Sunday, December 31, 2006

Doctor and invention outlast jeers and threats 

He is a doctor and innovator. Years ago, he took aim at a medical curse that has disabled millions of people and defied treatment. He came up with a cure that was astonishingly simple. No surgery. No pills.

Now, think: Would his colleagues cheer his stroke of ingenuity by spreading the news -- and practice -- of the treatment to relieve suffering?

No. Inexplicably, they rejected him, ridiculed him, heaved accusations that threatened his license to practice medicine.

Portland ear surgeon John Epley persevered quietly. His daughter grew up largely unaware of his struggle. When by chance she found out, the discovery changed her life -- and his.

Stirring disbelief

John Epley's stooped shoulders and gentle eyes gave him a turtlish look. He wore a thickly knotted necktie and wrinkled sport coat. No amount of combing could tame the stubborn cowlick in his short hair.

His audience of ear surgeons muttered skeptically and shook their heads. Few at the October 1980 meeting in Anaheim, Calif., believed Epley's claim to have developed a cure for the most common cause of chronic vertigo.

In any given year, tens of thousands of people seek treatment for the disorder's strange, crippling attacks. Provoked by a casual tilt or turn of the head, the victim's surroundings whirl. The eyeballs twitch involuntarily. Nausea overwhelms the senses. On-and-off bouts may torment a sufferer for years.

Physicians were baffled. The best they could offer as treatment was a drastic last resort: surgically destroying nerves to the inner ear, impairing patients' balance and possibly their hearing.

Epley proposed an elegant alternative.

His talk concluded with a demonstration, a young woman acting as his patient. Epley and his research collaborator, audiologist Dominic Hughes, began by tilting the woman flat on her back, her head hanging over the end of an exam bench. Hughes cradled her head in his hands and rotated it about 45 degrees to his right, then he and Epley rolled the woman's head and shoulders back to the left in a counterclockwise move that ended with her face down. In a final move, Hughes and Epley lifted the woman to a sitting position.

And that was it.

By then, audience members were walking out. One doctor stomped up to Epley and slapped down a comment card before exiting. He'd scrawled, "I resent having to waste my time listening to some guy's pet theory."

Solving the riddle

Epley diagnosed many patients at his Glisan Street medical office with a condition known by a cumbersome name: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV.

A Viennese physician first described the disorder in 1921. Decades later, nobody had nailed down the cause or devised a satisfactory treatment.

To Epley, it was a challenge ripe for picking.

By nature, the Klamath Falls native was a hands-on problem-solver. In college, he tinkered in the physics laboratories at the University of Oregon. His zeal for experimentation continued after he earned a medical degree from the school now called Oregon Health & Science University. During his surgical residency at Stanford University Medical Center, he helped develop an early cochlear implant to restore hearing. He opened a solo practice across the street from Providence Portland Medical Center in 1965.

Though no longer connected to a university, he devised surgical methods and instruments -- innovations that medical journals published. As he dreamed up ideas, he'd sometimes forget the patients cramming into his waiting room, Hughes observed.

The audiologist shared Epley's fascination with dizziness. With no graduate degree, Hughes was an unlikely collaborator. Epley had hired him to do workplace hearing tests. But Hughes had been a research assistant at the University of Chicago Medical School and had spent three years studying hearing and balance problems at a Japanese university. Over a long lunch two or three times a week, the two debated the latest studies and hashed out their own ideas.

To maintain balance, the brain coordinates messages from the eyes, from muscles pulling against gravity and from motion sensors inside the inner ear's maze of fluid-filled canals.

Another researcher had reported finding chalklike particles in the inner ears of vertigo patients and proposed that these particles clumped onto ears' motion sensors to trigger false sensations of motion. But the hypothesis failed to explain the on-again-off-again nature of positional vertigo: If particles stuck on sensors, why did dizziness ever go away?

Epley and Hughes reasoned that the particles must float freely. Head movements might shift them, causing a siege of dizziness until the particles settled or shifted. It might be possible, they figured, to move the particles where they wouldn't cause mischief. Since the particles are denser than inner-ear fluid and sink, gravity could do the work.

Hughes used plastic tubing to build a model of the inner ear. To simulate loose particles, he put BBs in the coiled tubes. He and Epley flipped and turned the hand-size model as they might a kid's puzzle, to work out a sequence of moves to reposition the tiny metal balls.

They began testing the moves on people straightaway, tilting and rolling them on an exam bench. Odd as the treatment sounded, frustrated patients were keen to try it.

The first two or three subjects seemed to gain immediate relief. At first, Epley wasn't too impressed. The condition often clears up by itself, he recalls reminding himself. He didn't know whether he had made any difference.

But when the treatment cured several more patients, including one who had endured dizziness for a decade, he and Hughes realized they'd hit upon a great discovery.

Hard sell


In Portland, some of Epley's colleagues were so skeptical that they began to question his medical skills. Some doctors stopped referring patients.

On one occasion, Epley scheduled time in an operating room at Providence Portland Medical Center so that a patient could be put under anesthesia while he and Hughes performed the repositioning maneuvers. The patient was an elderly woman disabled by vertigo; she had to be pushed around in a wheelchair with her head cradled in a brace. Epley applied a handheld vibrator behind the affected ear to help mobilize the particles while rolling the patient.

The anesthesiologist glared at Epley, dumbfounded. He later pulled Epley aside. "I don't think you know what you are doing," Epley recalls him saying.

But when the woman awoke, her vertigo was gone. The results amazed even Hughes. The anesthesiologist, impressed in a different way, filed a complaint at the hospital. The hospital's audit committee soon dropped the matter, but tensions resurfaced.

By 1983, when Epley had cured several more cases, he and Hughes submitted their first article. The Journal of Otology rejected it, explaining that the treatment defied established theory. The two revised the paper and submitted it to other journals but got nowhere. Hughes struck out on his own after completing his doctoral degree.

Epley labored on. Rejection drove him to work harder to convince colleagues. He no longer had time for hobbies or socializing, his wife, Norma, and daughter Cathy noted.

In front of hostile crowds, he kept presenting his findings. Ken Aebi, a medical supply salesman in Portland who'd become Epley's friend, felt helplessly embarrassed for him. Epley struggled at the lectern, reading too much from notes and occasionally wandering off on tangents. Some doctors rolled their eyes. Others laughed openly.

The surgeon launched into a project to design and build a motorized chair that would enable him to better treat balance disorders, even in patients with fragile necks or who were obese.

He tracked cases he treated, using handwritten index cards for a database. In 1992, he submitted a report to the journal of the American Academy of Otolaryngology. In it, he described the 100 percent cure rate of his "canalith repositioning" maneuver in 30 patients.

The journal published the report. More than 10 years after Epley took on BPPV, he'd finally gained the recognition that was vital to acceptance among his peers. But the stamp of approval did not sway the skeptics. Many doctors rejected or ignored Epley's breakthrough, even in his hometown.

Desperate patient

At an emergency room in 1995, a doctor couldn't figure out the cause of a sudden attack of vertigo that struck Joseph Delahunt.

He had crawled from the living room of his North Portland house out to his car so that his wife could drive him to the hospital. Delahunt hung his head out the window and vomited most of the way. An Air Force veteran in his mid-50s, he was healthy and active -- selling real estate and practicing yoga -- until the attacks started.

Delahunt consulted his family doctor, then tried a neurologist and an ear, nose and throat doctor. They prescribed motion-sickness drugs and other medicines that didn't help much. One told him he'd have to learn to live with the "benign" condition. None mentioned Epley's treatment. His wife discovered it on the Internet.

Delahunt's condition worsened. To avoid unbearable, spinning nausea, he sat as still as he could in a reclining chair. For nearly three months, he left the recliner only to go the bathroom.

At Epley's office, an assistant helped Delahunt down a long hallway to a gray-walled room with closed blinds. An ungainly apparatus filled much of the room. Inside a giant steel ring hung a padded chair that reminded Delahunt of an ejection seat. Motors, gears and drive-chains were rigged to flip and twirl the chair like a carnival ride.

Delahunt stepped up to a platform and into the chair. An assistant clipped straps across his chest and ankles. She covered his eyes with a bulky mask. It contained a video camera to track his eyes. She clipped a vibrator behind his ear. It buzzed gently, more lightly than a cell phone on vibrate.

"Are you comfortable?" the assistant asked. Delahunt nodded, grateful for the Valium he'd taken.

Epley fingered a joystick controller to tilt the chair back until Delahunt was face up. A flick of the joystick rotated Delahunt like a barbecue skewer. On a black-and-white computer display, Epley monitored his patient's eyes for a characteristic twitching movement triggered by positional vertigo. He repeated the series of calibrated tilts and whirls. Then he swung the chair upright and face-forward.

No waves of vertigo struck when Delahunt moved his head. The nausea had cleared. He stopped taking the medications other doctors prescribed and resumed his life.

Threat to livelihood

In Portland, many doctors still dismissed Epley as a crank.

The conflict flared into a crisis in 1996. The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners notified Epley that he was under investigation for alleged unprofessional conduct.

His medical license and livelihood were on the line.

At issue was Epley's development and use of another cutting-edge technique: the infusion of a drug to deaden nerves suspected of causing inner-ear disturbances. The case dragged on for five years before hearing officer Marilyn Litzenberger ruled.

Epley kept his feelings to himself, even at home. But his wife and daughter knew that the investigation weighed heavily. Epley's stoop worsened, they could see. His health faltered. He had to break into his retirement savings to pay for his legal defense.

Epley's accusers, two Portland physicians, testified that Epley was administering the nerve-deadening drugs recklessly, based on inadequate diagnostic testing.

Epley's main defender, a Harvard-affiliated specialist from Boston, described Epley as "a forward thinker who has been right virtually every time he stuck his neck out."

Litzenberger left no doubt whom she found most credible, portraying the board's medical experts as hostile, one-sided and ill-informed. In the summer of 2001, Litzenberger dismissed all claims.

By then, a review article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine had credited John Epley as the inventor of the "treatment currently recommended" for positional vertigo. In clinical trials, about 90 percent of patients were cured by a single treatment. Doctors applying treatment around the world referred to it as the "Epley maneuver."

Daughter's mission

Epley's daughter, Cathy, may have never heard the full story of her father's travails if not for a terrible coincidence.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Cathy was attending a medical convention in Denver, hoping to find job leads. At 43, she had worked as an editor for a business magazine during the Internet boom, then switched to politics, managing anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore's unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1998. She moved on to a job in marketing with a medical device startup. But the firm couldn't afford to keep her on full time. So she tagged along with her father to Denver.

News of multiple jet crashes halted the convention. With airliners grounded, convention goers scrambled to book rental cars from a hopelessly inadequate supply. Cathy Epley accepted an offer to share a ride back to Portland with her father's old friend Ken Aebi and his wife. They headed west trying to make sense of the terrorist strikes, compulsively gleaning news from the radio. As the drive wore on, the conversation turned to John Epley and his struggles.

Cathy Epley felt enraged.

But as she absorbed the details, her anger solidified into something more like resolve: She had to help her father get his due. The rest of the drive, Epley spent talking with Aebi about ways to help her father earn money from his inventions.

Back in Portland, she tried to interest venture capitalists in commercializing her father's work. Several listened to her pitch, but all had the same message: She was unlikely to land venture funding. Endless meetings with fund managers, however, weren't fruitless. One suggested she seek startup money from the National Institutes of Health's small-business innovation program.

Cathy Epley went out on a limb. With scant knowledge of running a company, she worked 10 months without pay, writing grant proposals and a business plan. She named the business Vesticon, and she and her father held monthly "board meetings" at American Dream Pizza, across Glisan Street from the elder Epley's office.

Soon federal grants started rolling in: more than $348,000 in 2003, $1.4 million in 2004 and $1.6 million in 2005. Cathy Epley hired an engineer and technicians to build a sleeker version of the "Omniax" chair. The company leased an office and set up a crowded laboratory in Southeast Portland.

In January, specialists in Louisiana, San Diego and Portland are set to begin clinical trials of the chair. The study should take four to six months. If it stays on track and yields satisfactory results, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could allow Vesticon to begin sales next summer. Cathy Epley has already begun negotiating with distributors.

Epilogue

On a recent day in the building where Epley has practiced since 1965, the doctor stood by the controls of his rotating chair.

"We're going to roll you back," he said to a patient from Idaho. She'd suffered intermittent vertigo since a rollover car accident and was back for a follow-up on a successful earlier treatment. Epley piloted the chair through rolls and twists. The device showed signs of modifications: a radio transmitter lashed to its frame with nylon straps, a video camera clamped to an adjacent shelf, cables to added components snaking beneath ceiling tiles pushed ajar.

At 76, Epley sees patients three days a week. He spends the two other days of the workweek at Vesticon. His daughter's startup has already launched development of two of Epley's other inventions.

In a pause between patients, Epley reflected on the reasons other doctors refused to accept his findings for so many years.

"If I look back at medical school, much of it was misinformation," he said. "Physicians learn to just do the routine, to do the accepted things -- don't go too far out.

"They've got so much to lose if they stick their neck out."

- Joe Rojas-Burke ©2006 Oregon Live LLC. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:57 PM

The Bill of Wrongs 

I love those year-end roundups—ubiquitous annual lists of greatest films and albums and lip glosses and tractors. It's reassuring that all human information can be wrestled into bundles of 10. In that spirit, Slate proudly presents, the top 10 civil liberties nightmares of the year:

10. Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui
Long after it was clear the hapless Frenchman was neither the "20th hijacker" nor a key plotter in the attacks of 9/11, the government pressed to execute him as a "conspirator" in those attacks. Moussaoui's alleged participation? By failing to confess to what he may have known about the plot, which may have led the government to disrupt it, Moussaoui directly caused the deaths of thousands of people. This massive overreading of the federal conspiracy laws would be laughable were the stakes not so high. Thankfully, a jury rejected the notion that Moussaoui could be executed for the crime of merely wishing there had been a real connection between himself and 9/11.

9. Guantanamo Bay
It takes a licking but it keeps on ticking. After the Supreme Court struck down the military tribunals planned to try hundreds of detainees moldering on the base, and after the president agreed that it might be a good idea to close it down, the worst public relations fiasco since the Japanese internment camps lives on. Prisoners once deemed "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" are either quietly released (and usually set free) or still awaiting trial. The lucky 75 to be tried there will be cheered to hear that the Pentagon has just unveiled plans to build a $125 million legal complex for the hearings. The government has now officially put more thought into the design of Guantanamo's court bathrooms than the charges against its prisoners.

8. Slagging the Media
Whether the Bush administration is reclassifying previously declassified documents, sidestepping the FOIA, threatening journalists for leaks on dubious legal grounds, or, most recently, using its subpoena power to try to wring secret documents from the ACLU, the administration has continued its "secrets at any price" campaign. Is this a constitutional crisis? Probably not. Annoying as hell? Definitely.

7. Slagging the Courts
It starts with the president's complaints about "activist judges," and evolves to Congressional threats to appoint an inspector general to oversee federal judges. As public distrust of the bench is fueled, the stripping of courts' authority to hear whole classes of cases—most recently any habeas corpus claims from Guantanamo detainees—almost seems reasonable. Each tiny incursion into the independence of the judiciary seems justified. Until you realize that the courts are often the only places that will defend our shrinking civil liberties. This leads to ...

6. The State-Secrets Doctrine
The Bush administration's insane argument in court is that judges should dismiss entire lawsuits over many of the outrages detailed on this very list. Why? Because the outrageously illegal things are themselves matters of top-secret national security. The administration has raised this claim in relation to its adventures in secret wiretapping and its fun with extraordinary rendition. A government privilege once used to sidestep civil claims has mushroomed into sweeping immunity for the administration's sometimes criminal behavior.

5. Government Snooping
Take your pick. There's the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program wherein the president breezily authorized spying on the phone calls of innocent citizens, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI's TALON database shows the government has been spying on nonterrorist groups, including Quakers, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and Veterans for Peace. The Patriot Act lives on. And that's just the stuff we know about.

4. Extraordinary Rendition
So, when does it start to become ordinary rendition? This government program has us FedEx-ing unindicted terror suspects abroad for interrogation/torture. Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen, was shipped off to Afghanistan for such treatment and then released without charges, based on some government confusion about his name. Heh heh. Canadian citizen Maher Arar claims he was tortured in Syria for a year, released without charges, and cleared by a Canadian commission. Attempts to vindicate the rights of such men? You'd need to circle back to the state-secrets doctrine, above.

3. Abuse of Jose Padilla
First, he was, according to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, "exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Then, he was planning to blow up apartments. Then he was just part of a vague terror conspiracy to commit jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. Always, he was a U.S. citizen. After three and a half years, in which he was denied the most basic legal rights, it has now emerged that Padilla was either outright tortured or near-tortured. According to a recent motion, during Padilla's years of almost complete isolation, he was treated by the U.S. government to sensory and sleep deprivation, extreme cold, stress positions, threats of execution, and drugging with truth serum. Experts say he is too mentally damaged to stand trial. The Bush administration supported his motion for a mental competency assessment, in hopes that will help prevent his torture claims from ever coming to trial, or, as Yale Law School's inimitable Jack Balkin put it: "You can't believe Padilla when he says we tortured him because he's crazy from all the things we did to him."

2. The Military Commissions Act of 2006
This was the so-called compromise legislation that gave President Bush even more power than he initially had to detain and try so-called enemy combatants. He was generously handed the authority to define for himself the parameters of interrogation and torture and the responsibility to report upon it, since he'd been so good at that. What we allegedly did to Jose Padilla was once a dirty national secret. The MCA made it the law.

1. Hubris
Whenever the courts push back against the administration's unsupportable constitutional ideas—ideas about "inherent powers" and a "unitary executive" or the silliness of the Geneva Conventions or the limitless sweep of presidential powers during wartime—the Bush response is to repeat the same chorus louder: Every detainee is the worst of the worst; every action taken is legal, necessary, and secret. No mistakes, no apologies. No nuance, no regrets. This legal and intellectual intractability can create the illusion that we are standing on the same constitutional ground we stood upon in 2001, even as that ground is sliding away under our feet.

What outrage did I forget? Send mail to Dahlia.Lithwick@hotmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless otherwise stipulated.)

Wishing you and yours a happy, and freer, New Year.

- Dahlia Lithwick, a Slate senior editor. (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:30 AM

Let Ms Dewey find it for you 

Flash search engine. (via PandaChute)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:26 AM

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Unofficial Video Of Saddam Hanging 

27 seconds after trapdoor opened. - Information Clearing house.
From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family…" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell…" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala…?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood…?".

Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched. - Riverbend

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:32 PM

Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed 

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice," the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by D.H. Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along."

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else." The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing," ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington – in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the U.S. Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade." The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking," which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the U.S. Navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable."

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." - John Pilger Copyright 2003 Antiwar.com [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via James Foye)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:10 PM

Friday, December 29, 2006

Health Concerns Selector 

Excerpts from Disease Prevention and Treatment by Life Extension Foundation:
Acne
Adrenal Disease
Allergies
Alzheimer's Disease
Amnesia
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou ...
Anemia
Anxiety
Arrhythmias
Arthritis: Osteo
Arthritis: Rheumatoid
Asthma
Atherosclerosis
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Dis...
Autoimmune Diseases
Bacterial Infections
Balding
Bell's Palsy
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)
Bladder Conditions
Blood Clots (Thrombosis)
Blood Disorders
Blood Testing
Breast Cancer
Bronchitis (Acute)
Bursitis
Caloric Restriction
Cancer - Overview
Cancer Radiation Therapy
Cancer Surgery
Cancer Treatment: The Critical Factors
Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Catabolic Wasting
Cataracts
Cervical Dysplasia
Chemotherapy
Cholesterol Management
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Chronic Pain
Cirrhosis and Liver Disease
Cognitive Impairment
Colitis (Ulcerative)
Colorectal Cancer
Common Cold
Complementary Alternative Cancer Th...
Congestive Heart Failure
Constipation
Coronary Artery Disease and Atherosclerosis
Crohn's Disease
Depression
DHEA Restoration Therapy
Diabetes
Digestive Disorders
Endometriosis
Epilepsy
Erectile Dysfunction
Exercise Enhancement
Eye Health
Female Hormone Restoration
Fibrocystic Breast Disease
Fibromyalgia
Fungal Infections (Candida)
Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)
Getting the Most from Exercise
Gingivitis
Glaucoma
Gout
Gulf War Syndrome
Hangover Prevention
Heavy Metal Detoxification
Hemochromatosis
Hepatitis B
Hepatitis C
Herpes and Shingles
High Blood Pressure
HIV/AIDS
Homocysteine Reduction
Hypoglycemia
Immune System Strengthening
Inflammation
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Influenza
Insomnia
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Jet Lag
Kidney Health
Leukemia
Liver Degenerative Disease
Lung Cancer
Lupus
Lymphoma
Macular Degeneration
Male Hormone Restoration
Meningitis
Migraine
Mild Cognitive Impairment
Multiple Sclerosis
Muscular Dystrophy
Myasenthia Gravis
Myofascial Syndromes
Nail Health
Neuropathy (Diabetic)
Obesity
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Osteoporosis
Pancreatic Cancer
Parkinson's Disease
Periodontitis and Cavities
Polymyalgia Rheumatica
Premenstrual Syndrome
Prevention Protocols
Prostate Cancer: Overview
Pulmonary Insufficiencies
Raynaud's Phenomenon
Restless Leg Syndrome
Retinopathy
Scleroderma
Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD)
Sinusitis
Sjögren's Syndrome
Skin Aging
Stress
Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease
Surgical Preparation
Thyroid Regulation
Tinnitus
Trauma and Wound Healing
Urinary Tract Infection
Uterine Cancer
Uterine Fibroids
Vertigo
Viral Meningitis
Wound Healing (Surgical Wounds, Trauma

Copyright © 1995-2006 Life Extension Foundation [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:53 PM

$200 note was passed 

SEPTEMBER 12--North Carolina cops are searching for a guy who successfully passed a $200 bill bearing George W. Bush's portrait and a drawing of the White House complete with lawn signs reading "We like ice cream" and "USA deserves a tax cut." The phony Bush bill--a copy of which you'll find below--was presented to a cashier at a Food Lion in Roanoke Rapids on September 6 by an unidentified male who was seeking to pay for $150 in groceries. Remarkably, the cashier accepted the counterfeit note and gave the man $50 change. In a separate incident involving a different perp, Roanoke Rapids cops Tuesday arrested Michael Harris, 24, for attempting last month to pass an identical $200 Bush bill at a convenience store. - The Smoking Gun (via Lew Rockwell)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:54 AM

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Y Combinator: More than just a hearty meal every week 

If you’re considering starting a company, then you should apply to Y Combinator’s winter 2007 funding. For those of you who do not know what Y Combinator is, it’s a venture firm which specializes in funding early stage startups. In order to receive funding, you send in an application and eventually meet with them to discuss your idea. If you are chosen and you accept, you become part of a 3 month program which consists of weekly dinners with your fellow Y Combinator founders and various luminaries of the tech startup community.

YouOS got its start through seed funding from Y Combinator. While we certainly appreciate the money we received from Y Combinator (hey, who doesn’t like money), the real value is in the knowledge and contacts you gain. Every week, we would meet with our fellow founders and discuss the trials and tribulations that we were facing in our startup lives: servers, scaling, programming languages, cross browser hell, and the real killer, staying sane enough to show up next week. It was a lot of fun to try to solve our problems together, and if we couldn’t solve a problem, well, misery loves company. We would also love to demo new features to our fellow founders to see what they thought. Being around other people with similarly lofty goals is exciting and motivating and it really pushed us to work hard each week.

In addition, the Y Combinator folks would invite someone from the startup community such as successful founders to talk about their experiences. It was always uplifting to know that others had succeeded before you and also to find out how they did it. We also learned all the ins and outs of how the business side of the startup world works. As a first-time founder and engineer, I found this particularly useful. You also get to meet types of people other than founders such as venture capitalists and patent lawyers who are useful to know.

If you didn’t find the above all that valuable, you should know that you get a free meal every week complete with a splendid assortment of cheeses and beverages. I would apply for this part alone. We also got to meet a lot of famous people who we would have never met otherwise. I will refrain from name dropping for now, but I’ll be selling my one-of-a-kind keyboard autographed by all 15 Winter 2006 Y Combinator speakers around Christmas time. So, if you need a gift for your significant other, drop me a line.

At the end of the program, Y Combinator helps you get in touch with future investors (either angels or venture capitalists). Even though I said that money wasn’t the valuable part of Y Combinator, it’s useful to have around. We received our next round of angel funding through this process. It was a surprisingly painless process for us and we’re very happy with the result.

We encourage anyone’s who’s interested in starting a company to apply to Y Combinator. The amount we got out of the program is worth far more than the portion of our company we gave up. At the very least, filling out the application is a great thought exercise for fleshing out the idea for your company. Whatever you decide, good luck with your ideas! - by joe in : Business , 2 comments September 1, 2006 © 2005 The YouOS Blog [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

Note: YouOS [now as a free beta] is an experiment in a new kind of computing platform.
Access from anywhere:
~ Create a document at an office computer, drive home, continue right from where you left off.
~ Built-in sharing.
Instantly share music, documents and more with your buddies.
~ An application community.
Everyone from professional software engineers to high school age programmers can participate at no cost. Choose from a growing list of over 531
released applications developed by our users.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:53 PM

Can we live longer? 

CENTENARIANS were a rare breed when Jeanne Louise Calment was born in 1875. But by the time she died in 1997 at the record-setting age of 122 years and 164 days, her club was distinctively less elite.

Today, centenarians comprise the fastest-growing segment of the population. In developed countries, their numbers have been doubling every five to seven years, and the age that they achieve has been rising steadily — from 110 in 1930 to 120 in 1995.

Trailing along in their impressive wake, the less-remarkable folks are doing better too. The average U.S. life expectancy has been increasing for more than 100 years and hit a record high in 2004: 80.4 years for women and 75.2 years for men.

Just how long can this go on?

It is a matter of fierce debate. Scientists aren't sure if we will ever be able to expand human life span to 100 years or beyond for most people, not just the lucky few favored by genes and environment. They're also divided on whether science will come up with a pill or other remedy that lets people break through what seems like a biological barrier unbreachable by even the Calments of this world.

The answers are intertwined with one of the most basic biological mysteries: why creatures, be they humans, rats or rhinos, all wither and die. That riddle is yet to be solved — but scientists are gathering tantalizing clues.

Just last month, a study reported that mice manipulated to have a slightly lower body temperature live longer than mice with a regular body temperature. Another reported that a substance found in red wine — resveratrol — extended the life span of overfed, obese mice.

A slew of theories on aging have been suggested over the centuries. Some people, turning to the Bible, believed it was moral transgression. Others — from ancient Greece to the 19th century — held that aging came from a progressive loss of heat, moisture or both.

Today, scientists are focusing on a few leading contenders — such as damage to cells and tissues from highly active chemicals called free radicals, chronic inflammation, a built-in limit to the number of times our cells can divide, or a slow, steady stiffening of tissues by a lifetime of exposure to sugar.

All of these are only theories at this point — albeit with some science to support each of them, says Dr. Robert Butler, president and chief executive of the International Longevity Center, a not-for-profit think tank in New York City. None has reached the point where it can fully explain aging.

Tantalizingly, scientists have discovered that they can extend life span in animals by restricting how much they eat: In rats and mice, a 30% reduction in caloric intake extends life span by a third.

And they've found that tinkering with certain genes allows rodents and other animals to also live longer.

The clues inside

One gene they're interested in is known as Sir2: Increasing the number or activity of Sir2 genes in fruit flies and worms can extend their life span by 30% to 50%, says MIT researcher Leonard P. Guarente. He says he's now testing whether the same is true in mice.

The Sir2 gene appears to play a key role in extending life span when animals restrict their calories, at least in worms, yeast and flies. Thus, understanding the human version of the gene should offer clues as to why we wither and die.

As it turns out, that gene directs formation of a key enzyme that senses how much immediate energy body cells have to sustain themselves with — and if those levels are low, it activates emergency stress responses.

Researchers are now looking for drugs that can increase the activity of that enzyme. If they're able to do so, and if the drugs act as they hope they will, "I believe we will break [the 122-year age] limit," says David Sinclair, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.

They have made some headway. Three years ago, Sinclair's lab discovered that resveratrol, a compound found in red wine and grape skins, seems to activate that enzyme. A study in February showed that feeding resveratrol to fish extends their maximum life span by 59%.

Another study, published in the journal Nature in November, showed that obese mice — which normally have shortened life spans — can live just as long as lean mice if they're fed resveratrol. The mice had healthier livers and heart tissue, more normal blood sugar levels and the agility of lean mice.

This doesn't mean resveratrol's an anti-aging elixir. It's unclear if the chemical would have the same effects in humans. And even if it did, people would have to ingest it in huge doses — on the order of dozens of supplement pills or hundreds of bottles of red wine a day, says Joseph Baur of Harvard Medical School, lead author of the obese-mouse study.
Sinclair (who is a cofounder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., company seeking chemicals that act like resveratrol) says he takes resveratrol himself. "I am doing it as a personal experiment, but I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone else to do it," he says. "We don't know what the long-term effects are, and the products that are currently available are untested."

Adds Susan Roberts, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University, "I think you would be nuts to take it until we have more data."

Sirtris is one of a few companies seeking compounds that can do what resveratrol does with much more clout. Sirtris has started clinical trials in diabetes patients with an improved version of resveratrol that's 10 to 20 times more powerful to test its safety and see if it can normalize blood sugar, says Chief Executive Dr. Christoph Westphal. In about a year, he says, Sirtris plans a trial to test the safety of a compound 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol.

The goal is not necessarily to increase human life span, Westphal says, but to treat age-related sicknesses such as Alzheimer's and diabetes.

Studies in worms, flies and mice have unearthed other genes that can affect life span, such as ones in fruit flies called SOD and methuselah and another, in mice, called P66.

Some of the genes are involved in the repair of cell damage. This fits nicely with a theory that aging is a side effect of turning food into energy, which creates free radicals that damage tissues, proteins and DNA. The idea gets further support from a study, to be published in January, by Dr. Richard A. Miller, a researcher who studies aging at the University of Michigan. He has found that skin cells from longer-lived rodents are more resistant to free radical damage than cells from shorter-lived rodents.

There are other genes too. In mice, several genetic mutations are known to result in lower levels of a protein called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), and some of these mutant mice live 50% longer than normal mice. Scientists also see longer life spans when tinkering with similar genes in roundworms and flies.

One reason could be stress-resistance: Cells from mice with less IGF1 can better resist damage from free radicals or heavy metal poisoning, Miller says. (Worms with such mutations are more stress-resistant also, he adds.)

These findings could one day result in life-expanding drugs, says aging researcher Andrzej Bartke, director of geriatric medicine at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Ill.

Bartke, who studies mice with lower-than-normal IGF1 levels, says companies are currently trying to develop drugs that inhibit the hormone as a possible cancer treatment — but "from what we see in these mice with low IGF1, I wouldn't be surprised if they get drugs that turn out to be an anti-aging substance."

Studying the source

Centenarians — for obvious reasons — are being intensively studied for the clues they may offer about aging.

If they're doing something right, Dr. Nir Barzilai, who studies centenarians at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says he hasn't found their secret yet. So far, he's asked 400 of them all kinds of questions about the way they live their lives, and "I don't have anything to tell you," he says. They don't seem to live more healthful lives. Among the 400, he hasn't found a single vegetarian. This bugs his research coordinator, who is a vegetarian herself, he says. "She has almost made it her ambition now to find one."

It is mostly genes that protect the oldest of the old, Barzilai says. Scientists know that having a close centenarian relative increases the chance of getting that old ten- to twentyfold — up from 1/10,000 for the general population.

Researchers are only beginning to pinpoint the genes that may be at play.

Barzilai, for example, has found that centenarians are more likely to have a version of a gene that protects them from inflammation, and make lesser amounts of an inflammatory protein called CRP. Their children have less hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, lower insulin levels and less diabetes than children of non-centenarians — implying that their resistance to aging is genetic, at least in part.

Barzilai also found evidence that structures on the end of their chromosomes — the structures that harbor the DNA in our cells — may differ from those of people who don't live as long. These so-called telomeres tend to become shorter every time a cell divides and are thought to set a limit to the number of times cells in the human body can divide. Centenarians' white blood cells have longer telomeres than those of most 85-year-olds, Barzilai found — and their children have longer telomeres than age-matched controls.

Barzilai isn't sure how to interpret these findings. "I don't know how it works, but [telomeres] are at least a marker of something," he says.

It may be kind of depressing to hear that the key to extreme old age — until, that is, someone comes up with a magical pill — has largely to do with luck and genes. But there is one key way in which scientists think people may be able to extend their lives: by eating dramatically less.

Rats, fed about 40% less rodent chow than what they would normally eat, live about 40% longer than is usual — 47 months instead of 33. The same has been found for mice, hamsters, fruit flies, worms, fish and spiders.
If the same could be achieved in humans, the results would be impressive, the University of Michigan's Miller says. "A 40% increase would have the average woman living to about 112, and many past 126, and a few past 140," he says.

So far, there is no proof that a similar extension of maximum lifespan is possible in our species. But rhesus monkeys and humans whose calories are restricted — in experiments in the case of the monkeys and by choice in the case of human beings — do seem healthier and show fewer signs of aging.

For example, rhesus monkeys fed 30% fewer calories get fewer cancers and are less prone to develop diabetes.

Richard Weindruch, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin who directs the monkey study, says he expects the monkeys, who were started on the diet when they were young adults, to become 10% to 20% older than normal monkeys.

Caloric restriction also seems to be healthful for humans, as exemplified by faddists who have been inspired by the data on worms and rodents and decided to try it for themselves.

A January 2006 study of 25 caloric restriction enthusiasts published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that people who eat about 30% fewer calories have more flexible hearts that look 10 to 15 years younger and also had lower blood levels of inflammation-linked proteins. This suggests that caloric restriction reduces inflammation, which usually increases with age and makes tissues stiffer, says principal author Dr. Luigi Fontana at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Chronic inflammation is linked to many age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and osteoarthritis, says inflammation researcher Dr. Claudio Franceschi of the University of Bologna, Italy.

And there are other tantalizing data. Recently, a six-month clinical trial in Baton Rouge, La., randomly assigned a dozen people to eat 25% fewer calories and another dozen to eat normally. The study reported a number of health gains in those eating less: lower body temperatures (which could result in production of fewer free radicals) and lower insulin levels, thus better sugar control. Both of these factors have been linked to longer life span in epidemiological studies.

The insulin difference may be especially important, because poor sugar control can lead to accelerated stiffening of tissues.

Participants in the trial also had higher levels of "good" (HDL) cholesterol in the blood and decreased DNA damage from exposure to free radicals, says Eric Ravussin, a researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the trial.

The study found no adverse effects such as bone loss or, for women, abnormal menstrual cycles. The researchers next plan a larger, two-year trial.

This may all sound wonderful, but not everyone is convinced that caloric restriction can induce the same life-span extension in humans as it does in animals.

For one thing, most people — unlike the enthusiasts — probably wouldn't start doing it before midlife and wouldn't do it as intensely, says John Speakman of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Animal studies show that the later you start and the less you restrict, the less of a benefit you get, he says.

"By the time people start thinking, 'Oh my god, I am going to die soon,' they are probably going to be in their 40s," Speakman says.

In fact, in a paper to be published soon, he has calculated that a 15% caloric restriction for four decades after the age of 39 would only add an extra 2.4 years. This is not exactly fountain-of-youth material.

Others say the effects in humans would not be as strong as in mice even if people did it all their lives and did it properly. Jay Phelan, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, says that men in Okinawa eat almost 20% less their entire life than other Japanese men but live less than a year longer. He's extrapolated these data to what would be expected if people ate 35% less for their entire life. He found it would only extend the average lifespan by about 2 years.

"What it tells me," he says, "is that humans aren't just mice blown up to 200 pounds."

Phelan says he doesn't think there will ever be a way to significantly extend human life span. "Millions of years and billions of people living a variety of lifestyles that result in life spans that never exceed 122 demonstrate that it is unlikely that some new method will dramatically extend this," he says.

Of course, all could change if scientists find a drug that can work on the very process of aging and somehow force a pharmaceutical wrench into its works. But even if we do find a drug that lets all of us live to be Jeanne Louise Calment, or perhaps even to an age that makes Calment seem youthful, would we — should we — take it?

"I wouldn't take it," says aging researcher Leonard Hayflick of UC San Francisco. "We all relate to each other with respect to the other person's age," he says. "If my aging stopped and my wife's continued, the discontinuities in our lives would be intolerable."

Small advantage?

As scientists sift through factors linked to aging, they've encountered a curiosity: that size and height may be somehow linked to life span.

They've found, for instance, that mice whose bodies have low levels of a protein called IGF1 not only live longer — they're also smaller than regular mice.

This makes some sense, because IGF1 is known to regulate bone and muscle growth, stimulate cells to divide and protect them from dying. Less of it should result in smaller mice.

But it's not the only hint that a smaller body size could be related to longer life span. Small dogs live longer than large dogs, as a rule, perhaps because of differences in IGF1. In fact, body size might even play a role in the human life span.

Back in 1992, Thomas Samaras, a former aerospace engineer living in San Diego, published a study arguing that short people have a life-span edge — reporting that shorter baseball players tend to live longer than taller ones.

"He took a lot of beating for this," says Andrzej Bartke, director of geriatric medicine at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Ill. "And now the field is slowly coming around to see that he was probably onto something."

Dr. Nir Barzilai, who studies centenarians at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has found that female offspring of centenarians are 1 inch shorter, on average, than age-matched controls. What's more, 3 of 100 centenarians he has looked at have mutations that affect IGF1 function.

— Andreas von Bubnoff Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Kurzweil AI)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:59 AM

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Gerald Ford's Role in the JFK Assassination Cover-up 

At approximately 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22 1963, in Dallas's downtown Dealey Plaza, a large and friendly crowd lined the street, cheering and waving excitedly at the approaching presidential motorcade. Riding in the third car – an oversized Lincoln with its Plexiglas "bubble" top removed – were President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, and Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie. As the limousine carrying the Connallys and the Kennedys wound its way through the hospitable crowds, Nellie Connally turned to President Kennedy, who was seated behind her, and said, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." Then the shots rang out.

Today, more than four decades later, the details on specifically how and by whom President Kennedy was assassinated are still open to question.

According to the report of the Warren Commission, released in September 1964 after a full year investigation, one single shooter – Lee Harvey Oswald – killed Kennedy and wounded Gov. Connally by firing three bullets from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

The most significant documentary record of President Kennedy's assassination, however, is the famous 8mm home movie taken that day by Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder. It seems to show Kennedy reeling from shots fired from more than one location. The film's apparent crossfire causes one to conclude that there were several gunmen – and a conspiracy. The number of shots reportedly heard by witnesses ranges from two to more than eight.

The most important eyewitness to the assassination was Gov. Connally. Questioned by Warren Commission counsel and now-U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, Connally's testimony to the Warren Commission solidly supports the Zapruder film:

Mr. Specter: In your view, which bullet caused the injury to your chest, Governor Connally?

Gov. Connally: The second one.

Mr. Specter: And what is your reason for that conclusion, sir?

Gov. Connally: Well, in my judgment, it just couldn't conceivably have been the first one because I heard the sound of the shot … and after I heard that shot, I had the time to turn to my right, and start to turn to my left before I felt anything. It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet.

Gov. Connally's vivid memories of those horrific moments never changed. And they fit a more-than-three-bullet scenario. Connally firmly believed different bullets struck him and President Kennedy. In a later interview for a TV program, Connally recalled hearing a rifle shot over his right shoulder "because that's where the sound came from." He said he saw "nothing out of the ordinary," and was in the process of turning to look over his left shoulder "when I felt a blow in the middle of my back as if someone had hit me with a double-fist … it bent me over and I immediately saw I was covered with blood and I knew I'd been hit, and I said, ‘Oh my God, they're going to kill us all.'" Connally then heard another shot and said, "I knew that the President had been fatally hit, because I heard Mrs. Kennedy then, I heard her say, ‘My God, I've got his brains in my hands.'"

In a separate comment, Connally said, "There were either two or three people involved, or more, in this – or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle."

Gov. Connally's insistence that he was struck by a separate bullet than the one that killed President Kennedy clearly contradicts the Warren Commission's lone-killer conclusion that a single bullet – fired by an old Italian-made mail-order rifle – hit both men.

The 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Depository and was originally identified as a 7.65 mm German Mauser. The Italian weapon, then nearly 20 years old, had a terrible reputation. The October 1964 issue of Mechanix Illustrated described the rifle as "crudely made, poorly designed, dangerous and inaccurate."

The commission said the first shot struck the President in the base of his neck and exited from his throat. This very same bullet then proceeded to hit Connally in the back, shattering his fifth rib. The bullet then emerged from the governor's chest, passed through his right wrist – breaking several bones – and finally came to rest in the his left thigh. This is known as the single or "magic" bullet— magic because it inflicted so many wounds, broke so many bones, yet still wound up – in nearly perfect condition – on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

The Warren Commission uncovered "no credible evidence that any shots were fired from the Triple Underpass (near the grassy knoll), ahead of the motorcade, or from any other location."

This determination was intended to support the scenario that Oswald could have fired the purported number of shots within an allotted timeframe – and that one of the bullets fired that fateful day hit both the president and the governor.

Despite this public assertion, JFK assassination expert Anthony Summers emphasizes most of the commission's seven members had private doubts about the theory: "John McCloy had difficulty accepting it. Congressman Hale Boggs had ‘strong doubts.' Senator John Sherman Cooper was, he told me (Summers) in 1978, ‘unconvinced.' . . . On a recently released tape, held at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, (Sen. Richard) Russell is heard telling President Johnson, ‘I don't believe it.' And Johnson responds, ‘I don't either.'"

In fact, many of the Warren Commission's conclusions do not agree with the evidence it collected. As Facts on File points out: "Of the 266 known witnesses to the assassination, the commission questioned 126. Of these, 51 thought the shots came from the direction of the grassy knoll, 32 said that they came from the Texas School Book Depository. Thirty-eight did not offer an opinion, but most of these witnesses were not asked. The remaining five thought the shots came from more than one location."

Those who thought shots came from the grassy knoll seem to be supported by NBC cameraman Dave Weigman's herky-jerky 16mm film of the assassination scene. With his camera rolling, Weigman jumped out of the seventh car in the JFK motorcade and ran up to the knoll. Experts who made a frame-by-frame examination of Weigman's film say it clearly shows puffs of smoke coming from bushes at the top of the knoll.

Dallas County deputy constable Seymour Weitzman also ran toward the top of the grassy knoll – where he found a man carrying Secret Service identification. Weitzman later identified this man as Bernard Barker, a CIA asset and the future Watergate burglar who would lead the four-man contingent of Cuban–born Watergate burglars from the Miami area. Barker was an expert at surreptitious entries, planting bugs and photographing documents. He was a close associate of Florida Mafia godfather Santos Trafficante, and of Mob-connected Key Biscayne banker Bebe Rebozo – Richard Nixon's bosom buddy.

Barker was a veteran CIA asset. Along with JFK assassination suspects Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and David Ferrie, he had helped plan the unsuccessful 1961 CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba, a mission fathered by Vice President Richard Nixon. The actual invasion was finally carried out at the Bay of Pigs under President Kennedy. The CIA recruited the Mafia to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro at about the same time the exile invaders waded ashore.

Barker's day job was a real estate agent on Key Biscayne. And he was a close friend and neighbor of fellow CIA asset Eugenio Martinez – the Watergate lock-picker. Martinez's real estate firm had extensive dealings with Bebe Rebozo, and had brokered Nixon's purchase of a house on Biscayne Bay.

In the immediate aftermath of the Watergate arrests, President Nixon was anxious about his pal Rebozo's vulnerabilities. On White House tapes released many years later, after hearing that Howard Hunt's name turned up in two of the burglars' address books, Nixon had a question for his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman: "Is Rebozo's name in anyone's address book?" Haldeman answers, "No … he (Rebozo) told me he doesn't know any of these guys." Sounding rather dumbfounded, the president responds: "He doesn't know them?"

If Weitzman was correct in fingering Barker, the CIA man would have had no trouble obtaining Secret Service credentials. CIA operatives have a way of coming up with badges and other items to suit their various goals (As a Nixon White House spy, Howard Hunt once wore a speech alteration device and a red wig to a secret encounter.)

Barker wasn't the only future Watergate conspirator to reportedly show up in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Under oath, CIA operative Morita Lorenz placed CIA agents Hunt and Frank Sturgis at the assassination scene.

This claim was bolstered by two other local law enforcement officers who reported encountering men on the grassy knoll who identified themselves as Secret Service agents – yet the Secret Service maintained that none of its agents were in Dealey Plaza right after the shooting.

For the record:

Deputy Constable Weitzman told the Warren Commission he encountered "other officers, Secret Service as well" on the grassy knoll. In 1975, he told reporter Michael Canfield the man he saw produced credentials and told him everything was under control. He said the man had dark hair, was of medium height, and was wearing a light windbreaker. When shown photos of Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker, Weitzman immediately pointed at Barker, saying, "Yes that's him." Just to make sure, Canfield asked, "Was this the man who produced the Secret Service credentials?" Weitzman responded, "Yes, that's the same man."

Dallas patrolman J. M. Smith also ran up the grassy knoll. At the top, he smelled gunpowder. Encountering a man, he pulled his pistol from his holster. "Just as I did, he showed me he was a Secret Service agent … he saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was."

In the mid-70s, Dallas police sergeant David Harkness told a House committee, "There were some Secret Service agents there – on the grassy knoll – but I did not get them identified. They told me they were Secret Service."

According to a Secret Service report in the National Archives, "All the Secret Service agents assigned to the motorcade stayed with the motorcade all the way to the hospital, none remained at the scene of the shooting."
In the years following the Warren Commission Report, its findings have been repeatedly questioned. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations suggested that at least two gunmen were involved, and that the probable assassination conspirators were Mafia-connected.

Later, two top committee staffers, G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, concluded that the assassination was planned and implemented by Mob bosses; that there were two shooters; and that Lee Harvey Oswald was silenced – on Mafia orders – by mobbed-up Dallas striptease club owner Jack Ruby.

In 1998, a review board appointed by President Bill Clinton found nothing in secret JFK assassination records to bolster the single-bullet theory. In fact, as the Assassination Records Review Board went out of business, it complained that records of the post-mortem examination of President Kennedy's body were incomplete. Such records could have cleared up mysteries about Kennedy's head wound, or wounds, and helped determine whether he was shot from the front.

In its final report, the review board said: "There have been shortcomings that have led many to question not only the completeness of the autopsy records of President Kennedy, but the lack of a prompt and complete analysis of the records by the Warren Commission."

While it collected and released thousands of previously secret government documents, the board also expressed worry that "critical records may have been withheld" from its scrutiny. It stressed that it was not able to secure "all that was out there."

In 2005, appearing at a scholarly symposium, assassination expert Dr. Jack Gordon went over doctors' statements from the hospital in Dallas where Kennedy was taken after the shooting. Gordon produced quotes from nine doctors who gave the same description of a huge softball size hole in occipital-parietal region of Kennedy's skull, and one nurse who said, "in layman's terms, 'One large hole, back of his head.'" This contradicts the official story that the back of the head was completely intact.

With all of these contradictions emerging – both during the Warren Commission hearings and in the aftermath of its final report – one has to wonder how the Warren Commission managed to arrive at the conclusions it did.

A key edit in the Warren Report may have helped. The report's first draft said: "A bullet had entered his [President Kennedy's] back at a point slightly below the shoulder to the right of the spine." Had that stood, the trajectory would have made it impossible for the bullet that struck Kennedy to come out his neck, and then somehow critically wound Connally.

Newly released documents show, however, that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the wound and place it higher in Kennedy's body. Ford wanted the wording changed to: "A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine." The panel's final version was: "A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."

This crucial change only came to light in 1997, when the Assassination Record Review Board released handwritten notes made by Ford that had been kept by J. Lee Rankin, the Warren Commission's chief counsel. Ford's change is even at odds with his own declaration in the Oct. 2, 1964 issue of Life: "I personally believe that one of these three shots missed entirely – but which of the three may never be known. I believe that another bullet struck the president in the back and emerged from his throat (and went on to strike Connally.)"

When the alteration was brought to Ford's attention in 1997, he said it "had nothing to do with (thwarting) a conspiracy theory" and was made "only in an attempt to be more precise." Assassination researcher Robert Morningstar, however, called the change "the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report." He pointed out that if the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have gone on to strike Connally the way the commission said it did. Morningstar contended that the effect of Ford's editing suggested that a bullet hit the president in the neck – "raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins."

Ford's alteration supports the single-bullet theory by making a specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body ''at the back of his neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff originally wrote.

Harold Weisberg, a longtime critic of the Warren Commission's work, said: "What Ford is doing is trying to make the single bullet theory more tenable."

Cyril Wecht, president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, is among many pathology experts who find this theory unacceptable: "The angles at which these two men [Kennedy and Connally] were hit do not permit a straight-line trajectory (or near straight line trajectory) of commission exhibit 339 (the so-called magic bullet) to be established. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. In order to accept the single-bullet theory, it is necessary to have the bullet move at different vertical and horizontal angles, a path of flight that has never been experienced or suggested for any bullet known to mankind."

A member of the House investigating committee's forensic pathology panel, Wecht remains a passionate opponent of the Ford theory. He has also been a consultant on a number of other high-profile cases, including the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson and – most recently – the 20-year-old son of model Anna Nicole Smith.

Former Texas First Lady Nellie Connally – who died in 2006 at the age of 87 – rediscovered her assassination diary in 1993. When Newsweek published it in 1998, the magazine said the diary "reaffirms the Connallys' verdict that the Warren Commission was wrong in concluding that a single bullet passed through JFK's neck and Connally's chest." Noting the commission's finding that one bullet missed the car, the magazine added: "Some conspiracy theorists argue that if three (Author's note: the commission said only two bullets hit the two men) bullets hit their targets, and an additional bullet missed, then there must have been a second gunman: nobody could have fired so many rounds so quickly."

After a two year probe costing taxpayers $5.5 million, House investigators concluded in 1978 that President Kennedy's murder was "probably . . . the result of a conspiracy," and that there was a strong possibility of a shot from the grassy knoll, meaning that two gunmen must have fired at the president within split seconds of each other. In 2001, a peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice determined there was a 96.3 percent chance a shot was fired from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine.

The author of the new analysis, JFK assassination researcher D. B. Thomas, believes this was the shot that killed the president.

G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the House investigation, called the new study "an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks." And he said it "increased the degree of confidence that the shot from the grassy knoll was real, not static (contained on a police dicta-belt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day.)"

In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board released a strong clue that more than three shots were fired at President Kennedy.

The cover of an empty FBI evidence envelope – dated Dec. 2nd 1963 – noted that it had once held a 7.65 mm rifle shell that was found in Dealey Plaza after the shooting. The discovery of a fourth bullet shell, therefore, supports the acoustical evidence cited by the House committee, as well as all of the eyewitness reports of a shot from the grassy knoll.

What motivation did Congressman Gerald Ford have for misrepresenting the placement of the President's back wound? For one thing, he had strong personal ties to the staunchest official advocate of the lone-assassin theory, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover had proclaimed Oswald was the lone killer long before the Warren Commission had even been appointed. On the very afternoon of the assassination, the FBI chief issued an internal memo stating that Dallas police "very probably" had Kennedy's killer in custody. In the memo, Hoover described Oswald as being "in the category of a nut and the extremist pro-Castro crowd . . . an extreme radical of the left."

Hoover may have wanted Oswald identified as the sole killer to protect himself. Some JFK assassination experts are convinced Hoover knew about the plot to murder the president in advance and helped cover it up. In his 1992 book Act Of Treason, researcher Mark North contends that – as the result of covert FBI surveillance programs against the Mafia – Hoover learned of the plot in September 1962.

North said Hoover found out that the family of New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello "had, in order to prevent its own destruction (through prosecutorial pressure resulting from the [Kennedy] administration's war on organized crime), put out a contract on the life of John F. Kennedy … Hoover did not inform his superiors within the Justice Department, or warn the Secret Service . . . (Hoover) did this because JFK had made it known that he intended . . . to retire the director . . ."

Former CIA operative Robert Morrow agreed that Hoover had learned in advance of both the contract on JFK and the ensuing plot to assassinate him. In a 1992 book, Morrow said the contract "called for the assassination of the president prior to November 4, 1964 (Author's note: the date of the next presidential election), and was clearly the directive of New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello."

Gerald Ford was so close to Hoover that he served as the FBI director's informant while he was on the Warren Commission. This is confirmed by an internal FBI memo of Dec. 12, 1963. Written to Hoover by his deputy Cartha DeLoach, it says: "Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the commission. He stated that would have to be done on a confidential basis; however, he thought it had to be done." The Washington Post disclosed the memo in 1991. Newsweek had earlier described Ford as "the CIA's best friend in Congress."

Hoover biographer Curt Gentry concurs that Ford was Hoover's informant on the commission. In fact, in his 1991 book J. Edgar Hoover, Gentry notes that the Hoover-Ford connection went back a number of years. Discussing the FBI's "favored politicians," the author said such people "were warned who their opponents would be, what background they had, and what skeletons might be hidden in their closets. In some cases, they were even elected with the FBI's help. Impressed with a young congressional hopeful in Michigan, the bureau in 1946 arranged support for Gerald Ford, who then expressed his thanks in his maiden speech in the House by asking for a pay raise for J. Edgar Hoover."

Not only was Ford leaking the commission's deliberations to Hoover, but on the eve of the publication of the Warren Report, he rushed to publicly endorse its coming finding that Oswald was solely to blame for Kennedy's murder. In the Oct. 2, 1964 issue of Life, he stressed that the "sorely disturbed" Oswald's "faith in Communism and the writings of Karl Marx" made him "look to Cuba as the as the place where … his shadowy philosophical theories might possibly come to fruit."

Hoover's man on the commission added, "there is not a scintilla of credible evidence" to suggest a conspiracy to kill JFK, adding, "The evidence is clear and overwhelming: Lee Harvey Oswald did it. There is no evidence of a second man, of other shots, of other guns. There is no evidence to suggest that Oswald went to work at the Depository for the long-range purpose of killing the President, that Jack Ruby knew Oswald before he killed him, or that either of them knew Officer Tippit (the Dallas policeman who was killed the afternoon of the assassination).

Why did this future president think if was necessary to declare his belief in Oswald's guilt just before publication of the commission's report? Was he acting in league with his friends at the CIA and the FBI to give advance support to what he knew would be the report's lone-killer conclusion? Almost certainly, the answer is "yes." Especially when you consider the fact that the man most responsible for placing Ford on the commission – President Richard Nixon – later described the "Oswald did it by himself scenario" as "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated." Nixon's assertion – contained in a tape of an Oval Office conversation with aide Bob Haldeman – was not made public until 2002.

Hoover himself helped promote the commission's finding two days before the Warren Commission was even formed. He personally ordered a leak to United Press International that resulted in a worldwide wire story that began: "WASHINGTON – An exhaustive FBI report now nearly ready for the White House will indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unaided assassin of President Kennedy, government sources said today." - Don Fulsom Copyright © 1998-2006 by Crime Magazine [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:58 PM

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

666 5th Avenue 

It may be bleak midwinter here in rural France, but the property market in
the United States is still a bit feverish.

Remember that building that sold for $1.8 billion in New York recently? It
was the most expensive single building ever sold in the city.

Well, we looked it up...

Its number is 666 5th Avenue. Already, we sense there is the Devil's hand
in this thing. '666' is the 'mark of the beast' in the Old Testament. It
prefigures the coming of the Antichrist, if we remember right. But what it
marks in the property market is probably the very peak of the biggest
property bubble in American history...and perhaps the peak of the whole
worldwide property bubble. Which is to say, it might herald the coming of
something big and bad.

You will know you have found the building when you walk along and come up
to a Brooks Brothers store, on the ground floor. We used to do all our
shopping there; it was known for a kind of waspy, out-of-fashion, high
school history teacher look that we favored for years. (We have since
moved on to an even more out-of-fashion style...we get most of our clothes
from the local farm co-op.)

666 was purchased by the Kushner family. It appears that Mr. Charles
Kushner, convicted of various financial crimes arising from his activities
as a political fundraiser, decided to splash out when his time in the
pokey was over. Now, he has got himself a trophy building...and has got
everyone talking about him. Not only has he bought the most expensive
building in the Big Apple; he's also shelled out three times as much for
it as it sold for six years ago.

Either the man is a genius... or a fool. We will have to wait to find out
for sure, but in the meantime we will do a little math. By our
calculation, he paid $1,200 per square foot for the place. Let's see. In
London, where we have an office, we pay about $50 per square foot per
year. That is supposed to be a decent price...but about what you should
expect to pay for prime office space in prime location in one of the
world's prime cities.

But if you paid $1,200 to buy a square foot...how much would you have to
rent it out for in order to make a profit? Well, if you apply the old rule
- you need to get 10% on your money just to cover your cost. That would
imply a rental rate of $120 per foot squared. Then, in order to get a 5%
return...the rent would have to be $180 per square foot. We don't know...
can you get that sort of rent in New York?

Let's see...1,000 square feet for $180,000 per year..? Imagine a
one-bedroom apartment renting for $15,000 per month.

No, dear reader...it is not very likely. Not even in Manhattan. Not even
in a bubble. - Daily Reckoning, Dec. 26, 2006.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:07 PM

Monday, December 25, 2006

WARGAMES AND HIGH TECH: PARALYZING THE SYSTEM TO PULL OFF THE ATTACKS 

Cheney to Oversee Domestic Counterterrorism Efforts

President announces new homeland defense initiative

President Bush May 8 directed Vice President Dick Cheney to coordinate development
of US government initiatives to combat terrorist attacks on the United States...
— White House Press Release, May 8, 2001

Therefore, I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm. I have also asked Joe Allbaugh, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to create an Office of
National Preparedness. This office will be responsible for implementing the results of those parts of the national effort overseen by Vice President Cheney that deal with consequence management. Specifically it will coordinate all federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and otherfederal agencies…. — Official Statement of President George W. Bush, May 8, 2001
Office of the Press Secretary, The White House

What wasn’t addressed by any of the constructs previously posed by 9/11 investigators
was an assumption that pilots and commanders would just sit passively by
and watch their country be attacked — no matter what the orders were — if Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or acting Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers failed
to issue a scramble order or actually issued a (very risky) direct stand-down order.
That assumption had people looking for a single “stand down” directive originating
from one hidden source. I never felt comfortable with that. A detective learns
to be vigilant against the temptation to cut corners; otherwise, the explanation
that requires the least investigative work is the one that gets all the attention.
In a sound investigation, the simplest explanation must also encompass the known
facts without any of those facts being discarded as a measure of expedience.

Military discipline can be severe, but the absence of orders to scramble would
never have provided our suspects with a guarantee that pilots and commanders
would not respond on 9/11 and stop the attacks anyway. For an event like 9/11,
where the American homeland was under attack and American citizens were dying,
that would be the equivalent of asking a prizefighter who had trained his entire life
not to enter the ring for his first-ever title fight — a championship match — when
the opportunity presented itself and his or her name was called. My father flew in
air force interceptors towards the end of the Korean War. I was a toddler then. We
were stationed in Maine and I still remember the cold. I also remember the bravado
and the esprit de corps of men who believed in their mission.

Air Force flyers are a proud and assertive lot. They are trained to be aggressive
and to show initiative. The lack of an order to scramble in the confusion of 9/11
was no guarantee that enough pilots wouldn’t scramble to prevent the second and
third attacks, especially after CNN had shown the World Trade Center burning.
Clearly NORAD and the FAA knew that multiple hijackings were in progress by
the time of the first impact. Strong initiative was demonstrated by NORAD’s second-
in-command, Lieutenant General Larry Arnold, from his command center at
Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida (CONR). This was before the first impact. In a
2002 interview with Aviation Week and Space Technology, Arnold described his
reaction when contacted by NEADS commander Col. Robert Marr who advised
that American 11 had been hijacked and that he had gone as far as he could by
getting F15 fighters battle-ready at Otis in Massachusetts. He had the pilots in the
cockpits and the planes ready. That was as far as he could go.

“I told him to scramble; we’ll get clearances later,” Arnold said. His
instincts to act first and get permission later were typical of US and
Canadian commanders that day. 1

The same Aviation Week article which contained Arnold’s quote contradicted
itself a mere six paragraphs later by quoting Canadian Navy Captain Michael Jellinek,
who was acting as NORAD’s command director on 9/11 at Cheyenne Mountain.

“NEADS instantly ordered the scramble, then called me to get Cinc [NORAD commander-
in-chief ] approval for it…”2 That would have been General Ralph Eberhart.

There were so many conflicting statements flying around that it was reminiscent
of a search warrant I once participated in where, among four suspects, we had
five different explanations of how six kilos of Mexican brown heroin had found its
way into the same room with them. By the time we got to ten different versions
from only four people, the lead detectives got confessions.

Whether the scramble was ordered by Arnold at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida,
or by Col. Marr at NEADS, it is clear that no one was going to wait for orders
from Donald Rumsfeld. Press accounts and his own statements indicate that
334 crossing the rubicon Rumsfeld had not even been advised of the hijacking as he was pontificating to Representative Christopher Cox in his office at the Pentagon that another terrorist attack was imminent at 8:44 AM, just two minutes before the WTC was hit by Flight 11. This was at least 23 minutes after it had been confirmed that Flight 11 had been hijacked.3 Still no fighters had left the ground, and according to FAA reports, Flight 175 had been off course with no transponder for at least two minutes — a second confirmed emergency. Before June 1, 2001, fighters had been off the ground in what I estimate to be about six to eight minutes on average, based upon the few available reports I could find.

Both Arnold’s and Jellinek’s statements demonstrate that the existing official
policy laid out in the Joint Chiefs’ instruction of June 1, 2001, was ignored on 9/11.

Something else must have been in place to paralyze fighter response on 9/11 and
still offer the plausibly deniable excuse that the tragic outcome was unintended.

In April and May of 2004 I found it after author Barbara Honegger, a senior
military affairs journalist with the Department of Defense, and a talented, if erratic, 9/11 researcher named Nico Haupt had again started asking questions in a 9/11 Internet discussion group about the role of a war game exercise on that day. Only one — Vigilant Guardian — was known or had been publicly mentioned at that
time.

Starting in August of 2002 Honegger had mentioned Vigilant Guardian and
had suggested that the hijackers and/or their controllers had to have somehow
learned the date of a wargame to piggyback their attacks on top of it. That story
was widely interpreted as suggesting that al Qaeda had penetrated US intelligence
or the military with inside help — a conclusion Honegger disputes but which
nonetheless was widely held and discussed by those who read her first and second
articles on the subject.

A second article by Honegger in May 2003 did not clear up the confusion.

This writer did not become aware of Honegger’s wargame research until she
refined her original story into a May 2003 story title “The Ides of March.”4 After
reading that article I too walked away believing that Honegger was arguing that
there had been some kind of defection from within the government.
Honegger’s stories posed two serious problems for researchers. First, a literal
reading led most people to believe that she was asserting that al Qaeda had quietly
penetrated classified operations. Second, she appeared to be willingly accepting
the allegation that the 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks all by themselves, were
all aboard the hijacked airliners, and actually did all the flying themselves. As we
will see, all of these assumptions are in serious doubt.

In May of 2003 I checked my reading of “The Ides of May” with a long list of
9/11 researchers, and we all drew the same conclusions. After much subsequent
dialogue with Honegger I believe that her intent was to suggest that the US government had deliberately leaked the information to the al Qaeda “hijackers” so
that the attacks could be carried out effectively. Unfortunately, that message was
not clear, and much time had been lost.

In 2004 when Honegger and Haupt began compiling and posting research about
previously undisclosed 9/11 wargames, it was immediately clear to me that they
were on to something big. In the spring of 2004 I asked Honegger for, and received,
a fairly complete list of every known wargame article (especially the newest).
Honegger sent a shocking body of mainstream press stories.

It was then up to me to analyze those stories in detail and see how all the
wargames worked together. Honegger’s material was good and I was only able to
find one or two small stories that she and Haupt had missed. What they revealed,
however, has become — in my opinion — the Holy Grail of 9/11 research.

As we will see, the assertion that al Qaeda had somehow penetrated (in an
active sense) the military may become an eventual fallback position for the planners
of September 11th. In light of what has been unearthed, that assertion falls
apart if you but breathe on it.

My answers came as they so often do for detectives working on a tough case: as
a result of going back to the files and starting over one more time to look for something I had missed.

As it turns out, on September 11th, various agencies including NORAD, the
FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and possibly
the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills — in some cases
involving hijacked airliners; in some cases also involving blips deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens which were present during (at least)
the first attacks; and which in some cases had pulled significant fighter resources
away from the northeast US on September 11. In addition, a close reading of key
news stories published in the spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were “live-fly” exercises where actual aircraft were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life; all of this as the real attacks began. The fact that these exercises had never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press, or publicly by Congress, or at least publicly in any
detail by the so-called Independent 9/11 Commission made me think that they might
be the Grail.

That’s exactly what they turned out to be.

For two and a half years after 9/11 the dominant question among skeptics of
the official version was why fighters had not been scrambled in time to prevent at
least one of the three “successful” attacks. We now know that there was ample
time, under normal circumstances, and sufficient resources to have prevented at
least two and probably all three of them.

At best I could only come up with questions and a list of people who needed to
be interrogated looking searching for answers. Like many others, I concluded only
that, if the system had worked perfectly so many times before with so much less
provocation, it stood to reason that something must have willfully intervened on
9/11. That was the easy part. Internet stories had reported anecdotal evidence in the
form of hearsay from someone who heard it from another person who said that they
heard Dick Cheney make a cryptic statement that “the order still stands” and argued
that this was “proof ” that Cheney had issued a stand-down order. By any standard
such claims do not constitute admissible evidence, and they would never be allowed
in a court of law. They certainly do not constitute proof for a trained investigator.
It only takes one good embarrassment under cross-examination in court over an
overlooked avenue or missed step for a detective to say, “That’s never going to happen to me again.” It happens to most good detectives at least once.

Starting in April of 2004 it all fell into place. First, the June 2001 Joint Chiefs
of Staff Instruction quoted at the beginning of this chapter surfaced on the website
of the Defense Department’s Defense Technical Information Center.4 That
demonstrated a willful intent to centralize decision-making authority away from
field commanders prior to the attacks. As it turns out, the change in procedure had
already been indirectly confirmed in a June 3, 2002, story in Aviation Week and
Space Technology, and almost everyone missed it. That story quoted the order without
disclosing that it had been put in place just ten weeks before 9/11. The wording
was a near verbatim quote of the Joint Chief ’s Instruction. One exception in that
order (Reference D) did leave some decision making in the hands of field commanders
in certain exigent circumstances, but the thrust was a radical shift away
from long-standing NORAD policy.

Further research into this change would disclose more evidence showing that,
just a month before that, all counter-terror response planning and organization
(with a focus on weapons of mass destruction) had been placed under the control
of Dick Cheney.5

Then there were the exercises themselves.

Vigilant Guardian was named or referred to in several news stories including
Aviation Week, Newhouse News Service,6 and on two official web sites.7 The official
websites indicated — and this was later confirmed to me in my own queries
with NORAD — that details of Vigilant Guardian were classified and not available
for release. A Vigilant Guardian exercise focusing on cold war-era threats was,
according to an official site, conducted by NORAD once a year. But a close look
at what NORAD told the press described a Vigilant Guardian that was vastly different
from an exercise preparing for a Russian attack. In their post-9/11 statements,
NORAD officials described details of Vigilant Guardian that seemed to be describing
something else altogether.

Aviation Week reported, “Senior officers involved in Vigilant Guardian were
manning NORAD command centers throughout the US and Canada, available to
make immediate decisions.”8 This confirmed the geographic scope of the exercise.
Vigilant Guardian was played up in the press as though it had facilitated a quicker
response. It did anything but that.

That Vigilant Guardian had a direct impact on the Northeast Air Defense
Sector in which all four hijackings occurred was confirmed in a December 2003
original story by NJ.com, a New Jersey-based service also summarizing all major
stories published by New Jersey press outlets.

NORAD also has confirmed it was running two mock drills on
September 11 at various radar sites and command centers in the United
States and Canada, including air force bases in upstate New York,
Florida, Washington, and Alaska. One drill, Operation Vigilant
Guardian, began a week before September 11 and reflected a cold war
mind-set: Participants practiced for an attack across the North Pole by
Russian forces.9

The story never named the second drill, and the assertion that it was strictly a
cold war-type exercise is belied by direct statements of many of the principals
involved that day. The NJ.com story also raised another chilling issue.

Investigators at the September 11 commission confirm they are investigating
whether NORAD’s attention was drawn in one direction —
toward the North Pole — while the hijackings came from an entirely
different direction.10

Vigilant Warrior was specifically mentioned by former White House counterterrorism
advisor Richard Clarke in his 2004 bestseller Against All Enemies. At the
beginning of the book Clarke describes a series of conversations with key officials
that occurred after the second tower had been hit as he chaired the White House’s
Crisis Strategy Group (CSG) during the first minutes of the attacks.

“[FAA Administrator] Jane [Garvey] where’s Norm?” I asked. They were
frantically looking for Norman Mineta, the Secretary of Transportation,
and, like me, a rare holdover from the Clinton administration. At first
FAA could not find him. “Well, Jane, can you order aircraft down? We’re
going to have to clear the airspace around Washington and New York.”

“We may have to do a lot more than that, Dick. I already put a
hold on all take-offs and landings in New York and Washington, but
we have reports of eleven aircraft off course or out of communications,
maybe hijacked.”…

I turned to the radar screen. “JCS, JCS. I assume NORAD has
scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?”

“Not a pretty picture Dick.” Dick Myers, himself a fighter pilot,
knew that the days when we had scores of fighters on strip alert had
ended with the cold war. “We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a
NORAD exercise, but … Otis has launched two birds toward New
York. Langley [Air Force Base] is trying to get two up now…

It was now 9:28 [emphasis added]11

[NOTE: Clarke’s book was edited by the White House for some months prior
to publication. The ellipsis (three dots) after the word “but” in Clarke’s paragraph
above are a direct quotation from the book suggesting the possibility that the
White House had deleted whatever Clarke had written here.]

As the chart in the preceding chapter shows, according to data provided by the
FAA, NORAD, and many press accounts, by 9:28 it was known that all four flights
had been hijacked and that flight 77 had been headed towards Washington for
some time.

This was the only reference to Vigilant Warrior I was able to find. Earlier references stored on the Web disclosed a 1996 exercise in the Persian Gulf with the
same name, but nothing since. I knew that the names assigned to exercises had
significance but did not know how names were allocated. Why would Myers indicate
that a Persian Gulf exercise, not reported on anywhere else, had any bearing
on domestic response on 9/11?

But if Clarke’s account is accurate, the name was confirmed directly to him by
the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military exercises are often linked, and according to several sources, when names are partially shared during simultaneous exercises this indicates a connection between them. The juxtaposition of the words “Guardian” and “Warrior” suggest opposing forces in a wargame exercise
with one side playing the aggressor and another side playing the defender.

The fact that Jane Garvey indicated that as many as 11 aircraft were out of
radio contact or off course was the most startling revelation. Was it an indication
that one or more of them could be connected with the war games?

Northern Vigilance was an exercise being conducted on September 11th as
reported only by Canada’s Toronto Star in a story dated December 9, 2001. The
story had a great deal to say about how 9/11 unfolded.

Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying
fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada. Part of the
exercise is pure simulation, but part is real world. NORAD is keeping a
close eye on the Russians, who have dispatched long-range bombers
to their own high north on a similar exercise….

The Federal Aviation Administration has evidence of a hijacking
and is asking for NORAD support. This is not part of the exercise.

In a flash, Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated
information, what’s known as an “inject” is purged from the screens…

“Lots of other reports were starting to come in,” [Major General
Rick] Findley [Director of NORAD operations] recalls. “And now
you’re not too sure. If they’re that clever to co-ordinate that kind of attack,
what else is taking place across North America?”… [emphasis added]12

The reference to “injects” was chilling. No other mainstream press (especially
in the US) had mentioned that false radar blips had been inserted onto radar
screens on September 11th. But on whose screens? Where? A major anomaly in
official 9/11 accounts had been officially ignored.

The only brief response I received from NORAD’s public affairs office when I
tried to sort out the various names and identities of the wargames contained the
statement, “To help clarify, NORAD did issue a news release entitled “NORAD
Maintains Northern Vigilance” on 9 SEP 01.” The e-mail response directed me to
a NORAD web page where I found the following:

The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter
aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska
and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the
Russian arctic and North Pacific Ocean. [emphasis added]13
So the fighters had been pulled north and west, away from New York and
Washington.

Other press stories referred to Vigilant Guardian as the exercise focused on a
simulated Russian attack. Which one was it? The official statements said that
Northern Vigilance was the Cold War exercise. So what was Vigilant Guardian?
And what were the other exercises all about? As I focused on these discrepancies it
became much easier to find answers. They weren’t pretty.

Northern Guardian was an exercise that was mentioned only once in a headline
for an early version of the same Toronto Star story described above; and then,
only in the headline. Being a journalist it appeared to me as though references to
Northern Guardian had been removed from the text of the story by an editor while
the headline reference had been overlooked. What appeared to be a later version
of the same story, posted in the online business section the same day had the reference to Northern Guardian deleted. Otherwise, the stories were the same.14

The National Reconnaissance Office, a joint creation of the CIA and the air
force that operates US spy satellites, was also running an exercise on September
11th. This one happened to involve a plane crashing into the headquarters of the
ultra-secret agency in the Washington, DC suburb of Chantilly, Virginia, just outside
Dulles International airport, the origin of Flight 77.

An Associated Press story dated September of 2002 was headlined “Agency
planned exercise on September 11 built around a plane crashing into a building.”

WASHINGTON — In what the government describes as a bizarre
coincidence, one US intelligence agency was planning an exercise last
September 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings.
But the cause wasn’t terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Virginia-based National Reconnaissance
Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate
jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency’s
headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.
The agency is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the runways of
Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees’ ability
to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold...

The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation’s
spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA
(news - websites).

After the September 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who
work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential
personnel, Haubold said.

An announcement for an upcoming homeland security conference
in Chicago first noted the exercise.

In a promotion for speaker John Fulton, a CIA officer assigned as
chief of NRO’s strategic gaming division, the announcement says,
“On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team ...
were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response
issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did
they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that
day.” [Emphasis added]15

Strategic gaming, indeed.

A second confirmation of the CIA-run NRO exercise was stored at www.memoryhole.
org.16 It was clear that the CIA was in charge of the NRO drill. This
corresponded perfectly with my experience which says that the CIA, when involved
in any training exercise involving other agencies, or the military, is always the
Alpha dog. How many others? Who was coordinating all these drills anyway?
Somebody had to make sure that American pilots didn’t start shooting down
Canadian airliners or thinking that friendly planes simulating hijacked airliners
were Russian bombers or worse, real hijacks.

Vigilant Guardian was a hijacking drill, not a cold war exercise

There were a number of direct quotes from participants in Vigilant Guardian indicating that the drill involved hijacked airliners rather than Russian bombers.

General Arnold had been quoted by ABC news as saying, “The first thing that
went through my mind [after receiving the hijacking alert for Flight 11] was, is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?” [emphasis added]17

The Aviation Week article reported:

“Tech. Sgt. Jeremy W. Powell of … Northeast Air Defense Sector
(NEADS) in Rome, N.Y., took the first call from Boston Center. He
notified NEADS Commander Col. Robert K. Marr Jr. of a possible
hijacked airliner, American Airlines Flight 11.

‘Part of the exercise?’ the Colonel wondered. No, this is a real world
event, he was told. Several days into a semi-annual exercise known as
Vigilant Guardian….” [emphasis added]18

The Newhouse story had opened with a reference to hijackings and also confirmed
a hijack scenario being linked to Vigilant Guardian.

“Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins figured it would be a long day .…

September 11 was Day II of ‘Vigilant Guardian,’ an exercise that
would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air defense outposts
nationwide….

At 8:40, Deskins noticed senior technician Jeremy Powell waving
his hand. Boston Center was on the line, he said. It had a hijacked airliner.

‘It must be part of the exercise,’ Deskins thought.” [emphasis added]19

For those unfamiliar with cold war-type air force exercises, for more than 50
years they have involved the simulated interception of Soviet (or Russian) strategic
bombers or missiles coming directly over the North Pole. Simulated, in this case,
means that interceptors are launched to intercept points. That’s what my father’s
job was in Maine as radar operator/weapons officer in an F89D Scorpion from late
1952 through 1953. The intercepts occurred either in polar regions or in the far
northern part of Canada, long before hostile forces could threaten the continental
United States or CONUS as it is called. That’s a long way from Boston, New York,
Washington, and Pennsylvania. There is no way that NORAD officers in Rome,
New York, or a Lieutenant General in Florida could possibly mistake a reported
hijacking out of Massachusetts as part of that kind of exercise. Such a question
could only arise if hijackings were a part of the scenario in one or more wargames
being played inside the US, especially Vigilant Guardian.

Northern Vigilance pulled fighter aircraft away
from NEADS and CONUS

I found two confirmations of this and a little more information about how extensive
the deployment had been. The first, indirect and incomplete, was from
NJ.com.

NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for
emergency scrambles on September 11. Throughout Canada and the
United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert —
armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes.20

A more specific confirmation had already come from NORAD itself from the
Northern Vigilance website.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy
fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS)
in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise
in the Russian arctic and North Pacific Ocean.21

The pieces were falling together rapidly. I remembered a story that the National
Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a message on September 10th between two
al Qaeda members. CNN reported:

A message intercepted by US intelligence officials September 10
declared “The match begins tomorrow,” and another declared
“Tomorrow is zero hour” — but the messages were not translated
until one day after the devastating terrorist attacks.22

That conversation was between Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the so-called mastermind
of 9/11, and Mohammed Atta, the reported lead hijacker.23 Could “match”
have referred to a wargame? Honegger had suggested this in 2002. The new
wargame information now made that conclusion much more attractive.

It certainly appeared that someone in authority had deliberately interfered with
FAA/NORAD operations on September 11th to make sure that some of the attacks
succeeded. Richard Clarke’s book, previously edited by the White House, had FAA
administrator Garvey referring to as many as 11 off-course/out-of-contact aircraft.
Was she saying that she couldn’t tell the wargame inserts from the real thing?

It would take only a day or two more to find damning evidence that this is
probably what she meant. The fact that the CIA had been running a plane-intobuilding
exercise simultaneously with all the military exercises made me very
suspicious. The first question that leapt at me was, with all these related exercises
running at the same time, who or what was coordinating them? Someone at DoD
had to have a regular job of knowing all the exercises being carried out everywhere
to avoid SNAFUs. That question and others would require interviews.

“Live Fly” — Pogo bounces toward truth

On Monday, April 12, the Project on Government Oversight (www.pogo.org)
released a copy of an e-mail that had been written in frustration on September 18,
2001, by former NORAD “member” Terry Ropes. In the wake of a multitude of
contradictory statements by suspects Rice, Bush, Ashcroft, Tenet, and Mueller
about how much had been known of “planes as weapons” warnings, a wave of
indignation and journalistic embarrassment had swept the country. All who testified
or answered questions, it seemed, had been saying that there had not been
enough information about “planes as weapons” to institute any kind of preparatory
responses. Ropes’s email proved them wrong.

Some of the major media finally mentioned Project Bojinka, a plan to hijack a
number of US-bound airliners over the Pacific and blow them up. Bojinka plans
also called for the crashing of a hijacked, explosives-laden airliner into CIA headquarters.

The FBI and CIA had learned of Bojinka in 1995 when they arrested
Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines. An April 17, 2004, New York Times Op-Ed headlined,
“Why Didn’t We Stop 9/11?”, finally — finally — mentioned Bojinka, the
mother of all advance warnings.24 We crazy, flaky, risible conspiracy theorists had
been screaming about it for 31 months.

The US government found out about Bojinka when they seized Ramzi
Youssef ’s personal computer and then brought him to the US and tried him for
the first World Trade Center bombing. In 2001 Minneapolis FBI agents, eventually
“adopted” by Colleen Rowley were apoplectically trying to get into Zacarias
Moussaoui’s laptop and receiving nothing but refusals. I wonder why? The agents
were also speculating about a hijacked airliner being crashed into the World Trade
Center after getting details of Moussaoui’s flight training.

Ropes’ e-mail, written a week after the attacks, expressed the frustration that we
now know was felt throughout the military and law enforcement community. It
did not take NORAD long to confirm the e-mail’s authenticity for the Boston Globe.

Subject: Exercise Scenario
In defense of my last unit, NORAD.
For POSITIVE FORCE/RSOI in Apr 01, the NORAD exercise
developers wanted an event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial
airliner (foreign carrier) and fly it into the Pentagon. PACOM
[Pacific Command] didn’t want it because it would take attention
from their exercise objectives, and Joint Staff action officers rejected it
as too unrealistic.
Terry25

The media machine kicked into high gear to control the damage. But as is
always the case in criminal investigations where the detective gets suspects to talk
— just a little — the amount of information learned is directly proportional to the
length of time the suspects (or his agents) keep talking.

April 14, 2004, stories in the New York Times, the Boston Herald, the Boston
Globe, and the Washington Post, all took the same line, emphasizing that the simulation suggested in the POGO email was rejected as being “unrealistic.”

The Boston Globe, however, added:

Concerns that terrorists might use hijacked airliners as missiles date
back to the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when jets were placed on
patrol to guard against such a threat.26

In the same story, retired FBI Director Louis Freeh (who had been FBI Director
in 1996) stated regarding 9/11: “I was never aware of a plan that contemplated airliners being used as weapons after a hijacking.” I suppose a really rich
terrorist could buy a Boeing 757 for such a mission. Osama had lots of money.

Days later, simultaneous with the appearances of top Bush and Clinton officials
in the theatrical environment of the so-called Independent 9/11 Commission, further
stories revealed shocking information — including the fact that the
government had itself been flying actual aircraft during simulated hijack exercises,
possibly even on September 11th.

Two new pieces of crucial evidence were that the exercise envisioned in the
POGO e-mail had, in fact, been conducted sometime after April of 2001, and that
several hijack exercises involved actual aircraft posing as hijacked airliners in “livefly” operations.

On April 18 USA Today spilled some of the beans. Headlined, “NORAD had
drills of jets as weapons” it offered never-before reported details of 9/11.

WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept 11 attacks, the
North American Aerospace Command conducted exercises simulating
what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners
used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was The World Trade Center. In another
exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet
supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the
United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but
that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic,
NORAD and Defense officials say….

“Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock
hijacked aircraft,” the statement said. “These exercises tested track detection
and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures;
internal and external agency coordination and operational security and
communications security procedures....

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration
was unaware of the exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show
that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of
such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny....

Until Sept 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and
Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks that responsibility
broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.

In the very next paragraph the story contradicted itself.

But there were exceptions in early drills, including one operation,
planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from
airports in Utah and Washington State that were “hijacked.” Those
planes were escorted by US and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British
Columbia and Alaska [emphasis added]27

The following day, April 19, CNN added fuel to the fire. For a moment — just
a moment — I had a hope that 9/11 might be broken, and that some treasonous
Americans might go to jail. The headline read, “NORAD exercise had jet crashing
into building.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a
regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command
simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the
United States as part of a training exercise scenario, a NORAD
spokesman said Monday….

Military officials said the exercise involved simulating a crash into
a building that would be recognizable if identified, but was not the
World Trade Center or the Pentagon….

The identity of the building named in the exercise is classified….

This sector exercise involved some flying of military aircraft as well
as a command post exercise in which communications procedures
were practiced in an office environment….

NORAD has the ongoing mission of defense of US air space….

According to a statement from NORAD, “Before September 11th,
01, NORAD regularly conducted a variety of exercises that included
hijack scenarios. These exercises tested track detection and identification;
scramble and interception; hijack procedures…. [emphasis added]28

NORAD’s own statement confirmed that real military and civilian aircraft had
posed as hijacked airliners. Fighter pilots can’t intercept thin air. They can’t fly
above and slightly to the left of thin air and rock their wings and wait for a
response. They can’t practice dodging sudden, unexpected movements, maneuver
or lock missiles unless there’s a real airplane to do it with.

The NORAD statement was quoted further in the story:

NORAD did not plan and execute these types of exercises because we
thought the scenarios were probable. These exercises were artificial
simulations that provided us the opportunity to test and validate our
process and rules of engagement with the appropriate coordination between
NORAD’s command headquarters, its subordinate regions and sectors and
National Command authorities in Canada and the United States.

Any assertion that the White House didn’t know of such drills was pure bullshit.

The National Command Authority is the White House. It starts with the president
and descends through the vice president (in the president’s absence as was
the case on 9/11), to the secretary of defense. Such exercises, when played in real
life, usually involve White House staff standing in for the president. But since they
are carried out using either the Presidential Emergency Operations Center or the
Situation Room, how could the president, vice president, and national security
advisor not know about drills that, of necessity, had taken place inside the White
House?29

Note the fact that one particular hijacked airliner drill, conducted most likely
between July 2001 and September 2001, had the hijacked plane crashing into a
building. September 11th was the best possible “drill” of all; the real thing. Was the same exercise that had been rejected in April then carried out as an actual event on September 11th? Was the intended game target the World Trade Center? The
Pentagon? Both had been mentioned as targets previously, and one of them had
actually been bombed before. Was the White House a target? Was the CIA
headquarters at Langley? It had been mentioned as a target in the Bojinka documents.
The CIA then certainly had an interest in knowing about and participating
in all such wargames.

The USA Today story quoted a NORAD spokesman as saying “No exercise
matched the specific events of September 11th.”30 So there must have been a major
salient difference between this particular drill and the events of 9/11 .… maybe
they used an airplane with Delta markings instead of United and American, or
maybe the number of peanuts on board was completely different. No match.

Other significant similarities to 9/11 jumped out. The one admitted domestic
hijack drill involved both the Canadian and US Air Forces, exactly like the drills
being conducted on 9/11. Importantly, at least one exercise involved the shoot-down
of a simulated hijack that must have been remotely piloted. It would have been difficult to find volunteers for the role of doomed airline pilot in a drill like that.

My understanding of the air force, acquired through my father’s career in the
military and with Martin-Marietta, reminded me of two things. There are many
old airliners lying around, and the air force likes to blow up the real thing
rather than a Cessna with an American Airlines logo. The equipment involved on
September 11th, Boeing 757s and 767s, were newer models. There might not have
been any older ones serviceable lying in the “bone yards.” Might the airlines, very
close with the US Air Force, have conveniently loaned some to the air force for use
in hijack drills? It’s a great tax write-off. If they did, were they remotely piloted to avoid injury to airline personnel in case of an accident? The technology certainly existed. Intelligence agencies and the military have long disguised special combat aircraft as harmless commercial planes. I believe that one such plane, the white business jet from the chart in the previous chapter, shot down flight 93. We couldn’t have a plane full of witnesses and live “hijacker/patsies” land and start talking; especially if the plane had been flying all by itself, now could we? We will see shortly that at least one of Flight 93’s alleged hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi, had received English language training from the military. If he was on that plane and it was successfully landed, he would have some interesting things to say. If he wasn’t — if only a few of the alleged hijackers had been on the plane, it would have raised an entirely different set of questions.

History remembers

A 1976 NORAD procedural memorandum established that NORAD was absolutely
responsible for all air defense in wartime or “limited war” or an “air defense
emergency” inside the US. The attacks of 9/11 would seem to qualify as a limited
war.31 There was no determinate country to attack that day, no invasion by foreign
troops. The memorandum, called SCATANA (Security Control of Air Traffic
and Air Navigation Aids), was partially implemented on 9/11. It had not been
superceded by any later orders. The Aviation Week article contained three chilling
paragraphs:

By 9:26 a.m., the FAA command center stopped all departures
nationwide. At 9:41, American Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon,
elevating tension levels even further. NEADS’ Sr. Airman Stacia
Rountree, an identification technician, said, ‘We had three aircraft
down and the possibility of others hijacked. We had to think outside
the box,’ making up procedures on the fly. Before the day ended, 21 aircraft
across the US had been handled as ‘tracks of interest.’

‘We didn’t know how many more there were ... Are there five? Six?
The only way we could tell was to implement Scatana — sanitize the
airspace. Get everybody down,’ said Lt. Col. William E. Glover Jr.,
chief of Norad’s air defense operations.

Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, NORAD commander-in-chief, was in
the Cheyenne Mountain battle center by then. He and his staff suggested,
via an open command link, implementing a limited version of
Scatana — a federal plan designed to take emergency control of all domestic
air traffic and navigation aids. Transportation Secretary Norman Y.
Mineta immediately concurred and gave the order to get all aircraft
on the ground as soon as possible. That action probably saved many
lives, but without unnecessary, paralyzing restrictions of a full Scatana
order.32

Many press stories, including some excellent reports in USA Today, painted a
clear picture of the biggest problem facing NORAD and air force units as the
attacks began. Many stories confirmed Jane Garvey’s number of 11 possible hijacks.
Some indicated that there were up to 21. How could a NORAD commander have
known where to send fighters at that time? There were clearly many possible hijackings underway. No one knew the exact number. No one knew which were real.

Sending fighters to a “possible” hijacking was not acceptable. There weren’t
enough to go around.33 And if they were sent to an intercept that turned out not
to have been a hijacking, they would have been in the wrong place to respond to
a real one. This was exactly the kind of uncertainty that would paralyze eager and
loyal pilots and commanders until uncertainty had been eliminated. By that time
of course, it was too late. Mission accomplished.

So who was flying those things anyway?

Especially with the case of Flight 77, which was, as 9/11-widow Kristen Breitweiser
testified, “performing loop de loops” over the Pentagon, some serious flying was
done on September 11th. Flight 77 not only flew straight towards the Pentagon
from near the Ohio-West Virginia border, it made a sudden U-turn over
Washington so that it could hit the Pentagon in a virtually unoccupied wing on
the navy side. It also descended several thousand feet in a sharp dive and was able
to pull out and approach the Pentagon just feet above the ground, without colliding
with anything other than some trees and a streetlight.34

So who was piloting Flight 77? According to ABC you have your choice between
our charmed lucky friends, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, or Wail Al
Shehri.35 According to multiple sources all three were poor and inexperienced pilots.
Someone made great progress in the summer of 2001. Or maybe it wasn’t necessary.

Training provided by Uncle Sam

There are differences between intelligence “assets” who are expendable and those
who are not. Usually, the non-expendable ones are people in whom an agency has
invested a lot of time and money. According to Newsweek, as many as five of the
9/11 hijackers received training at US military installations.

September 15 — US military sources have given the FBI information
that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used
in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure US military
installations in the 1990s.

Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on driver’s licenses and
car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. — known as
the “Cradle of US Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking US
Navy source.

Another of the alleged hijackers [Atta] may have been trained in strategy
and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another
high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language
instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both
were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United
States, according to the Pentagon source.

But there are slight discrepancies between the military training
records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers — either in the
spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source
said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of
the foreign nationals who studied at the US installations.36

Independent journalist and filmmaker Daniel Hopsicker moved to the Venice,
Florida, area shortly after the attacks. In the Washington Post and the Knight-Ridder
syndicate, Hopsicker found news stories confirming that some of the hijackers had
received US military training. Those stories had Mohammed Atta pretty well
nailed down. He had extensive US military training. He also spent a lot of time in
bars and strip clubs — behaviors that are completely inconsistent with those of a
devout Muslim about to meet Allah as a pure martyr.37

Credible press stories citing military sources and records also reported that
some of the alleged 9/11 hijackers had received English language training at the
military installations. The hijackers reported to have received such training here
were Saeed Alghamdi and unnamed others; “more than one,” according the
Associated Press. Alghamdi was allegedly one of the hijackers of Flight 93.38

Again, a little familiarity with the military proved helpful. Military language
instruction is a specialized, very elite school. Its primary providers of students havealways been military and civilian intelligence agencies. As one former Special
Forces soldier who attended the school told me, attendance is exclusively reserved
for the most highly qualified applicants making a career in intelligence or the military. “It costs too damn much money for them to train you to be fluent in
another language. It’s a highly marketable skill. They won’t just let you walk away afterthat,” he said. The same thinking, he added, applied to foreign students receiving English language training.

But the assumption that the military had somehow trained some of the hijackers
up to incredible skill levels didn’t hold water. Venice, Florida, was where several
of the hijackers received flight training in small, private aircraft. None received
training on Boeing airliners. Only one or two of the 19 had an instrument rating.
Over the course of two years Hopsicker not only added information to what was
known about military training, he established that some of the hijackers associated
with wealthy Floridians who had both intelligence and Bush family
connections. Hopsicker also confirmed that within hours of the attacks, Florida
Governor Jeb Bush had a military C 130 Hercules transport fly in to the Venice
airport where a hastily loaded rental truck, filled with the records of Huffman
Aviation — where Atta, Al Shehhi, and others had trained — was driven directly
into the plane. The C 130 immediately took off for parts unknown.

Experienced military pilots with thousands of hours in all kinds of aircraft,
Gary Eitel for example, have told me that the maneuver performed by Flight 77,
as described in official reports, was beyond the capabilities of 90 percent of even
the best and most experienced pilots in the world. I talked to Eitel on the day of
the attacks and he was amazed by the piloting skill used to steer Flight 175 into
the second tower. Flight 77 boggled his mind.

I remembered that the BBC had contributed some interesting material to the
stories that some hijackers received military training.

One of the most bizarre ironies of all this is that five of the hijackers
lived in a motel right outside the gates of the NSA .…
When Osama bin Laden first moved to Afghanistan, the NSA listened
in to every phone call he made on his satellite phone. Over the
course of two years it is believed they logged more than 2,000 minutes
of conversation ....

It all ended when President Clinton ordered the cruise missile
strike on his training camp in 1998. Bin Laden narrowly escaped with
his life.

He realised that the NSA was listening in and ditched his satellite
phone, and ordered his aides never to talk on the phone again about
operations.39

Early on the morning of 11 September, when Hani Hanjour and
his four accomplices left the Valencia Motel on US route 1 on their
way to Washington’s Dulles airport, they joined the stream of NSA
employees heading to work.

Three hours later, they had turned flight 77 around and slammed
it into the Pentagon.40

Flight 77 again: the miracle plane. The one that nobody actually saw hit the
Pentagon; the one that left no recognizable debris matching an airliner; the one
French author and investigator Thierry Meyssan did a pretty convincing job of
proving never hit the Pentagon because the hole was way too small and the damage
pattern (a key forensic technique used by police officers investigating traffic
accidents) was totally inconsistent with a mid-sized passenger jet like a 757; the
one where the engines melted, disappeared or evaporated, or were transported into
space by the Starship Enterprise and never found; the one that flew like a fighter
plane or a cruise missile.41

Meyssan was crucified in the American press, although his book L’Effroyable
Imposture, or The Horrifying Fraud, became a runaway bestseller in Europe. This
was another lesson for me about what happens in America when one tries to make
a conspiracy case in the public arena, based solely upon physical evidence. That
approach gave rise to verbal attacks and politically empty debates that merely wasted
time and energy. I have never believed that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. I also
deliberately chose not to pursue it in my newsletter because I couldn’t prove it by
the rigorous standards of either the law courts or by peer-reviewed forensic science.
Of course, like Meyssan and everyone else, I’ve been dogged by the big question
about the alleged Pentagon plane: where did Flight 77 go, and what happened to
the passengers?

I was now absolutely convinced that some valuable and highly trained assets
were among the so-called hijackers and that those assets could not have accomplished
the flying required on 9/11. Their behavior was more consistent with the
creation of a detailed “legend” to make the public believe they had done the deed.

Remotely piloted airliners?

The technology to fly airliners by remote control or, what the air force calls
remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), has been around since the 1960s. The famed
CIA Predator drone is just one example of how far the technology has advanced.
These unmanned, armed attack aircraft have successfully taken out single vehicles
from high altitudes in Afghanistan and Yemen. Remote piloting of airliners was
even described in the declassified Northwoods documents from 1962, as the Joint
Chiefs planned to shoot down American airliners and blame it on Fidel Castro —
so that the US could have a nice war with Cuba. In those days the Joint Chiefs
apparently thought it was bad form to kill too many American citizens when you
were attacking your own people.42

Boeing Aircraft now has an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) capable
of aerial dogfights and killing tanks.43

Shortly after 9/11, investigative reporter Joe Vialls reported on some technology
that has since been confirmed. While I do not agree with many of Vialls’s other
conclusions or political beliefs, he was right when he wrote:

"By the mid-seventies, aircraft systems were even more advanced, with
computers controlling onboard autopilots, which in turn were capable
of controlling all of the onboard hydraulics. In combination these
multiple different functions were now known as the ‘Flight Control
System’ or FCS, in turn integrated with sophisticated avionics capable
of automatically landing the aircraft in zero visibility conditions. In
summary, by the mid-seventies most of the large jets were capable of
effectively navigating hundreds of miles and then making automatic
landings at a selected airport in zero-zero fog conditions. All of this
could be accomplished unaided, but in theory at least, still under the
watchful eyes of the flight deck crews.

"In order to make Home Run truly effective, it had to be completely
integrated with all onboard systems, and this could only be
accomplished with a new aircraft design, several of which were on the
drawing boards at that time.

"Under cover of extreme secrecy, the multinationals and DARPA
went ahead on this basis and built ‘back doors’ into the new computer
designs. There were two very obvious hard requirements at this
stage, the first a primary control channel for use in taking over the
flight control system and flying the aircraft back to an airfield of
choice, and secondly a covert audio channel for monitoring flight
deck conversations. Once the primary channel was activated, all aircraft
functions came under direct ground control, permanently
removing the hijackers and pilots from the control loop.

"Remember here, this was not a system designed to ‘undermine’ the
authority of the flight crews, but was put in place as a ‘doomsday’
device in the event the hijackers started to shoot passengers or
crewmembers, possibly including the pilots. Using the perfectly reasonable
assumption that hijackers only carry a limited number of
bullets, and many aircraft nowadays carry in excess of 300 passengers,
Home Run could be used to fly all of the survivors to a friendly airport
for a safe auto landing. So the system started out in life for the
very best of reasons, but finally fell prey to security leaks, and eventually
to compromised computer codes. In light of recent high-profile
CIA and FBI spying trials, these leaks and compromised codes should
come as no great surprise to anyone."44

Back doors? Does that sound like yet another application of the ever-evolving
PROMIS software? Remember that DARPA (Defense Advanced Projects Research
Agency) is the same group of folks who brought us the Total Information
Awareness Program that virtually eliminates any expectation of privacy in the US.

One company in particular, Raytheon, had been directly involved in projects related
to the remote piloting of aircraft. The AP wrote about it just after 9/11. That story’sname-dropping suggested that people in government were aware that this technologywas a hot topic. Raytheon was of interest because it was developing technology toremove pilot-control from airliners under hijack or emergency conditions. Companieslike Grumman-Northrop had been flying their Global Hawk RPVs for years.

Are Remote Control Jets Worthwhile?

AP — Several companies and government agencies are developing
technology to help aircraft controllers land commercial jets from afar,
an effort that could avert future disasters or hijackings.
President Bush has suggested further exploration of the technology
since the September 11 terrorist hijackings, but some wonder if
moving responsibility for landing planes from the cockpit to ground
control is a good idea.

The Raytheon Corp. is one of several companies looking to use
new satellite technology that would someday allow jets to be landed
by people on the ground, in much the same way that hobbyists bring
in their model airplanes by remote control.

Raytheon announced on Monday that the company is working on
a secure military and civilian system that relies on ground units to
improve the precision of satellite navigation.

The company successfully landed a FedEx Corp. 727 without the help
of a pilot at a New Mexico Air Base in August.

‘There’s some pretty overt national security concerns I would think,’
said John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association. ‘The devil is in the details. Is this something we would put
on all aircraft? Because I’m sure you can imagine if I can control all aircraft
you would create a new target.’

But according to James Coyne, president of the National Air
Transportation Association, the technology could be a way to avert
disasters like those in the terrorist attacks or even prevent others like
the 1996 Valujet crash in Florida and the 1998 SwissAir crash where
crews were apparently stymied by fire.

‘Perhaps in both of those cases, if people on the ground could have
been made aware of the problems, those planes could have been
brought back to safety,’ said Coyne, who thinks remote control could
be a good idea.

Military and civilian jets have been landing on autopilot for years, but
the Raytheon test used technology that provides the extremely precise navigational
instructions that would be required for remote control from a
secure location….

Boeing spokesman John Dern said the company is waiting to hear
from task forces assembled by Mineta before trying to integrate such
technology into its commercial airliners.

‘Translating that into the commercial world and certifying such a
system would pose big challenges,’’ he said. ‘For safety and reliability
and redundancy, we’d certainly want to be sure that anything we’d do
enhances safety.’45

Either NORAD had responsibility for tracking domestically hijacked aircraft or it didn’t. If it didn’t, who did? The Civil Air Patrol? Local police departments? Air National Guard bases are under NORAD control to respond to external threats. Does some other agency control them for domestic threats? The military would never allow such confusing chains of command.

I was approaching one of those moments a detective lives for — when he knows he’s caught the suspect in many, many lies, and the whole pathetic construct begins to fall apart. If only a real detective could get these people into an interrogation
room, there would be signed confessions or the certainty of a conviction before the day was over.

It got better, and it got worse: as the logical beauty of the investigation grew,
so did the ugliness of the reality it revealed.

Then it hit me. The National Command Authority (NCA) in the United States
is the president; in his absence, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. NCA meetings and protocols routinely
include the National Security Advisor in the role of the president’s top advisor on
national security issues. On September 11th the NCA would have extended downward
through NORAD commander General Ralph Eberhart and then to General Arnold at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. NORAD had just established that, at
minimum, Donald Rumsfeld and General Myers were lying about having no conception
of such attacks and no preparedness for them. We already know that
Condoleezza Rice had been lying all along.

A memorable quotation

"Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario
which was used in the USA yesterday… As soon as something like that
happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we
are all up." — General Anatoly Kornukov, Commander in Chief of the Russian Air Force46

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush vowed that he would
not tap into the Social Security trust fund except as a result of war, recession, or
a national emergency. On September 11, 2001, shortly after the attacks, President
Bush turned to his Budget Director, Mitch Daniels, and said: “Lucky me. I hit the
trifecta.”47

The Russians

I kept seeing the words on Mike Vreeland’s note, “Let one happen, stop the rest.”
He had just returned to Toronto from Moscow in December of 2000 with knowledge
of the attacks in the pouches he carried with him. Were the Russians in on
it? They certainly had specific knowledge. The Izvestia story proved that. Putin
had said so on MS-NBC days after 9/11.

Russian intelligence has always been surprisingly effective in penetrating US
agencies; only those of Great Britain are historically more vulnerable to Russian
infiltration. Neither the FBI nor the CIA has fully recovered from the years when
Robert Hannsen and Aldrich Ames (respectively) flipped and served as double
agents for the KGB. They did it for money and ego gratification. Could al Qaeda
pay that kind of cash, offer that kind of support from its non-existent embassy in
Washington? Through its spy satellites, diplomatic pouches, and its large cadre of
Caucasian agents free to move around Washington unnoticed and throughout the
US with diplomatic immunity?

Running a spy ring is expensive, and it takes a lot of things, especially people,
which al Qaeda didn’t have. Osama bin Laden and his family did own some satellites,
and they hobnobbed with George H.W. Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major. They invested in companies benefiting both Bushes. Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton had been involved in joint-venture construction projects with the Bin Ladin Group in the Middle East. But this was truly a case where state sponsorship was the only thing that could explain one or more highranking American traitors.

It was becoming clearer that the state sponsor was the United States.

What if Vreeland had been wittingly or unwittingly delivering vague documents in which Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded certain slices of the 9/11 pie in exchange for Russian silence and cooperation? - Immediately after 9/11 Putin was
one of America’s head cheerleaders. He welcomed George W. Bush to Moscow shortly
after the attacks. Did Bush get a look at Putin’s intelligence files on how the
Bush cabal, its financial backers, and US intelligence agencies had set up the attacks, roughly between 1998 and 2001, by assembling pieces of known terrorist plans already on the shelf; by quietly co-opting some terrorist cells which still believed they were following bin Laden; by arranging for other al Qaeda members who had been “flipped” to recruit the unwitting muscle who would die a martyr’s death
on September 11th?

It was not until Iraq became the Bush administration’s raison d’être that the
Russian relationship went sour. Iraq had 11 percent of the world’s oil, and Russia
had around $8 billion of contracts to refurbish the oil infrastructure and $4
billion worth of Saddam’s unpaid IOUs.

So where could a few key al Qaeda operatives, some of whom had trained at a
CIA sponsored training camp in Chechnya, have possibly gotten detailed information
about multiple wargame exercises on 9/11 so that they could complete movements that would fill out the legend of their crime? From their handlers perhaps?

Unlike a police detective, I had no badge, no authority, no legal mandate, no
ability to compel people to show me records or even talk to me. But one thing was
absolutely certain.

It was time to go out and start asking questions.

War Games: Chapter 19 from "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert © Michael Ruppert (via 911weknow.com) © 2006 9/11 We Know [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:26 PM

Statist Dating 

So this afternoon, when my son comes home from school, he’s carrying a cat-cage. He throws his books on the kitchen table and flashes me a smile, heading to the fridge.

"Hey son," I ask, "Where’d you get the cat?"

"Oh" he says, opening the fridge door, "it’s my date’s."

"Your date’s?"

He takes a swig of milk. "Yeah. For the prom tomorrow."

"Ohhh-k. Why do you have her cat?"

"Uhh, well, for insurance."

"What? What do you mean?"

"Well I’m not sure she’s going to show."

"What happened? What did she say when you asked her?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, she’s all: it’s sooo totally inappropriate. She wasn’t into."

I shook my head slightly, trying to make sense of my son. "So – you… took her cat? Because she said no?"

"Uh, Dad, no, what do you think I am, crazy?"

"Uhhh, no… But you do have her cat."

"Well sure! She said she didn’t want to go to the prom with me, and I told her that she did, but she just didn’t know it yet, and that going to the prom with me was the right thing to do, and so I would have to make her do it if she didn’t want to."

"What? What kind of… Where on earth did you learn that that was a good idea?"

"From my political science class."

"Your political… What? How on earth does that make sense?" I took a deep breath. "Step me through it."

He smiles. "Sure! So my political science teacher tells us we choose the government, and then the government gets to tell us what to do. Right?"

"Yeah, that’s the theory I guess…"

"So I asked her: hey, what if we don’t like what the government tells us to do? She says, well, we have to obey the government anyway, but we can protest, or vote for someone else in a few years or whatever. And then I said: what if the government orders us to do something we really disagree with – can we say no? She says, not really, you have to obey the government. Why? I ask. She says: because you have chosen the government. But if we have chosen the government, why would it need to force us to do things? It’s like– if I go to a store to buy an iPod, and say to the guy, I really want this iPod, here’s my money, and he pulls out a gun and says: you totally have to buy this iPod, or I’m going to shoot you." He shakes his head. "What kind of sense would that make? If I want to buy the iPod, no one has to force me to buy it. If I don’t want to buy the iPod, isn’t it kind of wrong to force me to buy it? Am I wrong, Dad?"

I sigh. Sometimes I wish my son didn’t have to learn these lessons. "No, son, you’re not wrong."

He smiles. "So then I said that governments, then, must be always forcing people to do what they don’t want to do, or I guess stop them from doing what they do want to do. And she says that people want to do the wrong things, but that government makes them do the right things. So I asked her how people who want to do the wrong things can vote for people who will force them to do the right things? I mean, if you know enough to say to someone: force me to be good – and here’s my list of good things – then surely you’re good enough already, and don’t need to be forced. And only bad people would want that job anyway!" He shakes his head. "Then she gets really angry and just says that people have to be forced to do the right thing, that there are a lot of bad people in the world, and we need governments to protect us, and so we have to obey, because the government is trying to help us, and basically it knows best. So I say: then it’s OK to force people to do stuff even if they don’t want to. She says yes, as long as you have their best interests at heart. I started to ask her how you could possibly know that, but she cut me off and said we had to move on, and that all the other kids were bored, which I don’t think was the case, ’cause they were all pretty wide-eyed by then."

I nod slowly. "Right. Sooo… The cat?"

My son hops up on a stool. "Right, right! So, I want a date for the prom, and I ask someone in my poly-sci class, but she’s all ‘nooo, that’s soooo inappropriate,’ but I really want her to come, ’cause I have her best interests at heart, so I tell her that she has to come to the prom with me, because there are lots of bad dates out there, and it’s my duty to protect her. She says that she doesn’t need protection. I say sorry, that’s not really an option. She tells me to get lost. I say that if you don’t want to obey me, there will be consequences. She gets really mad and tells me to stop threatening her. I say I am not threatening her, I am just governing her, and if she doesn’t obey me, I’ll be forced to take her cat. She calls me a little creep and storms off."

"So… that’s her cat?"

"Yeah, it’s easy to find out where people live. And it was an outdoor cat, so I didn’t have to break in or anything."

I sigh. "So when can I expect a call from the girl’s parents?"

He blinks in confusion. "Parents? Why would her parents call? She’s, like, ancient."

"Ancient? You’re in grade 9!"

"Sure."

"So how old is this girl?"

He pokes his finger into the cat cage. "Hi there!" He glances at me. "Oh she’s not a girl, dad. She’s a woman."

"What?"

The phone rings. Numbly, I pick it up. Before I can say anything, a shrieking female voice hits my ear like an icepick.

"This is Mrs. Staten, your son’s political science teacher, what on earth is going on, and where the hell is my cat?"

- Stefan Molyneux Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:40 AM

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Francis A. Boyle interviewed by Alex Jones 

Alex Jones was joined on air this week by a leading American professor, practitioner of and expert on international law to discuss his detailed knowledge of the cover up of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which he is adamant were perpetrated by criminal elements of the US government in an attempt to foment a police state by killing off opposition to hardline post 9/11 legislation.

Dr Franics A. Boyle literally helped write the law with regards to terrorism, as he was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that was passed unanimously by both Houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bush Snr.

Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court.

The professor started off by explaining the motivation behind the October 2001 anthrax attacks:

"After the September 11th 2001 Terrorist attacks, the Bush administration tried to ram the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress, that would have, if already had not, set up a police state. And we know for a fact that the PATRIOT Act had already been drafted and was sitting on Ashcroft's desk as of September 10th.

Senators Daschle and Leahy were holding it up because they realised what this would lead to, indeed the first draft of the Patriot Act, they would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus. And all of a sudden out of nowhere come these anthrax attacks. And at the time I myself did not know precisely what was going on, either with respect to September 11th or the anthrax attacks, but then the New York Times revealed that the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle. A trillion spores per gram, special electro-static treatment.

This is super-weapons grade Anthrax that even the United States government, in its openly proclaimed programs, and we had one before Nixon, had never developed before. So it was obvious to me that this was from a US Government lab, there is no where else you could have gotten that."

Dr Boyle proceeded to call a very high level official in the FBI who deals with terrorism and counter-terrorism, Spike Bowman, whom he had met at a terrorism conference at the University of Michigan Law School.

He told Bowman that the only people that would have the capability to carry out the attacks were people working on US government programs on Anthrax and with access to high level a bio-safety lab. Dr Boyle went through all the names, the contractors and the labs for Anthrax work with the FBI's Bowman.

Bowman then informed Dr Boyle that the FBI was working with Fort Detrick on the matter, to which he responded that Fort Detrick could really be the main problem.

It was documented at the time that the anthrax strain used was military grade. This was widely reported in 2002 in publications such as the New Scientist.

"Soon after I had informed Bowman of this information, the FBI authorised the destruction of the AMES cultural Anthrax database." The Professor continued.

The destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, IA., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, was blatant destruction of evidence as it meant that there was no way of finding out which strain was sent to who to develop the larger breed of anthrax used in the attacks. The trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret but officially-sponsored US government biowarfare program that was illegal and criminal.

"Clearly for the FBI to have authorised this was obstruction of justice, a federal crime. That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That's the DNA, the fingerprints right there. It later came out of course that this was AMES strain anthrax that was behind the Daschle and Leahy letter."

At that point Boyle says it became very clear to him that there was a cover up in operation by the FBI. He points out that later on on reading one of David Ray Griffin's books on the 9/11 attacks, he discovered that Agent Bowman was the same FBI agent who sabotaged the FISA warrant for access to Zacarious Moussaoui's computer, which contained information that could have facilitated the prevention of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Later on Bowman was promoted and given a decoration, presumably because he did such a fine job on Moussaoui's computer and also on the anthrax.

So it was to be that the patriot act was rammed through, because the opposition from Leahy and Daschle, whom they had tried to kill, disappeared. Congress and even the House itself officially shut down for the first time in the history of the Republic. The Senate refused to shut down. Dr Boyle commented that he believes this to be one of the biggest political crimes in the history of America.

The professor agreed that actions such as this and legislation such as the Patriot act and the new Military Commissions act are the precursors to a military dictatorship.

"And remember that the first draft of the Patriot act that sat on Ashcroft's desk before 9/11, and also remember that Ashcroft was flying around in a private jet because he was told that there was going to be a terrorist attack with airplanes, so all this had been planned.

They were going to move to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which is all that really separates us from a police state. And that is what they have done now with respect to enemy combatants."

With regards to 9/11 itself the professor asserted that it is clear Bush, Rice, Tennet, Ashcroft and other Bush Administration officials all knew a terrorist attack was coming and that the attacks were at the very least allowed to go ahead.

"They let it happen because they wanted a war and they wanted a police state, all the elements for a war against Afghanistan were there in place, even the military force in the gulf were there on the scene, there were massive military forces in the gulf, in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, in the Arabian Ocean before September 11th poised for an attack, whether it was going to be Afghanistan or Iraq would be decided by Bush and the rest of them."

The professor pointed out that it is now being argued by lawmakers that the 14th amendment does not mean what it has been taken to mean and that under the Military Commissions Act any US citizen can be stripped of their citizenship and thus be labeled an enemy combatant.

"So in other words they are taken the position that in some point in time if they want to, they can unilaterally round up United States native born citizens, as they did for Japanese Americans in World War Two, and stick us into concentration camps. That is correct. They haven't actually yet done it but my guess is that the papers have been drawn up... and we know that the FEMA camps are out there.

So it's clear that the Bush people, I guess they are waiting for some other terrorist attack, another anthrax attack, who knows what, and then they will proceed to invoke these emergency orders."

Dr Boyle believes that the domestic police state is a seen as a must by the neoconservatives who are pushing for dominance in the middle east in order to quell dissent from an American public who, the informed majority of, clearly will not stand for such aggression in their names.

The professor then went on to talk about the sickness of the neoconservative sympathizers who are pushing for the practice of torture to be made legal. Legislators such as John Yu and Professor Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. Dr Boyle believes that there is a move afoot to infiltrate both the legal profession and legal education with opinion and legislature that subverts long established US law. His warning is stark:

"The Nazis did the exact same thing too. They had their lawyers infiltrating law schools. Carl Schmidt was the worst and he was the mentor to Leo Strauss, the founder of the neoconservatives. So the same phenomena that started out in Nazi Germany is happening here and I exaggerate not... we could all be tortured, we could all be treated this way."

Dr Boyle stressed that in order to seek justice over the anthrax attacks it is vital to keep the pressure on Senator Leahy who will apparently be becoming the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy will have subpoena power and investigative power, and if anyone would have motivation to try to get to the bottom of the attacks, it would be him.

Dr Boyle ended by urging readers and listeners to become informed and spread this information. He also admitted that in the Summer of 2004 he was interrogated by an agent with the CIA/FBI joint terrorism task force. The agent tried to recruit Dr Boyle as an informant to provide the FBI with information on his Arab and Muslim clients. When he refused the FBI placed him on all of the government's terrorism watch lists and he now finds it very difficult to travel in and out of the US. - Information Clearing House

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:49 PM

Streaming video, 4 minutes. (via Alternet)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:11 PM

Posada Carriles' [2003] US asylum application connects to JFK assassination 

"I suspect that Posada has some very incriminating evidence against Bush senior to be released if he dies a suspicious death. Otherwise I can't imagine how he can get away with it, or why the Bush administration exposes itself to so such an embarrasment."

In a [2003] interview with Granma International, Wim Dankbaar is not hiding his astonishment over the request for asylum by international terrorrist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami.

"It's just astounding. The apathy of the media even more so. Why does no media source write that the man is not pardoned from his sentence for killing 73 people, but that he ESCAPED and is still a convicted terrorrist on the loose?"

[As of Decmber 21, 2006 Posada, 79, has spent the past 18 months in federal custody in El Paso, Texas, on immigration charges. A judge ruled Posada, who was born in Cuba and naturalized in Venezuela, can not be deported to either country. He is wanted in both for his alleged involvement in a 1976 bombing of a Cuban jet in Venezuela that killed 73 people and a 1997 bombing campaign on Havana hotels, restaurants and clubs. - Fox News]

Dankbaar, a Dutch businessman who has financed new investigations into the Kennedy shooting - with the collaboration of retired FBI agents - and who is assembling a documentary on the subject, has shown how one of the three individuals arrested by Dallas police shortly after the crime, placed Luis Posada Carriles in Dealey Plaza in Dallas when the assassination was carried out.

He affirms that Chauncey Holt, one of three alleged vagrants - in truth, they were Mafia hitmen in disguise - who were detained, testified on the facts in a 2-hour video recording made shortly before his death that was never transmitted. ?In this recording,? said Dankbaar, ?Holt names a few Cuban-Americans, and among them is Luis Posada Carriles. "He identifies the other two tramps as Charles Rogers and Charles Harrelson. Harrelson is a convicted hitman serving life for another murder, and also the father of Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson."

Newsweek was the first to report on this story in 1991. (A reprint of that article can be found by clicking here.)

Meanwhile Dankbaar adds a lot more information: Chauncey Holt was working under the orders of Meyer Lansky, notorious chief of the Havana mafia during the 1950s, and Pete Licavoli, another U.S. mafia leader.

But Holt was also an operative for the CIA. His instructions for Dallas came from his undercover CIA supervisor Philip Twombly of the Bank of Fullerton, California. Those instructions were specifically to make and deliver secret service credentials to a rabid anti Castro militant named Homer Echevarria, who was a close associate of Cuban exile leader Paulino Sierra . Holt further relates that he made id cards in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. Furthermore he drove to Dallas from Licavoli?s Arizona ranch in the company of Leo Moceri and Charles Nicoletti, both hitmen for mafia moguls Giancana and Licavoli. Holt?s testimony on the Kennedy plot is therefore clear evidence of the collaboration between the CIA, Organized Crime and the Cuban exile community, with the consent of the highest elements in the US Government. His story even points out that Joseph Ball, counsel for the Warren Commission, was a CIA asset, who harboured several of the participants in a safe house in Acapulco, to keep them out of reach of the Commission.

According to Dankbaar, Holt came forward because all the principals are dead and he felt the american public was entitled to know the truth about the death of their President. He expressed particularly strong reservations on the CIA?s use of Lee Harvey Oswald as a sacrificial lamb. Holt has left a number of documents to support his story, up to written instructions and private correspondence from his mafia and CIA superiors.

Dankbaar pointed out that mafia boss Sam Giancana?s biography - edited by his brother - discloses the role played by two buddies of former Havana chief Santos Trafficante, one of which could perfectly be Posada, according to the description given.

The research financed by Dankbaar was led by retired detective Zack Shelton, who worked for the FBI for 28 years, principally in Chicago and Kansas City. The film entitled Second Look presents the results of his search for new information on the controversial subject.

According to Dankbaar, the presence in Dallas of several small groups of individuals linked both to the Cuban-American leadership of the Batista faction and the Italian mafia could be explained by the CIA?s compartmentalization of its operations.

As well as Posada, the film shows that other known Cuban-American CIA operatives, such as Frank Sturgis and Orlando Bosch, were also present in Dealey Plaza. It further presents the story of another CIA operative and sidekick of Charles Nicoletti from the Chicago crime family, James E. Files, who has confessed to being the man who fired the headshot at JFK from the infamous grassy knoll.

A fragment of this videotaped confession is presented here.

?Some JFK reseachers tell me that they have never heard of James Files. I then remind them they are not supposed to hear of covert CIA operatives. He did not achieve the notoriety of people like Bosch, Novo and Posada, who are implicated in the Cuban airline bombing and the assassination of Orlando Letelier. He just managed to keep a lower profile. But rest assured that he was active in the same circles?.

Dankbaar refers to these documents:

Document 1

Document 2

Dankbaar does not discount the possibility that Posada could have been another triggermen firing at Kennedy. He points out that in his special address at the Havana Convention Centre on April 11, Fidel Castro stressed that a document declassified by US authorities talks about Carriles as belonging to a CIA group, with the code name of Cazador (Hunter). Although ironically, the Cuban President noted, Carriles was a hunter who blew up passenger airplanes. Fidel Castro indicated that the document revealed that the terrorist had received military training, graduating with the rank of lieutenant, boasted a certificate as an expert sharpshooter and gave courses on explosives and demolition.

"Posada was almost killed in Guatemala in 1990, which he publicly blamed on Castro agents. 2

But that may be a cover story, it may as well have been the CIA. This guy knows too much, and I don't think it is too far out to assume he has communicated some type of "insurance".

Remember how CIA drug smuggler and Iran-Contra operative Barry Seal was gunned down? If you believe his lawyer, Seal was in direct contact with George Bush. And the personal telephone number of George H. W. Bush was found in the trunk of Seal's car. They blamed his murder on the Medellin cartel, but he was scheduled to testify and there were a lot of rumors he had a video tape featuring Jeb and George W. Bush." 3

Dankbaar also cites the case of David Morales: ?David Sanchez Morales is another CIA assassin involved in the JFK assassination who died under suspicious circumstances. He had secured his house with double alarm systems, but not against burglars. He confessed to a friend: "It's my own guys I am worried about. I know too damned much." 4

It's possible that Posada can blackmail the Bush Administration. Therefore I would not be surprised if he gets his asylum. James Files has been a target for discreditation as the CIA purged his files, even his birth certificate says "deceased at birth", but denying Posada's past is not so easy". 5

And does the fact that ex operative Porter Goss, who admits to having participated in terrorrist acts against Cuba, is the new CIA director, facilitate the return of Posada?

?Of course. The man that Bush selected, has been part of the CIA efforts to overthrow the Castro regime and assassinate its leader", Dankbaar confirms. ?Goss is an ideal man to keep possible scandals under the carpet for Bush and particularly, his father. They are both participants in the same history. ? 6

I am sure it will come as a surprise if I say that Bush has his fingerprints all over this case, but that is purely because of ignorance of the public. And the public is being kept ignorant because the mainstream press does not report on it. But there is ample documentary and testimonial evidence to tie Bush senior to the Bay of Pigs, the anti-Castro cause and the Kennedy assassination. It's beyond the scope of this interview to list that evidence here, but you have to understand that the Kennedy assassination stems from the same forces that were trying to oust Fidel Castro, which were basically Organized Crime, Cuban exiles, CIA and Big Oil in Texas. Bush connects to all four. They all wanted Cuba back and saw the Kennedy's standing in their way.

Their collaboration is now a matter of public record, from the Bay of Pigs, but also in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. Organized crime was under an unprecented attack from Robert Kennedy, JFK wanted to abolish the oil depletion allowance and splinter the autonomy of the CIA, and the hawks in the Pentagon found him soft on communism and war. On top of that they blamed him for the failure of the Bay of Pigs, to make it worse he fired the top three men of the CIA. They openly called him a traitor. He was treathening their existence. So he had to go. It is as simple as that. They got rid of him in a coup d' ?tat, displaying an arrogance of power by shooting him from opposite directions in broad daylight, and then lying to the American public in a cover-up that should insult the intelligence of every American who has only remotely looked at the evidence. Even despite the fact that most of that evidence was kept away. Imagine you film the murder of a President today. You could sell it for millions of dollars and it would go over every TV screen in the world. But not in Kennedy's case.

Kennedy wouldn't be President in the first place if he had not made a deal with Giancana to rig his election in Illinois. 7

Nixon lost just barely and he was put forward by Prescott Bush, few people know that. Neither do they know that Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by Kennedy and later member of the Warren Commission, was a close friend. 8

Even less that Nixon, Dulles and Bush had been the architects for the Bay of Pigs under Eisenhower. This can all be documented. Just like his friendship with George Demohrenschildt, who was Lee Harvey Oswald's closest friend in Dallas. 9

Why did Bush never disclose that? Witholding information about a crime, is also a crime. Why does he not recall his whereabouts on 11/22/63? When and where did he befriend the Cuban CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, who by the way is Posada's buddy, all the way from the Bay of Pigs to Iran Contra. All those kids with T-shirts of Che Guevara don't know that Rodriguez was his captor and probably his killer. 10

Why does he deny that he is the "George Bush of the CIA" in an FBI memo from Hoover about the Kennedy assassination? 11

Does he really expect us to swallow that his directorship was his first job for the Agency? Why did he pardon Orlando Bosch, Posada's acomplice in the airline bombing, who was also in Dealey Plaza that day? 12

Not to mention Guillermo Novo, also just pardoned and released by Panama and returned to Miami. I could go on and on. Most journalists don't ask these questions, because they are not even aware of the information. 13

And the Bushes themselves hardly make a secret of their symphaties. Look at what George W. is doing now, he is still calling for the removal of Castro, and he is still carressing the guys who have been trying to accomplish that for over 40 years. That's why Florida is "his" state. Don't get me wrong, I have no affiliation with Castro or his regime, my orientation is towards freedom and democracy, but the double standards of the Bush administration are just so insulting they are almost laughable.

Actually, what I find the most intriguing phenomenon in this case, is that no one believes the government version of JFK anymore, instead everyone believes it was a conspiracy, but if you say that Bush was involved they look at you as if you're crazy. What is so difficult in grasping that the ones who seized power from a coup d'etat, are still in charge today? Is it because it's too mindboggling?

Allen Dulles summarized his opinion about the American public at a Congressional meeting: "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record... the public will read very little".

I guess I am one of those "few professors" and thus more in support of this qoute:

"There is no doubt now that there was a conspiracy, yet most of us are not very angry about it. The conspiracy to kill the president of the United States was also a conspiracy against the democratic system --and thus a conspiracy against you. I think you should get very angry about that."

- Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator for the House Select Comittee on Assassinations

I say the story is a little bigger than Castro's indignation about Bush harboring and protecting terrorrists. He is harboring the killers of JFK. - Jean Guy Allard - Special for Granma International

More details http://jfkmurdersolved.com For the latest news on Posada just click here. Sources: 1 Sources: Never aired Documentary on Chauncey Holt: ?Spooks, Hoods and the Hidden Elite.? Family and associates of Chauncey Holt. http://jfkmurdersolved.com/holt1.htm http://jfkmurdersolved.com/lois1.htm 2Source: a.o. New York Times: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/144.html 3Sources: a.o. Washington Weekly: http://www.idfiles.com/cia-linked-to-seal-death.htm http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/ciahits.html Book ?Barry and the Boys? ? Daniel Hopsicker 4 Sources: Book The Last Investigation - Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator for the House Select Comittee on Assassinations http://cuban-exile.com/menu2/2fonzi.html Testimony of Roger Craig: http://www.jfk-online.com/craigshaw.html Testimony of Richard Randolph Carr: http://www.jfk-online.com/carrshaw.html http://jfkmurdersolved.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=26 7 5Sources: Interview with James E. Files: click here Record search at http://www.ussearch.com/ John Grady, historian for the 82nd Airborne. 6 Source: Washington Post, interview with Porter Goss: click here 7 Sources: ?Double Cross?- biography of Sam Giancana The dark side of Camelot ? Seymour Hersh Google sources: click here 8 Sources a.o http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm Letter of Prescott Bush to Dulles? wife: http://jfkmurdersolved.com/prescott.htm 9Sources a.o http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush3.htm Letter of Demohrenschildt to Bush:page 1page 2 10Sources a.o http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush2.htm Google sources: click here 11Sources a.o http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush2.htm FBI Memorandum "George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/bushmemo.jpg Google sources: click here 12Sources: Interview with James E. Files: click here http://jfkmurdersolved.com/confession2.htm 13 Source: Testimony of Marita Lorenz: http://www.holman.net/ufo/archives/research/newfiles2sort/conspire/ciaken.txt
COPYRIGHT 2003 jfkmurdersolved.com [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

NOTE: Two interviews in one. This special offer will give you on dvd:

1) The never before published unedited video interview (3 hours) with Chauncey Marvin Holt recorded in 1991.

2) The first ever video interview with James E. Files in 1994, originally brought out as "Confession of an Assassin".

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:34 PM

Tracking Santa 

Track Santa here.
(via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:53 PM

Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips 

Admit it: You want to be the sole survivor of an airline disaster. You aren't looking for a disaster to happen, but if it does, you see yourself coming through it. I'm here to tell you that you're not out of touch with reality—you can do it. Sure, you'll take a few hits, and I'm not saying there won't be some sweaty flashbacks later on, but you'll make it. You'll sit up in your hospital bed and meet the press. Refreshingly, you will keep God out of your public comments, knowing that it's unfair to sing His praises when all of your dead fellow-passengers have no platform from which to offer an alternative view.
Let's say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what?
First of all, you're starting off a full mile higher than Everest, so after a few gulps of disappointing air you're going to black out. This is not a bad thing. If you have ever tried to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you know what I mean. This brief respite from the ambient fear and chaos will come to an end when you wake up at about 15,000 feet. Here begins the final phase of your descent, which will last about a minute. It is a time of planning and preparation. Look around you. What equipment is available? None? Are you sure? Look carefully. Perhaps a shipment of folded parachutes was in the cargo hold, and the blast opened the box and scattered them. One of these just might be within reach. Grab it, put it on, and hit the silk. You're sitting pretty.
Other items can be helpful as well. Let nature be your guide. See how yon maple seed gently wafts to earth on gossamer wings. Look around for a proportionate personal vehicle—some large, flat, aerodynamically suitable piece of wreckage. Mount it and ride, cowboy! Remember: molecules are your friends. You want a bunch of surface-area molecules hitting a bunch of atmospheric molecules in order to reduce your rate of acceleration.
As you fall, you're going to realize that your previous visualization of this experience has been off the mark. You have seen yourself as a loose, free body, and you've imagined yourself in the belly-down, limbs-out position (good: you remembered the molecules). But, pray tell, who unstrapped your seat belt? You could very well be riding your seat (or it could be riding you; if so, straighten up and fly right!); you might still be connected to an entire row of seats or to a row and some of the attached cabin structure.
If thus connected, you have some questions to address. Is your new conveyance air-worthy? If your entire row is intact and the seats are occupied, is the passenger next to you now going to feel free to break the code of silence your body language enjoined upon him at takeoff? If you choose to go it alone, simply unclasp your seat belt and drift free. Resist the common impulse to use the wreckage fragment as a "jumping-off point" to reduce your plunge-rate, not because you will thereby worsen the chances of those you leave behind (who are they kidding? they're goners!), but just because the effect of your puny jump is so small compared with the alarming Newtonian forces at work.
Just how fast are you going? Imagine standing atop a train going 120 mph, and the train goes through a tunnel but you do not. You hit the wall above the opening at 120 mph. That's how fast you will be going at the end of your fall. Yes, it's discouraging, but proper planning requires that you know the facts. You're used to seeing things fall more slowly. You're used to a jump from a swing or a jungle gym, or a fall from a three-story building on TV action news. Those folks are not going 120 mph. They will not bounce. You will bounce. Your body will be found some distance away from the dent you make in the soil (or crack in the concrete). Make no mistake: you will be motoring.
At this point you will think: trees. It's a reasonable thought. The concept of "breaking the fall" is powerful, as is the hopeful message implicit in the nursery song "Rock-a-bye, Baby," which one must assume from the affect of the average singer tells the story not of a baby's death but of its survival. You will want a tall tree with an excurrent growth pattern—a single, undivided trunk with lateral branches, delicate on top and thicker as you cascade downward. A conifer is best. The redwood is attractive for the way it rises to shorten your fall, but a word of caution here: the redwood's lowest branches grow dangerously high from the ground; having gone 35,000 feet, you don't want the last 50 feet to ruin everything. The perfectly tiered Norfolk Island pine is a natural safety net, so if you're near New Zealand, you're in luck, pilgrim. When crunch time comes, elongate your body and hit the tree limbs at a perfectly flat angle as close to the trunk as possible. Think!
Snow is good—soft, deep, drifted snow. Snow is lovely. Remember that you are the pilot and your body is the aircraft. By tilting forward and putting your hands at your side, you can modify your pitch and make progress not just vertically but horizontally as well. As you go down 15,000 feet, you can also go sideways two-thirds of that distance—that's two miles! Choose your landing zone. You be the boss.
If your search discloses no trees or snow, the parachutist's "five-point landing" is useful to remember even in the absence of a parachute. Meet the ground with your feet together, and fall sideways in such a way that five parts of your body successively absorb the shock, equally and in this order: feet, calf, thigh, buttock, and shoulder. 120 divided by 5 = 24. Not bad! 24 mph is only a bit faster than the speed at which experienced parachutists land. There will be some bruising and breakage but no loss of consciousness to delay your press conference. Just be sure to apportion the 120-mph blow in equal fifths. Concentrate!
Much will depend on your attitude. Don't let negative thinking ruin your descent. If you find yourself dwelling morbidly on your discouraging starting point of seven miles up, think of this: Thirty feet is the cutoff for fatality in a fall. That is, most who fall from thirty feet or higher die. Thirty feet! It's nothing! Pity the poor sod who falls from such a "height." What kind of planning time does he have?
Think of the pluses in your situation. For example, although you fall faster and faster for the first fifteen seconds or so, you soon reach "terminal velocity"—the point at which atmospheric drag resists gravity's acceleration in a perfect standoff. Not only do you stop speeding up, but because the air is thickening as you fall, you actually begin to slow down. With every foot that you drop, you are going slower and slower.
There's more. When parachutists focus on a landing zone, sometimes they become so fascinated with it that they forget to pull the ripcord. Since you probably have no ripcord, "target fixation" poses no danger. Count your blessings.
Think of others who have gone before you. Think of Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who in 1972 fell 33,000 feet in the tail of an exploded DC-9 jetliner; she landed in snow and lived. Vesna knew about molecules.
Think of Joe Hermann of the Royal Australian Air Force, blown out of his bomber in 1944 without a parachute. He found himself falling through the night sky amid airplane debris and wildly grabbed a piece of it. It turned out to be not debris at all, but rather a fellow flyer in the process of pulling his ripcord. Joe hung on and, as a courtesy, hit the ground first, breaking the fall of his savior and a mere two ribs of his own. Joe was not a quitter. Don't you be.
Think of Nick Alkemade, an RAF tailgunner who jumped from his flaming turret without a parachute and fell 18,000 feet. When he came to and saw stars overhead, he lit a cigarette. He would later describe the fall as "a pleasant experience." Nick's trick: fir trees, underbrush, and snow.
But in one important regard, Nick is a disappointment. He gave up. As he plummeted to Germany, he concluded he was going to die and felt "a strange peace." This is exactly the wrong kind of thinking. It will get you nowhere but dead fast. You cannot give up and plan aggressively at the same time.
To conclude, here are some words that might help you avoid such a collapse of resolve on your way down.
"Keep a-goin'." (Frank L. Stanton)
"Failure is not an option." (Ed Harris, as the guy in Apollo 13 who says, "Failure is not an option")
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops-at all." (Emily Dickinson)

- David Carkeet

Note: Interested in more information on David Carkeet? Try this link.
Copyright 2001-2004, David Carkeet. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]
(via Lew Rockwell)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:25 AM

Friday, December 22, 2006

New Chemical Is Said to Provide Early Sign of Alzheimer’s Disease 

A chemical designed by doctors in Los Angeles could give earlier signals of Alzheimer’s disease and provide a new way to test treatments, a study has shown.

Currently, the only way to diagnose the disease is to remove brain tissue or to perform an autopsy.

The new study, to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, is by doctors at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is part of a larger quest to find a better method to diagnose the condition using tracers that can be detected with a positron emission tomography, or PET, scan.

The new chemical, called FDDNP, attaches to abnormal clumps of proteins called amyloid plaques and nerve cell tangles that develop in Alzheimer’s sufferers and inhibit messages being processed by the brain.

In the study, Dr. Gary Small and his colleagues discovered that the chemical allowed doctors to pick out which of 83 volunteers had Alzheimer’s, which had mild memory problems and which were functioning normally for their age.

It was 98 percent accurate in determining the difference between Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment, which surpassed the 87 percent success rate for a PET scan test that measured sugar metabolism in the brain, and the 62 percent accuracy rate when doctors used a magnetic resonance imaging.

The FDDNP signal can be seen in people years before they develop Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Small said.

Finding an easier way to track brain deterioration would also make it easier to assess experimental treatments, as researchers try to prevent or reduce the accumulation of plaques and tangles.

Dr. Small and 4 of the other 15 authors named in the research paper have a financial interest in FDDNP, which has been licensed to the German conglomerate Siemens AG. He said he hoped to see it on the market in three years.

About 4.5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s, a number that is expected to grow as the population ages. About 15 million to 20 million more have the mild cognitive impairment that often leads to the disease. - NYTimes (via KurzweilAI.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:02 AM

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Xmas Crooners 

Croon along with Santa and his reindeer quartet here.

NOTE: If you receive a denial of access message, that means your computer needs a plug-in to display the flash animation. First go here and a download prompt should appear. Installation will take about one second. Then go here.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:36 PM

Saturday, December 16, 2006

The Oklahoma city bombing: 

I never paid attention to this case at the time, but after reading about it, there seems to be several inconsistencies and unexplained events regarding the official story as to what actually happened. The official story claims that after he was discharged from the Army in 1991, McVeigh became ‘radicalized’ after reading a book (“The Turner Diaries”), hearing George Bush and Bill Clinton talking about their “New World Order” and learning about the Ruby Ridge incident and the Waco Siege. - (if this were in fact true, he blew up the wrong building)

McVeigh publicly stated that he purposely chose the second anniversary of the Waco assault for his terrorist act as a message to what he believed is an oppressive federal government. He also stated that he and co-conspirator Terry Nichols had carried out the bombing without anyone else's help.

Several witnesses at the Truck Rental reported that two men had rented the truck, neither of which matched the description of McVeigh or Terry Nichols. Apparently Nichols was known to be else ware at the time, so even if McVeigh was one of the men, who was the second man? (John Doe 2)

One whiteness testified that a year and half after he first saw John Doe 2 at Elliott's Body Shop, the government convinced him that he had made a mistake and identified a different person who had rented the truck. http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/mcveigh/part05.htm

McVeigh allegedly assembled a 5,000 pound bomb in the back of the rented truck at a lakeside campground near his old Army post, interestingly an aerial picture of a Ryder truck that had been parked near the camp ground latter surfaced, however it was parked inside the fenced area of the Army post.

[Click on image to enlarge.] This picture was taken in early April of 1995 - The Oklahoma city bombing was April 19, 1995. (In a Washington Post article on June 17th, 1997, the Oklahoma National Guard confirmed that this photo is authentic.)

More pictures at:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/TRUCK/truck.html

Note: in the picture that all encompassing screens set up to conceal the presence of the trucks and the outer screen set up to conceal the entire compound.

When the truck bomb exploded on April 19, 1995, it blasted the government building with enough force to shatter one third of the seven-story structure to bits. (claiming 168 lives). According to the FBI, the only identifiable part of the truck that could be found in the wreckage was the rear axle of the Truck, from it they were able to recover the serial number, from the serial number, they were allegedly able to determine that the truck was registered to a Ryder Truck Rental in Junction City, Ok.

The reason I say allegedly is that standard rear axle housings do not have serialized numbers. There may have been numbers cast into the axel housing, or stamped into the axle tubes, which under normal conditions are difficult to read. The bomb in the back of the truck would have exploded directly over the top of the rear axle, separated by only an aluminum deck. Even if the numbers on axle housings remained legible, they are ‘casting numbers‘, this number can indicate the axles weight rating, model type, year, month and sometimes the day, or the shift that it was made, it will often indicate the location of the plant where it was manufactured.

Casting numbers can not be used to uniquely identify an axle housing, all of the other units of its type which were made on the same day will have exactly the same number.

After they are manufactured, axle housings are shipped to the assembly plants of various customers which ordered them. Because of these factors, it would only be possible to identify a wide range of various truck models which may have been assembled using that particular run of castings. - several hundred, or thousands of possibilities.

Shortly after the bombing, McVeigh was stopped by police for driving his yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis with no license plates. McVeigh was arrested for driving without a license plate and carrying and transporting a loaded firearm. Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt.

-So McVeigh was smart enough to build a 5,000 pound bomb and carry out the worst act of terrorism in the history of our country (at the time), but he was stupid enough to leave the scene of the crime driving a bright yellow, early model car, without any license plates, while carrying a loaded firearm. - It sounds as if he was trying to be captured.

Brigadier General Benton K. Partin (Ret.) examined the damage that had been done to the building and concluded that "the damage at the Murrah Federal Building is not the result of the truck bomb itself, but rather due to other factors such as locally placed charges within the building itself".

- There have been attempts to discredit this determination (misjudging the power of the blast, etc.) but the Generals conclusion was not based upon the extensive damage, it was based upon the blast and debri patterns.

On August 10th 1995, McVeigh was indicted on 11 counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives, and eight counts of first-degree murder.

On October 20, 1995, the government filed notice that it would seek the death penalty.

On February 20, 1996 the Court granted a change of venue and ordered the case transferred from Oklahoma City to the US District Court in Denver, Colorado presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch.

On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on all 11 counts of the indictment.

On June 13, the same jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty.

McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending appeals. One of his appeals was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, which it denied on March 8, 1999. In December, 2000, without presenting a reason for doing so, McVeigh ordered his attorneys to withdraw the rest of his appeals, he then asked U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch to waive all future appeals of his death sentence. In a January hearing the Bureau of Prisons scheduled his execution for May 16.

The news media presented this withdrawal as if McVeigh was wasting his time and money, when in fact he had several legal challenges available to him that would have delayed his execution for many years, the unidentified accomplice who had rented the truck could have even provided reasonable doubt, possibly overturning the execution ruling.

His execution date was thrown into doubt, when the FBI revealed that it failed to turn over more than 4,400 pages of documents to McVeigh's defense. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in Oklahoma City Monday, postponed the execution for several weeks.

Again McVeigh chose not to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McVeigh did not request clemency either. (99.9% of condemned prisoners do, apparently the thought is that it does not hurt to ask)

On March 19, 2001, McVeigh claimed to oppose autopsies for ethical and philosophical reasons, McVeigh's attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch to approve an informal agreement under which the Coroner, Susan Amos, agreed not to conduct any "invasive procedure" on McVeigh following his execution. Matsch said he had no objection to the plan but had no jurisdiction, stating that:

"My jurisdiction ends when Timothy McVeigh ends"

Postmortem autopsies are typically performed after executions in order to discourage prisoner abuse and to provide jailers with defensive evidence from any possible allegations latter made by the executed prisoners relatives. To satisfy this requirement, it was agreed the coroner would check McVeigh for signs of any bruising before the execution. She would then examine his body again after McVeigh's execution, taking photographs and X-rays if necessary. If Amos found evidence of abuse, she could then perform an autopsy if McVeigh's attorney approved.

A new date was set for McVeigh’s execution, it was to be on June 11, 2001, just 5 years after the bombing. All other federal prisoners have had a minimum of eight years until their executions.

At McVeigh's request, no members of his family traveled to Terre Haute for the execution.

On the day before his execution, McVeigh seemed to be taking it well, he even took a nap. Before the execution, McVeigh was in amazingly good spirits.

Several whitnesses said that his facial expressions were "about as calm as they can be"

[Would you be calm and in good spirits?]

After he was strapped down to the table and given the lethal injection, he looked up above him...and right into the lens of the camera covering the event for the Oklahoma City Victims...and he smiled, then closed his eyes and died....Or did he?

[This is very uncharacteristic behavior compared to other lethal injection executions.]

McVeigh's passing, the witnesses said, was remarkably uneventful.

Media witness, Crocker Stephenson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said:

"The most remarkable thing to me was how remarkably subtle the process was in which he slipped from life to death, there was no point in which he looked as if he turned a corner"

McVeigh's body was removed immediately after his execution and driven away in a government van, Justice Department officials said. They would not give any information about its destination. The waiting funeral Hearse was left sitting at the prison as McVeigh was driven away in the white van. It was latter announced that McVeigh’s body had been taken directly to a crematorium, where he was then cremated - without a casket - and his ashes were to be spread at an undisclosed location. His lawyers said information about his remains and any resting-place would remain privileged.

Speaking from the White House briefing room about an hour and a half after the execution, President Bush told reporters that McVeigh "met the fate he chose for himself six years ago." Bush said, "Under the laws of our country the matter is concluded."

There are several things wrong with this story:

Why did McVeigh drop his appeals?

Why did McVeigh not request a new trail in light of the 4,400 pages of documents?

Why did McVeigh not request clemency?

Why was he executed only four years after his arrest and conviction? - other recently condemned inmates it had been delayed at least eight years.

Why did most of the witnesses note the unusual manor that he died?

Why was the information about his remains kept secrete?

Why was McVeigh opposed to having an autopsy? Cremation was not an issue.

Why was his body taken to the crematorium, rather than the morgue?

What about the agreement with the coroner? what about the post mortem exam?

I suspect that Timothy McVeigh - the first person in history to smile during his own execution - is still smiling today with a new identification, at an undisclosed location.

Speaking of executions, Richard Snell was executed on April 19, 1995, the same day of the Oklahoma bombing. Twelve years earlier, in 1983, Shell had also planned to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, but was arrested, imprisoned, and convicted of unrelated murders.

The circumstances surrounding his 1983 plans were amazingly similar to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing where the FBI had an informant infiltrate the terrorist group. The FBI not only failed to stop that criminal act, they also supplied the explosives to do it. - Submitted by a reader of What Really Happened.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:39 PM

Evidence that the U.S. Government Planned & Executed 9/11 

Streaming Video, 11 minutes. (via What Really Happened.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:13 PM

SEVERAL INTERVIEWS OF EDWIN BLACK 

September 26, 2006 1:00 P.M. CST

Welcome to "Disability Matters" with your host, Joyce Bender. All comments, views, and opinions are solely those of the host, guest, and caller. Now the host of "Disability Matters," here is Joyce Bender.

Joyce Bender: Welcome to the show. And you are in for a great treat! It really is my honor today to be bringing back a guest of one of the highest listened to shows that we had. That was with the internationally acclaimed Pulitzer Prize nominee, Mr. Edwin Black. And let me tell you what. Get ready for an energy burst, or as I always say when I talk about him, a burst of your bubble on what you may have thought about energy and oil and all of the myths that you may have in your mind because, you know what? We already had Edwin this morning right here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the Rivers Club to speak to executives in Pittsburgh. And tonight he will be at the Hill House speaking again to the public. He has changed my thinking across the board, and above all of that, let me tell you, he is a modest really just genuinely wonderfully human being.

Welcome to our show, and welcome to Pittsburgh! And you have learned, the home of Heinz ketchup. Welcome to Pittsburgh.

Edwin Black: Thank you for welcoming me. You have shown me a great welcome. I am so grateful to you and your colleagues for making it possible for me to come out to the people of Pittsburgh, and to speak to your radio listeners. And, yes, we had breakfast today, and it's the first time in my life where Heinz ketchup was served not in a bottle, but in elegant bowls all the way across all of the tables.

(Laughter) so that was a first.

Joyce Bender: I said that because Edwin said, "I've never seen that much ketchup."

It was a lot of ketchup.

Joyce Bender: I said, "Edwin, remember, you are in Pittsburgh. Heinz. You are in the home of Heinz."

Well, for our listeners who do not know, War Against the Weak which by the way you better buy that book. You better read it if you have not. As a matter of fact, we recommend this book everywhere that we go. And when I speak at national conferences, which I will be speaking in October in Washington D.C., as a matter of fact, to the Federal Government, no matter where I go, I frequently tell them about War Against the Weak. But let me tell you, IBM and the Holocaust, go read that book it will change your mind. Your thinking. Go read that book! But so will Banking on Baghdad, so will The Transfer Agreement. By the way, Pulitzer Prize nominated book. But the newest book, Internal Combustion, oh, my gosh, this book will have such an impact on you. And, Edwin, before we talk about Internal Combustion and how you can purchase Internal Combustion, and how everyone listening to this show today needs to tell someone to go buy that book immediately.

You are not just an author, but you really are an investigative author who speaks for the voices who cannot speak, which is why I am wearing the pin Voices of Civil Rights with Edwin back here in Pittsburgh.

Why? And who influenced you?

Edwin Black: Well, that's an interesting question. I suppose that it harks back to my family in the Holocaust and managed to survive that harrowing story. And I always assumed they lived for a reason, and I was put on this planet for a reason. That was to explain the inexplicable. I Want to make a difference through an indifferent world to be my primary mission throughout my life. I have always tackled the impossible task and made it real and tried to explain how our terrible past must be understood in order to salvage our precious future.

And what's interesting here is with Internal Combustion and our addition to open, I have examined a terrible future hoping that we can as well voyage our precious past.

Joyce Bender: Yes. And I guess it was your parents then that probably had this impact on you.

Edwin Black: Well, the tragedy of my parents, they survived a harrowing story, and we can recount it here, that my mom was pushed out of a train on the way to Treblinka, pushed off by her mother, pushed off on a small grill, and a small vent, and my father walked away from a shooting place and lived on their own for a few years in the woods. They were harrowing enough, they were forest fighters. So when my parents came to this country and had me as a child, I suppose that I always understood that I was here for a reason. It was not just an accident that so many people should die and some should live. I never made light of that, and I took it seriously.

Joyce Bender: And you know what? When you read Edwin's book, you are going to say, yep, that's it. That's why he is here. You know, there are those that hear about things in life that are terrible, and they say, "Oh, that's too bad."

And then there are those that hear about it and say, "What? I'm going to do something about it." That's Edwin. That's Edwin Black. That's why as I said if you are listening to this show today you have to tell everyone about Edwin. Edwin, Internal Combustion is your newest Pulitzer Prize nominated book, and this book is also absolutely tremendous, another winning, wonderful expos. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about what caused to you write this book, this current book, Internal Combustion?

Edwin Black: It arose because I understood that the most important and towering question of our day was whether or not society could continue in spite of its addiction to oil, our addiction to oil is killing our lungs mile by mile with micro-fine particles causing sickness and wreaking havoc and illness the way cigarettes incrementally do, mile by mile, people are dying. Our planet is dying from climate change that is caused by greenhouse gasses which are emitted by many sources, including the internal combustion machine running on oil. Our addiction to oil is transferring our treasury out of our hands and into the hands of people in the Middle East that wish to use the monies to sponsor terrorism and to buy airplane tickets to fly into the World Trade Center.

Our treasury's also being used, and we're being blackmailed to turning a blind eye to the terrorism that's being conducted worldwide and against Israel. And so I believe that of all the imperative crises that are placed upon us, the devastation of our climate, the devastation of our lungs, the devastation of our treasury, perhaps the most compelling is the petro-political and petro-terrorist threat which threatens to strangle our nation and our society, not in 5 years, not in 10 years, but in some inconvenient moment chosen not by us, but by those who hate our way of life.

Joyce Bender: Wow! You know what is amazing? We can change it.

Edwin Black: Yes, you can change it.

Joyce Bender: As you will find out when you read his book. You've got to read the book. Edwin, how can our listeners purchase your book?

Edwin Black: I have a website internalcombustionbook.com in which I've posted a notice, because of publicity on CNN and fine radio shows like yours, and there is a run on them in stores. And the fastest way to link is to go to Amazon. That can be done through my website, or through my home page, and you will get it at a substantial discount. It has taken the bookstore a long time to supply them probably because they have to use internal combustion vehicles to deliver the books.

(Laughter)

Joyce Bender: They can go to Edwinblack.com , or go to Amazon.com is that correct?

Edwin Black: They can go to Amazon.com, and that's faster. There is also a direct link from my website, and my website for this book is internalcombustionbook.com. They can learn more about the book and also see a three-minute video about the book if they log on to that site. That's internalcombustionbook.com.

Joyce Bender: And with that, we're going to go to break for a minute. And then we'll be right back so that we can talk more to Edwin Black, the author of this international, dynamic best-seller, "Internal Combustion."

Listen, whoever is listening to this show today, tell your friends to buy this book. We'll be right back with Edwin Black, our friend. Don't go away. You are listening to Joyce Bender, America's voice on VoiceAmerica.com. We'll be right back. (Music)

Joyce Bender: Welcome back to the show! We are talking to Edwin Black, the internationally-acclaimed author. So many books, eight nominated for Pulitzer Prize. His newest book, Internal Combustion, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize is absolutely awesome! If you haven't purchased it yet, you can get it right now by going to Edwin Black's own website, Edwin, that site again?

Edwin Black: Oh, that's internalcombustionbook.com, and click on "order copy" and that will take you right to Amazon.com. Or they can go right to Amazon.com.

Joyce Bender: Let me tell you what, Edwin Black spoke at the Rivers Club in Pittsburgh PA, for a group of executives, and he already had such an impact on them. We're on our way later on to hear him speak at Carnegie Mellon and then this evening at the Hill House. What a way to go. I'll tell you what, read the book. It will have that impact on you. Edwin, whenever they read your book, it is hard to believe, and I also know that you spoke about this on CNN, which you have been on CNN several times. And by the way, folks, he is on a 50-city, 300-event tour. Can you imagine what that is like? But if you meet him, he has so much energy, this would not surprise you. But when you were on CNN, I know that you talked about how Ford and Edison had the answer over 100 years ago.

Do you want to talk about that for a minute with our listeners?

Edwin Black: Well, originally all of the electric -- all of the automobiles in this country at the turn of the last century were electric. Through a complicated series of marketing maneuvers they became internal combustion machines burning gasoline. Henry Ford was involved in that in a primal fashion. But from 1912-1914 he and Thomas Edison decided that was the wrong way to take this country, and they decided to return to the electric vehicles, including electric vehicles that would be primarily charged from home regeneration with wind generators, and kerosene generators. And although the batteries were working, when they left his complex in New Jersey, by the time they got to Dearborn, Michigan suddenly they did not work.

He complained about tampering. He complained about false engineering, false reports. And then finally when the project was being shunned aside, Edison was convinced that he would have a resurgence of his effort and make his batteries tamper-proof, that all of his many buildings and his compound all in a flash fire burned down to the ground even though they were in fire-proof buildings, and fire-proof rooms with a fire brigade on premises, mysterious flash fire and everything burned, except the flammables, alcohol, turpentine, and so this was a fire of suspicious origin. Then came World War I, and that was the end of the beginning of clean electric vehicles in this country. It wasn't 20 years ago or 40 years ago. We've had these electric car setting land speed records of a mile a minute since the 1890s.

Joyce Bender: Well, you know what? This is a good time to ask you this question from Alfred in New York City. One of our listeners who says, "Wishing that this time of the year, Mr. Black, the best to you over the Jewish holidays [Yom Kippur]. I must ask you one question, which is, as I read your books, I often ask myself why have we never heard about any of this in our education system? Why is so much of this information never taught? And then my part two question is, sometimes I'm worried about you and your safety as to I know how much power people in the oil industry have. Do you ever get a lot of opposition from those who have power?"

That's from Alfred.

Edwin Black: Well, Alfred, let me say this. First of all, thank you very much for your wishes for a happy new year. I extend a happy new year wish for all of you listeners in Joyce's audience which are observing the holiday. I would like to say that all of my books have tackled the details and topics of incredibly compelling topics and revelations which have not been known to the academic community, to scholarship, to the general people. That's how it was in The Transfer Agreement. That's how it was in IBM and the Holocaust how I documented how IBM consciously engaged in co-planning with Adolph Hitler for the Holocaust in World War II. And now I'm doing the same thing with this book Internal Combustion, and I am explaining things that really no one in this country knows.

No one in this country knows that energy going all the way back to the Pharaohs was something that has been hoarded, that it's been manipulated, it's always been the domain of monopolies. People don't know that the first energy cartel was a coal cartel run by a secret society in England called the Hostman. No one ever heard of that. People don't know in this country that electric cars were running everywhere up and down the roads of the United States, and that they were controlled by a bicycle monopoly which had teamed up with the battery monopoly to create an electrical vehicle monopoly. People don't know that and mainly people don't know that Ford and Edison, and you can go to all of the Ford and Edison biographies you wanted at the Carnegie Library or anywhere else, and you will not find any information about this, that Ford and Edison were involved in this secret project to return America to a cheap electric cars. That was subverted, and this information is just not known, nor has anyone ever gone to the trouble to document exactly what General Motors did when they lead a criminal conspiracy together with Mac Truck, Standard Oil, Phillips petroleum, and Firestone to subvert mass transit lines, trolley lines, electric lines, in 40 cities through a front company called National City Lines. They were convicted of a criminal conspiracy, and they were found guilty. It was upheld on appeal, and substituted in those cities motor buses, stinky, smelly debilitating illness-causing motor buses that were so unpopular, and this lead to the debacle of mass transit in the United States. And while they were doing this, while they were doing this they were putting the Hitler regime on wheels, motorizing the third Reich, building the [Opel] Blitz truck for the blitzkrieg, helping the Nazis to carry out their program of Jewish exclusion and Jewish persecution.

No one is aware of this. But I am bringing this out. And the reason that they don't teach this in the classrooms and in the history books is that because I answer I answer the unanswerable questions. I ask the embarrassing questions. I don't stop until those questions are answered. And there's just one other thing that distinguishes those who are in academia and myself, and that is that I think like a criminal and I act like a cop. And it takes one who can think like a criminal to catch a monster, to catch a criminal, to catch a collaborationist with the Nazi regime. And that's why I am able to say now and conclude that based on the evidence there is no company that has done more to harm transportation in this nation than General Motors. And they're still harming our transportation by building gas guzzlers, by keeping us addicted to oil, and now by trying to convince us that corn ethanol is the answer when corn ethanol just extends the problem.

So I have to tell the story, and I tell it with facts and documentation that's bullet-proof. And as for the question as to am I in fear for my life from big oil, from big Detroit, from General Motors from IBM, from the corn lobby, from the ethanol lobby? They don't scare me. They know how to reach me.

Joyce Bender: This is why he is -- I'm going to tell you what. Edwin Black, Edwin Black, you know, should, I don't know, receive whatever the highest -- in addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he should receive the highest national -- not just national, but world recognition for what he is doing. Because you know what? This is serious. This is serious. He is just not like writing some book where he is just wanting to be this whatever author. He is trying to say, "This is what's happening, and we can make a difference."

Edwin Black: I am excavating the information that has been buried. You know, I lead a team of 50 researchers in over 100 repositories acquiring some 100,000 documents so that we could prove our point and make it bullet-proof. That's why I am speaking to you today, and that's why I am speaking around the country making the point that we must get off our oil addiction and, in fact, in point of fact we never really needed to be on oil.

And if we can get off now, and the only reason that we're on is because of a century of lies, lies from government, from media, and from the corporations whose duty it is to safeguard our technology, our energy, and our future.

Joyce Bender: And I just want to tell you if you are listening to this show, let me tell you something. Go buy his book. Go buy Internal Combustion, go by War Against the Weak, go buy IBM and the Holocaust go buy his books. Sometimes when you hear someone speak on TV, or you hear an author, and you think, oh, yeah, that's right. This isn't opinion. Read his books. It's like every line has a footnote. I've never read anything ever as well documented and as factual, you know, to answer that person's questions, the reason that you don't see all of these people going up against Edwin Black when he makes this statement is how can they? He has everything documented. Everything!

Edwin Black: And I've just written a story in a magazine for journalists in which I wrote about the Martian standard of evidence. That if you just came down from Mars, and you wanted to see me prove a point, I could bring it out in black and white. I maintain a 30-second standard. That means that if somebody needs to see -- somebody can point to any sentence on any page and ask where those facts come from and I can pull out a numbered file folder and prove the point within 30 seconds. I've got two teams of independent triple fact checkers. And this is why. My publishers know that when I say that IBM consciously engaged in the genocidal actions of the Third Reich, and that's why when I say that GM was a willing collaborationist with the Hitler regime from its first moments in 1933 going right into the War, that I can back this information up.

And that's why IBM has been hiding since 2001, instead of apologizing to the world, and that's why GM now is also behind the same rock. Because what they want to do is hope that I will go away. But I will not go away because our energy crisis will not go away. And I will not go away until this country is energy-independent, we're free from infrastructure, we're stopping the pollution, and I know that we can actually do it, not talk it in a "Star Trek" fashion, but we can do it now. We can start now, and we can finish the job later. That's why the answer to fleet, federal express, UPS, Krispy Kreme, Carnegie Mellon University, anybody who has a fleet, you must understand that if you and me, Joyce, buy vehicles, one by one, that's just fine and dandy and I am happy that we've done it.

But the mass production of these alternative vehicles will not occur until there is mass purchasing. And so more can be done with a fax machine and a purchase order than with all of the ballot boxes and votes that you care to cast, and all of the letters to the editor. And since we're in Pittsburgh, I am making a public appeal to Federal Express right now, 44,000 vehicles. How many of them are running compressed natural gas? Why haven't you placed an order for a hydrogen vehicle right now? Don't tell us there's no infrastructure. You can fuel that thing in your parking lot off-grid.

Joyce Bender: You heard him! You heard it! And you will hear more. You'll hear more from the exciting, wonderful Edwin Black, author of his newest book, Internal Combustion. You are listening to Joyce Bender, America's voice, on Voiceamerica.Com. Don't go away. We'll be right back to talk more to Edwin Black.

Announcer: If you have a question or comment, call toll-free at 1-866-472-5788.

Joyce Bender: We're talking to the author of the exciting new book Internal Combustion.

And we do have an e-mail question here from one of our listeners. Mr. Black, thank you for taking time to share your new book with us. Your investigative works have centered on important social injustice, governmental misconduct, and corporate criminality. These are important issues for your broad audience to understand. Could you please share with us why you think that it is particularly important that members of the disability community have a firm grasp of these topics as we seek full and equal participation in the world around us, as to you Jamie from Washington D.C.

Edwin Black: In a world in which mobility is life and death, or mobility is the difference between the quality of life the inequality of life, the disability community is primarily concerned with transportation issues.

When the entire world will be inconvenienced, the disability world will be devastated. There are two reasons. There are actually three. The first reason is that the internal combustion machine directly and through other means is causing disability, is causing illness and sickness through its pollution. How many young boys are losing their legs and losing their lives defending this pipeline of oil do we really want to, as I say, drill a hole in Saudi Arabia and drag this black substance over the dead bodies of Americans, and over the severed legs and bomb-blasted torsos of American boys and girls so that we can run lawn mowers off of petroleum? And so it's making disability in the same way that wars have always made disability.

You would think that we could learn from these wars. But that is not happening.

Secondly, we are transferring the treasury that we have out to the Middle East. Economics is such an important facet to the people in the disability community because medical economics is the difference between getting a wheelchair that is usable, and a wheelchair that's not usable. Of course, I was very much involved in the DME industry and I have an understanding that there are many people who around the world who don't even have a fraction of the access that we have to orthotics and prosthetics. This is a big issue. Care, home care, access. If a city is so busy paying its oil bill that it can't make sidewalk ramps, that's going to hurt the disability community. And, third, just the ability to get into a vehicle, just the ability to get into a bus, just the ability to get into a taxi cab, into a private vehicle, these are devastatingly important issues to the disabled.

They're sometimes looked at inconveniences and luxuries to those who are not challenged. But for the disabled community, it's life and death, it is enjoyment, or it is confinement. And that is why the energy crisis that we have in America must have a new and strong ally and spokesman in the disabled community, and those who do not wish to the disabled community to grow faster and more voraciously than it will, goodness gracious, I'm from Washington. I live just down the street from the Bethesda Naval Center. I know what's going on with our wonderful boys and girls coming back to this country as amputees. Why are we doing this? Why are we creating more disabled people when, in fact, what we should be doing is using our resources, using our talents, using our innovation to make it easier for the existing disabled to cope with their environment and making it more difficult for more disabled to join their ranks.

Joyce Bender: Wow! You know what? You have really hit on something major because I'm all about employment. Bender Consulting Services as my listeners know, my whole mission is gaining competitive employment for people with disabilities. And at the same time what is one of the biggest problems for people with disabilities?

Edwin Black: Mobility.

Joyce Bender: Transportation.

Edwin Black: Correct.

Joyce Bender: If you don't have transportation, you can't get to that job.

Edwin Black: No, it's true that some people aren't going To be able to go to the 7-Eleven at midnight and get an extra half a gallon of milk. But what about the people who can't get kidney dialysis? What are they going to do when oil stops? Get off of oil. It's a matter of life and death. The oil supply in this country will stop not at a moment of your choosing, but in the twinkle of an eye as chosen by someone else.

Joyce Bender: Not only that, but if you had a new way of more efficient transportation, then more people would be able to get to employment. They would have access to get to work. Because right now, remember, with the cost of oil, and then what that does at the gas station, and what that costs people with disabilities who may have prosthetics, but can still drive a car, or may be deaf but can still drive their car, but are in poverty. So in some of the ways, this impacts people.

Edwin Black: This is your issue, and I want you and me, Joyce, and all of your listeners to make it your issue. Claim it, speak loudly about it, and get those who care about the disabled to understand that you have a voice in this, too. And be counted! And just don't shout it from the rooftops. Shout it from the fax machines. Remember, only your fax machine, a purchase order from a fleet to Honda, BMW, that's what's going to get your hydrogen fleet and your hydrogen car here faster. Instead of somebody saying, "Well, we can't afford to transport you," why not say, "We could suddenly afford to transport you because suddenly we're off oil."

Joyce Bender: Well, let's talk about that in more detail. You always say that it's not about green, but it's about greed in this case. And here we are, our opposition being major corporations. So you're saying, if I understand you correctly, just a vote won't count, right? Calling your congressman is not enough in this case.

Edwin Black: The vote will not count. The letter to the editor will not count. All that's going to matter is the fax machine. Because I assure you that if government is going to do the right thing in terms of energy and transportation, they have many opportunities going back decades, going back centuries, going back thousands of years. They have proven themselves in each generation going back to the beginning of recorded time to have used oil, transportation, and energy to manipulate those around us.

And as they say in politics, power corrupts, and the same goes for energy. Power corrupts.

Joyce Bender: Power corrupts. Well, we can do something about it. You can do something about it. As Edwin said, time for the fax machine. But just think, you can go to your groups and get them involved right here in Pennsylvania. We have a group here that's now saying, "Hey, let's be progressive. Let's be doing something right."

Edwin Black: Well, just today as a result of our business we spoke to the county groups. We're speaking to the governor's groups. We want the school district to run our school buses on hydrogen instead of oil. And there are bridge technologies that we can undertake today such as the Honda compressed natural gas vehicles, and there are hydrogen cars which are going to start coming online as early as the spring. What will make them come online with greater abundance and greater alacrity -- alacrity, is a purchase order. Not mass purchasing, no mass production. The green fleet initiative.

Joyce Bender: The green fleet initiative. Okay. So a question that we have here from a listener is, "What can I as an individual do?"

Edwin Black: As an individual you can find out if you impact a fleet. Does your school have a fleet? Your hospital? Your school district? Your county? Your city? Your sheriff's department? A company that you work for? Ask them, why the hell they won't switch to compressed natural gas, to hydrogen. Get in touch with Joyce, she'll get in touch with me, and I will put these people in touch with the direct phone numbers at the automakers, and at the hydrogen companies who can make it possible immediately right now. We could run this stuff off of solar, we can run this stuff off of compressed natural gas, we could run this stuff off of many, many power sources. We can run it off of wind. But we have to start now, and we have to start it en masse. I do not want incremental change.

I want disruptive change. I want sudden change because when the moment comes, when the oil spigot dries up, when the terrorists bring to us our knees, that will be even more disruptive.

Joyce Bender: Oh, yes that is -- that is disruptive change. That does not surprise me! Listen, if you read Edwin Black's books, any of them, but especially this new book, Internal Combustion, you will want to make a change immediately. Go buy this book! Buy this book for your friends! Buy this book for everyone. Internal Combustion by Edwin Black. He will be right back as soon as we go to break. You are listening to Joyce Bender where disability does matter on VoiceAmerica.Com! We'll be right back.

Announcer: If you have a question or comment, call in toll-free at 1-866-472-5788. Now please welcome back the host of "Disability Matters," here is Joyce Bender.

Joyce Bender: Welcome back! And what an exciting show this has been. Remember, this show with Edwin Black will be archived on Voiceamerica.Com, and Benderconsult.com, if you want to tell anyone about the show. I think that we have a caller on the line right now?

Yes, Evan Frazier.

Joyce Bender: Hey, Evan!

Joyce, how are you?

Joyce Bender: Welcome to the show. I bet you are excited about the event tonight.

We sure are. Lot of people in the Hill District and the Pittsburgh region are looking forward to hearing Edwin Black, and we're very excited.

Joyce Bender: Edwin why don't you just -- Edwin, Evan Frazier is head of the Hill House, and Edwin will be speaking there this evening to the community. Evan, why don't you just take a minute and tell them what we're doing, and a little bit about the Hill house.

Well, first of all, thanks to you, Joyce, and your generosity, and that of Mr. Edwin Black. We're actually inviting Edwin Black to the Hill District which is an historically African-American community here in Pittsburgh. There is a lot of energy throughout the community about his coming, you know, to our community, giving people a chance to hear firsthand the kind of wonderful, provocative, and very meaningful and important influential work that you have been providing. So as we go around the community sharing the information about your book signings, and your lecture, it's not a tough sell. People are chiming in and really getting excited about your presence.

Joyce Bender: Where will that be tonight, Evan? What time and where?

It will be 6:00 at the Hill House Kaufmann Auditorium, 1835 Center Avenue Pittsburgh on the Hill District. We're only four blocks from the Mellon Arena, as you are leaving downtown Pittsburgh right in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh, and the other main center of Pittsburgh which is Oakland, which is where the universities reside.

Joyce Bender: Edwin, interestingly, the Jewish community from the beginning worked together with the minority community to bring the Hill House together and Evan is a tremendous leader in the Pittsburgh community. So we're all excited, Edwin, about you speaking there this evening.

Edwin Black: Well, the Jewish and black communities worked for years in the Civil Rights Movement, and frankly, I would like to see a resurgence of that alliance facing our common nemesis, which is now the paralysis of our nation by our addiction to oil. We are just a couple -- we are just a couple of oil tankers away from feeling this paralysis. I would like to avoid that both for those of means, those without means, and those of any color.

Joyce Bender: Well --

Absolutely.

Joyce Bender: -- we have the right group together tonight that's for sure. Evan?

Yes.

Joyce Bender: Anyone listening to the show this is opened to the public. Everyone knows that the Hill House is one of the most prestigious organizations in the community -- the most prestigious organizations in the community, and has brought in national leaders and speakers to the Hill House. Evan has arranged so much and done such great work. But it's opened to the public, 6:00 tonight at the Hill House.

Joyce, the other significant part of this evening, the actual auditorium in the center where he will be speaking tonight used to be a part, a very important part of the Jewish community in the early 1900s. It used to be a part of what was called the Irene Kaufmann settlement. So this is a building that's historic that goes back to the Jewish roots on the Hill. So, Mr. Black, as you talk about the Jewish and the African-American history intertwining, that's very much I think what you will see tonight.

Edwin Black: Well, it's going to be an absolute pleasure to be under an historic roof speaking of an historic matter that now faces not just these two communities, but all communities. You know something? The only color that we should be concerned with here is the color green. And unless we can all go green, this country and this world of ours is in desperate trouble.

Joyce Bender: You can hear him tonight, again, at the Hill House. If you are in the Pittsburgh area listening to this show, tell your friends 6:00 tonight at the Hill House. Evan, we will so much look forward to seeing you.

Edwin Black: Evan, I will see you there.

Thank you. I am looking forward to it. Thank you for coming. We're very excited about your presence.

Edwin Black: Thank you for bringing me there.

Thank you, Joyce.

Joyce Bender: Thank you! Thank you, Evan! This is what we need. We need to get all of these groups together and united, as Edwin said, one color, and that color is green. Because if not we are in desperate condition here. We will just continue as he said having, you know, more debts, more problems, or who knows what could happen, something similar that already happened with 9/11. We have really got to do something about it, and -- we've really got to do something about this.

Edwin Black: 9/11 was just a practice run. It was just a practice run. What's in store for us, what's being publicly spoken of, what's being publicly predicted, what's being publicly urged is the entire conquest of the Western way of life. That's being fuelled by one substance, petroleum. And we think we are the master of petroleum, but petroleum is our master.

Joyce Bender: Isn't that the truth? And by the way, Edwin, I want to also extend my sympathies to you because I know that you did lose a friend in Seattle at around the same time, isn't that correct?

Edwin Black: Yes. Just recently there was a Muslim extremist who attacked the Jewish Federation in Seattle and shot dead a friend of mine, someone that I knew, someone who I used to work with on speaking engagements, on tour in the same way that I work with you. So that was devastating. I want people to understand that there are many, many prices that we pay. Only one of those prices is the price at the pump. The quality of our lives, the quality of our ability to get on the airplane and bring shampoo, all of these qualities are tied to our addiction to oil. It's not just MPG, but it's U.S.A.

Joyce Bender: You heard him. And I'm going to tell you what. Edwin sent an e-mail out about this friend of his, and it was just the most sad e-mail because here he is trying to find out who this person was that was killed, and it ended up that it was his friend killed. And what does all of this go back to? What he is talking about right now. I mean, what is the weapon used over our heads? Oil. Every time that you hear about it, oil. And unfortunately oil does fuel terrorism.

Edwin, for those people interested in following you as you are going along here is it best just to go to your website? I know that you are on this 50-city, 300-event tour. I know that you've been on TV several times on CNN. How can people follow you if they're interested in doing so?

Edwin Black: Well, just go to -- there are two websites. One is my private site which is Edwinblack.com. That has my book tours and my book. But the specific book sites, the private book web page is internalcombustionbook.com. That has my tours, it has my articles, there will be pictures there, pictures from tonight. People can see where to find me in advance. Friend or foe, my life is an open book. And they can find out the alternatives such as Brazilian sugar cane ethanol which is 100% oil-free, but which our legislatures, not just the White House, but our Congress has taxed with a penalty tax of 54 cents per gallon. They can find out the truth about corn ethanol, which is a bogus energy saver that really is not. They can find out where these vehicles are that are obtainable now from Honda, from BMW.

They can find out what's really happening in the hydrogen world. They can really find out about detaching from the infrastructure. And, they can find out -- they can read excerpts from the book that aren't even in the book too much detail that the publishers didn't want it to go all under because they couldn't publish that fat of a book. So took the excerpts, and instead of putting them on the cutting-room floor, they're on the web. They can find the original pictures of some of these things such as parking meters that are actually electric. You park in front of them, and you would plug your electric vehicle in, and they would get charged. Where did that go? It's all been subverted, and now is the time for people to understand that we don't need to reinvent the wheel.

We need to excavate it from where it was buried a century ago.

Joyce Bender: Wow! That's Edwin Black, let me tell you what. It has been your treat to hear him. Edwin, what message do you want to leave with our listeners today?

Edwin Black: Get off oil!

Joyce Bender: Get off of oil. You heard it. Get off oil. You know what? We always have a quote from a famous disability leader, my quote today will be right from Edwin Black when he said For those in the non-disabled world, if there is an inconvenience to you, to the disability community, it's devastation. Oh, how true those words are! Right now, listen, go out and buy this book, Internal Combustion, by one of the greatest people I have ever met, Mr. Edwin Black! Edwin, it has been my honor to have you with us today. Thank you for coming to Pittsburgh.

Edwin Black: Thank you so much, Joyce. Let's get on with the crusade.

Joyce Bender: Let's get on with the crusade! And, listen, if you are in Pittsburgh, the Hill House, 6:00 this evening. You're listening to America's voice, disability does matter on VoiceAmerica.com!

Edwin Black: I'll see you there, Joyce.

Joyce Bender: See you later!

Bye-bye.

(Music)

Oil Junkies, Fall 2006
How corruption and greed led America from "green" electric trolleys to polluting, petroleum-powered automobiles--and what we can do now.

Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust, which in 2003 won the top two awards of the American Society of Journalists and Authors for best book and best investigative article; and of three other books, including War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. His most recent book is Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives, from which the following is drawn. He was interviewed by Reform Judaism editor Aron Hirt-Manheimer.

According to your book, there was a time in America when we as a nation were not dependent on oil to power our cars.

Yes. In the 1890s, most of the original automobiles were smooth-running, quiet, environmentally friendly electric vehicles powered by lead batteries. Thousands of such vehicles traversed our city streets and even the back roads of rural America. How we regressed from electric to oil is a complex story rooted in corruption and control. Here's the short version: During the first years of the 20th century, the electric vehicle people were "the bad guys" in America. The key players were the Pope Manufacturing Company in Hartford--which had secured a monopoly on the bicycle industry; the Electric Vehicle Company in New York and Philadelphia, which controlled a monopoly on batteries; and a small group of powerful carmakers such as Olds and Packard. Together, they created an automobile cartel that tried to dictate who could and could not buy and sell a car in America--and what kind of car. These monopolists acquired a primitive automobile patent called the "Selden Patent," designed from the outset to be used as a patent litigation weapon. Armed with this patent, the cartel threatened to file an expensive patent infringement case and injunction against every American who purchased an inexpensive internal combustion car that the "Selden Trust" did not authorize. At the same time, the cartel allowed its own technologically superior electric vehicles to falter in the marketplace in favor of high-priced, extremely profitable gasoline-burning cars designed for the moneyed elite. Remember, this was before mass production; each car was hand-built. Oil, especially oil from the Mideast, was very cheap, much cheaper than a lead battery. What's more, supply and demand of oil could be manipulated, yielding billion-dollar profits.

Soon, production of electric vehicles became limited to a few dozen small, independent car companies that could barely keep the flame of clean auto-making alive.

Didn't Henry Ford play a major role in popularizing internal combustion automobiles?

Yes, but that's only the end of the story. The beginning is fascinating. In 1903, Ford introduced a cheap, mass-produced internal combustion machine for the average man that revolutionized the car industry. The Model T became the "everyman" car. This was also a time when electric vehicles and battery makers--even decent independent ones--were perceived by the masses as scoundrels, crooks, and liars. For decades, imperfect, broken electric-battery technology had been used by devious financiers to launch stock swindles and monopolistic trusts based on exaggerated technology and capability. Thus, for many Americans, purchasing a Model T petroleum car over an electric car became an act of popular defiance against the rich, powerful, and corrupt transportation tycoons who were attempting to control the people's freedom of choice and movement.

In 1914, however, Ford saw the light, so to speak, and joined his lifelong idol Thomas Edison in a project to replace gas-driven internal combustion machines with cheap electric cars powered by revolutionary lightweight nickel batteries that could power a car or truck about 75 miles on a single charge and last for 40,000 miles--which could be the life of the vehicle in those days. Ford and Edison envisioned that all home and automotive energy would eventually be generated by wind-powered backyard and basement generators. Together, the two men invested years and millions of dollars to perfect a new generation of battery-run vehicles and to create a national infrastructure of charging stations and even curbside charging hydrants--remember, this was before gas stations were even invented. Their creative research and planning coalesced in 1914, when they were ready to launch mass production. America once again stood at the crossroads. Would we drive vehicles powered by electricity or oil?

Obviously oil triumphed. What happened?

The Ford-Edison electric vehicle was mysteriously subverted by an inexplicable and suspect series of events. Edison's batteries worked perfectly in Orange, New Jersey when Edison shipped them--yet when they were tested at Ford's facilities in Detroit, they inexplicably failed to work. Before Edison could recover, his laboratory and facilities were struck by a mysterious flash fire that burned everything. Ford eventually abandoned the project. The story is heart-breaking. I call 1914 the beginning of the end of clean electric in this country.

Yet at the time, much of America's mass transit ran on electricity. What happened to those systems?

In the 1930s and '40s, General Motors, the Firestone Tire Company, Mack Truck, Phillips Petroleum, and Standard Oil of California--all operating through a front company called National City Lines (NCL)--bought up dozens of local mass-transit systems that were operating the popular electric streetcars. Their plan was to control virtually all the leading mass-transit systems in America, and replace electric trolleys with smoky, gas-guzzling buses. In many cases, these trolley transit companies had previously been financially looted by their financier owners and fallen into disrepair, which only made them easier targets for acquisition. Once NCL purchased the trolley lines with "borrowed" money from GM and others, the tracks were torn up and the trolleys sold or destroyed, replaced by petroleum-powered GM buses running on tires and oil supplied by the NCL companies.

NCL started with small cities in Illinois and Texas. Within several years, the company managed to devastate or destroy the trolley systems in some 40 cities, including Baltimore, Tampa, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Salt Lake City. Then, in the years that followed, the badly managed NCL bus companies disappeared as well, leaving no mass transit and, in many cases, no alternative means of transportation other than individual automobiles.

How could such a scam go undetected for so long?

GM and its conspirators operated through National City Lines and numerous other Enronesque subsidiaries and affiliates, substantially under the radar. Yet once the NCL conspirators seized a transit system, so many citizens complained that ultimately the FBI launched a massive nationwide investigation to connect the dots. It began October 2, 1946 when the Department of Justice sent a memo to J. Edgar Hoover regarding "numerous complaints concerning the activities of National City Lines, Inc., and various associated companies in connection with the acquisition and operation of local transit systems acquired by those companies in various cities throughout the country. Through a series of contracts, manufacturers of buses, tires, and petroleum products have become important stockholders in the National City Lines. Investigation of the complaints disclosed the probable existence of a systematic campaign by National City Lines, acting with its manufacturing stockholders, to secure control over local transportation systems in various cities." The Justice Department memo continued: "It appears that National City Lines and its manufacturing associates have entered into a plan to secure control over local transportation systems in important cities of the United States.... One result of the plan for integrated control over local transportation has been the elimination of electric railway cars in city transportation controlled by these companies."

Then what happened?

FBI agents in blue suits fanned out across America interviewing executives, transit experts, community leaders, and local officials. Subpoenas for masses of documents were served. On April 9, 1947, NCL, GM, Mack Truck, Firestone, Phillips Petroleum, Standard Oil of California, and a group of their key executives were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to monopolize. Count 1 alleged a conspiracy to control mass transit through systematic acquisition and in so doing exclude all competition for motor buses, including electric trolleys. Count 2 alleged a "conspiracy to monopolize" the bus business by creating a network of transit companies that were forbidden to "use products other than the products sold by supplier defendants." This was a first-of-its-kind prosecution--the first antitrust action against companies that were using exclusivity contracts and "required purchase" contracts in another industry, effectively creating a monopoly. All of the defendants were found not guilty on the first count, and guilty on the second. On April 1, 1949 the judge handed down his sentence: a mere $5,000 fine to each corporate defendant, except Standard Oil, which was fined $1,000. As for the individual co-conspirators, they too were fined. Each was ordered to pay "one dollar." The conviction withstood appeals all the way to the Supreme Court.

By the time of the guilty verdict, GM, Firestone Tires, Mack Truck, Phillips Petroleum, and Standard Oil had succeeded in irrevocably changing mass transit in America--42 cities in 16 states were converted from trolley to motor bus--a trend that ultimately converted our country from clean, electric transportation systems to polluting petroleum-powered buses. America has never recovered.

In your book you also point to the business connections of GM and Germany during the Hitler years.

Yes. At the same time that GM was involved in undermining electric mass transit in America, the company built trucks and other military vehicles which Nazi Germany used to launch World War II, beginning with its 1939 blitzkrieg invasion of Poland. GM's direct involvement with the Reich continued until the U.S. entered the war in 1941. GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey also collaborated with the German company I.G. Farben to produce tetraethyl lead, a fuel additive which became indispensable both for Blitz trucks as well as the JU-88 bombers that were later manufactured in GM's German plants to rain devastation upon the civilian populations throughout Europe. When a stockholder complained about the alliance with Nazi Germany, GM president Alfred Sloan defended the business, calling the profits "outstanding."

Henry Ford's anti-semitism is well known, but GM's executives seem to have escaped this legacy.

True, even though GM portrayed Hitler as a hero. For example, in the June 1934 edition of its official company publication, "General Motors World," the automaker praised der Führer as a visionary lover of children. Overseeing GM's German operation was James D. Mooney, president of the General Motors Overseas Corporation. Mooney had learned early on to pump his arm diagonally, palm outstretched, in the Hitler salute. On one occasion, in 1934, Mooney practiced his Heil Hitler salute in a mirror to get it just right before an important meeting with der Führer in Hitler's Chancellery office. We know this from Mooney's own papers. Mooney eventually received the Merit Cross with Eagle (Germany's second highest honor) for invaluable assistance to the Reich.

A generation later in 1974, a Congressional report condemned GM and Ford for assisting the Nazis while undermining American mass transit: "Given the dominant structural positions of GM and Ford in the war economies of both America and Germany, these firms had the power to influence the course of World War II. They could determine, for example, which belligerent would benefit from their latest advances in war-related technology.... In any event, due to their concentrated economic power in both economies, they were able to shape the conflict to their own private corporate advantage. Whether in fact their profit-maximization determinations were also in the best interests of international peace, or, more specifically, in accord with the national security objectives of the United States at that time, is entirely unclear." GM would later launch a successful vilification campaign directed at Bradford Snell, who authored the report, calling it "totally misleading" and "slander."

Given this history and our technological advances, should we be weaning ourselves from oil, especially with the high cost at the pump?

The cost consumers pay for a gallon of gas is only part of the story. The U.S. Defense Department alone allocates $55 billion to $96.3 billion annually to safeguarding petroleum supplies, two-thirds of which are pumped from the Persian Gulf. Annual tax incentives and government programs supporting oil are estimated to be somewhere between $38 and $114.6 billion, and the U.S. 2005 energy legislation extended $8 billion in additional tax incentives to oil producers, despite the industry's record multibillion-dollar profits. And the social, environmental, and health consequences of oil--including the death and dismemberment arising from America's military presence in the Middle East to protect the oil flow--are staggering and admittedly incalculable costs.

The government, American auto companies, and some in the oil industry have been advocating ethanol made from corn as an alternative fuel. Is this a good idea?

Bad idea--corn ethanol is America's next big fuel mistake. At first blush, ethanol from corn appears to be a solution from America's heartland, a win-win proposition in the struggle to free the world from harmful hydrocarbons and dependence on foreign oil. But American ethanol actually depends upon the continued use of petroleum. And when you factor in ethanol's production and distribution costs, many experts say ethanol actually uses more petroleum than it saves. For example, a key series of studies conducted by Tad Patzek, a University of California geoengineer, and David Pimentel, a Cornell University expert in sustainable agriculture, found that "it takes 1.29 gallons of petroleum or petroleum equivalents to produce one gallon of ethanol." According to these experts, even proposed alternative ethanol cellulosic sources, such as switchgrass, wood, and straw, "require 50 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced." Unfortunately, the ethanol industry has effectively tried to silence its critics, especially since its lobby--remember those key Iowa presidential caucuses and Iowa is one of the key corn states--enjoys so many allies in Congress. Pimentel says that ever since he and Patzek reported on their finding, they have been subject to a vilification campaign by ethanol industry lobbyists.

What's more, the price of gas is inflated. U.S. cars currently run on gasoline that is generally 5-10 percent ethanol and our tax dollars pay for an amazing 51-cent-per-gallon government subsidy to the oil companies for every gallon of ethanol used.

And yet, GM and Ford are rushing more "Flex-Fuel" cars to market?

Correct. From a PR point of view, introducing cars that can run on a combination of fuels from gasoline to homegrown ethanol appears like a dynamic move toward energy independence. Ford has already sold 1.6 million such Flex-Fuel cars and trucks, and it's estimated that by the end of 2006 another 250,000 vehicles will be sold. GM is aggressively marketing E85 (85 percent ethanol) for its Chevrolet Avalanche. But the fact remains that every gallon of American corn ethanol consumed requires the consumption of more petroleum to produce and transport it. That is no way to break our addiction to oil and gain true energy independence.

What about the foreign carmakers?

Alternative fuel leaders such as Honda, BMW, and Toyota have refused to jump on the ethanol bandwagon. They know that corn ethanol is not so much an alternative as it is a petroleum adjunct merely backed by a strong lobbying and advertising campaign--big corn and big oil getting together at the expense of America's future.

But isn't using corn ethanol in our gas tanks a more environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum?

That's what the ethanol lobby wants us to believe. In fact, the production of corn ethanol is contributing to global warming because much of it is produced in plants that run on coal. For example, the Gold-Eagle Cooperative of Iowa is now burning 300 tons of coal daily--three railroad carloads--to produce 150,000 gallons of ethanol a day. I asked the company if the coal was mined by traditional smoke-spewing, heavy, diesel-thirsty coalmining equipment, then transported by diesel trains, and offloaded and processed by any number of greenhouse-inducing diesel processes. The company spokesman answered, "I guess it is."

Is all ethanol use environmentally harmful?

Not at all. Some ethanol products offer a perfect balance of environmental safety and oil independence. In fact, ethanol is achieving genuine green independence for Brazil. But Brazilian ethanol comes from sugarcane, which American soil cannot grow in cheap abundance. Most importantly, ethanol refineries in Brazil are driven not by coal or hydrocarbons but by a non-polluting sugarcane-stem byproduct called "bagasse." Hence, Brazilian ethanol, which packs eight times the energy of a gallon of corn ethanol, is genuinely renewable and sustainable. Flex Fuel vehicles manufactured by Ford and GM for the Brazilian market can run on E100--that is, 100 percent ethanol. Today, more than 28 percent of all Brazilian vehicles operate on 100 percent sugarcane ethanol.

If we can't grow sugarcane ethanol, shouldn't we import it from Brazil?

Of course. But American importation of Brazilian ethanol is obstructed by a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff, which is effectively keeping this energy solution out of the country in any great quantity. If our government were to truly put environmental concerns before corporate oil and corporate agriculture interests, it would eliminate the subsidy for American corn ethanol and lift the import penalty on Brazilian sugar ethanol.

Is America in danger of running out of oil before we find an affordable replacement?

Oil reserves are expected to last from 15 to 30 years, but much depends on the voracious usage in China, India, and other emerging economies. However, oil reserves are hardly as important as oil refinery capacity. If hurricanes or terrorism damage our refining capacity, we can swim in a sea of oil that won't drive an automobile. Moreover, if the price of the remaining oil is vastly escalated, it will simply become a punitive expense, out of reach or economically crippling. As non-Gulf sources deplete, the day is coming when most of the world's remaining oil comes from the Persian Gulf. Petropolitics is the most dangerous aspect of all future oil. That is why America must break its addiction to oil now.

So what's the answer?

The answer is hydrogen--everywhere abundant, and it can be produced in our back yards in small, inexpensive boxes.

How soon can we harness hydrogen?

Within three to four years, Honda and BMW are both planning to roll out production models of hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Honda's FX hydrogen vehicle comes with a home refueling dispenser that creates the hydrogen and also powers the entire house. Say goodbye to gas stations and electric company bills. Understand, these vehicles exist today. I have driven them and they are slick. While Honda uses a hydrogen fuel cell, which creates electric energy from hydrogen gas without internal combustion, BMW utilizes liquid hydrogen to drive its fuel cell; its vehicles can be refueled from public hydrogen pumps. Both GM and Ford have developed experimental hydrogen cars, but they are jolting, sluggish. I have driven them as well and consider them technologic tokenism.

How much will hydrogen vehicles cost?

Senior sources at Honda have told me that the cost will be "affordable" for the average person.

What does the future hold?

Within a few years, hydrogen will be able to power our homes and factories, and fuel our vehicles. Our government has adopted a so-called "Hydrogen Road Map" to a full hydrogen economy. The technology is available today. But the government and commercial interests are arranging for this hydrogen to come online in about a decade--thereby allowing the oil companies to squeeze every last drop out of their Mideast oil supplies, regardless of the political or economic price, wealth transfer, or terrorist potential.

Can GM and Ford compete?

GM is staving off bankruptcy now; Ford is not far from that. Both companies are hoping that corn ethanol can save their gas guzzlers. It won't. It can't. But remember, this is a problem that GM and other big U.S. automakers consciously created when, after the 1973 oil shock, they aggressively marketed massive, fuel-inefficient vehicles, from Ford's Navigator to GM's Hummers and Cadillac Esplanades.

Will Israel be safer if the world is no longer so dependent on Arab oil?

Not just Israel, but the world as a whole will be a safer place. The sooner we stop the transfer of Western wealth to Arab and Islamic states that fund terrorism, the better for everyone. As for Israel, the sooner we can neutralize the power of the oil weapon, the less likely we are to see European and American acquiescence to Arab demands at Israel's expense. We witnessed this in 1973 when President Nixon initially held back weapons during the Yom Kippur War.

What does America have to do to achieve energy independence?

We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but to distribute the wheel. In other words, we already have the knowledge to harness hydrogen; now we need to ramp it up and apply it. A good analogy is the Manhattan Project, which ramped up and applied existing nuclear knowledge more than it developed new knowledge.

As for cost, the true numbers are more feasible than nearly anyone imagines. Total expenditures for the original Manhattan Project were about $1.89 billion in World War II dollars spent over four years--or about $20 billion in 2005 dollars.

How realistic is such an expenditure?

It simply requires national will and a national priority. Take, for another example, the Apollo program to land a man on the moon. Apollo totaled nearly $20 billion, or about $135 billion in 2005 dollars.

What else can the government do to reduce oil consumption?

Our government needs to restrict gas-guzzling vehicles in the same way it discourages cigarette smoking--with high taxes, limited use restrictions, label warnings, and advertising bans. Cities with high pollution should do as central London has done--ban or restrict vehicles or at least hyper-tax gas guzzlers. Create a punitive carbon tax. Set a positive example by encouraging the depiction of environmentally friendly rather than gas-guzzling cars in movies and TV, the same way cigarette use and stereotypical imagery have been discouraged in the media. Launch disincentives against GM, Ford, and other low-efficiency vehicle makers. At the same time, offer tax incentives for high-fuel efficiency and alternative-fuel vehicle manufacturing and adoption.

In addition, government and industry with fleets can pave the way to energy independence by being the first to adopt widespread use of pure electric, hydrogen, and other alternative-fuel cars. Doing so would bring down the cost for everyone. The federal fleet alone is 600,000 vehicles strong. Government purchases alone could spur the rapid adoption of alternative-fuel vehicles.

And what can we as individuals do to free our nation from this addiction?

First and foremost, I believe we need to get serious and stop allowing ourselves to be deceived and manipulated by special interests, oil companies, and politicians. Today, energy interests are using such catch phrases as "environmentally friendly," "hybrid," and "alternative fuel" the way food companies used "fat-free" and "low-fat" a few years ago, but made us no thinner.

Second, drive smarter. While hybrids are an improvement over standard internal combustion engines, they nevertheless prolong petroleum use and delay real progress, by which I mean mass production of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Until they're available, we're better off switching to bridge technologies, such as compressed natural-gas cars, which serve as a bridge between the existing technology and the target technology--hydrogen. Bridge technology vehicles are available now from Honda and come with home-fueling stations as easy to install as a gas grill. While compressed gas--a climate-killing hydrocarbon--is not good for the environment, the compressed gas automobiles don't contain petroleum and thereby can begin to wean us from our oil dependence.

Third, when there is a movement to ship green, we can choose the shipper that is leaving the smallest petroleum footprint. Today in America, the three largest fleets are UPS, Federal Express, and the United States Post Office. That could create an immediate fleet decision in the marketplace.

Many solutions are available to us if we resolve together to put an end to our addiction to oil. But we must act.

Copyright © 2006 Union for Reform Judaism [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]
Aired August 30, 2006 - 19:00:00 ET

GLENN BECK, HOST:

How did we get in this situation? I mean, ask yourself this question: How have we gone decades without one major innovation to help us cut the frickin` oil noose from around our neck? My theory is, it`s because some very powerful people in government and industry do not want that noose cut from our neck.

Edwin Black, he`s the author of an upcoming book, "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives."

Edwin, who is responsible for keeping us hooked on oil?

EDWIN BLACK, AUTHOR, "INTERNAL COMBUSTION": Well, the main culprit on who is responsible is the public itself, because the public has allowed the government and the corporations to manipulate it and to take away the real energy alternatives that we actually need.

A hundred years ago, this country was crisscrossed with trolleys, electric trolleys, and with automobiles that ran on electricity. That was all subverted by people who realized it was easier to run an automobile on a gallon of gas that they took from the Middle East without paying a royalty than making a lead battery. So what they did is they subverted the electric cars -- and I`m talking about a hundred years ago -- and replaced it with internal combustion gasoline-burning cars. That`s befouled our air. It befouled our lungs. And ultimately it has led to where we are.

BECK: Well, hang on just a second. Edwin, I am -- you know, a look, I am a capitalist. I believe in a capitalist system and supply and demand, but I don`t think that`s what we have going on here. And I think we have such a shadow government of corporations that are really calling the shots. I hate to sound like a complete -- this is going to make me sound nuts. Maybe you know the answer, because you`ve done so much research on this. Do you believe -- hang on, do you believe...

BLACK: I`m a bigger capitalist than you are, and I can tell you that two of the biggest capitalists in the history of the United States, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, both agreed in 1914 to replace every gasoline- burning car in this country with an electric vehicle. It`s been forgotten in history. It was a secret project. And it was subverted by interests who wanted to stick with internal combustion machines, stick with gasoline burners.

And in 1914, we had a chance in this country to continue the electric vehicle trend with home-generated electricity. What happened to that?

BECK: OK. Is the solution sitting in some vault some place? Is it too conspiratorial to think that people have kind of just, oh, all of the sudden fallen into a river that had the solution? Is that too far?

BLACK: Well, it isn`t that we need to reinvent the wheel. We need to excavate it from where it was buried a hundred years ago. The secret weapon that you`re speaking about, the secret invention is the battery or electricity. And that can be produced with hydrogen or an electrical charge.

And all we`ve got to do in this country is to return to where we were a hundred years ago and generate electricity in our homes. There are plans afoot right now -- Honda, BMW want absolutely, within two to three years, to convert us all to hydrogen cars with home refueling.

BECK: The hydrogen car already exists, right? The compressed natural gas car -- Honda has them -- is trying to say, "Help us out. Put them in."

BLACK: Yes, but wait a minute. Wait a minute, Glenn. Do you know why nobody knows about the compressed natural gas car that Honda is making?

BECK: I`ve got 30 seconds. Tell me quickly.

BLACK: Because on the day they were making the announcement, the "Runaway Bride" occurred, and CNN and everybody else decided to cover that instead of a way we could get off of oil. That`s why no one knows about CNG.

Aired September 13, 2006 - 19:00:00 ET

GLENN BECK, HOST:

It`s time for us to make a decision. We can either be the short-term thinkers and cheer every time gas hits $2 a gallon, or we can be long-term thinkers and realize, this isn`t about the price of gas. It`s about the security of our country. Edwin Black, he is the author of a new book called "Internal Combustion."

Edwin, you did your book -- by the way, you did the IBM and Holocaust book, did you not?

EDWIN BLACK, AUTHOR, "INTERNAL COMBUSTION": Yes, I did, because that was involved with a terrible past, and now I`m looking at a terrible future.

BECK: Yeah. Tremendous book. I can`t wait to read "Combustion." What is the biggest lie that you came across when you were doing the research on this book?

BLACK: Well, the biggest lie we`re looking at now is that corn ethanol is good for this country. Actually, corn ethanol is going to extend our addiction to oil. It takes a gallon to a gallon and a quarter of petroleum to make a gallon of corn ethanol, and there`s more than a 50-cent little known government subsidy that goes right to the oil companies. So every time you think you`re helping the farmers, you`re actually helping the oil companies.

At the same time, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is oil-free, does not require oil, it`s good for the environment. We have a punitive tax against that, more than 50 cents a gallon, and that keeps it out. So that`s the biggest lie we`re looking at now, is the next big fuel mistake is corn ethanol.

BECK: OK. Hang on. How about this, because I really thought you would say that one of the biggest lies that you came across is the fact that we are going to have to spend billions of dollars to change the infrastructure of our highway systems if we come onto, let`s say hydrogen cars.

BLACK: That`s another lie.

BECK: Right.

BLACK: If you want a hydrogen car, all you`ve got to do is get the Honda hydrogen car, when it`s going to be introduced in a couple of years, perhaps sooner. It`s going to have a home energy station. It`s going to be about the size of an air conditioner. It`s going to convert hydrogen right in your backyard or in your garage. It`s going to power your entire home and five cars. Honda`s going to sell it with the hydrogen car.

This is not a look into the future. This machine is available right now from Plug Power. Honda controls it, and BMW is beating Honda to the punch with hydrogen as well. There`s enough hydrogen flowing through this country in pipelines and trucks every day, right this minute, to fuel a million hydrogen cars.

One of the lies is we need to build a hydrogen highway. We don`t, it`s here.

BECK: OK, but this, actually -- you`ll never go to a gas station again, or a hydrogen station. You actually pump the hydrogen in your own garage?

BLACK: That`s right. The hydrogen will be manufactured right in your own garage in a small box that will also power your entire home. It`s called the home energy station by Honda. It`s made by Plug Power, and Honda is developing a car that they want to bring out in about three years. BMW is bringing one out next year that`s actually going to use a liquid hydrogen and a gas station.

BECK: Wait, wait, wait. This will power your own home as well?

BLACK: That`s right, everything. We have a .

BECK: These guys, I`ve got to tell you, only Honda could do these, because these guys would be dead, they`d be floating in some river if they were anyplace in New Jersey.

BLACK: Honda refuses to get involved with corn ethanol because it`s a bad idea. Hydrogen is the answer and it is either going to be BMW or Honda. They`re both racing each other starting point and we need to be with them.

BECK: Let me go through a couple of things because there`s some technology that`s fallen flat -- oh, I have 30 seconds. I don`t have time to do this.

BLACK: We`ve only had 100 years to get it wrong.

BECK: I know. I tell you what, we`ll have you back, because you`re a fascinating guy and you`ve done so much research on this. How long you been researching this book?

BLACK: This book took about 50,000 documents, 100 archives and about a year to cut through all the lies. It`s a century of lies, and now we need a nice, big moment of truth to bring this country back to energy independence.

BECK: That`s great. Edwin, thank you so much. We`ll have you back again.

© 2006 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:41 PM

Why Did They Torture Jose Padilla? 

THERE'S A RANCID odor escaping from the cracks in the Jose Padilla case. Padilla is the American citizen arrested in Chicago and declared by President Bush to be an "enemy combatant." He was then kept for nearly two years in a South Carolina brig without access to a lawyer, family or friends.

The courts finally forced the Bush administration to release Padilla into the justice system, and he is now imprisoned in Miami awaiting trial on charges that have nothing to do with what he was arrested for, an alleged plot to use a dirty bomb in the United States. It is claimed he had al Qaeda connections.

What makes this case so insidious is that, according to a psychiatrist who examined him over a 22-hour period, the treatment Padilla received in the South Carolina brig was such that he now "lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense." In other words, a U.S. citizen was secretly worked over for 21 months to the point he is unable to think well enough to engage with his lawyer.

What needs to be pointed out is that the procedures that broke down Padilla's mental equilibrium weren't dreamed up by his jailers in South Carolina. According to Alfred McCoy in a new book called "A Question of Torture," they are the result of decades and billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research.

"From 1950 to 1962," McCoy writes, "the CIA became involved in torture through a massive mind-control effort, with psychological warfare and secret research into human consciousness that reached a cost of a billion dollars annually - a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind." This research amounted to "the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries." This "black budget" research has never stopped and elements of it were rushed into practice after 9/11.

No need for thumbscrews, racks, phone-crank generators to the genitals or Black & Decker drills. This was "no-touch torture," using extreme isolation and sensory deprivation to create confusion while establishing in the subject's mind the sense that any pain is self-inflicted, that he had chosen the course that led to the pain he was suffering. All it required was extended periods of time and the total elimination of all stimulation and human contact other than that of the jailer and the interrogator.

Padilla spent 21 months in a South Carolina brig especially re-designed after 9/11 to handle interrogation cases like his. A 10- cell wing was devoted solely to Padilla. The windows of his cell were blackened, and he wasn't allowed a clock or calendar.

McCoy says the no-touch torture chamber "has the theatricality of a set with special lighting, sound effects, props, and backdrops, all designed with a perverse stagecraft to evoke an aura of fear... The psychological component of torture becomes a kind of total theater, a constructed unreality of lies and inversion, in a plot that ends inexorably with the victim's self-betrayal and destruction..."

"As a result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation," the New York Times quoted psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty as saying, Padilla "has impairments in reasoning... complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation."

Why did the administration decide to dishonor the Constitution and do this to an U.S. citizen arrested on American soil?

Clearly, it hoped to ferret out leads to more arrests. But if Padilla's lawyers have their way, the psychological torture will actually exonerate him of even the new, vague charges that have nothing to do with what he was originally arrested for. As all experts on torture agree, torture is not as useful in getting true information as it is useful in getting confessions or responses interrogators want. The upcoming trial should be interesting.

A persistent conspiracy theory floating around the Web has Jose Padilla as John Doe #2 of the Oklahoma City bombing. Due to an uncanny likeness between Padilla and the police drawings of Doe #2 and some overlaps with the perpetrators of the bombing, this theory as an explanation of the government's extraordinary treatment of Padilla lingers in the mix. (A Google search of "Jose Padilla John Doe #2" turns up 60,000+ hits.)

For whatever reason the U.S. government did this to one of its own citizens, and whether or not he is guilty of anything, what was done to Padilla should give us all pause. We are now learning that post-9/11 fear resulted in a number of horrendously wrong-headed actions such as the invasion of Iraq that led to that nation's civil breakdown. The Padilla case is about the psychological breakdown of a single man, but it should send a shudder down the spine of every freedom-loving American.

- John Grant is a writer and filmmaker living in Plymouth Meeting.

Copyright [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:40 AM

Friday, December 15, 2006

Free online movie 

Sreaming video, 2 hours 10 minutes.
Often referred to as one of the best films ever made, this holiday classic is out of copyright and is available for everyone to enjoy again and again. (via Mises Blog.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:01 PM

Thursday, December 14, 2006

911 Mysteries 

Streaming video, 1 hour 30 minutes.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:40 PM

Robot with biological brain 

"One of [my projects] that is now ongoing is culturing neural networks - that is actually growing artificial brains from biological tissue - and we're working on that to control a little robot. So rather than have a robot controlled by a computer brain, the robot will be controlled by a biological brain. That to me is tremendously exciting." - Kevin Warwick (via KurzweilAI.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:33 PM

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Microsoft Robotics Studio Now Available 

REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 12, 2006 — Among the many remarkable innovations emerging out of the robotics industry, from surveillance robots that can defuse roadside bombs to robotic arms that perform surgeries, one persistent challenge has been the lack of a common development platform that would allow developers to easily create robotic applications for varied hardware platforms. Today, Microsoft Corp. is closing this gap with the release of Microsoft® Robotics Studio, a new Windows®-based development environment for creating robotic software for a wide variety of hardware platforms. Microsoft also introduced a new third-party partner program featuring Microsoft Robotics Studio-enabled applications, services and robots from independent software vendors, service providers, hardware component vendors and robot manufacturers. Already more than 30 third-party companies have pledged support for the new robotics development and runtime platform, which is available for download and evaluation here. - MS

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:35 AM

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Have Camera Phone? Yahoo and Reuters Want You to Work for Their News Service 

Hoping to turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists, Yahoo and Reuters are introducing a new effort to showcase photographs and video of news events submitted by the public.

Starting tomorrow, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Reuters said that it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

“There is an ongoing demand for interesting and iconic images,” said Chris Ahearn, the president of the Reuters media group. He said the agency had always bought newsworthy pictures from individuals and part-time contributors known as stringers.

“This is looking out and saying, ‘What if everybody in the world were my stringers?’ ” Mr. Ahearn said.

The project is among the most ambitious efforts in what has become known as citizen journalism, attempts by bloggers, start-up local news sites and by global news organizations like CNN and the BBC to see if readers can also become reporters.

Many news organizations turned to photographs taken by amateurs to supplement coverage of events like the London subway bombing and the Asian tsunami. Yahoo’s news division has already used images that were originally posted on Flickr, the company’s photo-sharing site. For example, it created a slide show of images from Thailand after the coup there in September.

Camera phone videos are increasingly making news themselves. Michael Richards, the actor who played Kramer on “Seinfeld,” was recorded last month responding to hecklers in a nightclub with racially charged epithets. The video was posted on TMZ, the celebrity news site.

The Yahoo-Reuters project will create a systematic way to incorporate images covering a wider range of topics into news coverage.

Starting tomorrow, users will be able to upload photos and videos to a section of Yahoo called You Witness News (news.yahoo.com/page/youwitnessnews). All of the submissions will appear on Flickr or a similar site for video. Editors at both Reuters and Yahoo will review the submissions and select some to place on pages with relevant news articles, just as professional photographs and video clips are woven into their news sites today.

“People don’t say, ‘I want to see user-generated content,’ ” said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo’s media group. “They want to see Michael Richards in the club. If that happens to be from a cellphone, they are happy with a cellphone. If it’s from a professional photographer, they are happy for that, too.”

Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events. For now, no money is changing hands between Yahoo and Reuters, but if Reuters is able to create a separate news service with the user-created material, it will split the revenue with Yahoo.

Before photographs or videos are used on the Yahoo site or distributed by Reuters, photo editors at Reuters will try to vet them to weed out fraudulent or retouched images.

This is an imperfect process. Last summer, a blogger discovered that photos of the conflict in Lebanon by a freelance photographer working for Reuters had been digitally altered. Reuters stopped using the photographer and withdrew his work from its archive. The company is now trying to develop software that will help detect altered photographs.

The arrangement with Yahoo is one of several initiatives by Reuters to use the Internet to bring new sources to its news report. It has invested $7 million in Pluck, a company that distributes content from blogs to newspapers and other traditional media outlets. It has also backed two more experimental ventures: NewAssignment.net, an effort to foster reporting that combines the work of professional journalists with input from online readers, and Global Voices, a collection of blogs from less-developed countries.

Yahoo has its own ambitious plans for the You Witness News service. The images received will be used on its sports and entertainment sites. Over time, it wants to expand to local news and high school sports. And it will consider allowing users to contribute articles as well as images. For now, both Yahoo and Reuters are concerned that they do not have the resources to edit and verify such articles.

“News has special constraints on content quality,” said Elizabeth Osder, a senior director for product development at Yahoo. “If we publish text, we want to review it.”

CNN, which is owned by Time Warner and introduced its I-Reports section for user-submitted material on its site in August (www.cnn.com/exchange/), accepts text, images and video. Some submissions are included in its news broadcasts.

“Even the best reporters in most cases are approaching the story from the outside in,” said Mitch Gelman, the executive producer of CNN.com. “What a participant observer can offer is the perspective on that story from the inside out. We feel as a news organization we need to provide both to offer full coverage to our audience.”

Yahoo and Reuters will have other competitors besides mainstream news organizations when it comes to attracting submissions. People with compelling video, for example, may want the instant gratification of putting it on YouTube, the giant video site owned by Google, or some other site.

“The average person witnesses something that is considered news once every 10 years,” said Steve Rosenbaum, who created MTV Unfiltered, one of the first viewer-contributed video programs on television. “When it’s time to put something on the Internet, they will put it in the place they have used before. The numbers tell us that is YouTube.”

Indeed, Yahoo has had some trouble attracting submissions for another high-profile initiative, an effort to solicit videos for a site created jointly with Current, the cable network started by former Vice President Al Gore. As of Friday, that site is no longer accepting new videos.

Moreover, said Mr. Rosenbaum, who now runs Magnify Media, which helps Web sites post video contributions, it might be difficult to get the right sort of submissions.

“If you are asking your audience to know what is a national news story of interest to the world, it seems to me there are only two results: whether you get flooded with lots of car fires, or you get nothing. Neither is a particularly good effect.”

- SAUL HANSELL Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via KurzweilAI.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:32 PM

Genetic testing is transforming medicine—and the way families think about their health. 

Dec. 11, 2006 issue - The year is 1895 and Pauline Gross, a young seamstress, is scared. Gross knows nothing about the double helix or the human-genome project—such medical triumphs are far in thefuture. But she does know about a nasty disease called cancer, and it's running through her family. "I'm healthy now," she reportedly confides to Dr. Aldred Warthin, a pathologist at the University of Michigan, "but I fully expect to die an early death."

At the time, Gross's prediction (she did indeed die young of cancer) was based solely on observation: family members had succumbed to colon and endometrial cancer; she would, too. Today, more than 100 years later, Gross's relatives have a much more clinical option: genetic testing. With a simple blood test, they can peer into their own DNA, learning—while still perfectly healthy—whether they carry a hereditary gene mutation that has dogged their family for decades and puts them at serious risk. Ami McKay, 38, whose great-grandmother Tilly was Gross's sister, decided she wanted to know for her children's sake. In 2002, the answer came back: positive. "It changes who you are," says McKay.

Genetic testing is changing medicine, too. Three years after scientists announced they had sequenced the human genome, new knowledge about how our genes affect our health is transforming the way diseases are understood, diagnosed, treated—and even predicted. Today gene tests are available for more than 1,300 diseases, including cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. And now, as genetic screening gets cheaper and faster, researchers are hunting down the biological underpinnings of more-complex disorders that involve multiple genes—big, rampaging illnesses that strike millions of Americans every year. On the list: type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease and depression. If the scientists are right, genetic tests for some of these diseases could be available by 2010. Testing positive doesn't guarantee that you'll get the illness, but it does help determine your risk. "We are on the leading edge of a genuine revolution," says Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Genetic testing today starts at the earliest stages of life. Couples planning to have children can be screened prior to conception to see if they are carriers of genetic diseases; prenatal tests are offered during pregnancy, and states now screen newborns for as many as 29 conditions, the majority of them genetic disorders. For Jana and Tom Monaco, of Woodbridge, Va., early testing has made an enormous difference in the lives of their children. Their journey began in 2001, when their seemingly healthy third child, 3 1/2-year-old Stephen, developed a life-threatening stomach virus that led to severe brain damage. His diagnosis: a rare but treatable disease called isovaleric acidemia (IVA), marked by the body's inability to metabolize an amino acid found in dietary protein. Unknowingly, Jana and her husband were carriers of the disease, and at the time, IVA was not included in newborn screening. The Monacos had no warning whatsoever.

Not so when Jana got pregnant again. Her daughter, Caroline, was tested by amnio while still in the womb. Knowing Caroline had the mutation, doctors were able to administer medication the day she was born. And the Monacos were prepared to monitor her diet immediately to keep her healthy. Today Stephen, 9, is unable to walk, talk or feed himself. Caroline, meanwhile, is an active, healthy 4-year-old. Genetic testing, says Jana, "gives Caroline the future that Stephen didn't get to have."

The future is what drives many adults to the clinic. The gene tests currently offered for certain diseases, like breast and colon cancer, affect only a small percentage of total cases. Inherited mutations, including BRCA1 and 2, contribute to just 5 to 10 percent of all breast cancers, and the main gene variants involved in colon cancer account for 3 to 5 percent of diagnoses. But the impact on a single life can be huge. The key: being able to do something to ward off disease. "Genetic testing offers us profound insight," says Dr. Stephen Gruber, of the University of Michigan. "But it has to be balanced with our ability to care for these patients."

Ami McKay now has an annual colonoscopy. Another kind of genetically driven colon cancer, familial polyposis, is treated by removing the colon. The risk of breast and ovarian cancers in people with BRCA mutations can be reduced by frequent screening and radical surgery, too. Having healthy breasts or ovaries removed isn't easy, but the payoff—an end to constant anxiety and a pre-emptive strike at disease—can be well worth it. "Most women I've met who've had prophylactic surgery are glad they made the choice even if they're unhappy they were put in that position," says Sue Friedman, a breast-cancer survivor and head of FORCE, an advocacy and support group focused on hereditary cancers. "It's a double-edged sword."

Genetic testing, exciting as it may seem, isn't always the answer. When Wendy Uhlmann, a genetic counselor at the University of Michigan, teaches medical students, she flashes two slides on a screen side by side. One says ignorance is bliss. The other: knowledge is power. That's because the value of testing becomes especially murky—and ethically complicated—when there is no way to prevent or treat disease, as in the case of early-onset Alzheimer's, which often strikes before the age of 50, or Huntington's.

Today only about 5 percent of people who are at risk for Huntington's—which is caused by a single gene and leads to a progressive loss of physical control and mental acuity—take the test. Many are worried that genetic testing will put their health insurance or job security in jeopardy. While there have been few documented cases of discrimination, nobody can say for sure what will happen as more disease genes are discovered and more Americans sign on for predictive testing. States have a patchwork of regulations in place, but what needs to happen now, experts say, is for Congress to pass the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which would put a federal stamp of approval on keeping genetic information safe.

For Shana Martin, 26, of Madison, Wis., the decision not to get tested is far more personal. Shana grew up watching her mother, Deborah, battle Huntington's. Now a fitness instructor (and the current world champion in logrolling, no less), Shana is young, strong, healthy—and not interested in opening her genetic Pandora's box. "I don't know how well I'd handle a positive result, and with how happy I am right now, that would just put a real shadow over my life," she says. "I'm much more comfortable with it being an unknown."

Some people, however, can't live with uncertainty. Uhlmann's patient Stephanie Vogt knew Huntington's ran in her family—her paternal grandfather and his three brothers all died of complications of the disease—and she wanted to find out where she stood. "As soon as I found out there was a test, I just had to do it," she says. In August 2000, after comprehensive genetic counseling, Stephanie, her sister, Victoria, and their mother, Gayle Smith, learned her results: positive. "It was like a scene out of 'The Matrix,' where everything freezes and starts again," says Stephanie, now 35 and single. Victoria, 36, who has since tested negative, says she hopes to care for her sister down the road. She also prays for a cure. Knowing isn't always easy. On good days Stephanie feels empowered; on bad days she's frightened. "But most of the time," she says, "I'm comfortable with the fact that I have the knowledge."

It's not just their own health that people care about. There is also the desire to prune disease from the family tree. Today, using a scientific advance called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), couples can create embryos through standard fertility methods, then screen them for genetic disorders, selecting only those that are mutation-free for implantation. The practice is expensive (in the tens of thousands of dollars) and not widespread, but a recent survey of fertility clinics by the Genetics and Public Policy Center found that 28 percent have used PGD to help couples avoid diseases that strike in adulthood, like breast cancer and Huntington's. Kari and Tim Baker knew they had to give it a try. Kari's grandfather died of Huntington's, and her mother was diagnosed in 1999. Kari, a board member of the Huntington's Disease Society of America, wanted to spare her kids. Twins Brooklyn and Levi are now vibrant 2½-year-olds who will never have to worry. "There's great joy and peace in knowing we did everything we could to not pass this on," says Tim.

Testing is just one piece of the genomic revolution. A major goal is to create new sophisticated therapies that home in on a disease's biological glitch, then fix the problem. Already, genes are helping to predict a patient's response to existing medications. A prime example in this field of pharmacogenetics, says Dr. Wylie Burke of the University of Washington, is a variant of a gene called TPMT, which can lead to life-threatening reactions to certain doses of chemotherapy. A genetic test can guide safe and appropriate treatment. Two genes have been identified that influence a person's response to the anti-blood-clotting drug warfarin. And scientists are uncovering genetic differences in the way people respond to other widely used medications, like antidepressants.

Knowing a patient's genotype, or genetic profile, may also help researchers uncover new preventive therapies for intractable diseases. At Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Christopher Ross has tested several compounds shown to slow the progression of Huntington's in mice. Now he wants to test them in people who are positive for the Huntington's mutation but have not developed symptoms—a novel approach to clinical drug trials, which almost always involve sick people seeking cures. "We're using genetics to move from treating the disease after it happens," he says, "to preventing the worst symptoms of the disease before it happens."

Early on, the targets of genetic medicine were rare, single-gene disorders, like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs. Now it's time for the big guns—genetically complex but common conditions like heart disease. A number of genes have already been linked to such illnesses, but many more are at work. The human-genome project, which defines the 99.9 percent of DNA we all have in common, was the starting point. Act II: the "Hap Map"—a genetic atlas completed last year that zeroes in on the .1 percent of DNA that differs among individuals. The Hap Map is proving to be a boon to scientists, allowing them to scan whole chunks of DNA, rather than single genes, to isolate mutations responsible for disease. Already, the Hap Map has helped scientists uncover several gene variations that contribute to macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in older people. At Harvard, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is using the Hap Map to track down gene mutations that cause the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer's, which could strike as many as 16 million Americans by the year 2050. Tanzi's work is funded by the Cure Alzheimer's Fund, a nonprofit that is investing $3 million to unravel the Alzheimer's genome, which it hopes to complete by the summer of 2008. Tanzi says a prototype genetic chip to test for the disease could be available within five years. Dr. Eric Topol, of Case Western Reserve University, is hunting down genes that predispose people to heart attacks.

Private companies, interested in developing drug therapies, are investing in DNA as well. In Iceland, deCode Genetics has pinpointed a gene mutation for type 2 diabetes called TCF7L2. One copy of the mutation increases an individual's risk by 40 percent, two copies by 140 percent, says CEO Kari Stefansson. Stefansson says he expects a genetic test will be available as early as next year. And a joint effort by NIH and Pfizer, announced earlier this year, is searching for genes for a host of diseases, including schizophrenia, bipolar disease and severe depression.

As science advances, business follows. Today genetic testing usually takes place in specialized clinics, where patients undergo thorough counseling both before and after testing so that they—and other family members—understand the emotional and practical implications that might arise. But do-it-yourself online testing companies, advertised directly to consumers, are springing up on the Internet. Ryan Phelan, CEO of DNA Direct, founded in 2004, says her site provides a "virtual genetics clinic," making testing as easy as sending in a cheek swab. (Cost: anywhere from $200 to $3,300.) DNA Direct provides counseling and does not sell remedies after results are in. But other companies are not so scrupulous, marketing tests that have little to no scientific validity, then pushing products as therapy. Critics say they need more oversight. "What you have here," says Dr. Adam Wolfberg, of Tufts-New England Medical Center, "is a real blurring of the lines between medical testing and product marketing."

Scientific revolutions must be tempered by reality. Genes aren't the only factors involved in complex diseases—lifestyle and environmental influences, such as diet or smoking, are too. And predictions about new tests and treatments may not come to pass as fast as researchers hope—they may not come at all. Still, it's hard not to get excited about the future, especially when you consider the medical competition now underway: NIH has challenged researchers to come up with a method, within the next 10 years, to sequence a single human genome for $1,000 (today's cost: $5 million to $10 million). Assuming it works, one day not too far in the future, each of us will go to the doc, hand over our blood and get back our personalized biological blueprints. "It's an astounding curve to be riding," says Collins. Hold on to your DNA. - Claudia Kalb with Anne Underwood and Jonathan Mummolo © 2006 MSNBC.com [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Kurzweil.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:58 PM

Solar cell breakthrough claimed 

A breakthrough in solar cell technology promises to make solar power a cost-competitive energy option and to reduce U.S. dependence on oil.
With funding from the Department of Energy, Boeing-Spectrolab has managed to create a solar cell with 40.7% sunlight-to-energy conversion efficiency, said DoE assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy Alexander Karsner on Tuesday.

The solar cell represents "the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved," according to David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. That claim has been verified by the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

Most of today's solar cells are between 12% and 18% efficient. Some of the ones used to power satellites are around 28% efficient. In 1954, 4% efficiency was state of the art.

High energy prices and environmental concerns are prompting businesses to consider solar power. In October, Google said it planned to install 9,200 solar photovoltaic panels at its Mountain View headquarters in 2007. Google's solar panels, made by Sharp, are 12.8% efficient. It expects to generate 30% of its peak energy usage during the summer from solar power. - EETimes.com Copyright © 2006 CMP Media LLC. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via KurweilAI.net)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:37 PM

A scientist finally proves existence of elusive axion 

Washington, Dec 7: Using a visual target/detector, a University of Buffalo researcher has revealed the existence of the axion, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond.

Dr. Piyare Jain, a UB professor emeritus in the Department of Physics, suggested the existence of the axion way back in 1974.

He published his latest research, which appears online in the British Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, during a two-day symposium held in October at UB that celebrated Jain's 50-year career in the physics department in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"These results show that we have detected axions, part of a family of particles that likely also includes the very heavy Higgs-Boson particle, which at present is being sought after at different laboratories," said Dr. Jain.

The axion has been seen as critical to the Standard Model of Physics and is believed to be a component of much of the dark matter in the universe.

Research on axion started way back in 1977, when scientists predicted the possibility of existence of a particle with characteristics very similar to those described in Dr. Jain's papers. In that publication, the term "axion" was coined.

After the theoretical work, there was a mushrooming of papers from both theoretical and experimental physicists all chasing the axion using low, medium and high-energy accelerator beams from different laboratories worldwide.

But when it proved to be too elusive, many in the physics community abandoned the search in the 1990s. Opinions started making round that such things as axions never existed at all. Later in 1999, a project called the CERES experiment at CERN in Geneva again focused on attempting to detect the axion, but that project was unsuccessful as well.

According to Dr. Jain, the problem in all these failed experiments lay with their detector, which was electronic, the standard used in high-energy physics experiments today.

“They didn't know how to handle the detector for short-lived particles. I knew that for this very short-lived particle -- 10 to the power minus 13 seconds -- the detector must be placed very near the interaction point where the collision between the projectile beam and the target takes place so that the produced particle doesn't run away too far; if it does, it will decay quickly and it will be completely missed. That is what happened in most of the unsuccessful experiments,” Dr. Jain said.

"This particle was there in my original paper in 1974. The experiment gave a hint that these particles existed but did not generate sufficient statistics to prove it. I knew I had to wait until a heavy ion beam at very high energy was available at a new accelerator,” he said.

In his experiment, Dr. Jain produced axions under extreme conditions of high temperature and high pressure, using a heavy ion lead beam with a total energy of 25 trillion electron volts at CERN in Geneva. (ANI) - sawfnews.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:20 PM

Monday, December 11, 2006

vcents 

Streaming video, 23 minutes. Verizon rep., "...I'm not a mathematician..." (via What Really Happened)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:58 PM

Sandra Day O'Connor: “My Life as a Buck-Passing Phony” 

12/10/06 "Information Clearing House" -- --- Do you like Sandra Day O’ Connor?

You know, the peevish ex-Supreme Court Justice with the mug like George Washington?

O’ Connor’s placement on the Iraq Study Group is one of the more striking political ironies of our time. After all, who played a bigger role in securing a spot in the Oval Office for our Crawford Interloper than O’Connor?

Nevertheless, O’Connor was rewarded for her loyalty by sticking her on a panel that is designed to derail the Bush juggernaut before the entire Middle East disappears in sheets of flames.

Apparently, O’Connor has forgotten her part in the 2000 election-swindle and now believes that the media has an obligation to clean up the mess she made.

Huh?

That’s right; in a terse warning to the press, the wizened O’Connor admonishes them on their responsibilities to the public:

“We’ve said in the report that we agree with the goal of US policy in Iraq as stated by the President: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And, to do that, we’ve made these various recommendations on a consensus basis. It’s my belief that if a large segment of our country gets behind that on a consensus basis, it’s very likely we can move forward and make some progress toward that statement of goals. And this is not an ongoing commission. It really is out of our hands, having done what we did. It’s up to you, frankly. You are the people who speak to the American people. You’re there interpreting this and talking to the American people. And I hope that that the American people will feel that if they are behind something in broad terms, that we’ll be better off.”

“Its up to you”?

What gall. What unmitigated gall!

In the 2000 election, 60 million votes were tossed on the burn-pile and only ONE FU**ING VOTE WAS COUNTE....Sandra Day O’ Connor’s. That was the vote which overturned the 225 years of democratic rule and put George Bush in the White House. O’Connor cast that vote by rescinding the constitutionally-guaranteed right of the states to conduct their own elections and by invoking the “equal protection” clause which had never been used except in cases of blatant racial discrimination.

And, now it “up to us”!?!

O’Connor knew that she was repealing democracy by stopping the counting of ballots, just as she knew that her ruling was flagrantly partisan and political in nature.

And, she went ahead anyway.

She sold out her country and paved the way for the disaster we all face now. O’ Connor’s bloody fingerprints are all over the Iraqi tragedy, as are Lee Hamilton’s, who whitewashed the 9-11 report to spare his fellow-traveler and plutocrat, George Bush; and , James Baker, who defended Bush in 2000 before the Supreme Court with perhaps the most cynical defense in American history: If the votes are counted my client will suffer “irreparable harm”.

“Irreparable harm” if the votes are counted!?!

Of course, he would have lost; what could be more harmful than that?

Ahhh, yes; but the biggest trophy still goes to O’Connor. It was her vote that revoked democracy in America and it is SHE who must be held responsible for its horrible consequences.

She could have remained invisible, in self-imposed exile; enjoying her life as a footnote in history’s chronicle of vile traitors. Instead, she wanted to fix some of the damage she’d done by joining a group that was organized to stop Bush’s genocidal march through the Muslim World.

I can still remember a photo of O’Connor which 2 appeared weeks ago in the New York Times and showed her leaving the White House after conferring with President Blockhead. She wore a look of utter dejection, perhaps, realizing that Bush is a recalcitrant, impervious numbskull, who is neither moved by friendship or reason.

What a bitter pill that must be for the woman, who, above all others, is responsible for putting him in office.

Now, of course, she’s trying to pass-the-buck just like Rummy passed-the-buck with one lame excuse after the other.

“It really is out of our hands,” O’Connor moaned. “It’s up to you, frankly. You are the people who speak to the American people. You’re there interpreting this and talking to the American people”.

Oh, so now it’s the media’s responsibility?

Sorry, Sandra, that bullsh** ain’t gonna cut it.

When the final text is written, the name of Sandra Day O’ Connor will feature quite prominently right next to Rasputin, Pol Pot, Henry Kissinger, Pinochet and the other scoundrels who litter the history books.

You sold us out, O’Connor. Now take your lumps like a man. - Mike Whitney

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:20 AM

Sunday, December 10, 2006

It's still about oil in Iraq 

12/10/06 "Los Angeles Times" -- -- December 8, 2006 -- WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq's oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group's work.

For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.

This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law."

This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.

Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.

Much to the deep frustration of the U.S. government and American oil companies, that law has still not been passed.

In July, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security when deciding whether to go into business in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political and economic support is contingent upon Iraq's government meeting certain undefined "milestones." It's apparent that these milestones are embedded in the report itself.

Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. Finally, the report unequivocally declares that the 79 total recommendations "are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation."

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies — presumably American ones — have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.

- ANTONIA JUHASZ is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Information Clearing House)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:19 PM

Former page rips Republicans for Foley Scandal 

Video. Zack Hall, a page during the Foley era, called the House Ethics Committee's findings in the Foley scandal "useless" and "disappointing" in an interview with MSNBC.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:04 PM

Call that a knife? [excerpt] 

The new Swiss Army knife contains 85 devices, weighs 2lb and costs nearly £500. But can you actually use it for anything? Andrew Martin puts the ultimate tool to the test. - The Guardian (via Lew Rockwell)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:36 PM

Shoppers' Guide to Pesticides in Produce 

Why Should You Care About Pesticides?

There is growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood
when exposures can have long lasting effects. Because the toxic effects of pesticides are worrisome, not well understood, or in some cases completely unstudied, shoppers are wise to minimize exposure to pesticides whenever possible.

What’s the Difference?

An EWG simulation of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to about 15 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 12 least contaminated will expose a person to less than 2 pesticides per day. Less dramatic comparisons will produce less dramatic reductions, but without doubt using the Guide provides people with a way to make choices that lower pesticide exposure in the diet.

Will Washing and Peeling Help?

Nearly all of the data used to create these lists already considers how people typically wash and prepare produce (for example, apples are washed before testing, bananas are peeled). While washing and rinsing fresh produce may reduce levels of some pesticides, it does not eliminate
them. Peeling also reduces exposures, but valuable nutrients often go down the drain with the peel. The best option is to eat a varied diet, wash all produce, and choose organic when possible to reduce exposure to potentially harmful chemicals.

How Was This Guide Developed?

The produce ranking was developed by analysts at the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) based on the results of nearly 43,000 tests for pesticides on produce collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2000 and 2004. A detailed description of the criteria used in developing the rankings as well as a full list of fresh fruits and vegetables that have been tested is available at www.foodnews.org.

Copyright 2006, Environmental Working Group. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:51 AM

Saturday, December 09, 2006

The Fountain 

Immortality. The Fountain of Youth. Humanity has pursued these goals since the beginning of time.

Every culture has had its ideas, myths, and methodologies for pursuing eternal life. Ancient civilizations used rituals and magic in their attempts to live forever. The ancient Egyptians created an entire culture devoted to preparing the body for travel to the next life. One of the central tenets of Christianity is resurrection from the dead.

Now, for the first time in history, science is on the verge of making significant strides toward overcoming death and dramatically extending the healthy human life span. Medical science, genetic therapy, and cryonics are at the forefront of these extraordinary breakthroughs.

Drawing on this fundamental human desire for eternal life, director Darren Aronofsky has created an epic new Warner Brothers film, "The Fountain." Obsessed with the concept of immortality, in 1999 Aronofsky began scribbling notes for the film on a restaurant napkin.

"The desire to live forever is deeply imbedded in our culture," he explains. "Every day, people are looking for ways to extend life or feel younger. I started wondering why Hollywood had never tackled a film about the search for the Fountain of Youth."

According to Aronofsky, "This concept has been present in every culture, starting with the Garden of Eden, extending through Gilgamesh and Ponce De Leon, right up to today with medical advances, plastic surgery, and all the areas of life extension that your magazine covers. I thought it was great subject matter on which to base a film. I know readers of Life Extension will be very interested in the content and story line of this film."

The film takes place over the span of a thousand years, during which the characters use the technology at hand in their efforts to overcome death and achieve immortality. Ingeniously set in three different time periods that blend mythology, present-day drama, and futuristic science fiction seamlessly in one film, "The Fountain" tells of the quest for eternal life as seen through these different cultures and eras.

Of most interest to Life Extension readers may be the section set in the twenty-first century, which takes place in a laboratory where a scientist, played by Hugh Jackman, desperately seeks to develop a cellular cure for brain cancer to save his wife from dying. For the actor, preparing for the film raised profound questions about the nature of death.

Hugh Jackman as scientist Tommy Creo seeking a cure for cancer.
Jackman describes the scientist he plays as someone "who looks at death as a disease that can be cured. His wife is dying, he loves her, and he wants to be with her, so he must eradicate death. Hundreds of years ago, the average human life expectancy was 40; now it's 80, so why can't it become 200 or 400? Why can't we solve this problem of life ending with death?"

This philosophical question about eradicating death drives the film. Similarly profound and visionary questions permeate all of Aronofsky's films. He is best known for his radical film, "?" (pi), which was followed by "Requiem for a Dream." Both films have garnered multiple awards and a strong following.

For "The Fountain," Aronofsky teamed up with Ari Handel, who holds a PhD in neuroscience, to write this science-based epic. Handel was able to provide much of the research and scientific veracity that underlie the movie's portrayal of the quest for immortality. "We examined all the cutting-edge life extension research, because the central story in the film takes place in a twenty-first century lab," he notes.

To create an accurate portrayal of a scientist seeking to cure cancer, Handel researched the latest data on aging and life extension. "Throughout various cultures, people have always searched for ways to create life extension—that's just part of the human condition," Handel says. "We did a lot of research into modern science on the sources of aging. We wanted to understand how scientists view aging. It is not necessarily obvious that the body should age, because it is always cleaning itself and rejuvenating cells. In a way, aging doesn't quite make sense."

Handel adds, "What we learned is how over time, the body's processes begin to gum-up and slow down. Additionally, small errors begin to amass, creating larger errors or replication. These tiny changes begin to add up. A lot of what people who are interested in life extension do is try to avoid or at least minimize these changes. Our research made us realize that it would be very difficult to design a single anti-aging 'wonder pill,' because there are a million little things that go wrong in the aging process."

Behind the scenes: Director Darren Aronofsky (left) discusses a scene featuring actors Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman in “The Fountain.”
The next step in Handel's research led him to investigate nanotechnology as part of a potential cure for cancer and aging. "If you have a million little problems, then you need a million little fixes," he says. "This led us to look into nanotechnology. We needed to understand the latest thinking about aging, so we would know how best to present it in the film. The kind of research we did to educate ourselves probably covers all the topics that people who read your magazine already know about. Once we had a better understanding of the range of today's thinking about aging, we could move forward in writing the story."

Even though the subject matter of "The Fountain" is highly unusual for a major Hollywood release, the film's cast is a stellar, award-winning ensemble capable of tackling such a thought-provoking script. The actors include Rachel Weisz, winner of an Academy Award for "The Constant Gardener," in which she portrays a tragic victim of the lethal greed of pharmaceutical companies; Hugh Jackman, who won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance in "The Boy from Oz" and appeared in "X-Men"; and Ellen Burstyn, who has received Oscar, Golden Globe, and Tony awards for her various performances.

While making a film about the quest for immortality is one thing, Aronofsky knows that a long life starts with one's own health habits and lifestyle choices. "I'm intrigued by the information in Life Extension magazine," he says. "I do a lot of yoga, swimming, and biking, though biking in Manhattan is one of the worst things you can do for life extension. However, I'm largely a vegetarian, and eat organic meat once in a while. I used to eat a lot of seafood. Unfortunately, I found that I had a lot of mercury in my body as a result, so I'm in the process of revising my supplementation program to make the appropriate adjustments."

Never one to tackle an easy subject as the basis of his filmmaking, Aronofsky continues his legacy of intriguing movies. "I'm hoping that 'The Fountain' takes people to places they've never seen," he says. "But most of all, I hope they're entertained."

"The Fountain" was released on November 22, 2006. For more information, please visit http://thefountainmovie.warnerbros.com.

- Philip Smith Copyright © 1995-2006 Life Extension Foundation [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:36 PM

Stem Cell Therapy in a Pill? 

In November 2001, Dr. Michael West made a startling announcement. Dr. West’s laboratory, Advanced Cell Technology, had just created the first human embryonic stem cells, and this breakthrough had been published in the Journal of Regenerative Medicine.

Dr. West’s announcement became instant headline news around the world. Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology made it clear that their intention was “not to create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes, strokes, cancer, AIDS, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.”1

Instead of heralding Dr. West’s discovery as a major scientific advance, the federal government tried to outlaw human embryonic stem cell research altogether. While the government failed to enact criminal penalties against stem cell scientists, it did manage to ban embryonic stem cell research in facilities that received government funding.2 The result of this prohibition is that very few stem cell therapies are available to the millions of Americans whose lives might otherwise be saved by them.

For the past five years, longevity enthusiasts have deluged Congress with letters seeking to lift the ban on embryonic stem cell research.

Nutrients Promote Stem Cell Proliferation

The tissue that scientists most associate with adult stem cell activity is the bone marrow. Each day, stem cells in the bone marrow evolve to produce red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. These mature cells are then released into the bloodstream where they perform their vital life-supporting functions.

When bone marrow stem cell activity is interfered with, diseases such as anemia (red blood cell deficit), neutropenia (specialized white blood cell deficit), or thrombocytopenia (platelet deficit) are often diagnosed. Any one of these conditions can cause death if not corrected.

Scientists have long known that folic acid, vitamin B12, and iron are required for bone marrow stem cells to differentiate into mature red blood cells.3-7 Vitamin D has been shown to be crucial in the formation of immune cells,8-11 whereas carnosine has demonstrated a remarkable ability to rejuvenate cells approaching senescence and extend cellular life span.12-28

Other studies of foods such as blueberries show this fruit can prevent and even reverse cell functions that decline as a result of normal aging.29-36 Blueberry extract has been shown to increase neurogenesis in the aged rat brain.37,38 Green tea compounds have been shown to inhibit the growth of tumor cells, while possibly providing protection against normal cellular aging.39,40

Based on these findings, scientists are now speculating that certain nutrients could play important roles in maintaining the healthy renewal of replacement stem cells in the brain, blood, and other tissues. It may be possible, according to these scientists, to use certain nutrient combinations in the treatment of conditions that warrant stem cell replacement.41-43

Theories Put to the Test

To test the hypothesis that nutrients may promote healthy stem cell proliferation, scientists screened a wide range of whole-food extracts, herbal extracts, and specific compounds.43 The objective was to promote hematopoietic stem cell proliferation. Hematopoietic stem cells are adult stem cells that are used routinely for bone marrow transplantation. They reside in bone marrow and are capable of generating all cell types of the blood and immune system.

In this study, spinach, spirulina, astragalus, and other plant compounds did not show a high activity for promoting human bone marrow cell proliferation. Blueberry, green tea, vitamin D3, and carnosine, however, were found to increase bone marrow cell activity in a dose-dependent manner.43

A common side effect of cancer chemotherapy drugs is bone marrow damage, leading to immune suppression and other blood disorders. Medical oncologists routinely prescribe expensive drugs such as granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)—which is also naturally produced by the bone marrow—to stimulate bone marrow stem cell activity. These drug treatments are not without risks of side effects.44

The scientists in this study used GM-CSF as a positive control from which to evaluate the stem cell-promoting effects of various nutrient combinations. As expected, GM-CSF increased bone marrow cell proliferation by around 46%, which was better than any single nutrient compound tested.43

When combinations of nutrients were tested, however, a greater percentage of bone marrow cell proliferation occurred compared to GM-CSF. For example, a combination of blueberry and vitamin D3 exhibited a 62% increase in proliferation of bone marrow cells.43 Blueberry and catechin (green tea extract) increased bone marrow cell proliferation by 70%. When carnosine and blueberry were combined, the growth promotion observed was 83% . . . an effect significantly greater than that of the expensive drug GM-CSF!43

The scientists next tested various nutrients on early stem cells, which can be identified and isolated by their surface antigen-receptor expressions (e.g., CD34 + and CD 133 +). The GM-CSF drug increased these early stem cells by 48%, as expected. A combination of blueberry, green tea, vitamin D3, and carnosine, however, increased these stem cells by an astounding 68%.43

These studies, published just this year, demonstrate for the first time that various natural compounds can promote the proliferation of human bone marrow cells and human stem cells. While these studies were done in vitro, they provide evidence that readily available nutrients may confer a protective effect against today’s epidemic of age-related bone marrow degeneration.

What These Studies Mean to Aging Adults
People afflicted with degenerative illnesses have endured daily suffering that could have been treated effectively had embryonic stem cell research not been stymied by our own government.

Elderly people endure defective immune function that makes them vulnerable to infectious disease, cancer, and chronic inflammatory conditions. Anemia is so prevalent among the elderly that doctors routinely overlook life-threatening red blood cell deficiencies in their older patients, which results in needless heart and brain damage.45

Embryonic stem cells are capable of generating all differentiated cell types in the body. If embryonic stem cell therapies were readily available today, the incidence of a number of age-related diseases would plummet. Regrettably, federal bureaucracies have stifled the advancement of human therapeutic embryonic stem cell research, and caused millions of Americans to suffer and die needlessly.

A few scientists have begun to experiment with the use of adult (bone marrow) stem cells to help treat a wide variety of diseases. Adult stem cells are often tissue-specific and can generate only the cell types comprising a particular tissue in the body; however, in some cases, they can trans-differentiate into cell types found in other tissues. Unfortunately, these therapies have not yet been fully developed and are largely unavailable to the vast majority of Americans.46

The encouraging news is that many of the nutrients that Life Extension members already use may serve to maintain youthful bone marrow stem cell production. It would be fascinating to see a clinical trial in aging humans to determine whether ingesting vitamin D3, blueberry, green tea, and carnosine can reverse anemia, immune deficiencies, and other bone marrow disorders.

For longer life,

William Faloon

References

1. Available at: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/11/25/human.embryo.clone. Accessed August 2, 2006.

2. Available at: http://www.hmnews.org/article2778.html. Accessed August 2, 2006.

3. Koury MJ, Ponka P. New insights into erythropoiesis: the roles of folate, vitamin B12, and iron. Annu Rev Nutr. 2004;24:105-31.

4. Fang TC, Alison MR, Cook HT, et al. Proliferation of bone marrow-derived cells contributes to regeneration after folic acid-induced acute tubular injury. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2005 Jun;16(6):1723-32.

5. Craciunescu CN, Brown EC, Mar MH, et al. Folic acid deficiency during late gestation decreases progenitor cell proliferation and increases apoptosis in fetal mouse brain. J Nutr. 2004 Jan;134(1):162-6.

6. Zittoun J. Anemias due to disorder of folate, vitamin B12 and transcobalamin metabolism. Rev Prat. 1993 Jun 1;43(11):1358-63.

7. Fishman SM, Christian P, West KP. The role of vitamins in the prevention and control of anaemia. Public Health Nutr. 2000 Jun;3(2):125-50.

8. Mathieu C, van EE, Decallonne B, et al. Vitamin D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 as modulators in the immune system. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2004 May;89-90(1-5):449-52.

9. Hypponen E. Micronutrients and the risk of type 1 diabetes: vitamin D, vitamin E, and nicotinamide. Nutr Rev. 2004 Sep;62(9):340-7.

10. Gysemans CA, Cardozo AK, Callewaert H, et al. 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 modulates expression of chemokines and cytokines in pancreatic islets: implications for prevention of diabetes in nonobese diabetic mice. Endocrinology. 2005 Apr;146(4):1956-64.

11. Aslam SM, Garlich JD, Qureshi MA. Vitamin D deficiency alters the immune responses of broiler chicks. Poult Sci. 1998 Jun;77(6):842-9.

12. Wang AM, Ma C, Xie ZH, Shen F. Use of carnosine as a natural anti-senescence drug for human beings. Biochemistry (Mosc.). 2000 Jul;65(7):869-71.

13. Brownson C, Hipkiss AR. Carnosine reacts with a glycated protein. Free Radic Biol Med. 2000 May 15;28(10):1564-70.

14. McFarland GA, Holliday R. Retardation of the senescence of cultured human diploid fibroblasts by carnosine. Exp Cell Res. 1994 Jun;212(2):167-75.

15. McFarland GA, Holliday R. Further evidence for the rejuvenating effects of the dipeptide L-carnosine on cultured human diploid fibroblasts. Exp Gerontol. 1999 Jan;34(1):35-45.

16. Yuneva MO, Bulygina ER, Gallant SC, et al. Effect of carnosine on age-induced changes in senescence-accelerated mice. J Anti-Aging Med. 1999;2(4):337-42.

17. Hipkiss AR, Preston JE, Himsworth DT, et al. Pluripotent protective effects of carnosine, a naturally occurring dipeptide. Ann NY Acad Sci. 1998 Nov 20;854:37-53.

18. Holliday R, McFarland GA. A role for carnosine in cellular maintenance. Biochemistry (Mosc.). 2000 Jul;65(7):843-8.

19. Shao L, Li QH, Tan Z. L-carnosine reduces telomere damage and shortening rate in cultured normal fibroblasts. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2004 Nov 12;324(2):931-6.

20. Yuneva AO, Kramarenko GG, Vetreshchak TV, Gallant S, Boldyrev AA. Effect of carnosine on Drosophila melanogaster life span. Bull Exp Biol Med. 2002 Jun;133(6):559-61.

21. Hipkiss AR, Brownson C, Bertani MF, Ruiz E, Ferro A. Reaction of carnosine with aged proteins: another protective process? Ann NY Acad Sci. 2002 Apr;959:285-94.

22. Stuerenburg HJ. The roles of carnosine in aging of skeletal muscle and in neuromuscular diseases. Biochemistry (Mosc.). 2000 Jul;65(7):862-5.

23. Gallant S, Semyonova M, Yuneva M. Carnosine as a potential anti-senescence drug. Biochemistry (Mosc.). 2000 Jul;65(7):866-8.

24. Boldyrev A, Song R, Lawrence D, Carpenter DO. Carnosine protects against excitotoxic cell death independently of effects on reactive oxygen species. Neuroscience. 1999;94(2):571-7.

25. Boldyrev AA, Gallant SC, Sukhich GT. Carnosine, the protective, anti-aging peptide. Biosci Rep. 1999 Dec;19(6):581-7.

26. Preston JE, Hipkiss AR, Himsworth DT, Romero IA, Abbott JN. Toxic effects of beta-amyloid(25-35) on immortalised rat brain endothelial cell: protection by carnosine, homocarnosine and beta-alanine. Neurosci Lett. 1998 Feb 13;242(2):105-8.

27. Boldyrev AA, Stvolinsky SL, Tyulina OV, et al. Biochemical and physiological evidence that carnosine is an endogenous neuroprotector against free radicals. Cell Mol Neurobiol. 1997 Apr;17(2):259-71.

28. Horning MS, Blakemore LJ, Trombley PQ. Endogenous mechanisms of neuroprotection: role of zinc, copper, and carnosine. Brain Res. 2000 Jan 3;852(1):56-61.

29. Braser P. Blueberries may aid balance, memory. Associated Press. September 17, 1999.

30. Galli RL, Bielinski DF, Szprengiel A, Shukitt-Hale B, Joseph JA. Blueberry supplemented diet reverses age-related decline in hippocampal HSP70 neuroprotection. Neurobiol Aging. 2006 Feb;27(2):344-50.

31. Andres-Lacueva C, Shukitt-Hale B, Galli RL, et al. Anthocyanins in aged blueberry-fed rats are found centrally and may enhance memory. Nutr Neurosci. 2005 Apr;8(2):111-20.

32. Wang Y, Chang CF, Chou J et al. Dietary supplementation with blueberries, spinach, or spirulina reduces ischemic brain damage. Exp Neurol. 2005 May;193(1):75-84.

33. de RC, Shukitt-Hale B, Joseph JA, Mendelson JR. The effects of antioxidants in the senescent auditory cortex. Neurobiol Aging. 2006 Jul;27(7):1035-44.

34. Willis L, Bickford P, Zaman V, Moore A, Granholm AC. Blueberry extract enhances survival of intraocular hippocampal transplants. Cell Transplant. 2005;14(4):213-23.

35. Lau FC, Shukitt-Hale B, Joseph JA. The beneficial effects of fruit polyphenols on brain aging. Neurobiol Aging. 2005 Dec;26 Suppl 1:128-32.

36. Matchett MD, MacKinnon SL, Sweeney MI, Gottschall-Pass KT, Hurta RA. Blueberry flavonoids inhibit matrix metalloproteinase activity in DU145 human prostate cancer cells. Biochem Cell Biol. 2005 Oct;83(5):637-43.

37. Casadesus G, Shukitt-Hale B, Stellwagen HM, et al. Modulation of hippocampal plasticity and cognitive behavior by short-term blueberry supplementation in aged rats. Nutr Neurosci. 2004 Oct;7(5-6):309-16.

38. Joseph JA, Shukitt-Hale B, Denisova NA, et al. Reversals of age-related declines in neuronal signal transduction, cognitive, and motor behavioral deficits with blueberry, spinach, or strawberry dietary supplementation. J Neurosci. 1999 Sep 15;19(18):8114-21.

39. Chen ZP, Schell JB, Ho CT, Chen KY. Green tea epigallocatechin gallate shows a pronounced growth inhibitory effect on cancerous cells but not on their normal counterparts. Cancer Lett. 1998 Jul 17;129(2):173-9.

40. Wang YC, Bachrach U. The specific anti-cancer activity of green tea (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Amino Acids. 2002;22(2):131-43.

41. Whetton AD, Spooncer E. Role of cytokines and extracellular matrix in the regulation of haemopoietic stem cells. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 1998 Dec;10(6):721-6.

42. Gemma C, Mesches MH, Sepesi B, et al. Diets enriched in foods with high antioxidant activity reverse age-induced decreases in cerebellar beta-adrenergic function and increases in proinflammatory cytokines. J Neurosci. 2002 Jul 15;22(14):6114-20.

43. Bickford PC, Tan J, Shytle RD, et al. Nutraceuticals synergistically promote proliferation of human stem cells. Stem Cells Dev. 2006 Feb;15(1):118-23.

44. Demetri GD, Griffin JD. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and its receptor. Blood. 1991 Dec 1;78(11):2791-808.

45. Available at: http://www.aafp.org/afp/20001001/1565.html. Accessed August 2, 2006.

46. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/07/harvard.cloning.ap/index.html. Accessed August 2, 2006.

Copyright © 1995-2006 Life Extension Foundation [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:22 PM

Free online book: FIAT MONEY INFLATION IN FRANCE 

INTRODUCTION
As far back as just before our Civil War I made, in
France and elsewhere, a large collection of documents
which had appeared during the French Revolution, including
newspapers, reports, speeches, pamphlets, illustrative
material of every sort, and, especially, specimens of nearly
all the Revolutionary issues of paper money,—from notes
of ten thousand livres to those of one sou.
Upon this material, mainly, was based a course of lectures
then given to my students, first at the University of
Michigan and later at Cornell University, and among these
lectures, one on "Paper Money Inflation in France."
This was given simply because it showed one important
line of facts in that great struggle; and I recall, as if it
were yesterday, my feeling of regret at being obliged to
bestow so much care and labor upon a subject to all appearance
so utterly devoid of practical value. I am sure that
it never occurred, either to my Michigan students or to
myself, that it could ever have any bearing on our own
country. It certainly never entered into our minds that any
such folly as that exhibited in those French documents of
the eighteenth century could ever find supporters in the
United States... - ANDREW DIGESON WHITE (via Mises Blog)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:00 PM

Friday, December 08, 2006

Ingot We Trust 

- Rude Awakening
Copyright © 2005-2006 Agora Financial LLC. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:36 AM

Thursday, December 07, 2006

9/11 Press For Truth: Victims' Families Tell the Story the Media Won't 

Streaming video, 1 hour 24 minutes.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:18 PM

The case against Israel 

Streaming video, 19 minutes.

Clues To The Murderers Of 9-11
In the Beginning, There Was Terror
Pioneers Of Terrorism - Facts About The Founding Fathers Of Israel
Early Zionist Terror Gangs
Timeline Of Zionist Terror
Israel's Latest Black Op - The Most Transparent Yet?
The Lavon Affair: Another Mossad False Flag Operation
Mossad Exposed In Phony 'Palestinian Al-Qaeda' Caper
US Army Officers: Mossad May Blame Arabs
Mossad And 9-11
Mossad: The Israeli Connection To 9-11
Hundreds Of Mossad Agents Caught Runnung Wild In America
How Mossad Deceived The US Military On 9-11
All Airports Involved In 9-11 Hijackings Were Serviced By One Israeli-Owned Company
The Israeli Moles Who Controlled US Defense Computers On 9-11
Dov Zakheim
Deciphering Dov Zakheim
More On The Good Rabbi Dov Zakheim
Following Zakheim And Pentagon Trillions To Israel And 9-11
Rumors Of Israeli Involvement In 9-11
Ehud Olmert's Ties To 9-11
Up In Smoke
Odigo Says Workers Were Warned Of 9/11 Attacks
Israeli Company Mum About Perfect Timing Of WTC Pullout
WTC Attack: Who Benefits?
Why Do We Believe Zionists Are The Masterminds Of The September 11 Attack?
Israel And 9-11: New Report Connects The Dots
Connecting The Dots - Zionists And 9-11
Sherlock Holmes And 9-11
How 9-11 Really Happened
Stranger Than Fiction
The German Intelligence Report
The Israeli Threat Memo
Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students Of DEA Facilities
Israeli Spy Operation Confirmed
The Israeli Spy Ring
Israeli-Mossad Spy Ring
Israeli Spying: The Mother Of All Scandals
How Zionists Spy On American Citizens Around The Clock
FBI Fury As Men With Nuke Plans And Valid Israeli Passports Escape
FBI Turning Over Stones With Israelis Underneath
Israeli Trainees And Mossad Agents Swept Up In 9-11 Net
Nearly 100 Israelis Arrested In US Since September 11 Attacks
The Israeli 'Art Student' Mystery
Urban Moving Systems And Detained Israelis
"By Way Of Deception" By Victor Ostrovsky - Ex-Mossad Agent
Five Israelis Were Seen Filming As Jet Liners Ploughed Into The Twin Towers
The Dancing Israelis At The Burning WTC
9-11: Controlling The Message
There's The Big Lie, And Then There's The Really Big Lie
Alex Jones: Can He Be Trusted?
Alex Jones Exposed
- Edward the Exposer

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:51 PM

Becoming what we despise 

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

JOSE PADILLA, a U.S. citizen, has been tortured by his own government for the better part of three-and-one-half years, suffering years of systematic sensory deprivation documented in his attorneys' filings and supported by photos of the prisoner published this week by the New York Times.

In that time, Padilla, who has been judged by professionals as mentally ill as a consequence of his brutal treatment, has been denied his constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial and allowed no legal representation for 21 months. The Bush administration's excuse for this betrayal of our legal system was that Padilla was a dangerous al Qaeda agent, a big fish caught in the administration's successful pursuit of its much ballyhooed war on terror. In the words of then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Padilla was "a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Those lurid claims were abandoned when the government, faced with a belated U.S. Supreme Court censure, finally charged Padilla with vague and lesser crimes carrying a maximum 15-year sentence.

Were this some isolated case of officially condoned sadism, say in a rural county jail, it could be minimized as an aberration. Instead, it is an all-too-accurate reflection of a presidential policy of dehumanizing anyone even suspected of being an enemy. The Times photos, taken from a government video, give evidence of a heavily manacled prisoner with masked eyes and muffled ears being walked down a corridor within a Navy brig, lending physical evidence to Padilla's lawyer's claims of a pattern of disorienting isolation. "There is nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement," Philip D. Cave, a former Navy judge advocate general, told the Times.

Obviously, a prisoner, who has been deliberately disorientated for so long, is no longer in a position to exercise his right to confront his accusers. An examining psychiatrist wrote that "as the result of his experience during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness ... complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation."

The excuse for this heinous treatment of a U.S. citizen is the same as that given for an entire orgy of despicable treatment of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a gulag archipelago of secret military facilities around the world: Our enemies, all linked through sophistry to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, are so vile and dangerous that the limitations on government power enshrined in our guiding documents and political culture no longer apply. Once the World Trace Center twin towers were knocked down, supposedly, we could no longer afford to be "nice guys" -- as if the rule of law is an indulgence of only the most secure nations.

By that standard, any tyrant can justify the cruelest of actions by citing enemies, real or imagined, be it King George III blockading Boston Harbor to teach the rebellious colonists a lesson or Saddam Hussein killing Kurdish villagers after an assassination attempt on his life. The very uniqueness of our national experiment was the checks and balances put upon the government to prevent such convenient rationalizations for abuse of the individual. The Founding Fathers won a war, but their true contribution to human history was to tackle head-on the reality that humans and their institutions can so easily become that which they despise.

Even when an American is suspected of a "capital or infamous crime," as was Padilla, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically says he still cannot "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." That is why the Supreme Court finally forced the Bush administration to give Padilla his day in court.

In the end, the administration has retreated from its hoary claims; Padilla's trial, set to begin on Jan. 22, does not include any reference to dirty bombs, al Qaeda, or any specific plans to attack America. Instead, he faces lesser charges claiming he was the recruit of a "North American support cell," whose interest was in jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. The Bush administration's lawyers have argued in motions that his treatment as a prisoner should not be presented before the jury as if it has no bearing on the disorientated state of mind of the defendant before them.

The more important question now, however, is when will those who, like Ashcroft, used this case to shamelessly exploit our fears for political purposes face their own day of accountability in a court of law? - Robert Scheer

Page C - 11

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle [See the Fair Use Notice, below.] (via Information Clearing House)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:58 AM

Free Y-Chromosome Results 

The non-profit Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) is building the world's largest database of correlated genetic and genealogical data. Their database uses sophisticated DNA analysis to link individuals together, while maintaining strict confidentiality of participants' information. I contributed a DNA sample in Dec 2005. As of Sep 2006 that DNA has been processed and the results are in the SMGF database as evidenced by the prsence of the pedigree chart I had submitted (with my DNA sample) in said database. This is a free service, but you don't get to see any results for free (unless your pedigree chart shows up in the default search results). As of Dec. 6, 2006 I was able to figure out my Y-chromosome numbers by searching their Y database with my surname and entering, at first, the default values as if the numbers were from one of the six DNA testing companies to choose from (i.e., "DNA-Fingerprint"). Then I guessed at each unmatched value until, after an hour or two, all my Y chromosome numbers were found.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:42 AM

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Umbilical Cord Accidents 

Two years ago I was present when our youngest daughter gave birth to our first grandchild. Our granddaughter was born with an abnormally long umbilical cord, a true knot in the cord and the cord wrapped around her neck. None of this was known prenatally, but there was some concern with fetal distress during delivery. She was, however, delivered safely.

A year later, our oldest daughter in her 39th week of her first pregnancy, saw the doctor for her weekly visit and was told that everything was fine. Two days later, our grandson’s heart stopped beating. When he was stillborn, it was evident that this was an umbilical cord accident. He also had an abnormally long cord and it was wrapped around his body several times, at some point compressing the cord and shutting off his blood supply. An autopsy confirmed there was no other cause of death.

The doctors insisted that this was a very rare occurrence and highly unlikely to happen again in subsequent pregnancies. But this baby’s aunt, the mother of our granddaughter, looking forward to more children for herself and her sisters, was skeptical and went to the Internet for more information. Her search regarding umbilical cord accidents kept coming back to a doctor in Louisiana, Dr. Jason Collins and his Pregnancy Institute. She immediately called him from her sister’s Brooklyn apartment and he spent an hour talking with our two daughters and their husbands about cord accidents and his method of identifying and saving at-risk babies.

Officially, umbilical cord accidents account for approximately 7,500 infant deaths out of 30,000 stillbirths per year in the United States. And it is thought that some of the unexplained stillbirths might also be due to cord compression. In addition to these deaths, two to three per 1,000 of live births are severely disabled due to cord compression accidents. There are a variety of cord problems that can result in difficulties for the fetus: from problems within the cord itself, to knots, torsion, wrapping and looping, too long a cord, too short a cord, the location of the placenta in the uterus, the location of the cord insertion into the placenta, and more.

Because of the possibility of problems, Dr. Collins thinks that cord assessment should be part of every pregnancy’s care package. Besides his own OB/GYN practice in Slidell, LA, he has spent over 15 years researching cord accidents and working with pregnant women who have previously lost a baby. Because fetal heart rate monitoring reduces the risk of death during labor, he suggests that the application of fetal heart rate monitoring can be applied to prelabor high-risk patients to reduce stillbirth risk. With a high-risk mother, he does an assessment at 28 weeks to identify potential umbilical cord problems and sends her home with a hospital-grade fetal heart rate monitor and instructions on how to monitor her baby’s heart rate for 30 minutes every night until delivery. These heart rate recordings are transmitted via the Internet to the Pregnancy Institute where Dr. Collins observes patterns in the baby’s heart rate and thus can identify umbilical cord compression patterns. If the evidence shows that the fetus is compromised, early delivery is considered.

The recordings are also e-mailed to the woman’s managing physician. And therein lies a problem. The majority of medical doctors don’t seem to believe that cord problems can be predicted or managed prenatally. - Jane Shaffer

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:14 PM

Nutritional Supplements & Longevity 

Updated: 07/15/2004

It used to be thought that little could be done to postpone what nature has in store for us. Today, a growing scientific consensus indicates that individuals possess a great deal of control over how long they are going to live and what their state of health will be.

Mainstream medicine has relied on simple measures of preventing disease, such as controlling hypertension, yet many doctors are coming to the realization that additional steps can be taken to protect against premature aging and death.

In fact, the results of tens of thousands of scientific studies make it abundantly clear that following the proper lifestyle can add a significant number of healthy years to the average person's lifespan.

The premise of taking actions to maintain youthful health and vigor is based on findings from peer-reviewed scientific studies that identify specific factors that cause us to develop degenerative disease. These studies suggest that the consumption of certain foods, food extracts, hormones, or drugs will help to prevent common diseases that are associated with normal aging.

Therefore, the concept of disease prevention can be defined as the incorporation of findings from published scientific studies into a logical daily regimen that enables an individual to attain optimal health and longevity.

Taking aggressive steps to extend one's lifespan is a major commitment. This Prevention protocol provides practical information about what a person can do to take advantage of the consensus of scientific knowledge obtained from the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

The Basis For Determining What Works

People seeking to reduce their risk of disease are often overwhelmed by the volume of technical data on the subject. For the past 23 years, the Life Extension Foundation has meticulously reviewed the published medical literature dating as far back as 1917. Life Extension personnel have dedicated the past 35 years to working with physicians and scientists to develop validated methods of preventing age-related disease.

Each year, the Foundation spends millions of dollars on research projects aimed at extending the healthy human lifespan. Since 1983, the Foundation has reviewed thousands of blood test results of members who have been following antiaging supplement, drug, and hormone-replacement programs.

Based on this vast accumulation of data, the Life Extension Foundation has designed a practical disease prevention protocol that is based solely on scientific principles.

Before you embark on a program to reduce your risk of degenerative disease, it is important for you to know about scientific studies conducted on humans that show these therapies really work. If you are not aware of these published studies, you may be unlikely to methodically follow a long-term disease prevention program.

Conventional Medicine Recommends Vitamin Supplements

For the greater part of the 20th century, mainstream medicine was openly hostile to the idea of healthy people taking vitamin supplements. This antivitamin position began to change in the 1990s as irrefutable evidence emerged that supplements could reduce the risk of age-related disease without inducing toxicity.

In the April 9, 1998, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, an editorial was entitled "Eat Right and Take a Multi-Vitamin." This article was based on studies indicating that certain supplements could reduce homocysteine serum levels and therefore lower heart attack and stroke risk. This was the first time this prestigious medical journal recommended vitamin supplements (Oakley 1998).

An even stronger endorsement for the use of vitamin supplements was in the June 19, 2002, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). According to the Harvard University doctors who wrote the JAMA guidelines, it now appears that people who get enough vitamins may be able to prevent such common illnesses as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. The Harvard researchers concluded that suboptimal levels of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 are a risk factor for heart disease and colon and breast cancers; low levels of vitamin D contribute to osteoporosis; and inadequate levels of the antioxidant vitamins A, E, and C may increase the risk of cancer and heart disease (Fairfield et al. 2002).

The FDA's Suppression of Folic Acid
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has spent enormous resources trying to prevent people from supplementing with folic acid. The FDA argues against folic acid supplementation because the presence of folic acid in the blood could mask a serious vitamin B12 deficiency. In a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Losonczy et al. (1996) addressed the FDA's concerns by recommending that folic acid supplements be fortified with vitamin B12 as a prudent way of gaining the cardiovascular benefits of folic acid without risking a B12 deficiency.

Even though major medical journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine) long ago endorsed the use of folic acid to reduce cardiovascular disease (Malinow et al. 1998), the FDA still does not accept that folic acid has any benefit other than preventing a certain type of birth defect.

A study by Giovannucci et al. (1998) in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed how fatally flawed the position of the FDA is. Data from the famous Harvard Nurses' Health Study conducted at the Harvard Medical School showed that long-term supplementation with folic acid reduces the risk of colon cancer by an astounding 75% in women. The fact that there are 90,000 women participating in the Harvard Nurses' Health Study makes this finding especially significant. The authors of this study explained that folic acid obtained from supplements had a stronger protective effect against colon cancer than folic acid consumed in the diet. This new study helps to confirm the work of Dr. Bruce Ames, the famous molecular biologist who has authored numerous articles showing that folic acid is extremely effective in preventing the initial DNA mutations that can lead to cancer later in life. This Harvard report, showing a 75% reduction in colon cancer incidence, demonstrated that the degree of protection against cancer is correlated with how long a DNA-protecting substance (folic acid) is consumed. It was the women who took more than 400 mcg of folic acid a day for 15 years who experienced the 75% reduction in colon cancer, whereas short-term supplementation with folic acid produced only marginal protection.

There now exists a massive body of evidence that supplementation with folic acid can prevent both cardiovascular disease and cancer, yet the FDA has proposed rules that would prohibit the American public from even learning about these benefits. Colon cancer will kill 47,000 Americans this year. It is unfortunate that the FDA didn't "allow" these colon cancer victims to learn about folic acid in time.

The Vitamin C Controversy
Does vitamin C cause kidney stones? Some doctors still believe it does, but a report from Harvard Medical School showed no increased risk of kidney stones when evaluating 85,557 women over a 14-year study period. This report, by Curhan et al. in the April 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, showed that women who consumed 1500 mg a day or more of vitamin C were no more likely to develop kidney stones than women who consumed less than 250 mg of vitamin C a day. The study did reveal that women who consumed 40 mg or more of vitamin B6 were 34% less likely to develop kidney stones compared to women taking fewer than 3 mg a day of B6 (Curhan et al. 1999). So now that kidney stone risk has been ruled out, let's look at some of the human studies showing positive benefits to vitamin C supplementation.

In the early 1990s, several large population studies showed a reduction in cardiovascular disease in those who consumed vitamin C. The media reported on some of these findings and this favorable publicity helped push a bill through Congress that prevented the FDA from banning high-potency vitamin C and other supplements.

The most significant report emanated in 1992 from UCLA, where it was announced that men who took 800 mg a day of vitamin C lived 6 years longer than those who consumed the FDA's recommended daily allowance of 60 mg a day. The study, which evaluated 11,348 participants over a 10-year period of time, showed that high vitamin C intake extended average lifespan and reduced mortality from cardiovascular disease by 42% (Enstrom et al. 1992).

A study by Nyyssonen et al. (1997) in the British Medical Journal evaluated 1605 randomly selected men in Finland ages 42-60 years from 1984-1989. None of these men had evidence of preexisting heart disease. After adjusting for other confounding factors, men who were deficient in vitamin C had 3.5 times more heart attacks than men who were not deficient in vitamin C. The scientist's conclusion was "vitamin C deficiency, as assessed by low plasma ascorbate concentration, is a risk factor for coronary heart disease" (Nyyssonen et al. 1997).

In a study in The Lancet (Khaw et al. 2001), researchers at Cambridge University in England looked at serum vitamin C and length of life. People who had the lowest levels of vitamin C were twice as likely to die when compared to those with the highest serum vitamin C levels. This study was based on the findings in more than 19,000 people. The question for those who want to achieve maximum health is: Do you want your blood to contain the lowest levels or the highest levels of vitamin C? Because being at the lowest level appears to double your risk of dying, we suggest that you consume fruits, vegetables, and supplements that are high in vitamin C.

In the March 9, 1999, issue of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, elevated homocysteine levels were shown to cause rapid onset of endo-thelial (arterial lining) dysfunction (Chambers et al. 1999). This type of dysfunction reduces blood flow and can facilitate a lethal arterial spasm. Vitamin C inhibited arterial dysfunction by interfering with oxidative stress mechanisms. The doctors conducting the study stated that acute impairment of vascular endo-thelial function can be prevented by pretreatment with vitamin C.

In a double-blind study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Watanabe et al. (1998) compared the effects of nitrate drugs in people receiving vitamin C to a placebo group not receiving vitamin C. The doctors administered nitrate drugs to healthy people and patients with coronary artery disease and then measured vasodilation response and cellular levels of cGMP, an energy substrate that is depleted by nitrate drugs. At day zero, all participants were measured to establish a baseline. After 3 days of vitamin C administration (2 grams 3 times daily), there was no change in either group. After 6 days of vitamin C therapy, an impressive 42% improvement in vasodilation response was observed, and a 60% improvement in cellular cGMP levels was measured in coronary artery disease patients receiving vitamin C compared to those receiving placebo. A similar improvement occurred in the healthy subjects taking vitamin C compared to the placebo group. The doctors concluded the study by stating that "these results indicate that combination therapy with vitamin C is potentially useful for preventing the development of nitrate tolerance" (Watanabe et al. 1998).

In another study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Bassenge et al. (1998) looked at the effects of nitrate drug therapy on human patients. Tolerance development was monitored by changes in arterial pressure, pulse pressure, heart rate, and activity of isolated patients. All patients experienced the deleterious effects of nitrate tolerance. However, when vitamin C was coadministered with the nitrate drugs, the effects of nitrate tolerance were virtually eliminated. The most significant improvement was a 310% improvement in the arterial conductivity test. The nitrate drugs induced a dangerous upregulated activity of platelets, but this too was reversed with vitamin C supplementation (Bassenge et al. 1998). The doctors who conducted this study indicated that vitamin C may be of benefit during long-term, nonintermittent administration of nitrate drugs in humans.

Chronic heart failure is associated with reduced dilating capacity of the endothelial lining of the arterial system. Scientists tested heart failure patients by high-resolution ultrasound and Doppler to measure radial artery diameter and blood flow. Vitamin C restored arterial dilation response and blood flow velocity in patients with heart failure. The scientists determined that the mechanism of action was that vitamin C increased the availability of nitric oxide, an important precursor to cGMP. This study was in the February 1998 issue of the journal Circulation (Rodes et al. 1998).

Also in 1998, another aspect of the effect of vitamin C on coronary artery disease was discovered. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (Vita et al. 1998) showed that low plasma ascorbic acid levels independently predict the presence of an unstable coronary syndrome in heart disease patients. According to the doctors, the study's results showed that the beneficial effects of vitamin C in treating coronary artery disease may result, in part, by an influence on arterial wall lesion activity rather than a reduction in the overall extent of fixed disease (Vita et al. 1998).

The published research findings suggest that vitamin C may reduce mortality in coronary artery disease patients, increase life span, and possibly eliminate the effects of nitrate tolerance in those taking nitrate drugs. Although not recognized in the medical establishment as a therapy for coronary artery disease, there now exists an accumulated wealth of evidence that vitamin C has beneficial effects in the treatment of heart-related illnesses.

Historically, mainstream medicine has ridiculed vitamin C supplementation. In today's modern world, conventional medicine says that only 200 mg a day of vitamin C is needed, despite findings showing that high doses of vitamin C are required to produce optimal benefit. Meanwhile, the FDA continues to hold with the position that no more than 60-100 mg a day of vitamin C is needed.

Saturating the Bladder
The most frequently voiced criticism about supplemental vitamin intake is that it produces "expensive urine," because water-soluble vitamins, such as vitamin C and the B vitamins, are rapidly excreted into the bladder within hours of ingestion. For years, the Life Extension Foundation has contended that these vitamins are beneficial in spite of their rapid excretion and that, moreover, it is desirable to have a bladder full of vitamins because certain vitamins inhibit chemicals that cause bladder cancer. In the September 1996 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, a study on the risk of bladder cancer in vitamin takers showed the following (Bruemmer et al. 1996):

~High intake of vitamin A and beta-carotene was associated with a 48% reduction in bladder cancer incidence compared to the lowest levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene intake.
~People taking higher amounts of vitamin C had a 50% reduced rate of bladder cancer. ~Those who took 502 mg or more of vitamin C a day had a 60% reduction in bladder cancer compared to those who took no vitamin C.
~For those who took multivitamin supplements for at least 10 years, the reduction in bladder cancer was 61% compared to people who took no vitamin supplements.
~High intake of fried foods was associated with double the risk of bladder cancer.
~It appears from this study that even low-potency "one-a-day" supplements (which do not protect against other types of cancer) can at least protect against bladder cancer.

Protecting Vision
Studies show that antioxidant supplements reduce the risk of cataracts. One study in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Rouhiainen et al. 1996) evaluated 410 men for 3 years to ascertain the association between serum vitamin E and the development of cortical lens opacities (cataracts). The men with the lowest level of serum vitamin E had a 3.7 times greater risk of this form of cataract compared to men with the highest serum level of vitamin E (Rouhiainen et al. 1996).

Although cataracts are usually treatable, a disease called wet macular degeneration is not. Those who eat spinach and collard greens have low rates of macular degeneration, and extracts from these vegetables thought to protect against this blinding disease are now available in dietary supplements that contain lutein and zeaxanthin.

Keeping Arteries Clean
In a study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Bonithon-Kopp et al. 1997), antioxidant status was assessed and carotid artery occlusion was measured in 1187 men and women 59-71 years of age without any history of coronary artery disease or stroke. The results showed that the higher the level of vitamin E in red blood cells, the lower the risk of carotid atherosclerosis. In men with the highest levels of carotid atherosclerotic plaques, the lowest levels of vitamin E, selenium, and carotenoids were found. The scientists concluded by stating: "Our findings give some epidemiological support to the hypothesis that lipid peroxidation and low antioxidant status are involved in the early stages of atherosclerosis" (Bonithon-Kopp et al. 1997).

A study in the journal Atherosclerosis (Koscielny et al. 1999) showed that people who took a 900-mg of garlic supplement every day for 4 years had 5-18% less plaque buildup in their carotid arteries compared to the placebo group. The women in the study group actually showed a 4.6% decrease in carotid plaque volume over a 4-year period, whereas the placebo group showed a 5.3% increase in artery-clogging plaque.

There are more studies showing that atherosclerosis can be prevented than for any other degenerative disease. Because more people die or become disabled from vascular diseases than from any other cause, it would appear prudent to follow a program that would reduce one's risk of suffering a vascular-related heart attack or stroke.

Are You Concerned about Cancer?
A well-justified fear of cancer is a major reason why people take dietary supplements. As has already been shown, there is a compelling body of evidence that cancer risk can be reduced by taking the proper supplements over an extended period of time.

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by Clark et al. (1996) showed that 200 mcg of supplemental selenium a day reduced overall cancer mortality by 50% in humans compared to a placebo group not receiving supplemental selenium. This 9-year study demonstrated that a low-cost mineral supplement could cut the risk of dying from cancer in half in certain individuals.

In the March 17, 1999, issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Zhang et al. 1999), associations between intakes of specific nutrients and subsequent breast cancer risk were investigated in 83,234 women who were participating in the Harvard Nurses' Health Study. Breast cancer risks were significantly lower in women who consumed alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin, and vitamins A and C. Among premenopausal women who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol (a known risk factor in breast cancer), beta-carotene lowered risk. Premenopausal women who consumed 5 or more servings a day of fruits and vegetables had modestly lower risk of breast cancer than those who had less than 2 servings a day.

A study in the March 15, 1999, issue of Cancer Research (Gann et al. 1999) showed that the tomato extract lycopene was the most effective nutrient shown to protect against the development of prostate cancer. This study, started in 1982, followed 578 men for 13 years. Lycopene strongly reduced prostate cancer risk and more importantly, lowered the risk for aggressive cancer. This study confirmed many previous studies showing that lycopene can help prevent pancreatic, prostate, and a host of other cancers. A surprising finding revealed at the April 12, 1999, meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research showed that 30 mg of lycopene supplements a day slowed the growth of existing prostate cancer and lowered serum PSA readings by 20%!

Men with high intake of vitamin E were 35% as likely to develop colorectal adenomas as men with low vitamin E intake (Tseng et al. 1996). (Adenomas are neoplastic lesions that are considered precursors to colon cancer.) In a related study in the February 1999 issue of Diseases of the Colon and Rectum (Whelan et al. 1999), the use of multivitamins, vitamin E, and calcium supplements was found to be associated with a lower incidence of recurrent adenomas in 448 patients with previous neoplasia who underwent follow-up colonoscopy. This study found a protective effect against the recurrence of precancerous adenomas when any vitamin supplement was used. On this same subject, a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Tseng et al. 1996) showed that women with high folate intake were 40% less likely to develop adenomas of the colon than women with low folate intake.

But what if you already have cancer? Again, the research shows a prolongation of lifespan with proper supplementation.

In a study in Cancer Letters (Evangelou et al. 1997), animals with malignant tumors given high doses of vitamins C and E and selenium manifested a significant prolongation of the mean survival time. Complete remission of tumors developed in 16.8% of the animals. Low-dose administration of these vitamins failed to exert any beneficial effect on mean survival time of the animals. Results indicated that high doses (mega doses) of vitamins C and E in combination with other carefully selected antioxidants are probably needed in order to achieve sufficient prevention and treatment of malignant diseases. This study indicated that low-potency supplements are of little value.

Vitamin E succinate was shown to inhibit growth and induced apoptotic cell death of estrogen receptor-negative human breast cancer cells in a study in Cancer Research (Turley et al. 1997). These findings suggest that vitamin E succinate may be of clinical use in the treatment and possible prevention of human breast cancers.

The research clearly shows the risk of contracting cancer is reduced in those who supplement with adequate amounts of nutrients, such as selenium, folate, carotenoids, vitamins, and other plant extracts.

Reducing Mortality
One of the most compelling reports that high-potency supplements extend lifespan in humans was by Losonczy et al. in the August 1996 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study involved 11,178 elderly people, who participated in a trial to establish the effects of vitamin supplements on mortality. The study showed that the use of vitamin E reduced the risk of death from all causes by 34%. Effects were strongest for coronary artery disease, where vitamin E resulted in a 63% reduction in death from heart attack. In addition, the use of vitamin E resulted in a 59% reduction in cancer mortality. When the effects of vitamins C and E were combined, overall mortality was reduced by 42% (compared to 34% for vitamin E alone) (Losonczy et al. 1996). These results provided significant evidence about the value of vitamin supplementation, yet the media failed to report on it. What made this study so credible was that:

It compared people who took low-potency "one-a-day" multiple vitamins to those who took higher-potency vitamins C and E supplements. Previous studies measuring the life expectancy of the "one-a-day" crowd did not show significant benefits, thereby causing most doctors to conclude there is no value in vitamin supplementation. In this new report, those taking "one-a-day" multivitamins did not do any better than people taking nothing at all, which supports the Life Extension Foundation's position that higher doses of antioxidants are required to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer than those found in conventional supplements.
It lasted 9 years! Most studies that attempt to evaluate the benefits of vitamin supplementation are for shorter time periods. It should be noted, however, that the famous Harvard Nurses' Health Study found that vitamin E reduced coronary artery disease mortality by more than 40% after only 2 years!
It included 11,178 people, a larger group than most previous studies.

Controlling Aging
The National Academy of Sciences published three reports showing that the effects of aging may be partially reversible with a combination of acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid (Hagen et al. 2002). One of these studies showed that supplementation with these two nutrients resulted in a partial reversal of the decline of mitochondrial membrane function while consumption of oxygen significantly increased. This study demonstrated that the combination of acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid improved ambulatory activity, with a significantly greater degree of improvement in the old rats compared to the young ones. Human aging is characterized by lethargy, infirmity, and weakness. There is now evidence that supplementation with two over-the-counter supplements can produce a measurable antiaging effect.

The second study published by the National Academy of Sciences showed that supplementation with acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid resulted in improved memory in old rats. Electron microscopic studies in the hippocampus region of the brain showed that acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid reversed age-associated mitochondrial structural decay. In the third National Academy of Sciences study, scientists tested acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid to see if an enzyme used by the mitochondria as biologic fuel could be restored in old rats. After 7 weeks of supplementation with acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid, levels of this enzyme (carnitine acetyl-transferase) were significantly restored in the aged rats. Supplementation also inhibited free radical-induced lipid peroxidation, which enhanced the activity of the energy-producing enzyme in the mitochondria. The scientists concluded that feeding old rats acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid can ameliorate oxidative damage, along with mitochondrial dysfunction.

[Note: It is important to take four capsules of the Mitochondrial Energy Optimizer in divided doses early in the day, or all at once upon awakening in order to benefit from carnosine. The reason for this is that the body automatically metabolizes lower amounts of carnosine into an inert substance, but the body cannot neutralize the amount of carnosine (1000 mg) contained in four capsules of Mitochondrial Energy Optimizer.]

Hormone Replacement
Proper hormone replacement can produce an immediate improvement in the quality of life and also prevent many diseases. DHEA is one of several important hormones whose production in the body diminishes rapidly as people age past year 35. There now exists a wide body of evidence that supplementation with DHEA can prevent many degenerative diseases, while improving feelings of well-being and alleviating depression.

In the October 1996 issue of the journal Drugs and Aging, an overview of published studies by Watson et al. (1996) on DHEA revealed the following:

~In both humans and animals, the decline of DHEA production with aging is associated with immune depression, increased mortality, increased risk of several different cancers, loss of sleep, and decreased feelings of well-being.
~DHEA replacement in aged mice significantly normalized immune function to youthful levels.
~DHEA replacement has shown a favorable effect on osteoclasts and lymphoid cells, an effect that may delay osteoporosis.
~Low levels of DHEA inhibit energy metabolism, thus increasing the risk of heart disease and diabetes mellitus.
~Studies conducted on humans show essentially no toxicity at doses that restore DHEA to youthful levels.
~DHEA deficiency may expedite the development of some diseases that are common in the elderly.

Since this overview was published in 1996, hundreds of additional studies have substantiated DHEA's role as an antiaging hormone-replacement supplement. In a study published in Biological Psychiatry (Wolkowitz et al. 1997), DHEA was tested on middle-aged and elderly patients with major depression. DHEA was administered for 4 weeks in doses ranging from 30-90 mg a day. This level of dosing elevated DHEA serum levels to those observed in younger people. Depression ratings, as well as aspects of memory performance, significantly improved. This data suggested that DHEA may have antidepressant and promemory effects and corresponded with previous human studies in which DHEA supplementation (50 mg a day) significantly elevated mood in elderly people.

For specific information on antiaging hormone replacement, refer to the Male Hormone Modulation Therapy, Female Hormone Replacement Therapy, and DHEA Replacement Therapy protocols.

The Life Extension Foundation's Prevention Protocol

If you are healthy now and want to stay that way, the Life Extension Foundation has designed protocols that incorporate the best-documented disease-preventing nutrients and hormones.

The Foundation's Prevention protocols consist of the 10 most important supplements for the average person to take every day to reduce risk of contracting the degenerative diseases of aging.

Note: The Prevention protocol is for healthy people. Those seeking to treat an existing disease may refer to the many specific disease prevention protocols contained in the Foundation's book, "Disease Prevention and Treatment." [See also "Scientific Abstracts: Prevention Protocols - Abstracts : Online Reference For Health Concerns."]

With new health findings being touted daily, consumers are often confused about what they should be doing to maintain optimal health. Each year, the Life Extension Foundation reviews the published scientific literature and
compiles a listing of the best-documented life-extending nutrients, hormones, and drugs.

When deciding on the Top 10 most important components, the foremost factor we consider is the preponderance of scientific data that substantiates the benefits of a particular nutrient, drug, or hormone. We also look at the cost-to-benefit ratio. That means we sometimes rule out components that are too expensive in relationship to lower cost items that may show equal efficacy. Convenience is also an important factor. We seek to provide the maximum amount of potency in the fewest possible capsules, tablets, etc.

Life Extension recommends that all members use this basic Top 10 listing as a guide to developing their own supplement program. Members have the exclusive benefit of speaking with a knowledgeable advisor at anytime via a toll-free phone line (1-800-226-2370) who will help develop a personalized supplement regimen to meet their individual health concerns.

The following recommendations are listed in order of importance:

1: Life Extension Mix
2: Life Extension Super Booster
3: Super EPA/DHA with Sesame Lignans & Olive Fruit Extract
4: Coenzyme Q10
5: Mitochondrial Energy Optimizer
6: Cognitex
7: Enhanced Natural Prostate with Cernitin (Men)
7: Bone Restore (Women)
8: Restoring Youthful Hormone Balance
9: S-adenosyl-methionine (SAMe)
10: Aspirin

- Life Extension Foundation (via LifeExtension Update)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:08 AM

Friday, December 01, 2006

The Long View [excerpt] 

I have been monitoring the big imbalances of our economic system to determine if we are heading toward a big economic convulsion that would change our investments and our lives. I have been evaluating long-term historical measures of prosperity and economic movement, comparing the last big depression to now to see if we face similar situations. Some of the similarities look dangerous, like the large overall indebtedness of then and now. Some of the differences do not show so serious a situation today, such as the relatively stronger financial institutions that would surely get government bail-out if liquidity became a problem. But there is one difference that is much worse now: the trade deficit.

[Click on image to enlarge.] The question is what that means for our financial system. Decades ago, the U.S. was smaller and dollars were worth more, so we need a baseline to make the periods comparable. The method I use is to calculate the ratio of trade deficit (or surplus) to GDP. The positive position we enjoyed in the lead-up to the 1929 crash has eroded now to a negative position.

The trade position of the U.S. was very strong before and during the great depression. The dollar was devalued against gold one time by Roosevelt, but was generally strong. In fact, we experienced deflation, meaning the purchasing power of the dollar increased, as prices of homes and other items crashed. The foreign situation of accumulated international debt is exactly the opposite of what it was in the 1920s. This important difference shows why the dollar then turned out to be strong, even in the face of disastrous economic contraction that brought 25% unemployment. Now, the accumulated trade deficit hangs over the dollar so that this time looking forward, the opposite conclusion is more likely: the dollar will succumb to decreasing purchasing power. Many commentators suggest that if we are headed toward recession or, even worse, to depression, that will be deflationary just like it was in the 1930s. I believe we are headed toward serious financial times, but I do not see the deflation of that time returning. Foreigners lending us $2.5B per day can’t continue forever. When it fails, we will not see deflation but big inflation. Foreigners all wanting to get out of dollar positions will drive the dollar down and prices up as they bid for assets other than dollars.

We can look at today’s numbers from the Treasury on foreign investment to see the size of foreign support by their reinvestment of their trade surplus in our Treasuries, agencies, stocks and bonds. I monitor the reinvestment as an indicator of pressure on the dollar. The data from today, averaged over the last 3 months, does not show a problem. Foreigners are still investing in U.S. financial assets, despite pronouncements from the Chinese and other central banks that they want to divest some of their U.S. holdings. In aggregate they are continuing to invest. The reinvestment by foreigners is equal to the trade deficit, so imbalances have escalated together.

The underlying data from today show this source of reinvestment may be more precarious than the surface shows. China is the country we watch most closely because they hold the biggest hoard of foreign currencies of $1 trillion. China still added to their U.S. dollar denominated holdings, even if at a slower rate this month. The other two biggest purchasers are London and Grand Cayman Islands. They are different because they are money centers, and are passing through investments from other countries from such sources as hedge funds and countries that prefer anonymity, like oil countries. The surprise is the amazing size of the investment from London:

Investing money centers are potentially able to change their position on a whim, as seen in London’s negative move in July. London’s investment of $47B is huge compared to the worldwide net foreign purchase of $88B. This trade deficit and investment juggling act has succeeded, and on the surface has held together. When you look at the components, the underpinnings do not look so stable.

The other side of the trade deficit is that foreign cheap labor has replaced manufacturing in the U.S., hollowing out our lower and middle class incomes. The chart below shows U.S. manufacturing jobs as % of total jobs. The expanding trade deficit matches the decreasing U.S. manufacturing jobs. This is exactly as expected, but it is not good for the long-term economic strength of the U.S.

The destruction of productive capacity will decrease our long-term wealth creation. With U.S. production decline, there is less need for investment in that productive capacity. Investment, which is the basis for future growth, has moved to Asia. U.S. corporations seeking to increase profits by cutting costs actively supported these moves. That means less wealth for the U.S. because we are not producing as much. The economy will weaken because we are not paying our workers to make the things we import, so they will have less to spend. Foreigners have put off the problem in the short term by lending us the money to buy their exports and maintain our lifestyle. But this can only continue until foreigners fear that they may lose by holding too many dollar investments that start to decrease in purchasing value. - Bud Conrad Copyright © 2005-2006 Agora Financial LLC. [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:29 AM

For new Swanson supplements see this.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:34 AM

United States v. George W. Bush et al. (Part 3) 

The Grand Jury Testimony

By Elizabeth de la Vega

Testimony of FBI Special Agent Linda Campbell

Assistant U.S. Attorney: Good morning everyone. We're back here in the case of United States v. George W. Bush et al. Let's start by looking at Exhibit 1 in your packets. It's a chart that lists the main points we're going to cover in the grand jury.

Ex. 1
Evolution of the Fraud

* Bush, Cheney, et al. were predisposed to invade Iraq even before they were elected.
* They secretly began to plan the invasion immediately after September 11. Bush requested an Iraq war plan in November 2001 and began escalating military activity.
* They enlisted biased political appointees to find evidence to justify a war beginning in October 2001.
* They began, without a reasonable basis, to imply that Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks and posed an urgent threat in the fall of 2001.
* They began a massive fraud campaign in September 2002 to overcome weak public support for an invasion and manipulate Congress into passing an authorization allowing the President to use force against Iraq.
* They invaded Iraq in March 2003, knowing that their stated grounds for war were false, fraudulent, and without reasonable basis.

Today, we'll talk about the administration's predisposition to invade Iraq.

Now, why is that relevant? Remember I told you that many fraud conspiracies begin as legitimate enterprises? They evolve into criminal activity when people begin to deceive others in response to problems or obstacles to achieving their goals. So, in any fraud case we need to know what the defendants' original objectives were.

Would somebody go get our witness? Thanks. [Whereupon the witness enters the room and is sworn]

Q. Could you please tell us your full name and what you do?

A. My name is Linda Marie Campbell and I'm a Special Agent with the FBI -- have been for sixteen years.

Q. What is your current assignment?

A. I'm one of eight agents on the task force that's investigating whether the President and his senior advisers defrauded Americans about prewar intelligence. But normally my office is in Boston. Home of Tom Brady -- the Patriot -- and of course, Sam Adams -- the beer and the patriot -- with a small "p." I do fraud cases, mainly.

Q. Could you tell us about your background? Sort of a Reader's Digest version?

A. Sure. I was an Air Force brat, so we lived all over--Georgia, Germany, Hawaii--until I was about twelve, when we landed at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. After Boston College, I started teaching English at Catholic Memorial. I was going to coach softball, go down the Cape in the summer, eat fried clams. But one day I just thought, you know, I really can't stand talking about Hester Prynne for one more minute, and it seemed as if it would be wicked cool to become an FBI agent. So I applied.

Q. Has it been wicked cool?

A. Yes and no. One thing about the FBI is that they always send you somewhere that's not where you want to be, even if no one else does want to be where you want to be. Does that make any sense? So I asked to go to Boston after Quantico . . .

Q. And where'd they send you?

A. Tulsa, Oklahoma. But only for two years, because I took a language aptitude test and, next thing I knew, I was at the Monterey Defense Language Institute, learning Russian. I worked in DC for a few years and finally got back to Boston last summer. Although, now I'm in DC again working on this case. I'm also on the Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery Team.

Not exactly condensed was it?

Q. No, but that's ok. You were, in fact, part of the team at the Pentagon after 9/11, weren't you?

A. Yes, I was. I will never forget it.

Q. Jurors, you recall that you may only consider evidence your hear from the witnesses? That means we occasionally present testimony about things people already know.

Like, in this case, September 11, 2001. What happened on that day?

A. On September 11, nineteen men hijacked four commercial airplanes -- United Flight 175 and American Airlines 11 out of Logan, United Flight 93 out of Newark, and American Airlines 77 out of Washington/Dulles. They crashed two planes into the World Trade Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers stormed the cockpit. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed. It was a nightmare.

Q. Were you working at the time?

A. I was at firearms training, but I called my supervisor and told him I'd go wherever they needed me for disaster response. By 5:00 p.m., I'm headed to DC on the Mass Pike, with my Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee. One of the four essential food groups, by the way.

Q. Did you already know who committed the attacks?

A. Basically, yes. By late morning, really, everyone was talking about it having been al Qaeda and, of course, Osama Bin Laden. It was even on the radio. No specifics, but it was only a day or so before we heard those. The main hijacker was Mohamed Atta, who, along with 14 others, was from Saudi Arabia. Two were from Yemen and two were from Lebanon.

Q. We'll have more about this later, but -- bottom line -- was there ever any evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 hijackings?

A. No, not a bit.

Q. But your investigation has shown, has it not, that before the war, a majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved?

A. Yes.

Q. Danny Crain -- Special Agent Crain -- will be testifying about that in more detail, but in the meantime, have you determined how people came to believe that?

A. Unfortunately, yes. President Bush -- and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld and Powell -- deliberately gave people that impression, or allowed them to have it. That's Danny's area of testimony, I know, but let me say this: In fraud cases, we don't have to prove that people were actually deceived, but the case is stronger when you can prove they were. And here we know that many people came to believe many things about Iraq that were just false--including that there was some 9/11 connection.

Q. Well, let's turn to --

A. May I just add something?

Q. Of course.

A. Sometimes, the best way to understand the impact of fraud is not so much the number of victims, but the stories of the victims. Like in the movie Why We Fight, Wilton Sekzer. He was a retired cop whose son died in the World Trade Center. He strongly supported the war against Iraq, but only because he thought it was related to 9/11.

So, in 2004, when the President said not only that he had no evidence linking Saddam to the 9/11 attacks, but also "I don't know where people got the idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11," Mr. Sekzer was devastated. I'll read what he said:

What did he [Bush] just say? I mean, I almost jumped out of the chair. I don't know where people got the idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11. What is he, nuts or what? What the hell did we go in there for? We're getting back for 9/11. Well, if he didn't have anything to do with 9/11, why did we go in there? I was mad. I was mad. My first thought is: you know, you're a liar.

Q. And he felt betrayed?

A. Absolutely.

Q. Was he the only one?

A. No. As of July 2003, approximately 71 percent of the people in the United States believed that the President had deliberately implied that there was a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.

•••

11:00 A.M.

Assistant U.S. Attorney: How's the temperature? I got GSA to turn off the air conditioning.

Grand Juror: No kidding. Now it's way too hot.

Second Grand Juror: Are we allowed to vote someone off the Grand Jury?

Q. It's tempting.

Agent Campbell, what evidence shows that Bush et al. were predisposed to invade Iraq before January 2001?

A. Well, we have to start back in 1992, after the first Gulf War.

Q. Ok. We're not going anywhere.

A. As some jurors may know, the ground-assault phase of the first Gulf War had ended after a hundred hours, because George H. W. Bush decided not to send troops on into Baghdad. Afterward, there was a bloodbath as Saddam Hussein put down a Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq.

At the time, at least publicly, Cheney, who was Secretary of Defense, supported Bush Sr.'s decision. He said if we'd gone into Baghdad, we'd still have forces there and we would be running the country. Cheney didn't think Saddam Hussein was worth "that damned many" casualties, meaning more than the 146 American soldiers who had already died.

Q. Does it appear that Cheney later changed his mind?

A. Yes. But Libby and Wolfowitz disagreed from the beginning.

Q. Who are Libby and Wolfowitz?

A. Libby is I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's aide in 1992. In 2001 he became a top adviser, mainly on foreign-policy issues, for Cheney and also for Bush. Until he got indicted. Paul Wolfowitz was also Cheney's aide in 1992 and in 2001 became Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Libby, Wolfowitz, and Cheney had a foreign-policy philosophy that's been described as neoconservative. They first wrote about it, as far as we know, in a 1992 paper called "Defense Planning Guidance." It was never published, but the draft was leaked to the press, so we know its main points. They wanted the United States to "assert world dominance" and to "to punish" or "threaten to punish" possible future aggressors to protect U.S. access to Persian Gulf oil or stop the proliferation of WMD -- weapons of mass destruction. They also recommended that the United States ignore the UN Security Council and act alone if it chose to do so.

Q. How were those ideas received at the time?

A. About as well as Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' dinner.

Q. Not a warm reception, I take it. So what happened to "Defense Policy Guidance"?

A. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby published a watered-down version of it in 1993 called "Defense Strategy for the 1990s."

Q. Did other future Bush-Cheney administration members publicly state their positions about the Middle East and/or Iraq in the 1990s?

A. Yes, they did. In 1996 Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser wrote a paper for the Israeli government, called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," that advocated invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.

Q. And how did those three figure in the Bush-Cheney administration?

A. From 2001 to 2003, Perle was Chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board. Feith was Bush's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Wurmser was brought in after 9/11 as part of the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group that reviewed raw intelligence looking for evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden.

Q. In 1997, there was --

A. Also, oh, sorry --

Q. No, go ahead. But if we both talk at the same time, the court reporter might quit.

A. What I was going to say was that David Wurmser also publicly advocated a United States invasion of Iraq. Twice, actually. Once in a 1997 Wall Street Journal editorial and then in a November 2000 Washington Times op-ed, where he argued that the United States and Israel should "strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region -- the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza."

Grand Juror: Someone who had publicly advocated using military force to remove Saddam Hussein and attacking Syria, Libya, Iran, and Gaza was assigned to look for evidence to justify invading Iraq?

A. Yes. He is now Vice President Cheney's adviser on the Middle East.

Q. All right. In 1997, a group called Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, was formed. What was that?

A. According to its website, PNAC is a think tank dedicated to "American global leadership." Its stated principles were: (1) promoting a bold foreign policy; (2) significantly increasing defense spending; and (3) meeting threats "before they become dire."

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, and Wolfowitz were founding members, as was Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother.

Q. Did the founding statement mention Iraq?

A. No, but a letter the members of PNAC wrote to Clinton in 1998 did.

Q. Before we get to that, were there other public statements advocating forcible removal of Saddam Hussein made by future Bush-Cheney people in 1997?

A. Yes, in a December 1997 issue of the Weekly Standard magazine called "Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide," Wolfowitz and the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, called for "sustained attacks" on Hussein's military and security forces to get rid of him.

Q. Early in 1998, the Project for a New American Century wrote the letter you just mentioned, right?

A. Right. Yes, most of it is excerpted in Exhibit 2:

Ex. 2
Excerpts from January 26, 1998 Letter from PNAC
to President William J. Clinton

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. . . . We urge you to . . . enunciate a new strategy . . . [that] should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power...

The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months...

It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.

In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

Q. Any familiar names in the signature block?

A. Twelve of the eighteen signers became Bush-Cheney advisers or appointees: Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Khalilzad, Perle, as well as Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, Paula Dobriansky, Peter Rodman, R. James Woolsey, and Robert Zoellick.

Q. Well, it's 12:30 and I'm "stahvin," as Agent Campbell would say. So let's go eat.

•••

1:30 P.M.

Assistant U.S. Attorney: Did everyone make it back? Good.

Grand Juror: Agent Campbell, doesn't this 1998 letter contain the same arguments that the Bush administration made in 2002?

A. Yes it does: (1) containment wasn't working; (2) inspections wouldn't work; (3) Saddam would definitely have WMD if we didn't act immediately; and (4) we didn't need to work with the UN.

Grand Juror: What does "containment" mean?

A. In the context of Iraq, it referred mainly to the use of UN sanctions and restrictions to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring WMD and from threatening his neighbors.

Q. We're going to switch gears and turn to the 2000 election campaign. Before that, any questions?

Grand Juror: Was Bush in PNAC?

A. No. But in 1999, he hired Condoleezza Rice and her future Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, along with five PNAC people -- Perle, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Zoellick, and Dov Zakheim -- to be campaign foreign policy advisers. Four of those five had previously advocated forcibly removing Saddam Hussein.

Q.> During the 2000 campaign, did Bush and Cheney talk about U.S. global preeminence and taking preventive military action against possible threats from WMD or to our oil interests in the Middle East?

A. No. Well, yes and no.

Q. Oh, okay. Everybody got that, then?

A. Well, behind the scenes, with the neoconservative crowd, Bush and Cheney conveyed a very strong message. In fact, in September 2000 Libby, Wolfowitz, and ten other future Bush-Cheney appointees signed a policy statement, called "Rebuilding America's Defenses," that was posted on the PNAC website. The paper, which described itself as a "blueprint for maintaining global U.S. preeminence" that grew out of Cheney's 1992 "Defense Policy Guidance" paper, advocated substantially increased defense spending. Regarding the Middle East, it said the "need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

In plain English: We should have permanent military bases in the Middle East.

Q. Did the statement indicate whether PNAC thought the public would agree with this strategy?

A. Yes. PNAC acknowledged that its goals would likely take a long time to achieve, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Q. Anyone could look at this website, couldn't they?

A. Yes. But it was not well known outside of DC and certain conservative circles, and publicly, especially in the general election, Bush and Cheney said nothing whatsoever about a "bold" foreign policy or any other PNAC principles.

Q. Can you give us some examples?

A. Sure. On August 27, 2000, on Meet the Press, Cheney said that the U.S. should not act as "an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments." He was talking about the Middle East.

Also, in the presidential debate against Al Gore at UMass on October 3, Bush said he would "take the use of force very seriously" and "be guarded" in his approach. He also said he disagreed with Vice President Gore about the use of troops: "He [Gore] believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation-builders."

Then, in the October 11 debate, Bush was asked how the world should view us and he said they would welcome us "if we're a humble nation, but strong." He also said we needed to "project strength in a way that promotes freedom."

Q. What did Bush say about the need for building coalitions?

A. One of Bush's main themes was that he was a leader and that leaders build coalitions. On December 2, 1999, for example, he said he would "keep the peace" by "strengthening alliances, which says [sic] America cannot go alone, we must be peacemakers not peacekeepers." In the October 11 debate, he said, "It's important to have credibility and credibility is formed by being strong with your friends and resoluting [sic] your determination." It was especially important to have strong ties in the Middle East, he said, because of the oil there.

Q. Did Bush or Cheney talk about forcibly removing Saddam Hussein during the 2000 campaign?

A. Cheney never did, but early on, Bush seemed to say just that, perhaps inadvertently. In the December 2, 1999, New Hampshire Republican primary debate, the Fox News reporter Brit Hume asked him what he would do differently from Clinton regarding Saddam Hussein. And Bush said:

I wouldn't ease the [U.N.] sanctions, and I wouldn't try to negotiate with him. I'd make darn sure that he lived up to the agreements that he signed back in the early '90s. I'd be helping the opposition groups. And if I found in any way, shape or form that he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take 'em out. I'm surprised he's still there. I think a lot of other people are as well.

Now, it's odd. The transcript says "'em" -- and I have no idea who's responsible for that. But, at the time, Hume clearly thought Bush was referring to "him," as in Saddam Hussein. And he -- Hume, I mean -- said, "Take him out?" And Bush responded, "To out [sic] the weapons of mass destruction." Which did not follow from saying "I'm surprised he's still there."

Q. Did Bush ever say "take 'em out" relating to Iraq or Saddam Hussein again during the campaign?

A. No. Although, in February 2000, he said, "There won't be any weapons of mass destruction left in Iraq if I'm the Commander-in-Chief." Usually, though, when Bush talked about Iraq, he'd say something like achieving world peace would require "firmness with regimes like North Korea and Iraq."

Actually, when you look carefully at what he said, he conveyed almost no information whatsoever.

Q. Have you come across a notable instance where Bush used the term "Commander-in-Chief"?

A. Yes. In May 1999, during an interview with a family friend and reporter named Mickey Herskovitz for a campaign book that someone else ended up writing, Bush said, "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a Commander-in-Chief." He also said:

My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade -- if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.

Grand Juror: In other words, Bush was saying that the way to be seen as a great leader was to start a war?

A. It appears so.

Q. Let's take our afternoon break.

•••

3:15 P.M.

Assistant U.S. Attorney: Special Agent Campbell, you mentioned that numerous advocates of the Project for a New American Century principles relating to U.S. global dominance and preventive attacks ended up in the Bush-Cheney administration in 2001.

How many of the people brought in by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were public proponents of the PNAC principles?

A. Public proponents of the PNAC principles?

Q. Precisely.

A. At least twenty-eight, including advisers and consultants, as well as officials, appointees, and staff. They're all listed in Exhibit 3.

Q. Does everyone have Exhibit 3?

Ex. 3
Public Proponents of PNAC Principles

1. Paul Wolfowitz: Deputy Secretary of Defense;
2. I. Lewis Libby: Assistant to the President/ Vice President's Chief of Staff;
3. Eliot Abrams: Assistant to the President/ Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Security;
4. Stephen Cambone: Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy/current Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence [newly created position];
5. Richard Armitage: Deputy Secretary of State;
6. Christopher Williams: Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense;
7. John Bolton: UN Ambassador/Former Undersecretary of Defense for Arms Control and International Security;
8. Peter Rodman: Assistant Director of Defense for National Security Affairs;
9. Paula Dobriansky: Undersecretary of Defense for Democracy and Global Affairs;
10. Douglas Feith: Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy;
11. David Wurmser: Middle East Adviser to the VP/Former Special Adviser to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security;
12. Abram Shulsky: Director of Defense Department's Office of Special Plans;
13. Zalmay Khalilzad: Ambassador to Iraq/Former Special Assistant to the President for Persian Gulf Affairs;
14. Barry Watts: Office of the Secretary of Defense/Director of Program Analysis & Evaluation;
15. Dov Zakheim: Undersecretary and Chief Financial for Defense Department;
16. Mark Lagon: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State;
17. Robert B. Zoellick: Former U.S. Trade Rep-resentative/Former Deputy National Security Adviser;
18. David Epstein: Staff, Secretary of Defense;
19. Richard Perle: Former Chairman, Defense Policy Board;
20. Eliot Cohen: Defense Policy Board;
21. Devon Gaffney-Cross: Defense Policy Board;
22. Henry S. Rowen: Defense Policy Board;
23. R. James Woolsey: Defense Policy Board;
24. Richard V. Allen: Defense Policy Board;
25. Daniel Goure: Consultant to Secretary of Defense;
26. Gary Shmitt: Consultant to Secretary of Defense;
27. Randy Scheuneman: Consultant to Secretary of Defense;
28. William Schneider, Jr.: Chairman, Defense Science Board

Q. Out of those, how many had specifically and publicly called for the use of United States military force to depose Saddam Hussein?

A. Seventeen had already called for the forcible removal of Saddam Hussein.

Q. Those would include the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and State, as well as seven additional high-level appointees in the State and Defense Departments, correct?

A. Yes. Also, of course, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Including Rumsfeld, eighteen of the Bush-Cheney administration appointees had publicly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein before 2001, including Rumsfeld.

Grand Juror: The evidence about Project for a New American Century, and Bush talking about being a Commander-in-Chief?

Q. Yes?

Grand Juror: Are you saying that Bush and Cheney were definitely planning to invade Iraq from the beginning?

Q. No, and that is not something you have to decide in this case. The predisposition evidence shows the genesis and some of the motivation for the fraud, but it's not intended to be proof of the fraud itself. You could decide they were not predisposed to invade Iraq and still find probable cause to believe that they conspired to defraud the United States beginning on or before September 2002.

So, let's call it a day. Thank you for your testimony, Agent Campbell. Have a good evening, everyone.

[Note: For Part 1 of Elizabeth de la Vega, "A Fraud Worse than Enron" click here; for Part 2, "The Indictment," click here. For the final five days of grand jury testimony, be sure to pick up a copy of United States v. George W. Bush.]

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in the Nation Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon. She writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com. This day of grand jury testimony is part of her new book, United States v. George W. Bush et al. She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net.

Excerpted from United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega, published December 1, 2006 by Seven Stories Press and Tomdispatch.com.

Copyright 2006 Elizabeth de la Vega [See the Fair Use Notice, below.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:04 AM