 George Will Written by George Will
WASHINGTON -- Let's be good cosmopolitans and offer sociological explanations rather than moral judgments about students, The Washington Post reports, having sex during the day in high schools. Sociology discerns connections, and there may be one between the fact that teenagers are relaxing from academic rigors by enjoying sex in the school auditorium, and the fact that Americans in public soon will be able to watch pornography, and prime-time television programs such as ``Desperate Housewives'' -- and, for the high-minded, C-SPAN -- on their cell phones and video iPods. The connection is this: Many people have no notion of propriety when in the presence of other people, because they are not actually in the presence of other people, even when they are in public. With everyone chatting on cell phones when not floating in iPod-land, ``this is an age of social autism, in which people just can't see the value of imagining their impact on others.'' We are entertaining ourselves into inanition. (There are Web sites for people with Internet addiction. Think about that.) And multiplying technologies of portable entertainments will enable ``limitless self-absorption,'' which will make people solipsistic, inconsiderate and anti-social. Hence manners are becoming unmannerly in this ``age of lazy moral relativism combined with aggressive social insolence." So says Lynne Truss in her latest trumpet-blast of a book, ``Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door." Her previous wail of despair was ``Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," which established her as -- depending on your sensibility -- a comma and apostrophe fascist (the liberal sensibility) or a plucky constable combating anarchy (the conservative sensibility). Good punctuation, she says, is analogous to good manners because it treats readers with respect. ``All the important rules," she writes, ``surely boil down to one: remember you are with other people; show some consideration." Manners, which have been called ``quotidian ethics," arise from real or -- this, too, is important in lubricating social frictions -- feigned empathy. ``People," says Truss, ``are happier when they have some idea of where they stand and what the rules are." But today's entitlement mentality, which is both a cause and a consequence of the welfare state, manifests itself in the attitude that it is all right to do whatever one has a right to do. Which is why acrimony has enveloped a coffee shop on Chicago's affluent North Side, where the proprietor posted a notice that children must ``behave and use their indoor voices." The proprietor, battling what he calls an ``epidemic" of anti-social behavior, told The New York Times that parents protesting his notice ``have a very strong sense of entitlement." A thoroughly modern parent, believing that children must be protected from feelings injurious to self-esteem, says: ``Johnny, the fact that you did something bad does not mean you are bad for doing it." We have, Truss thinks, ``created people who will not stand to be corrected in any way." Furthermore, it is a brave, or foolhardy, man who shows traditional manners toward women. In today's world of ``hair-trigger sensitivity," to open a door for a woman is to play what Truss calls Gallantry Russian Roulette: You risk a high-decibel lecture on gender politics. One writer on manners has argued that a nation's greatness is measured not only by obedience of laws but also by ``obedience to the unenforceable." But enforcement of manners can be necessary. The well-named David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, recently decreed a dress code for players. It is politeness to the league's customers who, weary of seeing players dressed in ``edgy" hip-hop ``street" or ``gangsta" styles, want to be able to distinguish the Bucks and Knicks from the Bloods and Crips. Stern also understands that players who wear ``in your face" clothes of a kind, and in a manner, that evokes Sing Sing more than Brooks Brothers might be more inclined to fight on the floor and to allow fights to migrate to the stands, as happened last year. Because manners are means of extending respect, especially to strangers, this question arises: Do manners and virtue go together? Truss thinks so, in spite of the possibility of ``blood-stained dictators who had exquisite table manners and never used their mobile phones in a crowded train compartment to order mass executions." Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related -- as a foundation is related to a house -- to the word civilization.
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 150,000 Illegal Criminals Running The Streets. The blessings of a global depression is that everyone is too poor in Los Angeles to kill anyone. Yet on the border of California and Mexico there are been 30,000 murders and beheadings. Isn't that cool. Read this out of the Los Angeles Times. See the benefit of open borders. Okay everyone, just go back to sleep! Los Angeles Murders Under 300 In 2010, Fewest Since 1967 For the first time in more than four decades, Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 300 killings. The Los Angeles Times says it is a milestone in a steady decline of homicides that has changed the quality of life in many neighborhoods and defied predictions that a bad economy would inexorably lead to higher crime. As of mid-afternoon yesterday, the police department had tallied 291 homicides in 2010. The city is likely to record the fewest number of killings since 1967, when its population was almost 30 percent smaller. Strikingly, homicides in the city have dropped by about one-third since 2007, the last full year before the economic downturn. The change, experts say, is not easily explained and is probably the result of several factors working together, including effective crime-fighting strategies, strict sentencing laws that have greatly increased the number of people in prison, demographic shifts. and sociological influences. A significant factor, said Columbia University law Prof. Jeffrey Fagan, is the absence of a drug epidemic. The three periods in U.S. history when homicides have spiked, he said, coincide with the emergence of heroin, powder cocaine and crack cocaine, each of which gave rise to “a chaotic, violent street drug culture.” That was the environment when the Rodney King verdict was announced on April 29, 1992. Riots erupted, and shortly after 9:00 p.m., the first 2,000 California Army National Guard (CA ARNG) soldiers were requested by the governor. The call was not expected because the CA ARNG had repeatedly been assured they would not be needed for any disturbances resulting from the Rodney King verdict. As a consequence of those assurances, considerable riot control equipment had been loaned to other agencies. In spite of the no-waming start, there were 2,000 Guardsmen marshaled in Southern California armories within six hours.
 Like the frog in the kettle, the most notorious criminal gang in the world is coming to a boil. Their games are over and paybacks reside just over the horizon.
The Elitist’s One World paradigm is wracking apart under internet exposure, astounding failures in climate change, cap and trade, profligate bond and currency printing disasters and shocking new public relations failures by pseudo authorities to explain away the obvious. These bad boyz have been caught red-handed and even Chopper Ben admitted so in recent televised hearings. A disconnect between these elitists and the common man seems a gulf too wide. Those that would control the world with stolen money, power and politics have finally met their match.At this juncture as they continue to flail away with old tools of fear, threats and illegal seizures, the herd on the ground has begun to fight back. We would suggest the cat’s out of the proverbial bag. The shaving crème is out of the can. Particularly in the USA, a new and nasty pushback has begun with a new internet army; and this is an army of revenge with many being armed to the teeth. The battle has begun slowly but the tide has definitely turned. The internet turned out to be a weapon more powerful than atomic bombs expanding into a massive, news monster shining very bright lights on these conspirators, their henchmen, their actions, and their other lackeys on the ground. How ironic the net was designed as a defense department security and safety device. In the end its original plan may prove to be exactly that-the savior of our American nation. Why was it reported Goldman Sachs employees are carrying guns for protection? Why was Mr. Bernanke having cold sweats and near collapse during his recently famous 60 minutes interview when he had the gall to tell us he wasn’t printing money? Why did former Treasury Secretary Paulson order preparation of written documents exculpating him from criminal prosecution before he approved TARP and handed out billions to his banker buddies who were busted and destroyed into insolvency by their derivative adventures? Once their confidence of power has broken-up around these Boyz, their very small but formerly powerful international army will run in fear. At this point, it’s early in their unexpected disaster. They are really quite ticked at the audacity of “The Little People” who dare to expose them and to fight back. How dare they? Here comes a nasty surprise, mister. And, the scary part is it might go way beyond a few visible bankers and politicians. It could go much deeper into the realm of associated hangers-on many of them innocents. If this gets out of hand, it’s going to be a take no prisoners and sort ‘em out later as in the old western movies. If you think I’m nuts just watch! I understand the American people. We’ve got some news; the common man will not only dare, but he is coming for the instigators. If I were in their shoes I would be very afraid. The world is a small place and the Bubba’s are not going to take it any more. With their hard-earned savings, pensions, jobs and homes being destroyed, some of the more radical loose cannons will get busy with revenge. We think violence is the wrong approach. Legal prosecution and humiliation in the courts is the correct method but we suspect the Bubbas are out of patience and want retribution right now; not in five years. We have some news for this Club of One Worlder’s and their nasty tools hidden in the U.N,, World Bank, IMF, Council on Foreign Relations, the Illuminati, and the northeastern USA university establishment that spawned so many of these types. Their others including a mercenary financial collection of bankers, investment bankers and other attached hangers-on are also in the guilty pile. History tells us when economic disasters of this magnitude visit the people, all hell is going to break loose, socially and morally with one big and very violent ending as in World War III. We’ve predicted this long ago, but now unfortunately, our prediction; our vision is coming true. The criminal cabal of banking elites have been in charge for hundreds of years. History tells us the typical life of a nation-state is 250 years. The United States is now 234 years old. Sadly, it seems the end of the road is in sight. This does not mean however, that it’s the end of the world or the conclusion of the grand and noble experiment of my free America. It just means that we are nearing a point where we need to a renew fight to retain what we had. Is this the time for Refreshing The Tree Of Liberty? All good logic would say this is the case. Obviously, its time to cleanse this world and flush the bowl. Thankfully we have the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights to guide us. I have confidence that while things will be very ugly for awhile, that the ending will be a good one and those espousing unbridled greed and naked power shall meet the fate of so many like those who came before them. First comes annoyance, then comes a small worry, then comes a new fear in the night that says yes, this could get out of control. Then comes the grand finale; the denouement, the indelicate erasure of the nasties. As we wrote in a recent essay about post World War I Germany and Austria, hundreds of bankers and politicians met their maker. Read “When Money Dies” by Adam Fergusson. This book tells the true story of life on the ground for the common man and woman in Europe during those tumultuous times. I say we just repeat this history. What Are Some Signals This Trend Has Begun? The bad boyz games are being exposed at a faster pace and the Sheeple are standing up to them using the net and other means. They are not going to take it any more-witness the Wiki-leaks thing. Failed wars in the Middle East have been largely exposed for the real meaning and reasons; to steal oil and hold a political presence. Further, the defense industry prospers making all the expensive stuff that gets blown-up and destroyed. Central banker games of QE2-3-4 or whatever are not working and the herd on the street has discovered where the money is really going- into insolvent banks, politicians pockets and for pay-offs to various voting supporters. Global warming has proven to be about as dangerous as a warm, steaming cow pile in a field. The real danger is the heat from those agitating tree-huggers, greenies and the let’s save the world from cows, horses and corporations gang. They are playing games to take taxpayer funds to fund and promote these stupid projects. Corn-ethanol is another one that should be deleted. The morons attending the Cancun, Mexico climate change conference all agreed the US and its partners should give them $100 Billion for defeating global warming in developing nations. These disturbed children are in obvious need of some serious therapy. Those dopes running the European Central Bank want German citizens to hand over hard -earned billions to their bankrupt neighbors who have been on vacation since the Spanish-American War. Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Finance Minister, whom we thought had his act together has now descended into the murk of those chortling, “The Euro Won’t Fail.” Of course it’s failing. It already has as the ECB buys crappy bonds of failing countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. Iceland raised the middle digit to the Euro-Bankers and we hope the Irish do also as Mr.Cowan, “The Coward” sold out his own people. So what would those bankers do if these financial victims-nations just refused to pay? Iceland found out. They are doing just fine thank you very much. It’s quite disagreeable and difficult for a banker cabal to sue a nation and get re-paid. It ain’t gonna happen. Too bad for the bankers. Another situation that cannot be thwarted in our view is the American gun and weapons population and those owning them. Most western-like nations in Europe and Canada along with a few others do not have the firepower of USA citizens. Instead of retreating, this group has been expanding as they fear the implementation of rules and regulations regarding gun ownership. Nobody knows for sure the number of guns in America. We sure don’t but having traveled a bit its obvious where the hunters and squirrel shooters reside. We would suggest that when things get terminally lousy and we are not there yet but working it, this is going to be a game changer. Should the One Worlder’s expect to take-over the USA by force using their UN army or foreign mercenaries, it would turn into Vietnam again with the good old boyz being the natives and the blue helmet crowd on the losing side of the fence. Reports we get say those sympathizers for the One Worlder’s reside mostly on the left and right coasts of America. Since they are about 20% of the national population it would seem they are out-numbered. In an interesting test of politics and perhaps some push and shove politics, who do you think wins that one? One very smart writer thinks the One Worlder’s might try to install a new global or international leader or Let’s-Pretend-King to rule the world. I think that one fails as his days on this earth would probably be cut short quite abruptly. Probably Bubba and his friends would just pay a vacation visit. Another early sign the bad boyz are under siege is the newer riots in Greece and some brand new ones in Rome. These are mostly kids who are very angry about losing all their free stuff which they feel they are entitled to as they pursue higher learning? at the university. These are not to rough and generally controllable with tear gas and clubs as the kids break windows and start fires. They usually end quickly until another one breaks out. I say it really gets nasty next summer when the very bad and poor sections of America’s largest cities start to riot over FOOD. People have to eat and while 43 million are on food stamp aid, the distribution is not moving fast enough to feed the needy. Also, while the new tax extension bill comes with another few week’s of unemployment aid payments taking some out to three years’ coverage, there are as yet too many more in critical condition receiving nothing. If you thought the Detroit race riots were interesting in 1967 and the Rodney King California riots later on, watch what happens next year. In Summary.Astute analysts and observers watching this stuff have agonized over the amount of unbelievable damage the bad boyz have done so far. While it seems they are unstoppable, they are not for the reasons we’ve just discussed. Further, we think the forthcoming bond market crash removes their power and money and the entire global system caves in on itself. Then watch as the patriots and freedom fighters world-wide begin to take power. This is going to be the most interesting movie ever produced. Now, more than ever, it is important to take the immediate necessary precautions to protect yourself and your families and friends. Traders and investors should be buying precious metals and select shares right now. In our newsletter we have a great list of trading and investing ideas for you. Meanwhile, you can never go wrong buying physical precious metals and holding them for security. We’ve had a constant run of nearly ten years in gold rising 15% per year so this remains a good trade. In the last twelve months, gold rallied over 34% and is going ever faster. It’s not going to stop any time soon. In fact, we predict those annual percentages will rise even more and this offers a chance, arriving only once in 25 years on the historical cycles Link to source: http://tiny.cc/sjaxj Wake up, the internet as we know it is about to end so get ready.
1) THERE ARE NO TESTS IN EXISTENCE THAT CAN PROVE MENTAL “DISORDERS” ARE MEDICAL CONDITIONS. PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS IS BASED SOLELY ON OPINION.
The psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year in order to convince the public, legislators and the press that psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc., are medical diseases on par with verifiable medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. This is simply a way to maintain their hold on a $84 billion dollar-a-year psychiatric drug industry that is based on marketing and not science. Unlike real medical disease, there are no scientific tests to verify the medical existence of any psychiatric disorder. Despite decades of trying to prove mental disorders are biological brain conditions, due to chemical imbalances or genetic factors, psychiatry has failed to prove even one of their hundreds of so-called mental disorders is due to a faulty or “chemically imbalanced” brain. To counter this obvious flaw in their push to medicalize behaviors, the psychiatric industry will claim that there are certain medical conditions that do not have a verifiable test so this is why there isn’t one for “mental illness.” This is frankly a lame argument; Whereas there may be rare medical conditions that do not have a verifiable medical test, there are virtually no psychiatric disorders that can be verified medically as a physical abnormality/disease. Not one. In fact the “brain scans” that have been pawned off as evidence that schizophrenia or depression are brain diseases, are simply bogus. Most have not been done on drug naive patients, meaning someone who has not been on psychiatric drugs such as antipsychotic drugs, documented to causebrain atrophy (shrinkage). Other brain scans have shown the brains of smaller children to show smaller brains in comparison to larger/older children and then claimed children with ADHD have smaller brains. None have been conclusively proven to verify mental disorders as abnormalities of the brain. The Difference Between a Medical Disease and a Psychiatric Disorder If there were such verifiable brain scans, or in fact any medical/scientific test that could show a physical/medical abnormality for any psychiatric disorder, the public would be getting such tests prior to being administered psychiatric drugs. This is fact: There are no genetic tests, no brain scans, blood tests, chemical imbalance tests or X-rays that can scientifically/medically prove that any psychiatric disorder is a medical condition. Period. Whereas real diseases are discovered in labs, psychiatric disorders are invented by committee and voted into existence. 2. YES, PEOPLE CAN GET DEPRESSED, SAD, ANXIOUS AND EVEN ACT PSYCHOTIC. THAT DOESN’T MAKE THEM MENTALLY “DISEASED” No one is saying that people don’t get depressed, sad, troubled, anxious, nervous or even sometimes act psychotic. The question then is simple—is this due to some mental “disease” that can be verified as one would verify cancer or a real medical condition? And the answer is No. For example, can soldiers returning from war experience extreme and often debilitating stress? Yes. It is something wrong with their brain? No. It’s the horrors of war. Can children become distracted and not pay attention? Since time immemorial, the answer is yes. But psychiatry has pathologized childhood behaviors into a “mental illness.” The same is true of mothers. Can a new mother become distraught after a joyous occasion such as the birth of a child? Yes. Is it a brain abnormality or mental disease? No. And is the most humane solution to put these people on drugs documented by international regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, worsening depression, heart attack, stroke, sudden death? Or for new or nursing mothers to risk birth defects or damage to their infants from being prescribed such powerful drugs? This is also true of people diagnosed “schizophrenic.” There is no medical test to verify someone has a brain abnormality or medical condition of schizophrenia. And while no one claims people can’t become psychotic, the fact remains there is no biological evidence to support schizophrenia as a brain disease or chemical abnormality. And consider this, if people do become psychotic, or irrational, is it in fact caused by some underlying medical (not psychiatric) problem? And why did a 15-year multiple follow up study find that there was a 40% recovery rate for those diagnosed schizophrenic who did not take antipsychotics, versus a 5% rate for those who did? What happened to their supposed “brain disease?” Did it simply vanish? Moreover, if they could recover from such a mental state, do they deserve the “stigma” of “schizophrenia” still being part of their permanent medical record? For life? Think about it. Imagine you were extremely overweight—obese. You lose all the weight so you are no longer obese. Yet your medical records continue to say that you are. And if schizophrenia is in fact a “disease” despite the fact there is no medical or biological evidence (note we did not say speculation, or theories, but evidence) then why is it that psychiatrist Loren Mosher, the former Chief of Schizophrenia Research for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) openly state that there is no biological condition of schizophrenia as a disease or brain malfunction? And why didn’t the mental health industry take advantage of his 2-year-outcome studies proving that those diagnosed schizophrenic could recover without the use of drugs? Is it because this proved that recovery was possible and thereby disproved the theory that something was wrong with their brain? Or was it the fact that they recovered without the use of drugs, thereby threatening a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry? Maybe this explains why Mosher was fired from his position at NIMH. 3. THE CAMPAIGN TO “STOP THE STIGMA OF MENTAL ILLNESS” IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY… BIG PHARMA With a seemingly altruistic agenda, the fact is the campaign to end the “stigma” of mental illness is one driven and funded by those who benefit from more and more people being labeled mentally ill—pharma, psychiatry and pharmaceutical front groups such as NAMIand CHADD to name but a few. For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill—the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (For an in-depth look at what else Pharma funds and how this funding not only helps set mental health policies but campaigns such as this, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies at the bottom of this post) The fact is that the “stigmatization ” is coming from those that benefit from people being labeled/stigmatized with mental disorders that have no medical/biological evidence. Case in point, if you are rebellious, you are “stigmatized” with the label “oppositional defiant disorder.” If your kid acts like a kid he is “stigmatized” with the label “ADHD.” If you are sad, unhappy (even temporarily) you are “stigmatized” with the label “depressive” or “bi-polar disorder.” If you are shy you are “stigmatized” with the label “social anxiety disorder.” Moreover, you or your child are now stigmatized for life as this label, which is based solely on opinion, is now part of your medical record, despite the fact there is no medical evidence to prove you are “mentally ill”. 4. PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS ARE BIG BUSINESS—AND THE PSYCHIATRIC/PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY IS MAKING A KILLING—$84 BILLION PER YEAR. The primary reason people take psychiatric drugs is because they’ve been taught to believe they have a medical condition called a psychiatric disorder, which then justifies taking drugs to treat it. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, but it is not science. Any drug changes behavior or mood, whether cocaine, alcohol, marijuana or heroin. This does not mean someone who acts or feels differently on cocaine does so because they had a cocaine imbalance which the cocaine then corrected. It means that drugs changes mood, emotion and behavior. But while the illicit use of drugs is universally frowned upon, and considered a bad way for people to deal with their problems, psychiatric drugs are made out to be “good” drugs, despite the fact many are more addictive than cocaine or heroin, and have side effects that rival such hardcore street drugs as LSD, heroin and crack cocaine. 5. WHERE TO GET THE FACTS ABOUT PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS Because the public has been so mislead by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry on the dangers of psychiatric drugs, CCHR has created a one-of-a-kind, easy to search psychiatric drugs side effects database, containing all international studies and drug regulatory warnings that have been issued on both classes of drugs (antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, stimulants, etc) and brand names such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Risperdal, Seroquel, Ritalin etc. These are provided by CCHR as a free public service to help people make educated decisions based on facts, not marketing campaigns 6. WHY SAFE, EFFECTIVE TREATMENTS TO MENTAL DIFFICULTIES ARE KEPT BURIED The larger problem is that the biological drug model (based on the bogus mental disorders are a disease marketing campaign) prevents governments from funding real medical solutions for people experiencing difficulty. And there are workable, non-harmful medical treatments that do not receive government funding because the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars on advertising and lobbying efforts, including hundreds of their pharma funded “patient’s rights” groups to counter any medical modality that does not support their biological drug model of mental disorders as a disease. Why? Billions of dollars in revenue for the psycho/pharma industry would be lost. This is an industry that time and again, has been proven to put profit above patients lives. See various non-drug solutions/alternatives here: http://www.cchrint.org/alternatives/ by Prof. John Kozy | Global Research
exerpted.. The law is a great crime, far greater than the activities it outlaws, and there's no way you can protect yourself from it. The establishment protects itself. The law does not protect people. It is merely an instrument of retribution. It can only be used, often ineffectively, to get back at the malefactor. It never un-dos the crime. Executing the murderer doesn't bring back the dead. Putting Ponzi schemers in jail doesn't get your money back. And holding BP responsible won't restore the Louisiana marshes, won't bring back the dead marine and other wildlife, and won't compensate the victims for their losses. Carefully watch what happens over the next twenty years as the government uses the law to shield BP, Transocean, and Halliburton while the claims of those affected by the spill disappear into the quicksand of the American legal system. Jim Kouri, citing FBI studies, writes that "some of the character traits exhibited by serial killers or criminals may be observed in many within the political arena.;" they share the traits of psychopaths who are not sensitive to altruistic appeals, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt over their crimes. They possess the personality traits of lying, narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. These are the people to whom we have entrusted our fate. Is it any wonder that America is failing at home and world-wide? Some may say that this is an extreme, audacious claim. I, too, was surprised when I read Kouri's piece. But anecdotal evidence to support it is easily cited. John McCain said "bomb, bomb, bomb" during the last presidential campaign in response to a question about Iran. No one in government has expressed the slightest qualms about the killing of tens of thousands of people in both Iraq and Afghanistan who had absolutely nothing to do with what happened on nine/eleven or the deliberate targeting of women and children by unmanned drones in Pakistan. What if anything distinguishes serial killers from these governmental officials? Only that they don't do the killing themselves but have others do it for them. But that's exactly what most of the godfathers of the cosa nostra did. read in full: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19536  James Blake Miller Los Angeles Times photo by Luis Sinco. (San Francisco) – Now it is official. Researchers have shown that uranium oxide, or DU, “travels the nerves from the nose to the brain,” in the words of a University of Chicago doc and researcher. A tiny amount (a milligram) of this radioactive poison quick marches up your smelling nerves right into your brain and keeps firing 1.2 Million bullets a day – forever. That’s a bunch. 850 Rounds a MinuteThe radioactive 850 rounds a minute automatic weapon is about as big as the period at the end of this sentence, never needs reloading and never jams. It’s a perfect killing machine for brain cells and other cells. The range is about 20 cells, after that there is what the famous British physicist Dr. Chris Busby calls the “bystander effect.” He discovered it, he gets to name it. These radioactive automatic weapons are so small they can float right through your clothes, evade your skin’s defenses and invade your body. Wherever the weapons alight inside, there is trouble as they never stop firing and there is no limit to their number. In a soldiers brain, trouble shows up in a noticeable way to others. As for the 20 cell radius ball within Range, think of these powerful Bullets each as a 100 car, 100 mph, or 160 kmh, fully loaded freight train obliterating a small dog tied to the railroad tracks. Right, for the 20 cells that are within range – in all directions, it ain’t pretty. To me, this means these 20 cell radius spheres in Soldiers and Vets brains turn to jelly or mush, weird diseases or cancers, or all of the above. No wonder VA Secretary and former General Eric Shinseki has noted the big increase in the VA’s contract Psychiatric services.  Olfactory Nerve to Brain, The Free Dictionary. This radioactive bullet explanation for Vets unusual behaviors holds water and makes perfect sense to me. The Vets are under attack internally. Actually inside their skulls and in their brains. Worse, there’s nothing they can do about it. The huge VA system is also helpless. There is no cure and no treatment. The VA knows it and is stonewalling. They fired the only doc who stood up to them on DU. Word travels fast among the cowed medical staffs. So, the Vets get slapped with some fake diagnosis and sent to the shrink or told there is nothing wrong with them. No way the spineless docs are going to call it like it is. They grab their 250K and slink home, comfortable every night. That ain’t no way to run an Army; but, it IS a way to run the world’s most lethal Armed Force right into the ground. Major Doug Rokke, Ph.D, Ret., former Director of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project, puts it succinctly “It [DU] is killing our own troops.” General Eric Shinseki, Head of VASince no less than Gen Shinseki has pointed out the huge increases in contract psychiatric services, let’s all take note of it and ask real loud “Why is this happening to Vets? They are not the enemy!” It’s way past time to take names and kick ass in DC. That means changing the President as s/he appoints the head of the DOD. Not so hard to do, really. It is simply what is required. No wonder DU in the brain drives Vets nuts. The suffering these Vets must go through is unimaginable. OK. Here’s the targeted science, make up your own minds. I did. Abstract http://tinyurl.com/ku3ctn Uranium travels nerves from nose to brain.Jul 31, 2009 Tournier, BB, S Frelon, E Tourlonias, L Agez, O Delissen, I Dublineau, F Paquet, and F Petitot. 2009. Role of the olfactory receptor neurons in the direct transport of inhaled uranium to the rat brain. Toxicology Letters doi:10.1016/j.toxlet.2009.05.022. Synopsis by Paul Eubig, DVM Radioactive uranium that is inhaled by soldiers on the battlefield and by workers in factories may bypass the brain’s protective barrier by following nerves from the nose directly to the brain. Nerves can act as a unique conduit, carrying inhaled uranium from the nose directly to the brain, finds a study with rats. Once in the brain, the uranium may affect task and decision-related types of thinking. This study provides yet another example of how some substances can use the olfactory system – bypassing the brain’s protective blood barrier – to go directly to the brain. Titanium nanoparticles and the metals manganese, nickel, and thallium have been shown to reach the brain using the same route. Military personnel and people who work in uranium processing plants are exposed to the weak radioactive element via wounds or by breathing. Exposure may affect brain function; cognitive skills are lowered in soldiers who carry uranium-laced shrapnel. Uranium has various industrial and military uses. A form of uranium called depleted uranium is very dense and is used in armor-piercing ammunition and military vehicle armor. Battlefield exposure can occur through wounds – such as with some US military personnel who were injured during the Gulf War. These exposures can be higher than with civilians who work with the element. A study of Gulf War veterans who have uranium shrapnel in their bodies showed that they perform more poorly on general brain cognitive tests of performance efficiency and accuracy. Uranium can also be inhaled. Soldiers in vehicles hit by uranium rounds and workers in uranium-processing facilities can breathe it in. The researchers – taking advantage of the fact that uranium can exist in different forms, or isotopes – used rats to compare how the element travels through the body if it is inhaled or injected into the blood. The animals breathed in one isotope at levels similar to those encountered on a battlefield where depleted uranium weapons are used. They were also injected with a different isotope. Researchers compared the levels of the two isotopes in different regions of the brain. The inhaled isotope accumulated at 2 to 3 times higher levels than the injected isotope in the olfactory (smell) paths from the nose to the brain and in the frontal cortex and hypothalamus of the brain. This is concerning because the front part of the brain controls executive function, which is the broad ability to gather information, make decisions and initiate action. The scientists then chemically damaged the olfactory nerves in the nose. The rats with the damaged nerves had three times less uranium in the olfactory system than the rats with intact olfactory nerves. These finding suggests that inhaled uranium can travel directly from the nose along the olfactory nerves to the front of the brain. The olfactory pathway, then, plays an important role in inhaled uranium reaching the brain. It is not known from this study if soldiers and civilian workers that breathe uranium could be at an even higher risk for cognitive effects or if inhaled uranium may affect brain function in similar ways as when it is carried through the blood. It is also unclear if these findings would hold true for the human brain since the rat brain is much more developed for smelling than the human brain. Assessing these possible risks and determining if people’s relatively underdeveloped sense of smell could protect the brain would require further studies of people exposed to uranium through inhalation. No 2. Abstracthttp://tinyurl.com/2ff6tcz Uranium presents numerous industrial and military uses and one of the most important risks of contamination is dust inhalation. In contrast to the other modes of contamination, the inhaled uranium has been proposed to enter the brain not only by the common route of all modes of exposure, the blood pathway, but also by a specific inhalation exposure route, the olfactory pathway. To test whether the inhaled uranium enter the brain directly from the nasal cavity, male Sprague–Dawley rats were exposed to both inhaled and intraperitoneally injected uranium using the 236U and 233U, respectively, as tracers. The results showed a specific frontal brain accumulation of the inhaled uranium which is not observed with the injected uranium. Furthermore, the inhaled uranium is higher than the injected uranium in the olfactory bulbs (OB) and tubercles, in the frontal cortex and in the hypothalamus. In contrast, the other cerebral areas (cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum and brain residue) did not show any preferential accumulation of inhaled or injected uranium. These results mean that inhaled uranium enters the brain via a direct transfer from the nasal turbinates to the OB in addition to the systemic pathway. The uranium transfer from the nasal turbinates to the OB is lower in animals showing a reduced level of olfactory receptor neurons (ORN) induced by an olfactory epithelium lesion prior to the uranium inhalation exposure. These results give prominence to a role of the ORN in the direct transfer of the uranium from the nasal cavity to the brain. http://tinyurl.com/2ff6tcz [End] The Notes are an integral part of the article. Include when distributing. CopyRight by Bob Nichols 2010. Feel free to distribute with attribution and Notes. Related Articles. “PTSD, infertility and other consequences of war,” April 27, 2010, Bob Nichols, VeteransToday dot com http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/04/27/ptsd-infertility-and-other-consequences-of-war/ Or,http://tinyurl.com/22w8qpy  Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner, a correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and a frequent contributor to various online publications. He reports on war, politics and the two nuclear weapons labs in the Bay Area. Nichols is writing a book based on 20 years of nuclear war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of an Army Ammunition Plant. You are encouraged to write Nichols at [email protected]
Please email us at: [email protected] with your thoughts, ideas suggestions, story tips and guest ideas. All good on this end as our show expands this week to New Zealand!
Wikileaks lawyer makes case for Assange innocence Despite his arrest, some people are asking if Julian Assange has broken the law in either his personal life or through his organisation making classified documents available to the world's media. "Information would not be on WikiLeaks if there had not been an illegal act undertaken," Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said, and the Government has asked the Australian Federal Police to see if Mr Assange has broken any laws. "He's not charged with anything," Mark Stephens, lawyer for Julian Assange, points out. "What he's done is no more illegal than every national newspaper and every broadcaster around the world every day," Mr Stephens asserts. The Swedish police "want him for questioning, he's not even wanted on a charge there," Mr Stephens adds. He goes on to describe Wikileaks as, "online journalism in the 21st century." However, another of Mr Assange's lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, reports she has heard from "several different US lawyers rumours that an indictment was on its way or had happened already, but we don't know." Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.  You wouldn’t think the cities had much in common. Iaşi, with a population of 320,000, lies in the Moldavian region of Romania. Mégrine is a town of 24,000 in northern Tunisia, on the Mediterranean Sea. Tartu, Estonia, with a population of 100,000, is the oldest city in the Baltic States; it is sometimes called “the Athens on the Emajõgi.” Shenyang, in northeastern China, is a major industrial center and transportation hub with a population of 7.2 million.
These places are not on anyone’s Top 10 list of travel destinations. But the advance scouts of the pharmaceutical industry have visited all of them, and scores of similar cities and towns, large and small, in far-flung corners of the planet. They have gone there to find people willing to undergo clinical trials for new drugs, and thereby help persuade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to declare the drugs safe and effective for Americans. It’s the next big step in globalization, and there’s good reason to wish that it weren’t. Once upon a time, the drugs Americans took to treat chronic diseases, clear up infections, improve their state of mind, and enhance their sexual vitality were tested primarily either in the United States (the vast majority of cases) or in Europe. No longer. As recently as 1990, according to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, a mere 271 trials were being conducted in foreign countries of drugs intended for American use. By 2008, the number had risen to 6,485—an increase of more than 2,000 percent. A database being compiled by the National Institutes of Health has identified 58,788 such trials in 173 countries outside the United States since 2000. In 2008 alone, according to the inspector general’s report, 80 percent of the applications submitted to the F.D.A. for new drugs contained data from foreign clinical trials. Increasingly, companies are doing 100 percent of their testing offshore. The inspector general found that the 20 largest U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies now conducted “one-third of their clinical trials exclusively at foreign sites.” All of this is taking place when more drugs than ever—some 2,900 different drugs for some 4,600 different conditions—are undergoing clinical testing and vying to come to market. Some medical researchers question whether the results of clinical trials conducted in certain other countries are relevant to Americans in the first place. They point out that people in impoverished parts of the world, for a variety of reasons, may metabolize drugs differently from the way Americans do. They note that the prevailing diseases in other countries, such as malaria and tuberculosis, can skew the outcome of clinical trials. But from the point of view of the drug companies, it’s easy to see why moving clinical trials overseas is so appealing. For one thing, it’s cheaper to run trials in places where the local population survives on only a few dollars a day. It’s also easier to recruit patients, who often believe they are being treated for a disease rather than, as may be the case, just getting a placebo as part of an experiment. And it’s easier to find what the industry calls “drug-naïve” patients: people who are not being treated for any disease and are not currently taking any drugs, and indeed may never have taken any—the sort of people who will almost certainly yield better test results. (For some subjects overseas, participation in a clinical trial may be their first significant exposure to a doctor.) Regulations in many foreign countries are also less stringent, if there are any regulations at all. The risk of litigation is negligible, in some places nonexistent. Ethical concerns are a figure of speech. Finally—a significant plus for the drug companies—the F.D.A. does so little monitoring that the companies can pretty much do and say what they want. Consent by Thumbprint Many of today’s trials still take place in developed countries, such as Britain, Italy, and Japan. But thousands are taking place in countries with large concentrations of poor, often illiterate people, who in some cases sign consent forms with a thumbprint, or scratch an “X.” Bangladesh has been home to 76 clinical trials. There have been clinical trials in Malawi (61), the Russian Federation (1,513), Romania (876), Thailand (786), Ukraine (589), Kazakhstan (15), Peru (494), Iran (292), Turkey (716), and Uganda (132). Throw a dart at a world map and you are unlikely to hit a spot that has escaped the attention of those who scout out locations for the pharmaceutical industry. The two destinations that one day will eclipse all the others, including Europe and the United States, are China (with 1,861 trials) and India (with 1,457). A few years ago, India was home to more American drug trials than China was, thanks in part to its large English-speaking population. But that has changed. English is now mandatory in China’s elementary schools, and, owing to its population edge, China now has more people who speak English than India does. While Americans may be unfamiliar with the names of foreign cities where clinical trials have been conducted, many of the drugs being tested are staples of their medicine cabinets. One example is Celebrex, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that has been aggressively promoted in television commercials for a decade. Its manufacturer, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, has spent more than a billion dollars promoting its use as a pain remedy for arthritis and other conditions, including menstrual cramps. The National Institutes of Health maintains a record of most—but by no means all—drug trials inside and outside the United States. The database counts 290 studies involving Celebrex. Companies are not required to report—and do not report—all studies conducted overseas. According to the database, of the 290 trials for Celebrex, 183 took place in the United States, meaning, one would assume, that 107 took place in other countries. But an informal, country-by-country accounting by VANITY FAIR turned up no fewer than 207 Celebrex trials in at least 36 other countries. They ranged from 1 each in Estonia, Croatia, and Lithuania to 6 each in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Russia, to 8 in Mexico, 9 in China, and 10 in Brazil. But even these numbers understate the extent of the foreign trials. For example, the database lists five Celebrex trials in Ukraine, but just “one” of those trials involved studies in 11 different Ukrainian cities. The Celebrex story does not have a happy ending. First, it was disclosed that patients taking the drug were more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes than those who took older and cheaper painkillers. Then it was alleged that Pfizer had suppressed a study calling attention to these very problems. (The company denied that the study was undisclosed and insisted that it “acted responsibly in sharing this information in a timely manner with the F.D.A.”) Soon afterward the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicinereported an array of additional negative findings. Meanwhile, Pfizer was promoting Celebrex for use with Alzheimer’s patients, holding out the possibility that the drug would slow the progression of dementia. It didn’t. Sales of Celebrex reached $3.3 billion in 2004, and then began to quickly drop. “Rescue Countries” One big factor in the shift of clinical trials to foreign countries is a loophole in F.D.A. regulations: if studies in the United States suggest that a drug has no benefit, trials from abroad can often be used in their stead to secure F.D.A. approval. There’s even a term for countries that have shown themselves to be especially amenable when drug companies need positive data fast: they’re called “rescue countries.” Rescue countries came to the aid of Ketek, the first of a new generation of widely heralded antibiotics to treat respiratory-tract infections. Ketek was developed in the 1990s by Aventis Pharmaceuticals, now Sanofi-Aventis. In 2004—on April Fools’ Day, as it happens—the F.D.A. certified Ketek as safe and effective. The F.D.A.’s decision was based heavily on the results of studies in Hungary, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. The approval came less than one month after a researcher in the United States was sentenced to 57 months in prison for falsifying her own Ketek data. Dr. Anne Kirkman-Campbell, of Gadsden, Alabama, seemingly never met a person she couldn’t sign up to participate in a drug trial. She enrolled more than 400 volunteers, about 1 percent of the town’s adult population, including her entire office staff. In return, she collected $400 a head from Sanofi-Aventis. It later came to light that the data from at least 91 percent of her patients was falsified. (Kirkman-Campbell was not the only troublesome Aventis researcher. Another physician, in charge of the third-largest Ketek trial site, was addicted to cocaine. The same month his data was submitted to the F.D.A. he was arrested while holding his wife hostage at gunpoint.) Nonetheless, on the basis of overseas trials, Ketek won approval. As the months ticked by, and the number of people taking the drug climbed steadily, the F.D.A. began to get reports of adverse reactions, including serious liver damage that sometimes led to death. The F.D.A.’s leadership remained steadfast in its support of the drug, but criticism by the agency’s own researchers eventually leaked out (a very rare occurrence in this close-knit, buttoned-up world). The critics were especially concerned about an ongoing trial in which 4,000 infants and children, some as young as six months, were recruited in more than a dozen countries for an experiment to assess Ketek’s effectiveness in treating ear infections and tonsillitis. The trial had been sanctioned over the objections of the F.D.A.’s own reviewers. One of them argued that the trial never should have been allowed to take place—that it was “inappropriate and unethical because it exposed children to harm without evidence of benefits.” In 2006, after inquiries from Congress, the F.D.A. asked Sanofi-Aventis to halt the trial. Less than a year later, one day before the start of a congressional hearing on the F.D.A.’s approval of the drug, the agency suddenly slapped a so-called black-box warning on the label of Ketek, restricting its use. (A black-box warning is the most serious step the F.D.A. can take short of removing a drug from the market.) By then the F.D.A. had received 93 reports of severe adverse reactions to Ketek, resulting in 12 deaths. During the congressional hearings, lawmakers heard from former F.D.A. scientists who had criticized their agency’s oversight of the Ketek trials and the drug-approval process. One was Dr. David Ross, who had been the F.D.A.’s chief reviewer of new drugs for 10 years, and was now the national director of clinical public-health programs for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. When he explained his objections, he offered a litany of reasons that could be applied to any number of other drugs: “Because F.D.A. broke its own rules and allowed Ketek on the market. Because dozens of patients have died or suffered needlessly. Because F.D.A. allowed Ketek’s maker to experiment with it on children over reviewers’ protests. Because F.D.A. ignored warnings about fraud. And because F.D.A. used data it knew were false to reassure the public about Ketek’s safety.”  For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary Contact: 202-282-8010 Washington, D.C. - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the expansion of the Department's national "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign to hundreds of Walmart stores across the country - launching a new partnership between DHS and Walmart to help the American public play an active role in ensuring the safety and security of our nation. "Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe," said Secretary Napolitano. "I applaud Walmart for joining the ‘If You See Something, Say Something' campaign. This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities." The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign—originally implemented by New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and funded, in part, by $13 million from DHS' Transit Security Grant Program—is a simple and effective program to engage the public and key frontline employees to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities. More than 230 Walmart stores nationwide launched the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign today, with a total of 588 Walmart stores in 27 states joining in the coming weeks. A short video message will play at select checkout locations to remind shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity. Over the past five months, DHS has worked with its federal, state, local and private sector partners, as well as the Department of Justice, to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign and Nationwide SAR Initiative to communities throughout the country—including the recent state-wide expansions of the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign across Minnesota and New Jersey. Partners include the Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country. In the coming months, the Department will continue to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign nationally with public education materials and outreach tools designed to help America's businesses, communities and citizens remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe. |
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