SpikHarry: Göteborg: nya våldsdåd en väktare skadad

SpikHarry: Göteborg: nya våldsdåd en väktare skadad

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate billproposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do. Read more here:

SUN DANCE CHIEF FASTS AT WHITE HOUSE FOR LEONARD PELTIER: SEEKS MEETING WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA

Picture: Leonard Peltier.

As a result of Peltier's recent parole denial, Ben Carnes, Choctaw Nation, and a Sun Dance Chief, states he will go to Washington, D.C. to stand and fast in front of the White House between September 5th - 12th, in hopes of securing a meeting with President Obama.
Earlier this year, the LP-DOC sent a letter to President Obama to discuss the case of Leonard Peltier, but the reply from the White House declined to invite members of the committee for a meeting.
Leonard Peltier has been an international symbol of American injustice based upon critical questions surrounding his conviction in 1977 in the deaths of two FBI agents. Amnesty International has designated Peltier as a political prisoner and a U.S. prosecutor has admitted in court during an appeal hearing that he did not know who killed the agents and cannot prove who did. A federal judge who heard this statement was unable to afford any relief wrote a letter to Sen. Inouye to ask the president to grant clemency.
Carnes is a recipient of the 1987 Oklahoma Human Rights Award for his stand against forced hair cutting of Native prisoners. He has been asked to speak before congressional committees and has served with numerous human rights, interfaith and Native organizations. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of Peltier for over 28 years, and first became a national spokesperson in 1991. He is also national support group coordinator and advisory board member for the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee.
"The basis of Peltier's denial by the parole commission is one of hypocrisy. It is also beyond belief that the chair of the US Parole Commission, Issac Fullwood, who is lectures on ethics in law enforcement, would turn a blind eye to the FBI's abuse of the investigative process. And Ms. Patricia Cushwa, commission member, and Chair of the Maryland parole commission recently supported a pardon for a man who had been executed, because there were questions about the case." said Carnes. He said that there are questions about Peltier case that remains unanswered, and with this denial, the parole commission have made Peltiers life sentence a sentence of death as he won't be eligible for parole for 15 years when he is 79 years old. Peltier will observe his next birthday on September 12 when he will turn 65. He has already served 33 years in prison.
Supporters are calling for a world wide 24 vigils on September 11th - 12th to begin at 8:45 AM.
*********
FROM THE LP-DOC:
We call upon all supporters to organize solidarity events and actions in conjunction with Ben's solitary prayer fast in DC on September 12th.
If you can begin a 24 hour vigil on September 11 beginning at 8:45 AM and set up some means of a public address for the 12th to broadcast a live statement from Ben as he concludes his fast. This could very well be an important time in the history of the struggle to bring justice to free Peltier, and in the federal government's relations' with the Native people of this land.
Everyone is asked to work locally, we know not everyone can be in DC at that time, but your work in your area is vitally important.
"The president has made some promises to the First Nations people during his campaign," Carnes said, "and since the election we have been saying it starts with Leonard Peltier. He needs to prove to us he means this!
Otherwise, it is just another in a long running series of broken promises, treaties and broken lives. We will not accept this anymore!"
Leonard Peltier has long reached International celebrity status, based upon critical questions surrounding his conviction in 1977 in the deaths of two FBI agents. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the 6th time, and has had the support of world political/spiritual leaders from around the world, including 55 members of Congress who has joined in the call for justice.
For more information, go to www.whoisleonardpeltier.info, the official website of the LP-DOC.
Information for contribution can be made through this site to help the committee and the action taking place in Washington, DC. You can also order originals of Leonard's art, lithographs or other products to help support the cause of Leonard Peltier.
This is not the time to be quiet, it is time to act - and right now.
CONTACT THE WHITE HOUSE:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
Contact President Obama via EMAIL
The website is not the only way to reach the president.
You can also call or write to the President :
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Link:

Madsen on RT: Vaccine Creators Refuse to Take H1N1 Vaccine

Fluoride Linked to Arthritis, Study Shows

Wednesday, 26 August, 2009 - 22:47

Fluoride: A Pain in the Neck - Case Report
A 52-year-old American (New York) man’s arthritic-like joint pain and immobility went away after he stopped brushing his teeth with fluoridated toothpaste, according to a  study in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (1).
There’s no scientific dispute that large fluoride doses cause crippling skeletal fluorosis over time.  (See. http://www.nalgonda.org/fluorosis/victims.htm) But, “less well-known causes of chronic fluoride toxicity include fluoride supplements, certain teas and wine and some toothpastes,” report researchers Kurland, et al. (1)
Skeletal fluorosis often results in  abnormal bone hardening and thickening (osteosclerosis) with painful and impaired neck and spine mobility, spine curvature, and/or painful lower extremities ultimately causing crippling and incapacitation, report the researchers.
In this case, the only obvious fluoride exposure was toothpaste. The patient drank no fluoridated water, tea or wine; had no occupational fluoride exposure; did not chew tobacco, inhale snuff, cook with Teflon pots, use fluoridated mouthwash or get fluoride treatments at twice-yearly dentist visits. But he brushed before and after all meals (minimum 6 times daily) with fluoridated toothpaste.
Fluoride was elevated in his serum, urine and iliac crest (bone), the researchers report.
Within 8 months of eliminating all obvious fluoride sources, the patient’s urinary and blood fluoride levels dropped and bone function markers showed clear cut improvement, the researchers report.
“By approximately two years after diagnosis and apparent elimination of excess fluoride exposure, the patient had complete resolution of his neck immobility and no longer required analgesics,” the researchers write.
Roos, et al. documents a woman whose painful swollen fingers healed after she ceased eating fluoridated toothpaste.(2)
Whyte, et al. report a woman’s fluoride-caused debilitating joint pains disappeared when her two-gallon-a-day iced tea habit stopped.(3)
Eichmiller, et al. report a patient’s leg and joint pains from a dentist-prescribed high-concentration fluoride product.(4)
Osteoarthritis is linked to water fluoride in a Turkish study.(6)
A 2009 Brazilian study shows that, after brushing with a fluoridated dentifrice, a substantial amount of fluoride is ingested by children. (7)
“Fluoride at any level accumulates in the body,” says Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. “So even water fluoridation will cause arthritic-like symptoms in susceptible individuals which is compounded by U.S. physicians’and dentists' lack of training to diagnose fluoride toxicity.” (See:  http://tinyurl.com/Susheela
“We know US schoolchildren are fluoride-overdosed (5). What’s it doing to their bones?” asks Beeber.

Link:

Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official

Wednesday August 26, 2009 

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.

Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent.

Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression.

Lockhart said the US economy was improving but "still fragile," and the beginning stages of a sluggish recovery were underway.

"My forecast for a slow recovery implies a protracted period of high unemployment," he said, adding that it would be difficult to stimulate jobs through additional public spending.

"Further fiscal stimulus has been mentioned, but the full effects of the first stimulus package are not yet clear, and the concern over adding to the federal deficit and the resulting national debt is warranted," he said.

President Barack Obama's administration has resisted calls for more public spending, arguing that the 787-billion-dollar stimulus passed in February needs time to work its way through the economy.

Lockhart noted that construction and manufacturing had been particularly hard hit in the recession that began in December 2007 and predicted some jobs were gone for good.

Prior to the recession, he said, construction and manufacturing combined accounted for slightly more than 15 percent of employment. But during the recession, their job losses made up more than 40 percent of all US job losses.

"In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a return of jobs lost in certain sectors, such as manufacturing," he said.

"In a similar vein, the recession has been so deep in construction that a reallocation of workers is likely to happen -- even if not permanent."

Payroll employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the recession began. Link:

German Health Minister admits swine flu pandemic a hoax

Germany's Health Minister Ulla Schmidt has admitted in an interview with German TV that the "swine flu" vaccination campaign is part of a gigantic hoax as the country prepares to vaccinate 25 million people as a first step from October in the biggest ever vaccine "experiment" in history.
Schmidt said in reply to a question by a reporter as to how many people will take the toxic jab: "Just you let it [the swine flu] run a bit more aggressively, and then the citizens will stream in [for their swine flu jab]."
Here is the report in German:

Pentagon Plans For Global Military Supremacy U.S., NATO Could Deploy Mobile Missiles Launchers To Europe

by Rick Rozoff, Global Research, August 22, 2009

From August 17-20 the annual U.S. Space and Missile Defense Conference was conducted in Huntsville, Alabama, which hosts the headquarters of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Among the over 2,000 participants were the Missile Defense Agency's new director, Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. James Cartwright, commander of the Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Administrator Charles Bolden Jr.
There were also 230 exhibitors present, among them the nation's major arms manufacturers with an emphasis on those weapons companies specializing in global missile shield and space war projects. The presence of the head of NASA indicated that the distinction between the military and civilian uses of space is rapidly disappearing. As the Bloomberg news agency reported on the second day of this year, "President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China" and "Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...." [1] The recently appointed NASA chief, Bolden, is a retired Marine Corps general.
47,500-Pound Missile Launcher Headed To NATO Bases In Europe?
A Reuters dispatch of August 20 on the Huntsville Space and Missile Defense Conference reported that the Boeing Company's vice president and general manager for missile defense, Greg Hyslop, announced to the conference that his company "is eyeing a 47,500-pound interceptor that could be flown to NATO bases as needed on Boeing-built C-17 cargo planes, erected quickly on a 60-foot trailer stand and taken home when judged safe to do so."
Boeing displayed a scale-model version of a mobile "two-stage interceptor designed to be globally deployable within 24 hours...." [2]
The company executive made an allusion to the fixed-site ground-based interceptor deployment planned for Poland as being politically risky - the majority of Poles oppose it if their government doesn't and Russian officials have persistently pledged to take countermeasures if the U.S. goes ahead with the project - and the above-cited Reuters report endorses the mobile interceptor proposal by claiming it could "blunt Russian fears of possible U.S. fixed missile-defense sites in Europe." [3]
How substituting a mobile missile launcher "globally deployable within 24 hours" for ten missiles permanently stationed in Poland at a location known to Russia would assuage the latter's concerns over its deterrent and retaliation capabilities being neutralized in the event of a U.S. and NATO first strike was not explained by either the Boeing official or Reuters.

Read more here:

EDITORIAL: Hurray for polar bears - Washington Times

EDITORIAL: Hurray for polar bears - Washington Times

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Vaccine-Induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks The Engineering of 'Pandemics'

By A. True Ott, PhD, ND  23 August, 2009

The year was 1921. America was entering a decade of robust prosperity. Later called "The Roaring Twenties", it was a time of unparalleled economic expansion. Debt money from Wall Street banks was plentiful and easy to obtain. The "Great War" was over.

America was flexing her industrial muscles. Factories were being built and expanded in every major city. Automobiles began rolling off Detroit assembly lines in record numbers. The stock market began making millionaires. People were HEALTHY and HAPPY largely because the dreaded "world mystery disease" (which decades later became known as the "1918 Flu Pandemic") had disappeared. Two entire years had passed with no dreaded "mystery deaths" being reported. America had cause to celebrate, and celebrate they did!

As a matter of fact, the American Public in general was so optimistic and HAPPY in 1921, that relatively few people were unhealthy as well. For the first time in decades, hospital beds were empty. The fledgling American Medical Association, formed by John D. Rockefeller just a few years earlier, was worried. Business was sagging.

Profits from vaccines and drugs were spiraling. Something had to be done, and done immediately. False, faux epidemics of smallpox were created to solve the problem, and keep the Medical Mafia's cash registers ringing.

We know this dastardly plan actually happened, thanks to a citizen's WATCHDOG GROUP in Kansas City, Missouri named "The Advertiser's Protective Bureau", who filed, and successfully prosecuted criminal charges against the Missouri state chapter of the AMA the Jackson Medical Society. The 'Protective Bureau's" official report of this cold-blooded plot reads as follows:

"In the Fall of 1921, the health of the city was unusually good, but slow for the doctors. So the Jackson Medical Society met and resolved to make an epidemic in the city. According to the minutes of this meeting: 'MOTION WAS MADE AND SECONDED, THAT A RECOMMENDATION BE MADE BY THE COMMITTEE, TO THE BOARD OF HEALTH, THAT AN EPIDEMIC OF SMALLPOX BE DECLARED IN THE CITY. (Investigation later revealed that there was NO SIGN OF AN EPIDEMIC at the time, in the city, or anywhere in the state or region!)

'It was moved and seconded that a day be set aside, termed VACCINATION DAY, on which physicians would be stationed at ALL SCHOOLS, clinics, public buildings and hospitals to vaccinate "free of charge". (Vaccinations are never "free". The taxpayers are always forced to pay for every one of the "free" vaccines.)

"IT IS FURTHER RECOMMENDED THAT WIDE PUBLICITY BE GIVEN, STATING THAT VACCINATION IS A PREVENTIVE OF SMALLPOX, AND URGING THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF VACCINATION FOR EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD IN THE CITY."

The Protective Bureau proved in court that there WAS NO EPIDEMIC before the vaccinations!! The court records show that the Medical Society manufactured vast amounts of posters, fliers, newspaper stories and ads featuring horrific and lurid pictures of diseased children covered with massive smallpox sores and open wounds. Some pictures actually showed children's corpses covered with the same ugly sores. The PANIC-DRIVEN message was clear --- VACCINATE EVERYONE, or face a deadly public disease. There was a "sweeping epidemic" in the city; the disease was "highly contagious" and would "strike anyone who was not vaccinated" was the bill of goods sold! (Does this sound at all familiar today 88 years later??)

The Medical Mafia's propaganda blitz was successful, and over a million previously healthy and happy American citizens were hypnotized and terrorized into placing the vaccine toxins into their bloodstreams. All public school children in the region were vaccinated while at school! Parents who dared question the vaccination of their children were ostracized and publicly vilified.

THE COURT RECORD ON THIS CASE IS VERY CLEAR. In the weeks and months following the "mass vaccinations" the area's hospital beds were filled to over-flowing with VACCINE-INDUCED SMALLPOX CASES!

Tens of thousands of people became ill, and many hundreds of innocents died, and many more were permanently crippled! Of course, THE NEWSPAPERS THEN TRUMPETED HOW WISE THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT WAS TO PROMOTE THE VACCINES stating how much worse the death toll would have been without the vaccination campaign!! Untold MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of profit was generated by this massive "medical" fraud.

Thanks to the ADVERTISER'S PROTECTIVE BUREAU, however; the massive fraud was exposed and criminally prosecuted to a successful conviction. During the trial, three amazing facts were proven beyond any "reasonable doubt".

Fact 1: The poster and advertising pictures showing the diseased and dying children used so successfully by the "doctors", WERE NOT EVEN CASES OF LOCAL SMALLPOX CASES AS THEY WERE BILLED TO BE! The Protective Bureau documented that they were pictures of ENGLISH CHILDREN who were victims of "court-proven" cases of SMALLPOX VACCINE POISONING!! One of the pictures was of a 5-week-old baby named Mona Stevenson, of Humphrey Street, Burnley, England. A previously healthy and happy baby, Little Mona had been vaccinated for smallpox at 5 weeks of age. Four weeks later, her pox-ridden little body was placed in a tiny coffin and buried. The horrific photos of Little Mona and others in England had previously been published in British newspapers where details of the resulting CRIMINAL TRIALS were also given. The full details of the trials, as well as the pictures, were also included in a comprehensively large medical boot titled "THE HISTORY AND PATHOLOGY OF VACCINATION" by Edgar M Crookshank, MD professor of Bacteriology at the ultra-elite Kings College, London England.

Fact 2: Vaccines containing LIVE VIRUSES, weakened (i.e. attenuated) or otherwise universally causes more diseases than the vaccine ever could prevent.

Fact 3: Vaccine-Induced-Disease (VID) is an extremely effective socio-economic tool. It has the potential to generate BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF WINDFALL PROFITS, while permanently changing the social structures of large groups of people.

While the Protective Bureau won the criminal court case the American People lost. The case should have made front-page headlines around the nation, showing the Modus Operandi of certain corrupt "medical practitioners". How, by means of fraud, treachery, and trickery, they made millions of dollars in windfall profits while thousands of innocent, trusting, and naïve Americans suffered and died. The entire sordid affair, with all its damning details, was kept out of the American Press. John D. Rockefeller's AMA, with its millions of dollars of influence made sure of that!

Amazingly, even though thousands of people had died or become crippled by this managed manslaughter, the doctors involved were only given a light penalty in the form of a token fine. The medical establishment as a whole was not upset in the least by the exposure and has continued on unabated perpetuating the same crimes against humanity creating vaccine-induced-diseases while fleecing the people continually until this present day.

It is a proven (albeit little-known) fact, EPIDEMIC/PANDEMIC MANUFACTURING IS STANDARD PRACTICE with the world-wide "Medical Mafia" circles. In order to maximize profits and re-shape geographical regions, they often manufacture a false-flag "emergency". If there is an outbreak of mild seasonal virus, they call it an influenza pandemic, give it a fancy new name, and then actually CREATE THE PANDEMIC by means of mass vaccinations using ATTENUATED, or LIVE VIRUSES!! Remember the shocking words of the AMA's Dr. Simon Louis Katzoff who said: " DOCTORS LIVE BY DISEASE, SO THE PUBLIC CAN EXPECT THE SUPPLY OF DISEASE TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION."

OTHER DOCUMENTED CASES OF V.I.D.E.O.s (Vaccine Induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks.)

Case 1: Following the lead of their colleagues in Kansas City, the exact same events occurred in Pittsburgh, PA under the direction of Pittsburgh's "Health Director", Dr. C.J. Voux in the autumn of 1924. As in Kansas City, a group of public watchdogs brought suit against Voux and his vaccine-promoters. As in Kansas City, the vaccine promoters were found guilty. The case documented that over 1,000,000 vaccine shots were "sold" to the residents of Pennsylvania, even though there had been ZERO documented cases of smallpox in the region. It was successfully proven that ONLY AFTER the million shots had been given, that a smallpox epidemic began.

This vaccine-induced, manmade "epidemic" resulted in 330 deaths and at least 1,680 cases of severe smallpox that caused permanent, crippling damage to the survivors. Moreover, it cost the city a total monetary loss of $3,069,616; although Dr. Voux and his accomplices had collected more than $10 million in hospital and related care revenues they were not forced to pay for damages or reparations. As in the Kansas City trial, a small, insignificant fine was levied, and the case was not widely publicized.

Case 2: The initial batches of Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine produced thousands of cases of poliomyelitis in vaccinated individuals. (One such case was Franklin D. Roosevelt who was stricken weeks after receiving a vaccine.) This was due to an unsafe amount of LIVE VIRUSES in the vaccine itself. Dr. Sabin then introduced his "improved" vaccine with "attenuated" or "weakened' live viruses in 1958, and the following year his vaccine was made to be compulsory (mandatory) in all school-age children in a number of states. As a result, polio increased a whopping 300% in these states. For example, Tennessee reported 119 polio cases in 1958, after "vaccination" this total increased to 386 cases in 1959, Ohio 17 cases in 1958, 52 cases in 1959, Connecticut 45 cases in 1958, 123 cases in 1959, and North Carolina: 78 cases in 1958 compared to 312 cases in 1959 AFTER forcing compulsory shots in school children. The modern record is equally damning. The ONLY cases of recorded polio in the modern era is immediately following vaccinations.

Poliomyelitis, you see, is a water-borne virus and is caused by drinking contaminated water.

During the early 60's, water-treatment facilities became standardized across America small amounts of CHLORINATION effectively wiped out polio viruses. The conquering of polio had NOTHING TO DO with the vaccine needles and swallowing sugar cubes.

In fact, as author Ed Haslem documents so well in his book, "http://doctormarysmonkey.com/" Dr. Mary's Monkey, the Sabin vaccines were actually contaminated with mutated GREEN MONKEY VIRUSES (SV-40 viruses to be specific) which has caused untold millions of SOFT-TISSUE CANCERS and deaths worldwide. (The cancer "industry" has reaped BILLIONS of dollars from this "contamination" over the years, of course.) "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edikv0zbAlU" Dr. Maurice Hilleman has actually confessed as being a part of this very activity.

Case 3: Knowingly added to "hepatitis" vaccines, HIV viruses were inoculated into thousands of homosexual men and intravenous drug users in America's inner cities resulting in the "AIDS epidemic" in the 80's. Purposefully placed in SMALLPOX VACCINE SYRINGES, HIV was also introduced into African nations as a tool of ethnic cleansing and GENOCIDE. The covert development and weaponization of the HIV/AIDS virus and its monkey-virus origins, along with the amazing story of how the scientists involved are tied to President Kennedy's assassination is well documented in "http://doctormarysmonkey.com/" Dr. Mary's Monkey. The covert biological experimentation labs responsible for this mayhem are today consolidated into the NIH, the NAIDS, the National Cancer Institute, and Ft. Detrick, Maryland. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta became the centralized hub of pandemic and epidemic creations and propagation.

Case 4: The 1976 "Swine Flu" Fiasco and Fraud is perpetrated. A solitary soldier at Ft. Dix collapses and dies following a reaction to an "experimental" vaccine while completing an intense physical "forced march" exercise at Ft. Dix. Immediately, the CDC swings into action, declaring a nationwide SWINE FLU PANDEMIC is pending. Providentially, of course, the CDC just happens to have 200+MILLION DOSES of Swine Flu vaccine already stockpiled, prepared with ATTENUATED (live, yet weakened) viruses and experimental ADJUVANTS.

President Gerald Ford, (with proven ties to Big Pharma and Nixon's covert viral weapons labs also a key member of the "Warren Commission's" obfuscation of the JFK murder) rolls up his sleeves on national TV and dutifully takes the vaccine. 40 million vaccines are given to naïve American human guinea pigs. A rash of auto-immune disorders (Guillan-Barre Syndrome GBS, and lupus) as well as a large number of deaths is immediately attributed to the vaccine, and the mass vaccination campaign is halted. (What happened to the other 140 million vaccines, one may ask?) In 1979, the television news magazine 60 Minutes did a documentary investigation on this travesty-for-money scandal. Against all odds and the threats of Big Pharma, the OBJECTIVELY FAIR 60 Minutes program aired ONE TIME. There was no follow-up story, No criminal indictments were ever issued. There was no MASS- MURDER-FOR-HIRE trial. As a result, America has largely forgotten the 1976 SWINE FLU SCANDAL! Click here for "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lcJt4jX1Vo" Part I of the 60 Minutes story; and "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4c9Is1T3z4"

Part II.

Case 5: During the first Gulf War Operation Desert Storm, an experimental anthrax vaccine was forcibly given to 140,000 rear-echelon support troops. This experimental vaccine included an oil-in-water adjuvant called squalene (aka MF-59 made by NOVARTIS). Despite voluminous studies showing dangerous toxicity factors conducted on "oil-in-water" adjuvants at such prestigious research labs as UCLA the U.S. Military brass consented to the experimental injections. As a result, ALL 140,000 troops developed a condition subsequently named "Gulf War Syndrome". This sordid tale is explained in a very honest and credible book by "http://www.vaccine-a.com/" Gary Matsumoto, called, Vaccine-A.

ALL MODERN "PANDEMICS" ARE CAUSED BY VACCINE NEEDLES

As this author has repeatedly declared during many public radio interviews, the deadly 1918 Influenza Pandemic was the direct result of live-virus-contaminated Typhus Fever Vaccines mandatorily given to U.S. and Allied military personnel during World War I. During that era, viruses were not yet discovered and diseases were thought to be bacterial only. These deadly typhus fever vaccines were manufactured by John D. Rockefeller's research labs and Chinese pharma factories. The vaccine "seed stock" consisted of viruses harvested from human typhoid fever patients, cross-injected into swine herds to create increased "seed stock", and then injected into chicken and turkey eggs for further incubation of the pathogens. The final, harvested "vaccine material" then was injected into HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF HUMAN VEINS. The result was a massive 'pandemic' that claimed the lives of as many as 50 million people worldwide.

In 1918, the viral pandemic was an honest mistake the result of a combination of a very bad vaccine and gross ignorance about viruses and the diseases they cause. However, the continued denial of these FACTS, and the subsequent REVERSE ENGINEERING OF THE KILLER VIRUS in Ft. Detrick labs (1997-2003) is inexcusable and constitutes a veritable crime against humanity.

Moreover, the ONLY WAY a modern "SWINE FLU PANDEMIC" can actually materialize is by injection of certain LIVE VIRUSES via vaccine needles. Make no mistake, the world is NOT experiencing a true pandemic explosion at this time but it most assuredly WILL when and if the planned mass influenza vaccinations are completed worldwide.

THE DANGERS INHERENT IN "DUPLEX" VACCINES FROM DESIGNER VIRUSES

"Modern Medical Practitioners", including some well-meaning "osteopaths", would have the world believe the MYTH that vaccines containing attenuated (weakened) live viruses cannot cause the viral disease conditions they are targeting. This is a most dangerous misconception for the following SCIENTIFIC reasons.

Traditional "common" vaccines targeting measles, mumps and rubella for instance, contain small amounts of "attenuated" live viruses which have been "weakened" but not 100% killed outright. Research has shown that these weakened "live" viruses create a very mild form of the disease in the human that has been vaccinated, which in turn creates a cellular immunity from that pathogen. The science behind this is correct, and valid for the most part. To keep the targeted viral pathogen in a perpetually weakened state, specific amounts of formaldehyde and ether are typically added, and in some formulations, mercury in the form of thimerasol is added as a preservative to keep the egg albumin cells from decaying and dying prematurely. The established theory behind all of this 'vaccination' is the "protect the herd" theory which originated with Pasteur in the late 19th century. As in all vaccines, a certain small percentage of the herd will develop severe, 'full blown' disease states CAUSED by the attenuated viruses in the vaccine itself, and another percentage will exhibit side effects from the chemicals added to the vaccine but if the vast majority of the herd is "protected" from the disease condition the vaccine is approved and stamped "safe and effective".

Science has also proven that each viral pathogen has its own unique characteristics that produce its own set of symptoms in the human hosts. Thus, each viral pathogen has its own unique fingerprints of replication and reproduction as well. Each virus also has a different level of effectiveness in its attenuated (weakened) state.

Moreover, some viruses have shown the ability to "drift" and acquire additional genetic alterations over time. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE OF THE SO-CALLED "NOVEL" RECOMBINATION VIRUSES that have been "reverse engineered" in the world's weapons laboratories!

When the RNA of the virus is spliced with other viral genes, the resulting "Franken-virus" is very unpredictable. Studies conducted (yet currently unpublished) by Terrence Tumpey, Jeffrey Taubenberger, and others at the NIH and CDC show that these 'resurrected pandemic viruses' do not exhibit the NORMAL tendencies of traditional, NATURAL influenza viruses such as seasonal H3N2 human strains. They are best described as "Viral Wild Cards".

This is just one problem with the headlong, mad rush to vaccinate Americans with a series of reverse-engineered lab-created viruses, attenuated or otherwise, in an UNTESTED, UNTRIED, EXPERIMENTAL VACCINE that has not been subjected to LONG-TERM CLINICAL TRIALS TO DETERMINE THE LEVELS OF "DRIFT" or even ATTENUATED TENDENCIES OVER TIME.

To supposedly minimize this "safety" issue, the CDC is now recommending a DUPLEX vaccination, of all things. A "duplex" vaccination basically involves a two-shot series. The first shot consists of a VERY WEAK, HIGHLY ATTENUTATED dose of the live virus.

This is intended to create an initial immune response patterning the specific virus injected. Within a couple of weeks of the 1st shot, a BOOSTER SHOT is given. The booster shot has only lightly attenuated, or even FULL STRENGTH VIRUSES in the injection. This 2nd shot is then intended to create a full-strength immune system response in the human subject.

This is, at the very least, BAD SCIENCE and borders on insanity for self-evident and fairly obvious reasons. By their own admissions, the NIH scientists in their various writings have declared that the level of potency of these REVERSE ENGINEERED VIRUSES show abnormal, almost RANDOM tendencies in their attenuated states. Nobody really knows what will happen over time as the inevitable "genetic drifts" occur. It is a literal crap shoot. It is highly probable that even the HIGHLY ATTENUATED FRANKEN-VIRUSES can swiftly regain their FULL POTENCY even in the presence of ether and formaldehyde. (See Addendum Below) Secondly, the full-strength BOOSTER shot viruses could just as easily "DRIFT" into something much more deadly than the "original' recombinant virus that it is targeting.

I submit that the scientists responsible for this "pandemic" are not stupid. They have to know these facts as well as I do.

Therefore, I can only conclude that this entire affair is following the Modus Operandi of the medical elite since the 1920 engineered smallpox epidemics. It is all being ORCHESTRATED first and foremost for MONEY, and secondly, for social and geographical restructuring of the "human herd".

Also, it must be understood that this "Novel 2009 Influenza" is not easily nor readily transmissible between humans. (See published study in the addendum). If this report is accurate, how then did the "Pandemic" begin, and why the need for mass vaccinations at all?? Like the "study" shows, the only way the test ferrets could contract or transmit the 2009 "Novel Swine Flu" was by and through INOCULATION OF THE DISEASE!! Humanity demands an answer, and demands it NOW!!!

A.True Ott, Phd, ND Link:

"Food Standards Guidelines" Threaten Human Health, Codex Alimentarius (CA) serves corporate interests

by Stephen Lendman Global Research, August 24, 2009

On its web site, CA (Latin for food code) says:

"The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN) and WHO (World Health Organization) to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme. The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations."

Whatever its founding purpose, CA is much different today because corporate interests control it - global pharmaceutical, food, and banking giants in league with complicit UN and government agencies to promote GMOs over healthy foods, and drugs over natural remedies by restricting or banning vitamin and dietary supplements, except ones they control. Organic food as well by irradiation and hidden synthetic additives or ingredients.

If CA's standards and guidelines are adopted, they'll establish binding global rules, effectively overriding sovereign national laws. GMO foods and drugs will proliferate. Labeling will be banned. Food and drug giants will decide what will and won't be sold. Governments will be prohibited from countermanding them. Everyone's health and well-being will be jeopardized.

Since its 2004 founding, the Natural Solutions Foundation has been involved in "discover(ing), develop(ing), demonstrat(ing) and disseminat(ing) natural solutions to the problems facing us and threatening our health and freedom." Its goal is "to support advanced healthcare and health freedom" globally, not a system promoting corporate interests at the expense of human health and well-being.

It explains that CA has "absolutely nothing to do with consumer protection." It's a corporate-run "Trade Commission" created to control "every aspect of how food and nutritional supplements are produced and sold to the consumer." It's about profits, not human health. It wants to ban natural remedies and promote unsafe drugs. It's "unscientific because it classifies nutrients as toxins and uses 'Risk Assessment' to set ultra low so-called 'safe upper limits' for them." It wants to prohibit everything not explicitly permitted and controlled by them.

Under the 1986 - 1993 GATT Uruguay Round, its 110 member countries agreed to harmonize their domestic laws to conform to international standards. In January 1995, the WTO replaced GATT, and as of July 2008, its membership included 153 nations.

Its Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade was established "to ensure that regulations, standards, testing and certification procedures do not create unnecessary obstacles. It specifically refers to:

-- ...."the important contributions that international standards and conformity assessment systems can make....by improving efficiency of production and facilitating the conduct of international trade....;" and

-- the importance of "develop(ing) such international standards and conformity assessment systems."

It states that "Members are fully responsible under this Agreement for the observance of all provisions of Article 2" - pertaining to the "Preparation, Adoption and Application of Technical Regulations by Central Government Bodies;" under them, "Members shall formulate and implement positive measures and mechanisms in support of the observance of (Article 2's) provisions by other than central government bodies."

This means that WTO members are legally bound under global guidelines, including CA standards if adopted, that override currently in force national laws. Under WTO rules, failure to comply may bring punitive fines or crippling trade sanctions.

At its July 2005 session, the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), drew up guidelines that set restrictive upper dosage limits on popularly used vitamin and mineral supplements and nutrients. They prohibit the sale of all curative, preventative, and therapeutic supplements without a doctor's prescription, most now accessible over-the-counter at health food, other stores, or by mail order.

Twenty-six other committees are tasked with setting global standards for different areas of the global food and drug trade, including:

-- fruits and vegetables;

-- fruit and vegetable juices;

-- fats and oils;

-- meat, poultry and fish;

-- cereals, pulses (used for food and animal feed) and legumes;

-- milk and milk products;

-- natural mineral waters;

-- sugars;

-- cocoa products and chocolate;

-- food hygiene;

-- food labeling (as a way not to disclose GMO foods and ingredients)

-- pesticide residues;

-- residues of veterinary drugs found in foods;

-- food additives;

-- regional coordination, and more.

Codex standards are binding on all WTO members under its Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. Both were included among the Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods that was part of the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement that established the WTO.

Currently, it says that "there is no legal obligation on Members to apply Codex standards, guidelines and recommendations." In fact, the WTO uses them to resolve international trade disputes that are legally binding on all members.

On December 31, 2009, Codex standards will be globally mandated unless legal challenges prevent it. In force, they'll override food and drug laws of all member countries, including consumer protection ones and America's 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). It classifies nutrients and herbs as foods, sets no dosage limits, and permits the sale of all dietary supplements unless expressly proved unsafe. Codex rules reverse things by prohibiting everything NOT proved safe, including high potency, therapeutically effective nutrients and supplements.

Common foods, herbs, nutrients, amino acids, homeopathic and other natural remedies would be called drugs. Potencies would be limited, and prescriptions would be required for their use. Some would be banned altogether.

In contrast, about 300 dangerous food additives will be allowed, including aspartame, BHA, BHT, potassium bromate, and tartrazine. New guidelines will authorize the worldwide proliferation of unlabeled GMO foods, drugs, and ingredients, known to harm human health.

In addition:

-- dangerous high-potency industrial chemicals, pesticides, and fungicides will be allowed, ones now near-universally banned, including aldrin, hexachlorobenzene and toxaphene;

-- growth hormones for cows will be mandated;

-- antibiotics as well for all "food herds, fish and flocks;"

-- irradiation will be required for all foods not locally grown and sold raw and unprocessed; and

-- new standards will permit dangerous toxic levels (0.5 ppb) of aflotoxin in milk produced from moldy storage conditions of animal feed; aflotoxin is one of most potent carcinogenic compounds known.

In addition, professional written, oral or other nutritional advice will be banned, including about the benefits of vitamins, minerals, nutrients and other health-promoting substances. Henceforth, they'll be considered toxins or poisons to be removed from food because Codex will prohibit their use to "prevent, treat or cure any condition or disease."

In America before the 1996 Food Quality and Protection Act passed, the 1958 Delaney Clause prohibited use of known carcinogens in processed foods. It specifically said:

"the Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals."

It protected against unsafe food additives, meat and poultry drugs, color additives, and cancer-causing pesticide residues in processed foods above a certain level.

Obama's Enforcers

On July 23, Obama appointed Monsanto vice-president and lobbyist Michael Taylor as food safety czar - the man Jeffrey Smith, author and leading GMO foods critic, called "The person who may be responsible for more food-related illnesses and death than anyone in history....This is no joke....What have we done?"

At FDA in the early 1990s, Taylor headed policy over letting Monsanto's GM bovine growth hormone (rBGH) be injected into cows to increase milk supply despite the known health dangers. He also kept containers from being labeled to warn consumers. Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand banned the drug because of the significant cancer and other risks.

Taylor also got the FDA to treat genetically modified foods and ingredients as "substantially equivalent" to natural ones, so no testing was required for safety. Ever since in America and many other countries, GM foods have proliferated despite reliable evidence of their harm to human health.

Rumored to become USDA's food safety head is Dennis Wolff - an rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary. Wolff spearheaded state legislation to ban rNGH-free labeling so consumers could choose safe milk over contaminated brands. He partially succeeded when governor Ed Rendell balked but allowed an FDA disclaimer on containers regarding bovine growth hormone's safety.

Operation Cure All

A June 14, 2001 FTC press release headlined "Operation Cure All Wages New Battle in Ongoing War Against Internet Health Fraud." It cited a 1997 initiated law enforcement and consumer education campaign in announcing new actions against "the fraudulent marketing of supplements and other health products on the Internet" targeting dietary supplements, herbal products, and various other "questionable" substances. The FDA claimed (without evidence) that "unscrupulous marketers (were selling to) the sickest and most vulnerable consumers." To the general public as well that relies on them as essential nutrients and natural remedies that are far more effective, safer, and vastly cheaper than dangerous overpriced drugs.

At stake isn't consumer safety. It's protecting drug company profits by eliminating competition. It's about removing safe alternatives, natural therapies, and information about them. It's to empower drug giants and approve only their products for sale. It's to establish standards they alone write; to pave the way for mass-marketing of genetically modified foods and drugs. It's a stepping stone toward mandated harmful global Codex rules.

Codex Alimentarius - A Sinister Scheme for Profit at the Expense of Human Health

Empowering Ag and drug giants through CA poses an unacceptable danger to humanity as Dr. Rima Laibow, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, explains:

-- it will replace "safe upper (nutrient) limits with junk science;"

-- reduce them to useless levels; and

-- call essential-to-life and well-being nutrient levels toxic or poisonous.

Adequate nutrient levels are vital to "health and longevity. Nutrients are essential components of enzyme function in the human body and enzymes are the very stuff of life because they carry out every biological process in your body. Without enzymes, nothing would happen. Literally."

"There would be no digestion, no growth, no detoxification....no life. At any moment, approximately 35,000 enzymatic reactions are occurring in every cell in your body. Nutrients feed and support enzymatic action and that's why they are so crucial to health."

At optimum levels, they produce optimum health. At impaired levels, symptoms. At unhealthy levels, illness, and "No enzymatic action = death." Varying human nutrient needs depend on "genetic diversity and requirement, diet, climate and energy output, toxic load (from food, water, air, and skin absorption), underlying nutritional deficits, (and all types of) diseases and stress." In sum, it's called "Biological Individuality - a concept "totally absent from the philosophy of Codex Alimentarius."

According to Laibow, there is no "scientifically measurable 'upper limit' for nutrients" because their potential toxicity is "astonishingly low" even though at times "more is not necessarily better." DSHEA prohibits nutrient upper limits because they're foods, not drugs. "Scientifically, DSHEA is right on the mark." CA is pseudo-science for profit at the expense of human health. Legal challenges have five months left to stop them.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendman.stephen@sbcglobal.net.

Link to this article:

Antibiotic Resistance at Factory Farms "Scares the Hell Out of" Johns Hopkins Scientists

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

I don't like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they're scared out of their wits, or use exclamation marks.

I also get a little nervous when they say stuff like, "We're such a dumb species, we don't deserve to survive on this planet" because of the great lengths we're going to just to kill ourselves off.

Nevertheless, I was glued to this shocking piece called simply "Farmacology" in the most recent issue of John Hopkins Magazine on the devastatingeffects of low level, non-therapeutic antibiotics in industrial agriculture.

It turns out they're making more than just broilers and bacon on your local factory farm; they're growing germs that are resistant to antibiotics. And don't think your commitment to organics or vegetarianism will save you: Your exposure to these superbugs could depend on actions as innocuous as driving behind a truck bound for a Tyson slaughterhouse.

Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at theBloomberg School of Public Health, has been studying the phenomenon for years. She's no radical -- she doesn't even necessarily advocate organic meat production or ceasing the use of antibiotics on farm animals. She simply wants farmers to stop using antibacterial measures to boost profits.

Antibiotics are inserted into animal feed not only because they're necessary to ward of the diseases endemic in the cramped and unsanitary conditions of concentrated-animal feeding operations (CAFOs); such additives also make animals grow faster. Silbergeld explains:

"These are feed additives. It's like using antibiotics as hair dye." She adds, "We have this practice of permitting the addition of almost any antibiotic that you can think of to animal feed, for no therapeutic purpose, under conditions that absolutely favor the rise of resistance. We have no controls or management of the wastes. Our food safety system is a shambles. This is a situation that is widely recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and by others, and nothing happens! It's astounding to me!"

One of Silbergeld's studies looked at people in direct or tangential contact with factory farms:

41 percent of the chicken catchers had been colonized by Campylobacter jejuni, which is commensal in poultry -- it derives benefit from the chicken without harming it -- but pathogenic in people, where it's the second-leading cause of gastrointestinal disease in the United States. Among the workers at the poultry processing plant, the rate of colonization was 63 percent. Of the nine people who lived near but did not work in the industry, 100 percent had been colonized.

A different study done by Silbergeld entailed simply driving behind poultry trucks headed to slaughter. The insides of the passenger vehicles that followed the trucks, where none of these antibacterial-resistant bugs were found beforehand, were coated with such microbes afterwards.

Another study found flies transport microbes from the farms with similar expediency. Farm workers are perhaps the best vectors, bringing these superbugs home to their families and spreading them around their communities and in clinics when they come in with respiratory and neurological disorders linked to increased exposure on the farm. In fact, some studies cited in the Johns Hopkins article suggest that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA) -- the staph infection that caused near apocalyptic warnings across the nation in the last couple of years -- may come from the farm, not from the hospital as is widely believed.

Another Johns Hopkins researcher, Kellogg Schwab, says he's more than just concerned:

"This development of drug resistance scares the hell out of me. If we continue on and we lose the ability to fight these microorganisms, a robust, healthy individual has a chance of dying, where before we would be able to prevent that death." Schwab says that if he tried, he could not build a better incubator of resistant pathogens than a factory farm. He, Silbergeld, and others assert that the level of danger has yet to be widely acknowledged. Says Schwab, "It's not appreciated until it's your mother, or your son, or you trying to fight off an infection that will not go away because the last mechanism to fight it has been usurped by someone putting it into a pig or a chicken."

Let me just say that there's little more frightening than something that "scares the hell out of" a scientist studying our water supply and health, as Schwab does.

Another frightening element to this is the difference between what the conventional wisdom has been on the ability of microbes to mutate, versus the more shocking reality. Silbergeld says that the Darwinian idea of evolution "underestimates the brilliance of microbes":

Molecular biologists now understand that within a microbial community, one microbe can acquire genetic material from another microbe, even a microbe of a much different type, then incorporate it in its own genome and thus acquire resistance to an antibiotic it has not yet even encountered. It's as if bacteria are capable of downloading resistance from a gene database.

The article does get the views of the animal farming industry, which predictably shows little concern for the potential trouble caused by antibiotic use in animals, insisting that not using antibiotics would be more harmful in terms of disease than using it. They also insist, contrary to the scientific findings outlined in the article, that the medical industry bears the most responsibility for the overuse of antibiotics.

Because the federal government does not require reporting from either the drug industry or from the industrial agriculture complex on antibiotic use, the industries' argument of there not being enough data is a somewhat valid one.

As with many other so-called innovations in the agricultural industry, the health effects of antibiotic use on CAFOs are poorly understood, which makes me even more thankful for the work of scared scientists.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Read the full Farmacology article by Dale Keiger, associate editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine, online here.

Searching for the Depression and Finding It Economic Stress Is Hidden, But It’s There in a Recovery That Isn’t.

by Danny Schechter Global Research, August 21, 2009

Last week I was telling a visiting filmmaker from overseas about the financial crisis and how it was getting worse. He looked at me askance. The market had just gone up, he said, and the White House was talking about an emerging recovery.
“I have been in New York before, he said, and it looks the same.”
A lot of the pain is hidden, I told him, hidden behind the deceptive spin in our media or buried in the denial and delusions of many people on the streets who have not taken the trouble to try to understand the nature of the calamity they are living through.
On the elevator, we pass the offices of City Harvest, a charity that collects excess food from restaurants and distributes it to shelters and programs for the hungry. An employee explains that with the restaurant business way off, they have less to donate. What about the demand by the hungry, I ask? With a shrug, he tells me the need is way up. (AP is reporting, “The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.”)
Out in the street, you soon notice fewer cabs and town cars. More people are walking or using public transportation, even though, the fares recently went up. Even that is deceptive because there are still a lot of tourists in Midtown to complicate the picture. New Yorkers have other things on their minds. There are retail vacancies on every block. Other stores are discounting everything. The fast food places have their specials going for $2-5 dollars. Many of the clothing stories look like good will shops. When a JC Penny opened a store in Midtown, 15,000 people applied for 500 jobs.
As we walked downtown, we passed nearly empty bars and restaurants, a sign that the most customers are staying away. Media reports are now confirming what I saw. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Major retailers reported that American consumers are continuing to hunker down, casting a cloud over the durability of the U.S. recovery and underscoring the importance of overseas demand in restoring the world economy to health. Retailers across the spectrum provided foreboding reports.”
Down where I live, you also pass new buildings with empty stores and unsold apartments. The foreclosure crisis is already hitting New York’s condos and co-ops. You just can’t see it from the street the way you can in a suburban tract. When you read the auction noticies, you realize its real. A new wave of foreclosures is expected and not just in poor homes. The middle class and commercial real estate is affected.
Almost every block on 8th Avenue in Chelsea has a new bank branch. It’s like ATM heaven except most are not crowded. There was a report last week that banking industry opened 10,000 branches over the last five years. Most were based in shopping areas or concentrated in affluent neighborhoods. Only a small number are in poorer communities, especially those victimized by predatory subprime lending. The New York Times reported this week that 91,100 NY households hide their savings in closets, in pillows — even in brown paper lunch bags, just not at a bank
Meanwhile, every week, more banks are going bust and being taken over and sold by the FDIC. There are reports that the FDIC itself is insolvent.
And as for the markets, cooler heads prevailed when the wisemen realized that consumer demand has fallen up as defaults and delinquencies rise
Inequality is mounting in social and racial terms. Recent statistics cited in a Times study: "From the first quarter in 2008 to the first quarter in 2009, the national unemployment rates for blacks rose from 8.9 percent to 13.6 percent, compared to a rise for whites of 4.8 percent to 8.2 percent. In NYC, it was even worse: from 5.7 percent to 14.7 percent, compared to 3.0 percent to 3.7 percent for whites.”
Remember these statistics notoriously undercount those not looking for jobs that are not there. Unless you are following the trajectory of this crisis you might not know that economist Nouriel Roubini, who was among the first to predict it, sill sees it as far more serious that most of us realize:
“This is the worst US and global recession in 60 years. If the US recession were—as is most likely—to be over at the end of the year, it will have been three times as long and about fives times as deep—in terms of the cumulative decline in output—as the previous two.” Notice he is not quite predicting its end, using the “If” word to mask his own uncertainty. The Financial Times cautions against optimism taking refuge in the term “caution.”
Here in the Big Apple, The City’s top money man, Controller Bill Thompson says, “108,000 jobs evaporating citywide between August, 2008 and May, 2009. Typically, unemployment continues to climb even after the economy bottoms out and begins to recover. I expect the number of unemployed in New York City to reach 400,000 in 2010, for the first time in decades.”
Still invisible are the impact of cutbacks on city services and the educational system.
Income disparities are growing, according to a new study but how do I show that to my visitor since people with credit cards can still charge it even as credit limits are being cut back and interest rates rise. At the same time, A Bank of America Merrill study shows the Middle class is being hit hardest.
The LA Times reports, “The consumer debt problem in the economy really is a debt problem for the middle class. The need to work off a chunk of that debt will sap middle-class family spending power for perhaps years to come. By contrast, the upper 10% of income earners face a much smaller debt burden relative to income and net worth. Those people should have ample spending power to help fuel an economic recovery.”
And don’t think the end of the recession will bring back many of the jobs that are gone. Economists are now getting us used to a new term: “jobless recovery.”
Already employers are introducing compulsory furloughs, as the Christian Science Monitor reveals: “For millions of Americans, this might be the year of the furlough. Over the course of a month or so, workers – both white-collar and blue - may have to take several days off whether they want to or not. Call it a temporary pay cut - an action that is sold by management as a way to help save some jobs.”
Another new study finds, “Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing."
Its all amazing, all devastating to our lives and futures, and yet you can’t necessarily see it if you don’t look, or know what to look for. No one is talking about our economic pain—not the right or the left, perhaps because it is not an “event” that you can cover live at a town hall.
It’s there but, for many, it’s invisible and seen as a personal problem, not a social issue. This crisis didn’t just happen; it was caused. Will those responsible ever be held accountable? Out of sight is out of mind. The hope is that if we ignore it, it will go away.
If you think that, think again.

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