hemp seed nutrients to human health cannot be fully appreciated without some understanding of bio-chemistry in life. Unfortunately, any attempt to understand the flow of life leads into the realm of the most troublesome of the three infinities -- the infinitely complex.

Some deep thinkers believe life is a paradox not to be understood but experienced to the fullest. However, the Sages have said, "Know thyself." At any rate it is paradoxic to attempt simplifying the infinite complexity of flowing life. Yet, it is far better for the health and development of any thinking and feeling, uniquely individual human being, to pursue knowledge than to lounge in ignorance.

One out of two Americans win die from the effects of cardiovascular disease (CVD). One out of four Americans will die from cancer. Researchers believe cancers erupt when immune system response is weakened. Pioneers in the fields of biochemistry and human nutrition now believe CVD and most cancers are really diseases of fatty degeneration caused by the continued over-consumption of saturated fats and refined vegetable oils that turn essential fatty acids into carcinogenic killers. And if this is not scary enough, more Americans are succumbing to immune deficiency diseases than ever before. Sadly it is ignorance of human nutritional needs that will cause this overwhelming majority of Americans to die slowly from these afflictions -- the greatest killers in affluent nations.

HEMP SEED PROTEINS AND THE
BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE AND IMMUNITY
There are eight amino acids the human body cannot make and two more the body cannot make in sufficient quantity, so they are essential to life. A diet without any one of them will eventually cause disease and death. These essential amino acids, along with eleven others the body can make from them, are chained together in accordance to genetic guidelines, via RNA formats from DNA blueprints, into structural proteins that give body to life, and into enzymes (globular proteins) that carry out the mechanics of living.

Nearly three quarters of body solids are proteins. The body is literally constructed and maintained by an infinitely complex system that simply builds proteins from amino acid sub units. Every amino acid consists of an amine and a carboxyl bound to the same carbon atom. All but the smallest amino acid have one, more or less complex, carbon containing side chain connected to the carbon atom shared by the amine and carboxyl groups. The amine group, ND, is slightly basic; the carboxyl group, COOH, is a mild acid. The amine group of one amino acid unites with the carboxyl group of another forming a peptide link. Proteins are made of amino acid peptide chains in specific sequences. The number of possible amino acid peptide combinations is infinite.

Peptide chains can bend, twist and unite with other peptide chains by forming weak hydrogen bonds between nitrogen and oxygen atoms along the chain. Amino acids can also form bonds through side chain linkages. All three types of amino acid bonding methods contribute to the infinite possibility of protein shapes and reactivity potentials. Though each species builds proteins unique to itself, life can tailor new ones if challenged by the pressures of existence.

Hemp is not unique in having all the essential amino acids in its embryonic seed. Flax seeds also contain all the essential amino acids as do many other seeds in the plant kingdom. What is unique about hemp seed protein is that 65% of it is globulin edistin. That is the highest in the plant kingdom.

Globulins are one of seven classes of simple proteins. Simple proteins are constructed from amino acids and contain no non-protein substances. Globulins are in seeds and animal blood. Edistins are found in seeds; serum globulin is in blood. Edistins are plant globulins. And globulins along with albumins are classified as globular proteins. All enzymes, antibodies, many hormones, hemoglobin and fibrogin (the body converts fibrogin into non-soluble, fibrin, a blood clotting agent) are globular proteins. They carry out the main work of living.

Albumin, globulin and fibrogin are the three major types of plasma proteins. Plasma is the fluid portion of blood that supplies nutrients to tissues. And the three protein types: serum albumin, serum globulin and fibrogin, compose about 80% of plasma solids. These plasma proteins serve as a reservoir of rapidly available amino acids should any body tissues be in need.

Plant seeds contain albumin and globulin but no fibrogin. Albumin is the nutritive material that fills the space in the seed between the embryo and the seed coat. The embryo needs albumin to fuel its initial growth until photosynthesis begins. Globulin edistins within the embryo guarantee this new life has the enzymes necessary for metabolic activity.

Globulin is the third most abundant protein in the human body. Globulins perform many enzymatic (causing reactions to take place) functions within the plasma itself. More importantly, they are responsible for both the natural and acquired immunity a person has against invading organisms. The body uses globulin proteins to make antibodies which attack infecting agents (antigens) that invade the body. Globulins like gamma globulin are absolutely essential to maintain a healthy immune system. They neutralize alien microorganisms and toxins.

Globulins are divided into three classes: alpha, beta and gamma globulins. Alpha and beta globulins operate as transport vehicles by combining with other substances and carry protein from one part of the body to another. They haul the materials needed to build new and replace worn or damaged bodily structures. Gamma globulins are divided into five classes of antibodies called immunoglobulins. All are formed to combat specific cell invading antigens. They comprise the body's first line of defense against disease and infection. Immunoglobulins are produced by B lymphocyte (white blood cells) plasma cell clones located in lymph system nodes. Infecting antigens normally must pass through the lymph system before entering the blood stream.

Regarding human protein requirement: "Qualitively, it is considered desirable to secure amino acids similar to those of human tissues, both as to kinds and relative quantities of the various kinds." [Textbook of Anatomy and Physiology, Kimber, Gray, Stackpole, 1943]

During digestion proteins in food are broken down into amino acids. The amino acids are then taken into the body and reassembled into human proteins according to need and the availability of the amino acids necessary to make specific proteins.

The body needs the necessary kinds of amino acids in sufficient quantity in order to make proteins such as the globulins. Proper quantities of the right kinds may not be available to the body much of the time. So even though the body has enough essential amino acids available to prevent deficiency diseases, it may not have enough to build quantities of immunoglobulins necessary for the immune system to repel infection.

The best way to insure the body has enough amino acid material to make the globulins is to eat foods high in globulin proteins. Since hemp seed protein is 65% globulin edistin, and also includes quantities of albumin, its protein is readily available in a form quite similar to that found in blood plasma. Eating hemp seeds gives the body all the essential amino acids required to maintain health, and provides the necessary kinds and amounts of amino acids the body needs to make human serum albumin and serum globulins like the immune enhancing gamma globulins. Eating hemp seeds could aid, if not heal, people suffering from immune deficiency diseases. This conclusion is supported by the fact that hemp seed was used to treat nutritional deficiencies brought on by tuberculosis, a severe nutrition blocking disease that causes the body to waste away. [Czechoslovakia Tubercular Nutritional Study, 1955]

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ANTIBODIES
Antibodies are globulin proteins programmed to destroy antigens (any substance eliciting a response from lymphocytes: bacteria, viruses, toxins, living and dead tissue, internal debris, etc.). Circulating in blood plasma like mines floating in a harbor antibodies await contact with the enemy, then initiate a cascade of corrosive enzymes that bore holes in the antigen surface causing it to break apart.

Antibodies are custom designed to neutralize or disintegrate one specific type of antigen. White blood cells called B cell lymphocytes seek out and lock-on to antigenic proteins or sugars on the invader's surface. The B cell then uses that lock and key pattern to make antibodies tailored to that antigen only. It also will make clones of itself called plasma cells. Most of the clones begin producing antibodies for that antigen. Others become memory cells which may spend years wandering through the blood stream looking for that specific antigen. If the body is exposed to it again the memory cells lock-on to one and begin producing plasma cell clones and a flood of antibodies that wipe out the invader. One lymphocyte can divide into hundreds of plasma cells in a few days. A mature plasma cell can make about 2000 antibodies every second for the few days it lives. This is how the body acquires immunity.

The body's ability to resist and recover from illness depends upon how rapidly it can produce massive amounts of antibodies to fend off the initial attack. If the globulin protein starting material is in short supply the army of antibodies may be too small to prevent the symptoms of sickness from setting in.

Hemp seed is the premier plant-seed provider of globulin starting material -- the highest in the plant kingdom. Eating hemp seeds will insure the immune system has the reservoir of immunoglobulin resources needed to make disease destroying antibodies.

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Next issue: Part II, Hempseed Oils and the Flow of Life Force
References:

Blood: The River of Life, Jake Page; Dr. Robert A. Good, Dr. Lawrence S. Lessin, Dr. Kenneth C. Robbins, consultants. U.S. News Books 1981.
Fats and Oils: The Complete Guide to Fats and Oils in Health and Nutrition, Udo Erasmus. Alive Books 1986.
Life and Energy: An Exploration of the Physical and Chemical Basis of Modern Biology, Isaac Asimov. Avon Books 1962.
Organic Chemistry, R. T. Morrison. 1960
Textbook of Anatomy and Physiology, Kimber, Gray, Stackpole. 1943
Textbook of Medical Physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, MD. W. B. Sunders Company 1971.
Textbook of Organic Chemistry, E. Wertheim. The Blakiston Company 1945.

Frazier and DeBolt Interview May, 2010

2010-07-31T03:42:00.004-04:00

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/2010/05/fraserdeboltdoc.html

I have covered their tunes endlessly in performance after performance

http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1523523238

Stevie Wonder @ The White House, Gershwin Award

2010-07-28T22:44:00.001-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more In Performance at The White House.

60 Minutes, Deepwater Horizon's Blowout, Head Electronics Tech Interview, 3 Parts

2010-07-11T12:08:00.004-04:00

Part 1

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Part 2

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Andrea rescued

Watch CBS News Videos Online

A Well Animated Lecture, The Crisis Of Capitalism

2010-07-06T15:43:00.002-04:00

In this RSA Animate, radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

This is based on a lecture at the RSA (www.theRSA.org).

Repost: Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill: Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy

2010-07-04T02:59:00.004-04:00

I found this article quite objective in describing my own forgotten memory of this era.

Originally found at:
http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

Electronic Journal of Sociology (1998)
ISSN: 1198 3655
Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill:
Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy
Alexandar R Thomas
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Northeastern University
alex@telenet.net

Abstract
Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness

Introduction
Almost ten years after Ronald Reagan left office as president, the legacy of his administration continues to be studied. What is almost indisputable is that the changes in public policy that were implemented during the 1980s were sweeping and marked a turning point in American domestic policy. Faced with increasing competition from overseas, American business found it necessary to alter the social contract. This would require a realignment of the political economy so as to weaken labor unions and the social safety net. In Reagan, the Right found a spokesman capable of aligning conservatives, centrists, and working class whites. With this coalition, Reagan was able to bring about a number of reactionary changes in public policy (Alford, 1988).

This paper provides an illustration of this co-optation by examining the policies regarding involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. The shifts in such policies were not the result of overt attempts at change, but rather part of an overall effort to realign the political economy to be more profitable for business. The overall result was that political discourse shifted from a focus on social policy to a focus on fiscal policy. As such, social programs that necessitated financial outlays on the part of the federal government were overlooked in favour of policies that seemed less costly.

Still, the administration did not, and perhaps could not, act in isolation and without public support. But they didn't have to. By the middle of the 1970s, there was a consensus among interested groups that reform of the Mental Health Care System was n ecessary. Lobbying on the part of special interest groups and a commitment on the part of President Jimmy Carter led to passage of the Mental Health Systems Act.

With the planned transfer of responsibility for the mentally ill to the states, reformers needed to build coalitions of fiscal conservatives concerned with the cost of social programs; "law and order" Republicans concerned with crime; and those who dea lt with the mentally ill who, in the absence of more comprehensive reform, sought more limited alternatives (Becker, 1993). Within this context, statutes and procedures dealing with involuntary commitment of the mentally ill were attractive. Easing standards cost relatively little, allowed the Administration to claim action simultaneously on mental health care policy, crime, and homelessness, and appeased health care providers and families of the mentally ill.

The Economy
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States experienced a period of dramatic economic growth. The industrial economies of Western Europe and Japan were by and large devastated by the war. As a result, American firms found little competition abr oad in an expanding world market. The implementation of the Marshall Plan under President Truman provided American goods and services on credit to the war ravaged economies. During this period of economic hegemony, American companies were able to make con cessions to labor in regard to wages and fringe benefits. Thus, the postwar political economy of the United States was characterized by relative peace between management and labor. With record corporate profits and rising standards of living, the United States government passed a series of liberal reforms throug hout the period. Among these reforms was the passage of the Civil Rights Act, various social welfare programs, the construction of the interstate highway system, and the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the rebuilt economies of Europe and Japan began to give American companies stiff competition in the world marketplace. The growth experienced by American firms during the previous two decades began to slow, and profit margins were deemed to be too low (Barlett and Steele, 1996; Gruchy, 1985). In order to increase profits, many American firms attempted to become more comp etitive by trimming labor costs through layoffs and the relocation of factories (Bluestone, 1990; Bluestone and Harrison, 1982; Gruchy, 1985; Harrison and Bluestone, 1988; Moriarty, 1991; Perrucci et al, 1988; Sassen, 1991; Wallerstein, 1979). In addition , the reduction of corporate taxes was pursued with a renewed vigor (Barlett and Steele, 1994).

In order to reduce corporate taxes, it was necessary to reduce the size of the welfare state. This objective was carried out by the Reagan administration (Abramovitz, 1992). After taking office in 1981, the administration set out on a course to alter t he (relatively) labor sensitive political economy to be more business friendly. Reagan appointed anti-union officials to the National Labor Relations Board, "implicitly [granting] employers permission to revive long shunned anti-union practices: decertifying unions, outsourcing production, and hiring permanent replacements for striking workers" (102). Reagan himself pursued such a policy when he fired eleven thousand striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Regulations designed to protect the environment , worker safety, and consumer rights were summarily decried as unnecessary government meddling in the marketplace (Abramovitz, 1992; Barlett and Steele, 1996). Programs designed to help the poor were also characterized as "big government," and the people who utilized such programs were often stigmatized as lazy or even criminal. With the help of both political parties, the administration drastically cut social welfare spending and the budgets of many regulatory agencies.

The new emphasis was on "supply side" economics, which essentially "blamed the nation's ills on 'big government' and called for lower taxes, reduced federal spending (military exempted), fewer government regulations, and more private sector initiatives " (Abramovitz, 1992, 101). Thus, to effect a change in the political economy, Reagan was able to win major concessions regarding social policy that continue today. By taking away the safety net, the working class was effectively neutralized: workers no lo nger had the freedom to strike against their employers or depend upon the social welfare system as a means of living until finding employment. Business was thus free to lower wages, benefits, and the length of contracts. The overall result was that the av erage income for the average American dropped even as the average number of hours at work increased (Barlett and Steele, 1996; Schor, 1992).

It should be understood that a realignment of the political economy did not require the complete dismantling of the welfare state -- although ideally this would be the case. Rather, the welfare state had to be rearranged in a way favorable to business. The concept of the new federalism would perform this function. The new federalism was an outgrowth of the debate over the appropriate role of the federal government relative to that of the states. While liberal Democrats argued that social welfare progra ms and governmental regulation fell within the purview of the federal government, many conservatives argued that such powers should be reserved for the individual states. Since the new environment supported conservative ideologues, the federal government was seen to have improperly assumed powers it had not been granted in the Constitution. The new federalism required that individual states create their own social policies tailored to their own particular needs. Thus, each state would have its own regulat ory and social welfare system. As each state tried to pay for such programs, this would mean fifty different state taxation policies. This effectively pitted states against each other in competition for the most favorable business climate.

Among the policies in need of reform to suit the corporate agenda were those that affected the mentally ill. The funding cuts that altered these policies were part of the overall attempt to alter the political economy in a way that would be more profit able for business rather than a direct assault on the policies themselves. Within the scope of the cutbacks, interest groups operated both in opposition and in support of the changes, both within and outside the government.

Growing Discontent
The fight over involuntary commitment during the 1980s was in some ways separate from the Reagan agenda. But it was fortuitous since it coincided with the administration's desire to dismantle the liberal era reforms. However to understand why groups made committment an issue in the 1980s, we have to take a step back and look at reforms that occurred during the 1960s.

During the early 1960s a series of initiatives designed to reform the mental health system were passed. At issue was the system of state run hospitals for the mentally ill, which were increasingly perceived as inhumane and, with the help of new medicat ions, rather unnecessary for large portions of the patient population. In 1961, the Joint Commission on Mental Illness released Action for Mental Health, calling for the integration of the mentally ill into the general public with the aid of Commun ity Mental Health Centers. In 1963, the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers instituted the centers, but due to the financial drain of the Vietnam War during the 1960s and the financial crisis of the 1970s, the program was not fully funded.1 The result was the release of patients into an environment lacking the Community Mental Health Centers to adequately treat them (Becker and Schulberg, 1976; DeLeonardis and Mauri, 1992; Hollingsworth, 1994; Rachlin, 1974; Rachlin et al, 1975; Saathoff et al, 1992; Shwed, 1978, 1980; Talbott, 1992; Worley and Lowery, 1988;).

By the start of the Carter administration in 1977, involuntary commitment had been restricted to those who were deemed as potentially dangerous to themselves or, perhaps more significantly, those around them.2 Typically, the commitment had to be sponsored by a family member and/or ordered by the court. A result of this policy was that the mentally ill patient who refused treatment typically did not receive any at all. If the patient had lost contact with family members, she or he would not be committed unless found to be a threat by the court. Often, those arrested ended up in jail rather than in treatment if they had not been found to be a threat but had committed a crime (Abramson, 1972; Conrad and Schneider, 1980). On e result was a high degree of stress and frustration experienced by the relatives of the patient. Throughout the 1970s, family members organized with the purpose of correcting a policy that they perceived was wrong.

Professional organizations also joined the backlash against the liberal era reforms of commitment regulations. One obvious reason for this is self-interest. When some mentally ill patients do not receive treatment, mental health professionals have lost (or never gained) a potential client. These professionals as a group have much to gain in terms of patients and income if the laws governing involuntary commitment are expanded to include those patients who refuse help but do not pose a serious threat to themselves or the people around them.

Perhaps more important than self-interest is the burden that deinstitutionalization put on mental health practitioners. Time spent in court took away time spent with patients. Moreover, the medical profession saw themselves as being second-guessed by o thers outside the medical community: lawyers, judges, policy makers, etc. The treatments that psychiatrists and psychologists viewed as necessary for the well being of the patient often could not be applied because of the legal rights of the patient. Invo luntary commitment would force those who needed care into the hospitals and force patients to keep appointments and take medication. Without commitment, these things were more difficult for the practitioners (La Fond and Durham, 1992, 112-13).

Critics of Community Mental Health charged that in the rush to shrink the state hospital population, many patients were released prematurely (Robitscher, 1976; Yarvis et al, 1978). Some patients went off their medications after being released into the community. The criteria of "dangerousness" for civil commitment also meant that some patients who needed treatment but were not a danger could not be committed. As a result, patients whose behavior was considered odd by the community in which they lived were increasingly arrested for bothersome and minor infractions such as vagrancy. These individuals were thus detained in the criminal justice system rather than the mental health system (Abramson, 1972; Conrad and Schneider, 1980).

Groups representing mentally ill patients also organized, but generally did not have the success that groups representing their families and practitioners had. Organizations representing patients, such as the Mental Patients Liberation Front and the Na tional Alliance for the Mentally Ill, lacked the political clout of larger organizations and tended not to be as well funded as the other organizations. Phillip Armour (1989) summarized the situation in this way:

In sum, congressmen do not confront well-funded lobbyists for the mentally disordered in the halls of the Capitol, they typically do not receive large contributions from the residents of state and county mental hospitals or the clients of com munity service centers, and they do not have to calculate the electoral risks of offending a multimillion member association of former mental patients. (187-8)
Although many groups were interested in seeing reform, there was a general lack of coordination between them. In addition, the interests of each groups shaded in and out of congruence. No two groups saw the situation the same way. This essentially left the political arena open to corporate interests and other well funded organis ations interested in mental health and capable of lobbying the government (e.g., the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, etc.). Still, the discontent of the practitioners, families, and patients dealing with the mental health system led to new hearings on mental health care policy.

Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter appointed the President's Commission on Mental Health. This commission was charged with assessing the particulars of mental health services, and then making specific suggestions on how things should be changed. The commission collected data by holding regional hearings in order to hear testimony from professionals, relatives of the mentally ill, and other politicians. This technique has been utilized as a politically conspicuous means of proving tha t action is being taken, but often has little merit in terms of scientific methodology.3 The final reports from the commission and its task forces were characterized in this way by Levine (1981: 179):

The quality of the Task Panel reports vary widely; apparently its members understood their instructions very differently. The reports range from very brief ones, which look as if they had been written by someone on the plane on the way to the meeting, to well-thought out analytic reviews. Some consist of little more than a list of recommendations. No more than a third of the Task Panel reports would pass muster as scholarly documents. The preparation of the reports was sloppy. Many are poorly written. Citations made in the body of the report do not appear in the bibliographies. Citations for key points are often to unpublished sources. To be fair, it should be stated that some of the Task Panels did not expect their reports to be published.
The commission made special references to political interest groups throughout both the task panel reports as well as the final recommendations. After the reports were completed and the Congress attempted to codify these recommendations into law, the l obbying organizations continued to be a presence throughout the process. Some groups were by nature opposed to each other: the National Council of Community Mental Health Centers (NCCMHC) and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directo rs (NASMHPD), for instance. The former of these groups represents the interests of community mental health centers that would benefit by expanding these services. The latter group represents the directors of state mental hospitals. They would benefit by i ncreases in the funding of such hospitals and reinstitutionalization (Armour, 1989, 185). On this point, the commission searched for a compromise.

The final report of the commission to President Carter contained the recommendations upon which the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was based. Despite the methodological flaws of the earlier report, the act was considered a landmark in mental health care policy. The key to the proposals included an increase in funding for Community Mental Health Centers and continued federal government support for such programs. But this ran counter to the financial goals of the Reagan administration, these were of c ourse to reduce federal spending, reduce social programs, and transfer responsibility of many if not most government functions to the individual states. So, the law signed by President Carter was rescinded by Ronald Reagan on August 13, 1981. In accordance with the New Federalism and the demands of capital, mental health policy was now in the hands of individual states.

Settling for Smaller Reforms
In the aftermath of the non-implementation of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, the power of the various interest groups had been further weakened. Clearly, the groups that represented the patients themselves were the weakest. Such groups, represe nting the targets of involuntary commitment, tended to be opposed to the easing of commitment requirements. But facing interest groups representing mental health professionals and patients' families, the patient's rights groups found themselves underfunde d and understaffed.

The interests of others fared somewhat better. Pressure from organizations (some of which represented the families of the mentally ill) lead to new legislation in several states that made it easier to commit a mentally ill patient involuntarily. As noted earlier, much of this pressure emerged because the current underfunded system was not providing adequate supports for patients or family. Families of the mentally ill were genuinely concerned about loved ones who they felt were not receiving adequate care. Also, families who were responsible for providing care for their mentally ill members could not support the burden which came from care provision without adequate institutional supports. From the position of the family member, deinstitutionalization appeared more like an attempt by the government to download responsibility. In this context a loosening of commitment standards would, it was thought, force patients to receive care and (hopefully) reduce the burden on the family.

Mental health professionals were also concerned that patients were not receiving adequate care. Estimates of the homeless population ranged from 250 to 500 thousand people (Dear and Wolch, 1987; Jencks, 1994; Rossi, 1989; Wright, 1989). Of these, appro ximately a third were mentally ill (Rossi, 1989). In many cases, such mentally ill patients were arrested for vagrancy and other minor infractions and were processed by the criminal justice system. Concerned that this population was receiving no treatment at all, mental health workers advocated involuntary commitment as a means of getting the mentally ill homeless into treatment.

With such activism, a coalition between the neoconservatives who opposed liberal reforms in general and the interest groups mentioned above was possible. In the absence of the comprehensive reforms planned in the Mental Health Systems Act, the interest groups who opposed specific outcomes of liberal era reforms, although not necessarily all the reforms, turned to the neoconservatives for narrowly focused reforms. The activism of the interest groups supplied the Reagan Campaign with a supportive constituency which could be used as a foil for reactionary reforms. However there was a deep irony here. The 1980 Reagan Campaign received support from a population which might have otherwise supported the liberal objectives of the previous era (had they been adequately funded, for example). The fact that these interest groups had become disillusioned with the implementation of liberal reforms (specifically deinstitutionalization which was largely viewed as a failure), meant that this population would support a change in policy even if it meant policy reforms that would otherwise be unpalatable.

The composition of this coalition was of course antithetical to the interests of the mentally ill themselves. But groups representing the patients themselves were relatively weak. Despite the fact that groups representing the patients stressed the need for better treatment, debate most often revolved around issues defined by other stakeholders in the system like the growing homelessness problem and the burden on the families. And of course, better treatement automatically translated, in an underfunded system, to more more funding - this argument ran counter to the neoconservative need to cut back the welfare state. So often patients concerns were simply ignored.

Cuts in funding for mental health services continued throughout the 1980s, with the emphasis being on the provision of services via the private sector. Overall, the number of beds available to the mentally ill in public and private hospitals dropped ov er forty percent between 1970 and 1984 (Reamer, 1989). Most of this decline was due to cuts in public hospitals. During the 1980s, the number of beds provided by general hospitals in psychiatric wards and in private hospitals for the mentally ill increase d. In 1970, there were 150 private psychiatric centers; in 1980, there were 184; by 1988, there were 450 in the United States. General hospitals offering psychiatric services increased from 1,259 in 1984 to over two thousand in 1988 (Reamer, 1989, 25; LaF ond and Durham, 1992, 115-16). With such growth in the private sector, there were substantial profits to be made in mental illness, assuming that the patient had adequate health insurance. Those without medical insurance frequently did not receive adequat e care.

A Supportive Public Climate
The intersection of interests noted above was an important factor in creating an environment within which reactionary reforms could take place. However other environmental factors also played an important role in creating conditions whereby the desires for progressive reform could be co-opted. For example, the goals of the Reagan Administration were well received in some quarters of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In the 1980s, the NIMH started to come under the leadership of a different cohort of individuals. While the NIMH had originally been led by individuals who had come of age during the Great Depression, the leaders of the 1980s had come of age later. The result was that while the former cohort had been committed to innovations in government al social policy, the latter generation tended to be less interested in actual social policy and more supportive of measures to reduce the cost to the federal government (Armour, 1989, 187).

The Administrations goals of fiscal restraint also received support from the general public due to the perception of a federal government too prone to waste revenues and not address other basic concerns, such as crime prevention. Certain forms of social welfare spending, such as programs for the mentally ill, were perceiv ed as wasteful and thus easy targets for budget cuts (Gans, 1995; Katz, 1989). In contrast, other social programs, such as Social Security, were perceived as being "earned" by the recipients, and thus equitable. Despite the fact that the average Social Se curity recipient receives more in return than they pay into the system, programs such as this are perceived as being a pension for which the recipient has already paid. As such, they are less susceptible to cuts than categorical spending programs, such as community mental health treatment centers. Indeed, Social Security funding per beneficiary increased under the Reagan Administration (Levitan, 1990, 30). Mental health policy lacks the widespread public support that benefits Social Security (Armour, 1989 , 186). In light of this, it is not surprising that the Reagan Administration was able to cut these programs relatively easily (186-7).

The concerns of the general public were also mobilized in the context of fear over the possibility of a patient committing a violent or otherwise anti-social act. Media attention paid to the problems of the mental health system tended to concentrate in two areas: the growing homelessness problem of the early 1980s and the possibility of criminal acts committed by deinsitutionalized patients. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people concentrated in the inner cities. With the rise of gentrification during the 1980s, many of them became displaced from their relatively affordable housing and were unable to fin d new accommodations. Many of these patients had lost contact with family members and were unable to work, and many did not have health insurance. Thus, they were unable to receive mental health services in the private sector. Media coverage of the growin g homeless problem helped to pressure legislators in many states to rewrite commitment laws to extend the net and make the streets "safer."

This media attention played into, and supported, the growing perception of violent crime as a problem in the United States. The Reagan Administration answered this general alarm by calling for quick and severe punishment of offenders. For those offenders who were not mentally ill, prison was normally seen as the solution (Gans, 1995). For the mentally ill however, involuntary committment seemed the best answer. Either way, quick removal of individuals threatening the social order fit well with the administration's "law and order" stance (LaFond and Durham, 1992, 114).

The new laws, however, were not intended to make it easier to commit the dangerous mentally ill. Rather, the new laws had more general application and made it easier to commit those only considered a threat (Lafond & Durham, 1992, 118). In addition to this, many of the existing liberal justices began to rule on a "right of treatment" clause rather than a straight civil libertarian viewpoint. The result was that at both the state and federal level, the court became increasingly reluctant to strike down legislation that broadened the definition of who was eligible for involuntary commitment (119). Again, this more stringent approach meshed well with the "law and order" stance taken by the administration.

Discussion
The net result of federal abdication of responsibility, the push to state orientated programs (often underfunded), the dis-organization of groups, and the confluence of public interests (in crime prevention and fiscal restraint) with state goals, were reforms that only marginally addressed the real concerns of stakeholders and that ultimately benefitted capital by reducing the cost of social safety net. To be sure, the shift in policies dealing with involuntary commitment emerged from larger social issues. By the middle of the 1970s, groups representing the mentally ill, their families, and those who cared for them had reached a consensus on the need for reform. This culminated in the passage of the Mental Health Systems Act. This implementation, though not without its problems, was seen as a progressive step forward. However the costs of these reforms were unacceptable in the new neoconservative climate and ran counter to the interests of capital. Reagan, who never presumed to support social policy, promised to cut federal spending and ensure a "favorable business climate." So under Reagan the new law was rescinded. This signaled that for Reagan's administration, social policy was of lower priority than fiscal policy. After this act, the interest groups would need to settle for piecemeal reforms within the limitations of the administration's desire for low cost reform measures.

The "New Federalism" served as justification for relaxed federal "interference" in state issues, including mental health policy. The business community was facing a crisis of accumulation, and a shift in the political economy was perceived as necessary to guarantee adequate profit. With the abdication of the federal government, mental health policy was almost entirely in the province of the individual states.

A survey of initiatives shows that they came primarily from individual state legislatures, and thus varied according to state (Peters et al, 1987; LaFond and Durham, 1992). The procedures for commitment of the mentally ill accordingly vary by state. Ma ny states have adopted outpatient commitment as an alternative to inpatient care, and this policy has met with mixed results. 4 Many state hospitals have been closed, and many others are facing the possibility. Debate around mental health policy is still, to a large degree, concentrated around issues of deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionaliza tion and the relative merits of each.5 Sadly, professional groups with opposing interests have stalled the implementation of a comprehensive mental health policy in most states (Becker, 1993; Wilson, 1993).

Under the Reagan Administration, groups and individuals who had hoped for a change found that the federal government did very little to effect a change. The appointment of conservative justices for the federal court system was a part of the "law and or der" platform advocated by the administration and thus was never intended to have a direct effect on procedures regarding involuntary commitment or any other aspect of mental health policy.

Perhaps what is most interesting about the change in policies of involuntary commitment is the coalition that helped bring it about: a combination of "law and order" conservatives, economic conservatives, and liberal groups that sought reform in the pr ovision of mental health services. But the policy shift had hardly anything at all to do with the mentally ill or the practitioners who treated them. It was designed to lower taxes and shift responsibility away from the federal government. Ironically then , the need for reform perceived by those involved and concerned with the mentally ill (practitioners and families) was co-opted by the interests of capital.

Reagan's social policy is best seen as an abdication. Reagan's economic policy was to adjust government regulation so that it favored business once again, and social policy was merely an outgrowth of this larger issue. While family groups and professi onal groups and patient groups did clamor for respect, the real struggle was between the state and the business community. Reagan worked to lessen the tax load for the rich, and the social policies were meant to match this goal. Business needed a more fav orable corporate climate, and Reagan worked to that end. The coalitions that were necessary for election were either gratified (the elderly) or abandoned (the poor). As for the mentally ill, certain changes that their families and practitioners wanted wer e gained, and the administration pointed this out. Even though these changes came about primarily through state governments and the courts, the Administration would take credit. All in all, business interests were served. Families and doctors were appease d. Patients were forgotten.

References
Abramovitz, M. (1992). The Reagan Legacy: Undoing Class, Race, and Gender Accords. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 20, 91- 110.

Abramson, M. F. (1972). The Criminalization of Mentally Disordered Behavior: Possible Side-Effects of a new Mental Health Law. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 23, 101-05.

Alford, C. F. (1988). Mastery and Retreat: Psychological Sources of the Appeal of Ronald Reagan. Political Psychology, 9, 571-89.

Armour, P. K. (1989). Mental Health Policymaking in the United States: Patterns, Process, and Structures. In Rochefort, D. A. (ed.), Handbook on Mental Health Policy in the United States. New York: Greenwood Press.

Barlett, D. L. and Steele, J. B. 1994. America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?. New York: Touchstone.

Barlett, D. L. and Steele, J. B. 1996. America: Who Stole the Dream?. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews and McMeel.

Becker, F. W. (1993). The Politics of Closing State Mental Hospitals: A Case of Increasing Policy Gridlock. Community Mental Health Journal, 29, 103-14.

Becker, A. and Schulberg, H. C. (1976). Phasing Out State Hospitals: A Psychiatric Dilemma. New England Journal of Medicine, 294, 255-61.

Bluestone, B. (1990). The Impact of Schooling and Industrial Restructuring on Recent Trends in Wage Inequality in the United States. American Economic Review, 80, 303-07.

Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. (1982). The Deindustrialization of America. New York: Basic Books.

Brooks, A. D. (1974). Law, Psychiatry, and the Mental Health System. Boston, Ma.: Little, Brown, and Co.

Conrad, P. and Schneider, J. W. (1980). Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. St. Louis: Mosby.

Dear, M. J. and Wolch, J. R. (1987). Landscapes of Despair: From Deinstitutionalization to Homelessness. Oxford: Polity Press.

DeLeonardis, O. and Mauri, D. (1992). From Deinstitutionalization to the Social Enterprise. Social policy, 23, 50.

Durham, M. L., Pierce, G. L., and Fisher, W. H. (1984). Legislative Policy and Resource Allocation in Involuntary Civil Commitment. Research in the Sociology of Health Care, 3, 135-57.

Gans, H. J. 1995. The War Against the Poor. New York: Basic Books.

Grant, G. and Murray, C. (1985). James Coleman and the Coleman Reports. In Rubinstein, E. and Brown, J. (eds.). The Media, Social Science, and Social Policy for Children. Pp. 3-35. Norwood, N. J.: Ablex Publishing.

Gruchy, A. G. (1985). Corporate Concentration and the Restructuring of the American Economy. Journal of Economic Issues, 19, 429-39.

Harrison, B. and Bluestone, B. 1988. The Great U-Turn. New York: Basic Books.

Hoge, S. K., Appelbaum, P. S., and Greer, A. (1989). An Empirical Comparison of the Stone and Dangerous Criteria for Civil Commitment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 170-75.

Hollingsworth, E. J. (1994). Falling Through the Cracks: Care of the Chronically Mentally Ill in the United States. In Hollingsworth, J. R. and Hollingsworth, E. J., Care of the Chronically and Severely Ill: Comparative Social policies. Pp. 145 -72. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Jencks, C. (1994). The Homeless. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard U. Press.

Katz, M. B. (1989). The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York: Pantheon.

Korr, W. S. (1988). Outpatient Commitment: Additional Concerns. American Psychologist, 43, 748-49.

LaFond, J. Q. and Durham, M. L. (1992). Back to the Asylum: The Future of Mental Health Law and Policy in the United States. New York: Oxford U. Press.

Levine, M. (1981). The History and Politics of Community Mental Health New York: Oxford U. Press.

Levitan, S. A. (1990). Programs in Aid of the Poor. Sixth Edition. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins U. Press.

Lidz, C. W., Mulvey, E. P., Appelbaum, P. S., and Cleveland, S. (1989). Commitment: The Consistency of Clinicians and the Use of Legal Standards. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 176-81.

Mechanic, D. (1989). Mental Health and Social Policy. Third Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall.

Midgley, J. (1992). Society, Social Policy, and the Ideology of Reaganism. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 19, 13-28.

Moriarty, B. M. (1991). Urban Systems, Industrial Restructuring, and the Spatial-Temporal Diffusion of Manufacturing Employment. Environment and Planning A, 23, 1571-88.

Mulvey, E. P., Geller, J. L., and Roth, L. H. (1987). The Promise and Peril of Involuntary Outpatient Commitment. American Psychologist, 42, 571-84.

Perrucci, C. C., Perrucci, R., Targ, D. B., and Targ, H. R. (1988). Plant Closings: International Context and Social Costs. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Peters, R., Miller, K. S., Schmidt, W., and Meeters, D. (1987). The Effects of Statutory Change on the Civil Commitment of the Mentally Ill. Law and Human Behavior, 11, 73-99.

Rachlin, S. (1974). With Liberty and Psychosis for All. Psychiatry Quarterly, 48, 410-20.

Rachlin, S., Pam, A., and Milton, J. (1975) Civil Liberties versus Involuntary Hospitalization. American Journal of Psychiatry, 132, 189-92.

Reamer, F. G. (1989). The Contemporary Mental Health System: Facilities, Services, Personnel, and Finances. In Rochefort, D. A. (ed.), Handbook on Mental Health Policy in the United States. New York: Greenwood Press.

Robitscher, J. (1976). Moving Patients out of Hospitals - In whose Interest? In Ahmed, P. and Plog, S. (eds.), State Mental Hospitals. Pp. 141-75. New York: Plenum.

Rochefort, D. A. and Logan, B. M. (1989). The Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Block Grant: Origins, Design, and Impact. In Rochefort, D. A. (ed.), Handbook on Mental Health Policy in the United States. New York: Greenwood Press.

Rossi, P. H. (1989). Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness. Chicago: U. Chicago Press.

Rousseas, S. (1982). The Political Economy of Reaganomics: A Critique. Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe.

Rubin, J. (1980). A Survey of Mental Health Policy Options. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 5, 234-49.

Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the Victim. New York: Random.

Saathoff, G. B., Cortine, J. A., Jacobson, R., Aldrich, K. C. (1992). Mortality among Elderly Patients Discharged from a State Hospital. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 43, 280-81.

Sassen, S. 1991. The Global City. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton U. Press.

Scheid-Cook, T. L. (1990). Ritual Conformity and Organizational Control: Loose Coupling or Professionalization? Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 26, 183-99.

Schor, J. B. 1992. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books.

Segal, S. P. (1989). Civil Commitment Standards and Patient Mix in England/ Wales, Italy, and the United States. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 187-93.

Shwed, H. J. (1978). Protecting the Rights of the Mentally Ill. American Bar Association Journal, 64, 564-67.

Shwed, H. J. (1980). Social Policy and the Rights of the Mentally Ill: Time for Re-examination. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 5, 193-98.

Talbott, J. A. (1992). The Care of the Chronically Mentally Ill, Deinstitutionalization, and Homelessness in the United States. Psychiatric Humanarica, 7, 615-26.

Tancredi, L. R. (1980). The Rights of Mental Patients: Weighing the Interests. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 5, 199-204.

Teplin, L. A. (ed.). (1984). Mental Health and Criminal Law. Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage.

Vega, W. A. and Murphy, J. W. (1990). Culture and the Restructuring of Community Mental Health. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press.

Wagenfeld, M. O. and Robin, S. S. (1976). Boundary Busting in the Role of the Community Mental Health Worker. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 17, 112-222.

Worley, N. K. and Lowery, B. J. (1988). Deinstitutionalization: Could it have been better for Patients? Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 2, 126-33.

Wright, J. D. (1989). Address Unknown: The Homeless in America. Hawthorne, N. Y.: Aldine de Gruyter

Wilk, R. J. (1988). Implications of Involuntary Outpatient Commitment for Community Mental Health Agencies. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 58, 580-91.

Wilson, W. H. (1993). Response to Fred W. Becker's "The Politics of Closing State Mental Hospitals." Community Mental Health Journal, 29, 115-17.

Yarvis, R. M., Edwards, D. W., and Langsley, D. G. (1978). Do Community Mental Health Centers Underserve Psychotic Individuals? Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 29, 387-88.

Endnotes
1. For a more detailed account of the development of policies regarding deinstitutionalization, see Mechanic (1989) and Wagenfeld and Robin (1976).

2. For practical purposes, "dangerousness" has been a vague consideration in the United States as the definition changes from state to state. See Brooks (1974), LaFond and Durham (1992), and Teplin (1984) for greater discussion.

3. For a further discussion of this practice, consult Grant and Murray (1985) and Midgley (1992).

4. Consult Mulvey et al (1987), Korr (1988), Wilk (1988), and Scheid-Cook (1990) for further discussion.

5. Examples include Shwed (1980), Tancredi (1980), Luckey and Berman (1981), Durham et al (1984), Hoge (1989), Lidz (1989), Segal (1989), and LaFond and Durham (1992).

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Copyright 1998 Electronic Journal of Sociology

22 year Air Force Officer-retired: "THIS IS NOT AN OIL SPILL. THIS IS AN OIL VOLCANO"

2010-05-15T01:05:00.005-04:00

I am not buying this guys sabatoge theory. It is the deepest well ever drilled and they probably did not anticipate the pressures involved. His geologic scenario is scary and plausible?

What do you think?

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/disaster_unfolds_slowly_in_the.html
comment 854
It is the GD Queen and BPs fault cutting corners employing the criminals at Haliburton who are nothing but a bunch of terrorists. This spill was a terrorist act of sabotage. Here is a letter from someone in the know:

Commander Norman Olson-a 22 year Air Force Officer-retired:

"THIS IS NOT AN OIL SPILL. THIS IS AN OIL VOLCANO"...

There is a huge bubbling torrent of superheated oil erupting from the gaping hole remaining after sabotage destroyed the pumping rig, 1 mile of pipeline to the bottom of the canyon, and the check valves able to control the flow. The exploratory borehole, approx 24" in diameter pierced the rock 5,000 feet below the surface, to reach a vast and immeasurable dome of oil under great pressure beneath the floor of the Gulf.

The hole, now enlarged by the past ten days of scouring, is calculated to become much larger, as long as the great pressure on the dome, by the weight of the water in the gulf continues. Essentially, the pressure will not subside until the hole in the oil dome is patched. Such a patch job has never been attempted. Nor can anything be built large enough or fast enough to deliver and install it in time enough to even hope to slow the flow.

It is thought also that near simultaneous explosions both at the wellhead, the great check valves, and the pumping station on the rig, were calculated to blow a crater at the wellhead. That crater itself is growing larger as the oil flow continues to increase along with the diameter of the drill hole.

Geologic dynamics include what is called the "Rebound Theory" which means that the earth will rebound after it has been bent and broken, such as in the case of an earthquake. After the slip or upheaval, the earth will return to its former topography. If this were the case in the Gulf, the oil will empty from the dome until the weight of the water equalizes the pressure. When this happens, the earth dome will begin to rise once again, causing a vacuum in the now empty dome.

This vacuum will draw water down into the dome where it will be superheated. A huge explosion MAY occur, larger than any thing we've ever seen before, possibly setting off a string of earthquakes, including a colossal one along the New Madrid fault running from Chicago to New Orleans. Think of what happens when a tennis ball with a small hole bored in it is pushed below the water. Now squeeze the ball. Air will bubble up as long as the pressure remains on the ball to force the air through the hole. Now enlarge the hole and increase the pressure.

Soon the inside pressure and the outside water equalize, but you still have to deal with the rubber characteristic of the ball. The ball will attempt to rebound to its former shape, when that happens; a vacuum begins to pull water into the ball through the hole. The larger the hole the faster this happens. But what if the center of our "tennis ball" is 10 times the boiling point of water 10,000 feet below sea level. What would happen?

The timing of the sabotage was critical. BP estimates say that the hole cannot be patched for up to 3 months. If unchecked, the dome could release nearly 100 million barrels of oil into the gulf. The economy of all Gulf States would be wiped out. The destruction of the rig coincided with the onset of hurricane season. By the end of July as the near peak of the hurricane season approaches, there will be a crust of oil many thousands of square miles in size, nearly 3 inches thick float along the coast when the first of the great hurricanes hit.

There is no way to stop the borehole's enlarging every day.

Later this year, unusual plant life will begin to grow along the coasts where oil has been washed and blown ashore. Dryland oil drillers do not freely talk about the plant seeds and other material that gushes from oil wells since any exotic or rare plant life would result in shutting down the operation by federal endangered species agency order. Once spore reach the warm climate of a Gulf Coast summer, they will sprout and bloom.

The question will forever remain, who sabotaged the BP operation?

Someone picked the best possible location at the best possible season and with the best possible destruction anyone could possibly imagine.

High-ranking officials at BP face one of two possible scenarios. Either they announce that the destruction was sabotage and escape some of the financial devastation due to lawsuits, or they remain silent and end up totally broke. I suspect that we will begin hearing about terrorist sabotage within just a couple weeks.

Hundreds of platforms. Dozens of companies, Hundreds of subcontractors. Skilled laborers and technician teams coming and going. People from all different Middle Eastern counties working on rigs. These repair and operation team members are not given extensive security checks. They work for the lowest bidding contractor. Background investigations cost money and to win the bid, expenses are shaved.

Only a very brilliant mind could have chosen an act of sabotage so devastating.

Norm Olson, Commander

ACM

Deepwater Horizon Spill, Largest Unanticipated Disaster

2010-05-04T23:28:00.003-04:00

I think this open sore in the gulf is going to end the planet as we know it ( not the collider in Switzerland...), it is the deepest offshore well yet. 1 mile down and 18,000 feet deep, the pressures, obviously, were not anticipated, that is, the pressure from the gas went uncontrolled and caused the explosion is my conjecture...

I found this in offgrid living group yahoo:

"Subject: 294 Days of Oil

This essay was originally written in August of 2009 for possible inclusion into my latest book, LIVING SANIBEL - A Nature Guide to Sanibel & Captiva Islands. Owing to space limitations it was left out of the book where it would have appeared in an editorial box. In hindsight I wish we had left it in, but I wanted to share it with all of my clients, friends and readers now because it speaks volumes about what is happening today off the coast of Louisiana.

Maybe it should be called 294 Days. What amazes me is that I have yet to hear a single reference to this 31-year-old disaster in any of the current coverage. Why is that?

Feel free to share it with your friends and family. Ive also attached it as a pdf.

The True Cost of Oil
In the spring of 1979, PEMEX, Mexicos state-owned oil company, was drilling a two-mile-deep exploratory oil well in the Bay of Campeche, located in the southwest corner of the Gulf of Mexico. On June 3, 1979 that oil well, known as IXTOC 1, blew out. An unexpected loss of drilling mud circulation, just as the well struck a major oil and gas deposit, caused the blowout to occur. The pressurized oil and gas coming out of the well ignited, causing the drilling platform to catch fire, collapse and sink directly on top of the well head, hindering any immediate attempts to control the blowout.

Within moments of the blowout crude oil started pouring out of IXTOC 1 at a rate that fluctuated between 10,000 and 30,000 barrels per day. There are forty-two gallons in each barrel of oil. At its peak outflow of 30,000 barrels per day, IXTOC 1was spewing 1,260,000 gallons of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

Capping the well became the first priority but because of the depths involved, and the complications of having the drilling platform land on the BOP (the Blowout Preventer), IXTOC 1 continued pumping oil into the western Gulf of Mexico non-stop for another 294 days.

After clearing the debris field, oil well experts, including the renowned oil well firefighter and specialist Red Adair, were able to reach the BOP within a few months time, but the internal pressure from the well exceeded the preventers capacity and after a brief shut down, the BOP had to be reopened and the oil flow resumed. Two more wells were drilled into the deposit to relieve the pressure and finally, on March 23, 1980, a team of North Sea Norwegian experts were able to cap the well. The IXTOC 1 went down as the single largest accidental oil spill in history.

The Exxon Valdez, which struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989 spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil, which eventually covered 11,000 square miles of ocean. The IXTOC 1 oil well disaster pumped out 140 million gallons of crude, or 13 times the amount of the Exxon Valdez. At one point in time, the oil from this unprecedented blowout covered half of the Gulf of Mexico, some 300,000 square miles.

Because of the prevailing loop current, oil from this spill made it all the way up to the Texas shoreline, six-hundred miles to the north.
The environmental impact was unprecedented. The only nesting beach in the world for the critically endangered Kemps Ridley sea turtle, located near Nuevo Rancho, Mexico, was covered in oil. The turtle eggs that had been deposited had to be dug up and transported to another beach to survive. The damage was widespread and catastrophic.

Sadly, we are hearing the same "Drill, baby drill!" mantra repeated today. Powerful lobbying efforts are underway by the oil and gas industry to allow drilling off the west coast of Florida. The engineers and scientists working for Exxon Mobile, Shell, Chevron and BP all assure us that modern BOPs will not fail and that todays oil platforms are capable of handling category 5 hurricanes without incident.

What if theyre wrong? Let us assume we have another uncontrolled blowout roughly twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster one hundred miles west of Captiva. The prevailing loop current would take the vast majority of the oil slick south toward the Dry Tortugas and the Florida Keys. Ironically, Sanibel and Captiva would probably not be impacted by the event.

Florida, especially the eastern seaboard of the state, would be overwhelmed. The only coral reef in the United States, from Fort Jefferson to John Pennekamp National Park would be ruined. The entire Keys fishing recreational fishing fleet would, just as did the commercial fishing fleet of Prince William Sound, collapse. Further up the coast, once the spill were carried north with the Gulf Stream, Miami and Palm Beach would suffer immeasurable damage. The cost of cleanup and mitigation could make entire municipalities fail.

Then consider the fact that a recent proposal by a Florida State Senator would allow drilling to occur as close as three miles from the mouth of the Caloosahatchee and an equal distance off the beaches of Captiva. An oil spill this close to shore, even one-tenth the size of the Exxon Valdez, and more than 100 times smaller than the IXTOC 1, would ruin the beaches and marine environments of Sanibel and Captiva within days.

The death toll to wildlife would be incomprehensible. The surface breathers; the endangered manatee, the Atlantic spotted porpoise and the bottle-nosed porpoises would be the first to die. With the surface of the water covered in a thick black ooze, every time these animals surfaced to breath their lungs would inevitably take in the toxic byproducts of the chemistry of oilsubstances like toluene, which causes severed neurological harm and benzine, which has an anaesthetic property to it that sedates marine mammals, causing them to drown.

Even if they survive the initial spill, the volatile compounds of these and other hydrocarbons can damage red blood cells, suppress immune system, strain the liver, spleen and kidneys and even interfere with their ability to reproduce. The same physiological effects would occur to anyone living along the beaches where the crude oil inevitably would wash up. The value of a Gulf front home or condominium would drop precipitously overnight. No one in their right mind would want to live anywhere near the spill and the tax base of Lee County, supported by the higher property values of the barrier island properties, would tumble. The county would likely have to file for bankruptcy.

Wildlife and eco-tourism would walk hand in hand to a common grave. Tens of thousands of acres of red and black mangrove forest, unable to function properly because of the oil, would wither and die. Entire ecosystems would collapse along with the crabs, fishes and shrimp that form the marine matrix of life.
Even with extensive clean up, the lessons learned from Prince William Sound and the

Exxon Valdez show us that the impact from a major oil spill can last for decades. Tar balls and traces of the oil would wash up on our beaches for the next thirty to forty years. Even the impact from drilling, the mud, the displaced sediment and the constant minor spills would be felt with oil rigs three miles offshore.

There is the larger issue of global warming. By feeding the cycle of CO² (carbon dioxide) through the burning of fossil fuels we are caught in a cycle of climate change wherein the hotter we make the planet, the stronger the hurricanes and the more at-risk the drilling platforms become. Florida, sitting at the epicenter of hurricane alley, can hardly afford more storms like Hurricane Katrina but, as the atmosphere warms, scientists predict that we will have fewer hurricanes but the ones that do form will likely be more powerful.

With the vast majority of Floridians living along the coast and the cost of insuring their properties continually rising, why would we even consider adding more greenhouse gases into the earths atmosphere?

In the end, the oil found under the eastern Gulf of Mexico is too expensive to recover. Centuries from now, when all of mankinds energy needs are derived from renewable sources such as solar (have you ever heard of a solar panel array oil spill?), tidal, hydroelectric, wind and geothermal systems, it may well be noted that all of the worlds vast carbon-based fuels should have been left untouched, given the long-term environmental impact the use of these hydrocarbons appear to be creating.

From the mountaintop removal of West Virginia to the damage already done to the drilling fields of Texas and Colorado the true cost of oil may not be known for a thousand years. The Sunshine State should capitalize on its greatest resource, sunshine, and become the solar capital of the Eastern United States. IXTOC 1 is more than a subtle reminder of that. "

Charles Sobczak
a Florida Author
and Sanibel Resident

Charles Sobczak, VIP Realty
CHOOSE THE WRITE REALTOR!
Cell 239-850-0710
E-mail: writerealtor1@earthlink.net

Brewers New Law, Voter Purge, Palast and Coming Election

2010-04-28T23:15:00.002-04:00

http://www.gregpalast.com/behind-the-arizona-immigration-lawgop-game-to-swipe-the-november-election/

Reporter Palast in guard tower over Joe Arpaio's jail, Maricopa County, Arizona
Our investigation in Arizona discovered the real intent of the show-me-your-papers law.

by Greg Palast for Truthout.org

[Phoenix, AZ.] Don't be fooled. The way the media plays the story, it was a wave of racist, anti-immigrant hysteria that moved Arizona Republicans to pass a sick little law, signed last week, requiring every person in the state to carry papers proving they are US citizens.

I don't buy it. Anti-Hispanic hysteria has always been as much a part of Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and excessive air-conditioning.

What's new here is not the politicians' fear of a xenophobic "Teabag" uprising.

What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.

In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.

BlueOregon: Tea partiers don’t want you to read this.

2010-04-16T08:55:00.001-04:00

BlueOregon: Tea partiers don’t want you to read this.

Posted using ShareThis

Dissociative Hyper Priming?

2010-03-17T12:00:00.013-04:00

Scientists enter the realm of marijuanas effects on the mind in "real time".
Background Studies:
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/03/how_cannabis_makes_t.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20122742

Leonard Peltier APPEAL DENIED!

2010-03-01T10:44:00.000-05:00

LP-DOC - PO Box 7488 - Fargo, ND 58106
Phone: 701/235-2206; Fax:701/235-5045
contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

February 24, 2010

APPEAL DENIED!

Today we received word that the parole decision has been affirmed by
the U.S. Parole Commission. The Parole Commission made no concessions
except for one -- to finally recognize Leonard's "recent prison
record of good conduct." The Parole Commission went on to say that
Leonard's age, health, and release plan were all considered, but that
these elements "don't warrant his release at this time." All legal
arguments made by the Peltier attorney Eric Seitz were rejected.

Once again, we're told that innocence is no defense. Yet again,
the government has singled out Leonard Peltier as a scapegoat. As
has always been the case, they intend to force Leonard Peltier to
pay the price for the killings of their agents despite the lack
of evidence against him. This is nothing short of politically
motivated vengeance.

Leonard won't receive another full parole hearing until he is nearly
80 years old. Already at risk for blindness, kidney failure, stroke,
and certainly premature death given his diet, living conditions,
and health care, this parole decision is also nothing less than a
death sentence.

Don't accept the unacceptable. Demand Leonard's freedom. Call the
White House comment line every day to express your outrage. Call:
(202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1112. You also can send an e-mail
to the White House. Go to
. Mail or fax a letter to President Barack Obama, The White House,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
20500; Fax - (202) 456-2461.

A Small World For "Big Minds", Diameter 8000 Miles

2010-02-27T14:25:00.005-05:00

Well with all the controversy surrounding global warming and planetary resources, ponder the fact the the planet earth's diameter is only just under 8ooo miles!

six billion people and counting, the drive from NY to La approx 3000 miles, NY to London 5000 miles! That is it.

We only have so much of a planet folks. It is not an SUV but a smart car with limited resources and space. With this in the forefront of everyones mind, maybe we can move ahead with a more objective plan to save ourselves from ourselves and recruit a more intelligent populist effort to manage our resources wisely.

In peace

American Low Grade Political Infection, Future Shock, Teabaggers

2010-02-13T13:26:00.005-05:00

I believe the Teabaggers are the pre-eminent example of Future Shock,the first of a series of books released by Alvin Tofller and also a documentary film narrated by Orson Welles

Together with the recent coup in Honduras mirrors the present state of a low grade political infection here in the western hemisphere. The influence of the political right and the insulation of the American congress and its president from the people are not far from outright facism. Until the people rise up and demand equal protection against the abuses of the facist state with an intelligent approach (as opposed to the raw tea party approach), we will be not heard.

Future Shock (Orson Welles Intro)
by donaldtheduckie

Supreme Injustice

2010-01-24T11:47:00.001-05:00

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson

Before You Enlist

2010-01-15T15:17:00.002-05:00

http://www.beforeyouenlist.org

Individualism Vs. Chemical Straight Jacket, R. D. Laing 1984

2010-01-10T19:28:00.003-05:00

Green Ontario, Quickly, Ohio, Green Gov. Candidate

2009-12-27T22:33:00.003-05:00

Why Not Ohio? Huge Response to Ontario's Feed-in Tariff Launch
Dennis Spisak -

Green Party candidate for Ohio Governor cites a report by Paul Gipe last week about Ontario's Feed-in tariff program becoming a huge success.

"This is the type of government involvement that is needed to make a successful committment to renewable energy programs and to get them off the ground."said Spisak. "This type of program in Ohio would help people save money and begive the drive toa cleaner and greener Ohio in terms of renewable energies" he concluded.

According to the report, Ontario's new feed-in tariff program got off to an attention-grabbing start December 16, 2009 when the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) announced that it had awarded 700 contracts for renewable energy to homeowners under its expedited microFIT program.

Altogether, OPA received 8,000 MW of applications for wind and solar energy contracts under the province's precedent-setting, feed-in tariff policy.

OPA's remarkable press release was well timed to send a signal, if any was intended, to the Canadian delegation in Copenhagen where Canada was singled out as "Fossil of the Year" by climate change activists for its refusal to limit greenhouse gases.

Ontario is acting independently of Canada's federal government and plans to close all its coal-fired power plants by 2014. The province, Canada's most populous, is also aggressively developing its renewable energy industry. OPA's announcement was the first concrete indication of how fast the Ontario market may grow.

OPA estimates that the feed-in tariff program will stimulate more than $5 billion (Canadian) in new manufacturing, design, construction, and engineering investment in the province.

But the news that generated the most media buzz in Canada and elsewhere was the microFIT contracts. Saying the program "literally brings power to the people," Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Gerry Phillips sounded like a 1960s radical. He went on to add that the MicroFIT program "allows homeowners, farmers, schools and mom and pop businesses" to generate their own power "and get paid for it".

Under Ontario's microFIT program, homeowners generating their own electricity from solar PV will be paid $0.80 CAD/kWh ($0.76 USD/kWh) for a period of 20 years.

Indeed, it does sound radical, a program enabling citizens to profit from the renewable energy that falls on their rooftops. And Phillips wasn't alone in embracing the province's accomplishment-or sounding revolutionary.

Colin Anderson, OPA's chief executive, proudly noted that "We've cut the red tape and made it simpler for ordinary Ontarians to become electricity producers."

For Anderson and the OPA this wasn't idle boasting. They delivered North America's most aggressive renewable energy program in record-breaking time.

OPA said it was continuing to process another 500 micoFIT applications. When awarded, OPA will have issued a total 8.6 MW of contracts--nearly all for rooftop solar PV--to generators with projects less than 10 kW. These residential solar systems will generate nearly nine million kilowatt-hours per year under Ontario conditions.

Ontario's microFIT contracts alone will put Ontario close to one of the top ten markets for solar PV in North America. Yet the microFIT contracts represent just the tip of the iceberg.

Of the 8,000 MW of applications for feed-in tariffs, nearly 1,300 MW were for solar PV, and 6,300 MW were for wind energy.

Unfortunately, there is only 2,500 MW of grid capacity available in the first phase of OPA's feed-in tariff program. Another 1,500 MW of grid expansion is currently under construction.

In the meantime, OPA is giving preference to projects that are "shovel-ready" to get as much renewable energy in the ground as quickly as possible.

Within three to five years there could be as much as 4,000 MW of new renewable capacity in Ontario. Under Ontario conditions this would be roughly 3% to 5% of the province's electricity consumption. If achieved, this would be the most rapid growth of renewable energy in North America outside Texas.

For comparison, California--the one-time renewable energy leader in North America--currently generates only slightly more than 2% of its electricity consumption from new renewables.

Ontario has clearly put itself on the renewable energy map. This time next year we can judge the province by what really counts: not by the contracts awarded, but by the hardware installed.

Http://www.votespisak.org/governor/

Zelaya

2009-11-05T23:31:00.001-05:00

Reuters: U.N. envoy slams U.S. for unanswered drone questions

2009-11-01T13:25:00.002-05:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/gc05/idUSTRE59Q51220091027

By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States must demonstrate that it is not randomly killing people in violation of international law through its use of unmanned drones on the Afghan border, a U.N. rights investigator said on Tuesday.

Philip Alston, a U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, also said the U.S. refusal to respond to U.N. concerns that the use of pilotless drones might result in illegal executions was an "untenable" position.

Alston, who is appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said his concern over drones, or predators, had grown in the past few months as the U.S. military prominently used the weapons in the rugged border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan where fighting against insurgents has been heavy.

"What we need is for the United States to be more up front and say, 'OK we're prepared to discuss some aspects of this program,'" the Australian law professor told reporters.

"Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws," he said.

Critics say attacks using drones have resulted in unnecessary civilian deaths.

The killing of civilians, especially during operations by foreign forces, have infuriated Afghans and increased hostility toward the presence of international troops nearly eight years after the Taliban's fall in Afghanistan.

During a speech to the U.N. General Assembly earlier on Tuesday, Alston stepped up pressure for Washington to answer questions he first raised in June about the drones. He said the United States could well be using the drones legally, but the country needed to be more open about the program.

The United States told the Human Rights Council in June that it has an extensive legal framework to respond to unlawful killings. It also objected to Alston's criticism, saying the U.N. investigator did not have the mandate to cover military and intelligence.

Alston wants to know the legal basis on which the United States is operating the drones, precautions it is taking to ensure these weapons are used strictly for purposes consistent with international humanitarian law, and what mechanisms are in place to review the use of the weapons.

"The response of the United States is simply untenable," Alston said.

"And that (U.S. response) is that the Human Rights Council, and the General Assembly by definition, have no role in relation to killings that take place in relation to an armed conflict," he said. "That would remove a great majority of issues that come before (the United Nations) right now."

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Dr. Weil Threatened by FDA Over Immune-Boosting Supplements

2009-10-31T23:45:00.002-04:00

Dr. Weil Threatened by FDA Over Immune-Boosting Supplements
FDA, FTC threaten Dr. Weil over immune-boosting supplements for H1N1 swine flu
By Mike Adams
Natural News, October 22, 2009
Straight to the Source

In working to protect the business interests of vaccine manufactures, both the FDA and FTC have declared all-out war against any products that might offer consumers options other than vaccines. This week, that war against natural remedies reached the shores of Dr. Andrew Weil, who is perhaps the best-known alternative medicine doctor in America. In an intimidating, threatening letter jointly issued by the FTC and the FDA, these rogue government agencies threatened Dr. Weil with criminal prosecution for making true statements about his immune-boosting formula such as, "Astragalus ... is ... used traditionally to ward off colds and flu, and has demonstrated both antiviral and immune-boosting effects in scientific investigation."

This statement, although scientifically valid and true, is a threat to the profits of the vaccine industry, and so Dr. Weil's company is being targeted by the FTC / FDA vaccine racket tag-team for termination.

You can review the FTC threats against Dr. Weil on the FTC's own website: http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetter...

Planting of industrial hemp seed at DEA headquarters (700 Army Navy Dr, Arlington, VA). Vote Hemp - October 13, 2009

2009-10-15T12:53:00.000-04:00

http://www.votehemp.com/DEAhempplanting.html

Hospital Raided By Honduran Renegade Government

2009-10-10T02:47:00.003-04:00

CIRIBOYA'S HOSPITAL GARIFUNA IS CLOSED    
Yesterday at five in the morning, the Hospital Garífuna de
Ciriboya was invaded, by elements of the national police and
soldiers that broke in through a window. In the first
operation ,approximately fifteen soldiers and police
participated, which alleged to be participating in an
anti-narcotics operation.

This action on the part of coup
government of the Ministry of security and Defense, serves to
add itself to the persecution that is occurring in our country
against the national resistance to the coup d'etat. Days before
the Ministry of Health disqualified the hospital turning it
into a simple center of health, to the detriment of the
population garífuna and mestiza of the Municipality of Iriona.

The Hospital of Ciriboya is part of the project Luagu Hatuadi
Waduhenu, first popular hospital garífuna, which is a model
of medical attention in Honduras, taken care of by doctors
trained and graduated from ELAM (Latin American
Medicine School) in Cuba. The social function they are
fulfilling (the graduates of ELAM) in Honduras contrasts
sharply with the the majority of the Honduran trained
doctors, who have been reluctant to serve in the countryside
and remote areas of the country.

The Hospital of Ciriboya was
constructed with the support of unions of California and our
own efforts of the people of the garífuna villages, through the
leadership of Dr. Luther Castillo, who at present has been
one the organizers in the defense of the democracy and the
construction of a participatory government of our country for
all, which includes a constituent assembly .

The isolation in
which the garífunas communities live in Iriona and
Walumugu has been a favorite place used by the narcotics
traffickers in conspiracy with the elite, they are able to use
local people and the desolated areas to make their landings,
having logistical support of gangs associated to the national
elite. The complex phenomenon of the drug trafficking in
Honduras, on the North coast especially, has been going on
for several decades, without ,to this date, the determining
measures to change the course of the situation.

IT is public
knowledge who these people are, and of their untouchable
nature and their ties to the illicit business, those that persist
in using pseudo-clandestine plantations of African palm and
airports, but their economic power acquits them of any
crime. The closing of the hospital is a clear message sent to the
garífuna people, by their participation - especially of Dr.
Castillo and the personnel of the Hospital - in the resistance to
the coup d'etat.

For the OFRANEH the punitive action against the Hospital,
is one more of a sample of racism that prevails between the
followers of the coup participants, those that see the medical
support of the Cubans, as exemplary campaigns of
alphabetization which have been realized in some parts of the
country, and medicine with a social vision seems to threaten
the prevailing feudal regime in the country.

We ask ourselves
if there certainly exists " intelligentsia" between the security
forces, like those coming to search the hospital, with the
pretext that the day before an airplane had landed supposedly
unloaded drugs in the surrounding communities. For our
garífuna people, the closing of the Hospital of Ciriboya, is one
more aggression that demonstrates one of the fundamental
objectives of the government de facto is to destroy the
communitarian vision and to promote the violence.

It is
incredible that one of the best examples of communitarian
health on the the continent, is attacked by a government
conformed by a handful of mercenaries in the service of the
South command and the banana, telephone and oil companies
that want to preserve the Status Quo in Honduras.

IN La Ceiba, 7 of October of the 2009. Honduran Black
Brotherly organization, OFRANEH

ALLANADO HOSPITAL GARIFUNA DE CIRIBOYA  

El día de ayer a las cinco de la mañana, fue allanado el Hospital Garífuna de Ciriboya, por elementos de la policía Preventiva y soldados los que irrumpieron al recinto a través de una ventana. En el operativo participaron aproximadamente quince elementos, los cuales adujeron estar participando en un operativo antinarcóticos. 

Esta acción por parte de elementos del Ministerio de seguridad y de Defensa, viene a añadirse a la persecución que se está dando en nuestro país en contra de la resistencia nacional al golpe de Estado. Días antes el Ministerio de Salud descalificó al hospital convirtiéndole en un simple centro de salud, en detrimento de la población garífuna y mestiza del Municipio de Iriona.

El Hospital de Ciriboya es la sede del proyecto Luagu Hatuadi Waduhenu, primer hospital popular garífuna, el cual es un modelo de atención médica en Honduras, atendidos por médicos egresados de la ELAM (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina) con sede en Cuba.

La función social que ha venido cumpliendo los egresados de la ELAM en Honduras contrasta con la visión capitalista de la mayoría de los médicos Hondureños, los que han sido renuentes a prestar sus servicios en las zonas rurales del país.

El Hospital de Ciriboya fue construido con el apoyo de sindicatos de California además de esfuerzos propios del pueblo garífuna, a través del tezón del Dr. Luther Castillo, el que en las actuales circunstancias ha sido uno los abanderados en la defensa de la democracia y la construcción de un proyecto de país para todos, que incluye el imperativo de una asamblea constituyente.

El aislamiento en que viven las comunidades garífunas de Iriona y Walumugu ha sido aprovechado por los narcotraficantes que en contubernio con la elite de poder local han utilizado lugares desolados para efectuar sus desembarcos, teniendo apoyo logístico de bandas asociadas a la elite de poder nacional.

El complejo fenómeno del narcotráfico en Honduras, en especial en la costa norte se viene dando desde hace varias décadas, sin que hasta la fecha existan las medidas determinantes para cambiar el derrotero de la situación. Es de conocimiento público quienes son muchas de los intocables vinculados al negocio ilícito, los que persisten en utilizar sus plantaciones de palma africana y aeropuertos pseudoclandestinos, pero el poder económico que poseen los absuelve de antemano de cualquier delito.

El allanamiento del hospital es un claro mensaje dirigido al pueblo garífuna por su participación - en especial del Dr. Castillo y el personal del Hospital - en la resistencia al golpe de Estado. Para la OFRANEH la acción punitiva en contra del Hospital, es una muestra más del racismo que prevalece entre las huestes golpistas, las que ven el apoyo médico de los cubanos, a las campañas de alfabetización ejemplares que se han realizado en algunas partes del país, y la medicina con una visión social como amenaza al régimen feudal imperante en el país.

Nos preguntamos si ciertamente existe "inteligencia" alguna entre las fuerzas de seguridad, como para proceder a allanar el hospital, con el pretexto que día antes había aterrizado un avión supuestamente cargando droga en las comunidades circunvecinas.  

Para nuestro pueblo garífuna, el allanamiento al Hospital de Ciriboya, es una agresión más que demuestra como uno de los objetivos primordiales del gobierno de facto es destruir la visión comunitaria y promover la violencia. Es inaudito que una de los paradigmas en materia de salud comunitaria a nivel del continente, sea agredido por un gobierno conformado por una cúpula de mercenarios al servicio del comando Sur y de las compañías bananeras, telefónicas y petroleras que quieren preservar el Status Quo en Honduras.

La Ceiba, 7 de Octubre del 2009.
Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH

Honduras: U.S. Diplomatic Floundering

2009-10-02T00:00:00.004-04:00

American Indian Movement at UN: The Right to Speak

2009-09-27T11:52:00.002-04:00

PRESS RELEASE
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT
GRAND GOVERNING COUNCIL

September 24,2009
The Right to Speak

In President Obama’s speech to the United Nations on September 23, 2009, he spoke of a ‘new direction’. Two years ago, four solitary nations voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, they were Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America. The Australian government has since reversed its vote and now support the international human rights standard toward Indigenous people.

The American Indian Movement asks the question of the Obama Administration: Will his administration recognize and support the international standard approved by the vast majority of the world’s nations?

The United Nations 64th year brings world leaders together to our sacred homeland to discuss the effects of the world’s problems to humankind. The American Indian Movement respects the right of all world leaders to speak. We support the right of Moammar Al Gathafi, leader of Libya. We respect the right of Evo Moralas, President of Bolivia. We respect the right of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. We respect the right of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. We respect the right to speak at the United Nations of all the world leaders visiting our homeland.

We often talk in terms of the first world, or the west; or the second world, the east; or the third world, or the non-aligned nations. Another important dimension to this concept is the fourth world of natural and Indigenous people. Peoples whose populations oftentimes go beyond geo-political boundaries. While these struggles have been going on for hundreds of years, the international community has, for the most part, ignored this reality.

One of the greatest crimes against humanity occurred right here in the United States of America. Support for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is a start to right this great wrong.

Clyde Bellecourt, co-founder American Indian Movement
612.251.5836
Bill Means, International Indian Treaty Council
612.386.4030
Chief Terrance Nelson, Vice Chairman American Indian Movement
204.782.4827

Robert Parry Special Report: Neocon Judge's History of Cover-ups

2009-09-27T10:29:00.004-04:00

Poster comment: It is time for the CIA to own up to its illustrious past and turn the page on a clean righteous future. Maybe they can put themselves out of a job?

Reprinted from Consortium News
By Robert Parry
September 23, 2009
Laurence Silberman, a U.S. Appeals Court judge and a longtime neoconservative operative – part of what the Iran-Contra special prosecutor called “the strategic reserves” for convicted Reagan administration operatives in the 1980s – is back playing a similar role for the Bush-43 administration.

On Sept. 11, the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Silberman issued a 2-to-1 opinion dismissing a lawsuit against the private security firm, CACI International, brought by Iraqi victims of torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

Silberman declared that CACI was immune from prosecution because its employees were responding to U.S. military commands. The immunity ruling blocked legal efforts by 212 Iraqis, who suffered directly at Abu Ghraib or were the widows of men who died, to exact some accountability from CACI employees who allegedly assisted in the torture of prisoners.

"During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor's engagement in such activities shall be preempted," Silberman wrote.

But Silberman is not a dispassionate judge when it comes to the crimes of Republicans committed to advance the neocon cause.

In the 1980s, Silberman played behind-the-scenes roles in helping Ronald Reagan gain the White House; he helped formulate hard-line intelligence policies; he encouraged right-wing media attacks on liberals; and he protected the flanks of Reagan’s operatives who were caught breaking the law.

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican himself, counted Silberman as one of "a powerful band of Republican [judicial] appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army," determined to prevent any judgments against Reagan’s operatives who broke the law in the arms-for-hostage scandal.

In his 1997 memoir, Firewall, Walsh depicted Silberman as a leader of that partisan band, even recalling how Silberman had berated Judge George MacKinnon, also a Republican, who led the panel which had picked Walsh to be the special prosecutor.

"At a D.C. circuit conference, he [Silberman] had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon," Walsh wrote. "Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger."

In 1990, after Walsh had secured a difficult conviction of former White House aide Oliver North for offenses stemming from the Iran-Contra scandal, Silberman teamed up with another right-wing judge, David Sentelle, to overturn North’s conviction in a sudden outburst of sympathy for defendant rights.

Trashing Anita Hill

Less publicly, in 1991, Silberman also went to bat for the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, working with right-wing operatives to destroy the reputation of Anita Hill, a former Thomas employee who testified about his crude sexual harassment.

Author David Brock, then a well-paid right-wing hatchet man who published what he later admitted were scurrilous attacks on Hill, described the support and encouragement he received from Silberman and Silberman’s wife, Ricky. Even after Thomas had won Senate confirmation, Silberman still was pushing attack lines against Hill, Brock wrote in his book, Blinded by the Right.

While George H.W. Bush’s White House slipped Brock a psychiatric opinion that Hill suffered from “erotomania,” Silberman met with Brock to suggest even more colorful criticism of Hill.

“Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian ‘acting out’,” Brock wrote. “Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would never have asked Hill for dates: She had bad breath.”

After Brock published a book-length assault on Hill, called The Real Anita Hill, the Silbermans and other prominent conservatives joined a celebration at the Embassy Row Ritz-Carlton, Brock wrote, noting that also in attendance was Judge Sentelle.

But Silberman’s anything-goes approach to promoting – and protecting – right-wing control of the government dated back even further, to his key role as a foreign-policy and intelligence adviser to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.

During Campaign 1980, Silberman was a senior figure in what was then a fast-rising neoconservative faction that saw Reagan’s victory – and the defeat of President Jimmy Carter – as vital to expand U.S. military power, to confront the Soviet Union aggressively and to relieve pressure on Israel for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

More than a decade later, congressional investigators discovered that Silberman was assigned to secretive Reagan campaign operations collecting intelligence on what President Carter was doing to secure the release of 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

On April 20, 1980, the Reagan campaign created a group of foreign policy experts known as the Iran Working Group. The operation was run by Richard Allen, Fred Ikle and Silberman, the congressional investigators discovered.

After Reagan’s nomination in July, his campaign merged with that of his vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush, who had enlisted many ex-CIA officers who were loyal to Bush as a former CIA director.

October Surprise Obsession

The general election campaign assembled a strategy team, known as the “October Surprise Group,” which was ordered to prepare for “any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election,” according to a House Task Force that in 1992 investigated allegations of Republican interference in Carter’s hostage negotiations.

“Originally referred to as the ‘Gang of Ten,’” the Task Force report said the “October Surprise Group” consisted of Allen, Ikle, Charles M. Kupperman, Thomas H. Moorer, Eugene V. Rostow, William R. Van Cleave, John R. Lehman Jr., Robert G. Neumann, Seymour Weiss – and Silberman.

While that reference made it into the Task Force’s final report in January 1993, another part was deleted, which said: “According to members of the ‘October Surprise’ group, the following individuals also participated in meetings although they were not considered ‘members’ of the group: Michael Ledeen, Richard Stillwell, William Middendorf, Richard Perle, General Louis Walt and Admiral James Holloway.”

Deleted from the final report also was a section of the draft describing how the ex-CIA personnel who had worked for Bush’s campaign became the nucleus of the Republican intelligence operation that monitored Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations for the Reagan-Bush team.

“The Reagan-Bush campaign maintained a 24-hour Operations Center, which monitored press wires and reports, gave daily press briefings and maintained telephone and telefax contact with the candidate’s plane,” the draft report read. “Many of the staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush.” [I discovered the unpublished portions of Task Force’s report when I gain access to its files in late 1994.]

Another deletion involved a Sept. 16, 1980, meeting ordered by Reagan’s campaign director William Casey, who had become obsessed over the possibility of Carter pulling off an October Surprise release of the hostages.

On that date, Casey met with senior campaign officials Edwin Meese, Bill Timmons and Richard Allen about the “Persian Gulf Project,” according to an unpublished section of the House Task Force report and Allen’s notes. Two other participants at the meeting, according to Allen’s notes, were Michael Ledeen and Noel Koch.

That same day, Iran’s acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was quoted as citing Republican interference on the hostages. “Reagan, supported by [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and others, has no intention of resolving the problem,” Ghotbzadeh said. “They will do everything in their power to block it.”

Exactly what the Reagan-Bush “October Surprise” team did remains something of a historical mystery.

About two dozen witnesses – including former Iranian officials and international intelligence figures – have claimed the Republican contacts undercut Carter’s hostage negotiations, though others insist that the initiatives were simply ways to gather information about Carter’s desperate bid to free the hostages before the election. [For the most thorough account of the “October Surprise” case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

The L’Enfant Plaza Mystery

One of the many unanswered questions about the October Surprise mystery revolved around a meeting involving Laurence Silberman and an Iranian emissary at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington in September or early October 1980.

Years later, an Iranian arms dealer named Houshang Lavi claimed to be the emissary who met with Silberman, Allen and Robert McFarlane, who was then an aide to Sen. John Tower, R-Texas. Lavi said the meeting on Oct. 2 dealt with the possibility of trading arms to Iran for release of the hostages – and was arranged by Silberman.

Silberman, Allen and McFarlane acknowledged that a meeting happened, but they insisted they had no recollection of the emissary’s name nor who he was.

In 1990, I interviewed a testy Richard Allen about the meeting for a PBS Frontline documentary. Allen said he reluctantly went to the meeting, which he said was proposed by McFarlane. Allen said he took along Silberman as a witness.

“So Larry Silberman and I got on the subway and we went down to the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel where I met McFarlane and there were many people milling about. We sat at a table in the lobby. It was around the lunch hour. I was introduced to this very obscure character whose name I cannot recall. …

“The individual who was either an Egyptian or an Iranian or could have been an Iranian living in Egypt – and his idea was that he had the capacity to intervene, to deliver the hostages to the Reagan forces. Now, I took that at first to mean that he was able to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan, candidate for the presidency of the United States, which was absolutely lunatic. And I said so. I believe I said, or Larry did, ‘we have one President at a time. That’s the way it is.’

“So this fellow continued with his conversation. I was incredulous that McFarlane would have ever brought a guy like this or placed any credibility in a guy like this. Just absolutely incredulous, and so was Larry Silberman. This meeting lasted maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So that’s it. There’s no need to continue this meeting. …

“Larry and I walked out. And I remember Larry saying, ‘Boy, you better write a memorandum about this. This is really spaceship stuff.’ And it, of course, set my opinion very firmly about Bud McFarlane for having brought this person to me in the first place.”

‘Swarthy’ Emissary

Allen described the emissary as “stocky and swarthy, dark-complected,” but otherwise “non-descript.” Allen added that the man looked like a “person from somewhere on the Mediterranean littoral. How about that?”

Allen said this Egyptian or Iranian “must have given a name at the time, must have.” But Allen couldn’t recall it. He also said he made no effort to check out the man’s position or background before agreeing to the meeting.

“Did you ask McFarlane, who is this guy?” I asked Allen.

“I don’t recall having asked him, no,” Allen responded.

“I guess I don’t understand why you wouldn’t say, ‘Is this guy an Iranian, is he someone you’ve known for a while?’” I pressed.

“Well, gee, I’m sorry that you don’t understand,” Allen lashed back. “I really feel badly for you. It’s really too bad you don’t understand. But that’s your problem, not mine.”

“But wouldn’t you normally ask that kind of background question?”

“Not necessarily,” Allen said. “McFarlane wanted me to meet a guy and this guy was going to talk about the hostages. I met plenty of people during that period of time who wanted to talk to me about the hostages. … This was no different from anybody else I would meet on this subject.”

“It obviously turned out to be different from most people you’ve met on the subject,” I interjected.

“”Oh, it turned out to be because this guy is the centerpiece of some sort of great conspiracy web that has been spun,” Allen snapped.

“Well, were there many people who offered to deliver the hostages to Ronald Reagan?” I asked.

“No, this one was particularly different, but I didn’t know that before I went to the meeting, you understand.”

“Did you ask McFarlane what on earth this guy was going to propose?”

“I don’t think I did in advance, no.”

What also was unusual about this meeting was what Allen and Silberman did not do afterwards. Though Allen said that he and Silberman recognized the sensitivity of the approach, neither of Reagan’s foreign policy advisers contacted the Carter administration or reported the offer to law enforcement.

Defying Logic

It also defied logic that seasoned operatives like Allen and Silberman would have agreed to a meeting with an emissary from a hostile power without having done some due-diligence about who the person was and what his bona fides were.

Iranian arms dealer Lavi later claimed to be the mysterious emissary. And government documents revealed that Lavi made a similar approach to the independent presidential campaign of John Anderson, although Anderson’s campaign – unlike Allen and Silberman – promptly informed the CIA and State Department.

For his part, Silberman denied any substantive discussion with the mysterious emissary but refused to discuss the meeting in any detail. He did insist that he was out of town on Oct. 2, the date cited by Lavi, but Silberman wouldn’t provide a list of dates when he was in Washington during the fall of 1980.

Though purportedly having arranged the meeting, McFarlare also insisted that he couldn’t recall the identity of the emissary.

Later, when a Senate panel conducted a brief inquiry into whether the Republicans interfered with Carter’s hostage negotiations, a truculent Allen testified – and brought along a memo that he claimed represented his contemporaneous recollections of the L’Enfant Plaza meeting.

However, the memo, dated Sept. 10, 1980, flatly contradicted the previous accounts from Allen, Silberman and McFarlane. It described a meeting arranged by Mike Butler, another Tower aide, with McFarlane only joining in later as the pair told Allen about a meeting they had had with a Mr. A.A. Mohammed, a Malaysian who operated out of Singapore.

“This afternoon, by mutual agreement, I met with Messrs. Mohammed, Butler and McFarlane. I also took Larry Silberman along to the meeting,” Allen wrote in the memo.

According to the memo, Mohammed presented a scheme for returning the Shah of Iran’s son to the country as “a figurehead monarch” which would be accompanied by a release of the U.S. hostages. Though skeptical of the plan, “both Larry and I indicated that we would be pleased to hear whatever additional news Mr. Mohammed might be able to turn up, and I suggested that that information be communicated via a secure channel,” the memo read.

Nearly every important detail was different both in how the meeting was arranged and its contents. Gone was the proposal to release the hostages to candidate Reagan, gone was the abrupt cutoff, gone was the Iranian or Egyptian – some guy from the “Mediterranean littoral” – replaced by a Malaysian businessman whose comments were welcomed along with future contacts “via a secure channel.” The memo didn’t even mention the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, nor was McFarlane the organizer.

A reasonable conclusion might be that Allen’s memo was about an entirely different meeting, which would suggest that Republican contacts with Iranian emissaries were more numerous than previously admitted and that Silberman was more of a regular player.

Also, Silberman, McFarlane and Butler – when questioned by the House Task Force investigating the issue in 1992 – disputed Allen’s new version of the L’Enfant Plaza tale. They claimed no recollection of the A.A. Mohammed discussion.

Nevertheless, the House Task Force, in its determination to turn the page on the complex October Surprise issue, accepted Allen’s memo as the final answer to the L’Enfant Plaza question and pressed ahead with a broader rejection of any wrongdoing by Republicans – even though that required concealing a host of incriminating documents. [See Secrecy & Privilege.]

Tantalizing Clue

The House Task Force also turned a blind eye to another tantalizing clue related to the L’Enfant Plaza mystery. Lavi’s lawyer, former CIA counsel Mitchell Rogovin, provided me a page of his notes from that time period.

Rogovin, who was an adviser to the John Anderson campaign, wrote on his calendar entry for Sept. 29, 1980, a summary of Lavi’s plan to trade weapons for the hostages. After that, Rogovin recorded a telephone contact with senior CIA official John McMahon to discuss Lavi’s plan and to schedule a face-to-face meeting with a CIA representative on Oct. 2.

The next entry, however, was stunning. It read, “Larry Silberman – still very nervous/will recommend … against us this P.M. I said $250,000 – he said why even bother.”

When I called Rogovin about this notation, he said it related to a loan that the Anderson campaign was seeking from Crocker National Bank where Silberman served as legal counsel. The note meant that Silberman was planning to advise the bank officers against the loan, Rogovin said.

I asked Rogovin if he might have mentioned Lavi’s hostage plan to Silberman, who was in the curious position of being a senior Reagan adviser and weighing in on a loan to an independent campaign that was viewed as siphoning off votes from Carter. (Crocker did extend a line of credit to Anderson.)

“There was no discussion of the Lavi proposal,” Rogovin insisted. But Rogovin acknowledged that Silberman was a friend from the Ford administration where both men had worked on intelligence issues, Rogovin from the CIA and Silberman at the Justice Department. Later, Rogovin and Silberman became next-door neighbors and bought a boat together.

In a normal investigation, such coincidences would strain credulity, especially given Lavi’s claim that he took part in a meeting with Republicans at the L’Enfant Plaza on Oct. 2, the same day that he talked with a CIA representative. Lavi also claimed that Silberman had arranged the meeting, which would make sense given Rogovin’s personal ties to Silberman.

However, as on a host of other compelling leads, the House Task Force chose to look the other way.

Reagan’s Victory

On Nov. 4, 1980, with Carter unable to free the hostages and Americans humiliated by the year-long ordeal with Iran, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.

For his loyal service in the campaign, the neoconservative Silberman was put in charge of the transition team’s intelligence section. The team prepared a report attacking the CIA’s analytical division for noting growing weaknesses in the Soviet Union, a position despised by the neocons because it undercut their case for a costly expansion of the Pentagon’s budget.

Silberman’s transition team accused the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence of “an abject failure” to foresee a supposedly massive Soviet buildup of strategic weapons and “the wholesale failure” to comprehend the sophistication of Soviet propaganda.

“These failures are of such enormity,” the transition report said, “that they cannot help but suggest to any objective observer that the agency itself is compromised to an unprecedented extent and that its paralysis is attributable to causes more sinister than incompetence.”

In other words, Silberman’s transition team was implying that CIA analysts who didn’t toe the neoconservative line must be Soviet agents. Even anti-Soviet hardliners like the CIA’s Robert Gates recognized the impact that the incoming administration’s hostility had on the CIA analysts.

“That the Reaganites saw their arrival as a hostile takeover was apparent in the most extraordinary transition period of my career,” Gates wrote in his memoir, From the Shadows. “The reaction inside the Agency to this litany of failure and incompetence” from the transition team “was a mix of resentment and anger, dread and personal insecurity.”

Amid rumors that the transition team wanted to purge several hundred top analysts, career officials feared for their jobs, especially those considered responsible for assessing the Soviet Union as a declining power rapidly falling behind the West in technology and economics.

According to some intelligence sources, Silberman expected to get the job of CIA director and flew into a rage when Reagan gave the job to his campaign director William Casey, who also was tied to the October Surprise operations. (The U.S. hostages in Iran were released immediately upon Ronald Reagan taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981.)

Silberman’s consolation prize was to be named a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, where he helped frustrate the Iran-Contra investigation by overturning Oliver North’s conviction in 1990 and to this day is a defender of the neocons’ foreign policy -- as witnessed by his Sept. 11, 2009, ruling blocking civil lawsuits against U.S. government contractors implicated in torturing Iraqis.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Pay attention Iran Contra/Isreal Zbig Brez.

2009-09-24T08:25:00.003-04:00

Pay attention, Iran-Contra gave Reagan the office he did not deserve, which gave us Bush 1 and Bush 2.

The right has been living a dream, they need to wake up from... It is our obligation to, kindly, oblige them.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Neocon-Judge-s-History-of-by-Robert-Parry-090923-866.html

Zbig Brzezinski: Obama Administration Should Tell Israel U.S. Will Attack Israeli Jets if They Try to Attack Iran

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/zbig-brzezinski-obama-administration-should-tell-israel-us-will-attack-israeli-jets-if-they-try-to-a.html

From Ben Carnes Fasting In Lafayette Park For Leonard Peltiers Release and Meeting with the Great Black Father 09/10/09

2009-09-10T09:55:00.002-04:00

I wanted to announce that on Wednesday afternoon, I ceased the liquid portion of
my fast due to dehydration. I had taken that as far as I could without
endangering my health. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, when I relieved my
self, I experienced a burning sensation and around Noon Wednesday, I began to
feel as if my kidneys were tightening up.

I made an attempt to contact a
physician, but after a period of time with receiving a response.
At 2:40 PM (Eastern), I consumed some liquids to hydrate myself. It was a
promise I made to Chief Tayac when he visited me at Lafayette Park. He told me
that day that I needed to hydrate myself. He said, ?You are a Chief! Don?t
you dare hit the ground! There are a lot of people depending upon you to be
here for them, and if you die what good would that serve them?? I assured him
that when my body told me that I was beginning to have problems, I would take
care of myself.

Still, I will continue to fast without food until 8:45 AM Saturday. I can assure
you that Leonard would appreciate and respect this decision. He has suffered so
much pain and loss of allies and relatives, that it would only grieve him had I
continued and possibly caused irreparable harm to my health.

My personal prayer will continue on, and I will continue to conduct myself in a
honorable and respectful manner befitting my position. I knew that when I
decided to publicly announce to that I am a Sun Dance Chief and would be taking
this course of action. I would open myself up to criticisms, but that in itself
is a sacrifice I willingly accepted. And there has been none, just messages of
respect and support. It was never my intention to promote myself, but to show
my love and support for my Sun Dance brother.

I had contacted Arvol Looking Horse about the possibility of coming to DC. He
could not since he already had an earlier commitment, but he supported what I
was doing and that he would support me through his prayers from over there. I
am very thankful to have those prayers from the Keeper of the White Buffalo
Calf Pipe in this way.

I know that there are many more people who have joined in this fast as an act of
solidarity for me and for Leonard. This simple course of action has aroused so
much supportive action from around the world. It has done so much more than if
we had tried to have everyone come to DC.

Many of you are organizing in your
communities and creating so much awareness everywhere and that is so important.
The results of this prayer and sacrifice may not be immediately, I feel
something is taking place on a larger spiritual level and we will need to keep
that in mind in all that we do for Leonard. We know that we will prevail, and
it would have been difficult without your support.

Send your cards and letters to Leonard. Let him know how your event went and let
him know that we are all here for him and that we will continue to do all we can
to bring him home.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Ben Carnes

Impeach Scalia Petition

2009-08-19T09:52:00.004-04:00

Petition Link:
http://www.usalone.com/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?pnum=1000

Mark Crispin Miller Reference:
http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground/browse_thread/thread/c425ac226eb1e352?hl=en

Scalia's Opinion on a case esssentially calling the constitutional protection of innocence null!:

"The Georgia Supreme Court rejected petitioner's
"actual-innocence" claim on the merits, denying
his extraor-dinary motion for a new trial. Davis
can obtain relief only if that determination was
contrary to, or an unreasonable application of,
"clearly established Federal law, as determined
by the Supreme Court of the United States." It
most assuredly was not. This Court has never held
that the Constitution forbids the execution of a
convicted defendant who has had a full and fair
trial but is later able to convince a habeas
court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to
the contrary, we have repeatedly left that
question unresolved, while expressing
considerable doubt that any claim based on
alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally
cognizable. "

Essentially this is saying that there is no protection of innocence in the Constitution.

How can any sane or moral person claim such insouciance?

The decision stands as a sign of his deteriorating mental capacity. Would he have the capacity to resign?

Thumb Drives and Readyboost

2009-08-17T22:27:00.003-04:00

Microcenter is giving 4gig thumb drives away with a card in the mail w/2 coupons.

In vista there is a feature that allows a USB to be added to ram called readyboost. In order to get non-compliant drives to work, look here:

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53634

here is how to do it on xp

http://www.mstalkonline.com/xp-hack-readyboost-with-any-usb-device/

Nuclear Overall Costs are Abysmal

2009-06-18T09:23:00.002-04:00

Everyone thinks it is cheaper but the overall costs to produce nuclear fuel and the contamination hazards throughout the production cycle are not so innocuous.

I would think that if the tax payers were made aware of the costs to them via subsidies from start to decommission costs (in the billions) they would swear off beyond recall. Every nuclear plant has increased costs to the consumer and then there are the stranded costs.

It was reported yesterday that California Edison was purchasing 726 MW from Solar MIllenium.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-millennium-lands-726mw-contract-with-socal-edison

Let's move into the future and stop living under the fear of another nuclear catastrophe waiting happen.

I have no trust in someone who plays with fire then claims the chances are small. If it goes wrong, we would NEVER recover.

It would take 10 years till completion and the billions invested for a penultimately DIRTY technology could be better spend on renewable infrastructure.

The quote for insuring americans with health insurance was a billion or so? How about the Billions spent in Iraq? Now billions for this?
We can't afford it.
Last but not least, the fear of a catasrophe is enough to relegate this primitive technology to the pages of history. One incicdent is avoidable if it is NOT built.

DON"T GIVE IT CHANCE TO HAPPEN!

NO NUKES

Will The Cheney/Bush Private Hit Squad Turn Themselves In? Running via private funds?

2009-05-11T10:00:00.005-04:00

Seems like people are just showing up dead via Blackwater (now XE)? It could not be easily dismissed that private individuals could be responsible.

Especially since Bush/Cheney worked so hard to get Iran and Libya out from under U.S. Sanctions after the U.S. Iraqi invasion in 2003 so Halliburton could do business there after both countries were under sanction for years but prior this, Halliburton claimed immunity due to offshore business address.

Where is the media follow up to the private hit squad Cheney and Bush were running? We are all the media. Fear not death by private hit squad. Speak OUT. They can't kill everyone.

I doubt they would follow any international law as since they did not while they were in office.

Seymour Hersch Broke the story in a speech in Minnesota,
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us." from Raw Story

Socialism for all, not just for corporations Part deux

2009-05-06T11:15:00.007-04:00

Well, we Have been subsidizing the motor vehicle for decades to the extreme. They built a huge highway to newark ohio i.e. 161 and it would have been a heck of a lot cheaper to build a light rail system that would not need all the attention and maintenance that a road requires, and they would not have those pesky RFID readers that the Bush/Taft administration installed.

Remember, it was GM and other large corporate concerns that killed public transportation and if you don’t accept this as fact, it has been proven without a doubt. I lived on an ELECTRIC trolley line as a child. Stop and think, oil is primitive as stone wheels.

See Thread:

http://glasscityjungle.com/wordpress/?p=7085

Scientific Vs. Anecdotal Evidence, Pork and Disease, Factory Farms

2009-04-29T09:26:00.003-04:00

We as individuals must make the daily deliberations that affect our society as a
whole. We need to make them intelligently and based on sound etiology.

We cannot be beholden to the a priori assumptions of science or religion. That
being said, it involves us educating ourselves beyond those, who with degrees
and bully pulpits, tell us that which is antithetical to reality and sound
logic.

Not with a loud voice but with the murmur of the daily task at hand do we affect
the world in small ways, brick by brick, mouthful by mouthful.

See ProgressOhio Article:
For The Cause Of The Swine Flu Outbreak, Look First To Factory Farms
http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/daveharding/CqJt/commentary#comment-C2CP

Granville, Ohio, Karl Rove, Still Not Arrested

2009-04-17T10:07:00.004-04:00

April 16, 2009, 8 P.M.

Granville, Ohio
Denison University, Swasey Chapel

by nation.of.gandhis

Karl Rove spoke to a subdued, mixed crowd numbering, 2-300. Sponsored by the Campus Republicans and a group called Young Life (America?).

I did see a vanity plate in the parking garage from New Jersey with that on it, as in YGLFAM or the like.

In a liberal arts college, the house was very civilized. The only outbreak was when a young fellow who had several male family military members involved in several wars asked Karl why we fight for human rights and then deny them for prisoners of war.

Karl spoke on the economy, and about his mistakes in the White House (should have gone for immigration stuff first then the Social Security), with the smirk of Cheney across his lips and nukular (sic) on the tongue. It was apparent he spent a lot of time with these guys. As to the specific content of his speech, it was main stream right, though not very condescending as one might presume. There were applauses from the right on their catch phrases.

He laid the economic collapse in the lap of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac even though McCain Campaign Manager Paid Millions To Lobby Against Regulation On Behalf Of Fannie and Freddie.

One of the questioners from Change For Ohio, asked Karl about the "martial law" threat on two republican members of congress, one of whom being Imhoff, for not following the party line, but was poo pooed by Rove and denied after the petitioner claimed to have video proof.

The arguments continued from Rove, as from the right, that our national debt has not been as high as it was since WW2.

(Well personally, I would think that economic excursion got us through many years of middle class progress.)

Of course he railed the high debt and all the consequences, but such forethought was not used before invading Iraq.

He did bring up the election theft of Ohio subject and added, "What did they think I had? I did not have some magic little black box."

Well Karl maybe you didn't but perhaps Mike Connell did.

Smoking/Canabis/Alzheimers

2009-02-19T14:08:00.006-05:00

http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/OHliz/C2Sy/commentary#comment-CL4S

Well I wonder how much of the hemp plant had been emulated as decorations from calumets (peace pipes) of the past.

A onetime spokesperson for National Macrobiotics organization said that lung cancer forms in fat that collects around the lungs. That is where the tumors are found. The fat collects minerals and other toxins. The lungs can't clean that out.

So a high fat diet is not recommended, especially animal fat. And I have never heard of a blind study on vegan smokers, lol. I really believe tobacco is a scape goat for meat eaters. If tobacco is respected, it will teach one to be vegan.

The other observation I have is that now, for alzheimers prevention, they are passing out drugs called: Cholinestearase Inhibitors. What is nicotine? Same thing.

Apparently the blood pressure pills are now supposedly the cause of mental alzheimers.

And can we dispense with the DEA's exclusion from environmental impact studies of hemp removal? PLEASE? I AM DEAD SERIOUS HERE. There is no study on how it affects deer population and other wildlife including birds who used to have 50% of their bird seed as hemp. Let alone the human population without work and who are poor and need employment. Water is the universal solvent.

Hemp is the universal solvent of economic disparity. But we can't have that now can we?

Besides WE NEED JOBS, both here in Ohio and around the world.

Obama And Keeping the Republicans Out Of The Kitchen

2009-01-31T10:50:00.002-05:00

Well mom just made your favorite dessert and it is sitting on the counter cooling.

If you dare reach over and try to touch it you will be chided into waiting till later.

Well as the republicans have had their way with things for the last 8 or so years, we realize that the cake of peace and international progress lay in the restraints of the diplomacy of international support.

We can not let that be disturbed.

Hopefully there will be no time when it will:
when the fruition of it gives way to a planetary peace.

An international tribunal elected democratically would disallow ANY extrajudicial killing as in war or international espionage. This will require an international police organization and much restaint on behalf of all nations.

It would be the end the attacks of the predator aircraft, unilateral attacks from one country to another and restraint on all sides.

Essentially this framework has been in place in the United Nations and the Geneva convention. It will take leadership to maintain this bulwark of civilization that has been compromised by this last U.S. administration.

Can we, in the United States, revive the planetary good will in favor of a planetary peace?

Yes we can.

Fetus Worship Definition

2009-01-27T15:09:00.005-05:00

The act of biologic replication is worshipped in lieu of understanding the physiological consequences of a rapist's stem cells affecting the mother for the rest of her life.

The article below shows:

4 days after pregnancy stem cells invade the brain and create neurons

See the science here:
http://brainethics.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/on-a-mothers-mind/