NW0.eu – Page 79

The ‘False’ Pandemic: Drug Firms Cashed in on Scare Over Swine Flu, Claims Euro Health Chief

‘The swine flu outbreak
was a ‘false pandemic’ driven by drug companies that stood to make
billions of pounds from a worldwide scare, a leading health expert has
claimed.

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of
health at the Council of Europe, accused the makers of flu drugs and
vaccines of influencing the World Health Organisation’s decision to
declare a pandemic.

This led to the
pharmaceutical firms ensuring ‘enormous gains’, while countries,
including the UK, ’squandered’ their meagre health budgets, with
millions being vaccinated against a relatively mild disease.

The Mushroom Effect

‘One could be forgiven for thinking that
the neoconservatives who nudge us towards war with Iran are under the
effect of the magic mushroom. Obsessed with Iran, their trips take on
the shape of a ‘mushroom cloud’. Christopher Hitchens is one such
example. Writing for The Australian, one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers,
Hitchens’ Mullahs indubitably fancy a mushroom betrays a sly mind that
lacks lucidity.’

Israeli Firm Blasted for Letting Would-be Plane Bomber Slip Through

‘The Israeli firm ICTS International
(not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company),
and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international
investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons
for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to
board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden
in his underwear.’

ICTS is the Israeli company that handled
security at all the 9-11 airports and at the Paris Airport where
shoe-bomber Richard Reid boarded a plane to the US.

Food Costs to Soar as Big Freeze Deepens

‘Britons have been warned to brace
themselves for an increase in food prices as plunging temperatures
leave farmers unable to harvest vegetables and hauliers struggle to
distribute fresh produce.

Gordon Brown, who will chair a meeting
of the Cobra emergency committee early this week to discuss the freeze,
was today forced to reassure the country that it would not run out of
gas or grit for its roads during the coldest weather in 30 years.’

Military Base in Curaçao: The Third Frontier of the United States

‘Just days earlier,
Venezuela’s Vice-President Ramón Carrizalez had publicly
denounced the intromission of a US military plane also originating from
the air base in Curaçao during 2009. The governments of
Washington and Holland denied the violation, yet Carrizalez revealed an
audio recording between the Venezuelan airport control tower and the US
pilot while inside Venezuelan airspace.

The pilot stated clearly
that he was flying a US Navy military plane stationed at the base in
Curaçao. He claimed ignorance as to the violation of Venezuelan
territory, stating he was “unaware” he had entered an
authorized zone. But the US military plane hadn’t just merely
crossed a border that some might argue is difficult to visualize,
rather the pilot had flown over a strategic Venezuelan military base on
La Orchila, a small island off Venezuela’s northern coast,
clearly well inside Venezuelan territory. This was not an isolated
incident.’

Israeli Strike Kills Three in Central Gaza

‘At least three Palestinians were killed
by Israeli aircraft fire in central Gaza early Sunday evening, medics
reported. They were identified as Hasan 22-year-old Al-Qatarawi and
29-year-old Awad Nasir, 29, both from from Deir Al-Balah, as well as
Hudayfa Hams, 23, from Nusseirat refugee camp. All three were
transferred to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza City, according to Muawiya
Hassanein, the Gaza Health Ministry’s director of ambulance and
emergency services… Also on Sunday, two Palestinians were shot dead
by Israeli artillery in northern Gaza, Hassanein reported…’

UK Troops ‘Tortured and Murdered’ Iraqi Grandmother

‘Allegations that a 62-year-old Iraqi
grandmother was tortured and executed by British soldiers after her
family home was raided three years ago are being investigated by the
Royal Military Police. The Army’s
involvement in the death and abuse of Sabiha Khudur Talib is one of the
most serious charges to be made against Britain during its six-year
occupation of southern Iraq.

UK government ministers are to be given
previously unseen police reports from a Basra crime unit which conclude
that Mrs Talib’s body was dumped on a roadside in a British body bag in
November 2006. There was a bullet hole in her abdomen and her face had injuries consistent with torture, police reported.’

Cancer Risks Debated for Type of X-Ray Scan

MATTHEW L. WALD
NY Times
Saturday, January 9th, 2010

The plan for broad use of X-ray body scanners to detect
bombs or weapons under airline passengers’ clothes has rekindled
a debate about the safety of delivering small doses of radiation to
millions of people — a process some experts say is certain to
result in a few additional cancer deaths.

The scanning machines, called “backscatter
scanners,” deliver a dose of ionizing radiation equivalent to 1
percent or less of the radiation in a dental X-ray. The amount is so
small that the risk to an individual is negligible, according to
radiation experts. But collectively, the radiation doses from the
scanners incrementally increase the risk of fatal cancers among the
thousands or millions of travelers who will be exposed, some radiation
experts believe.

Full-body scanners that are already in place in some airports around
the country and abroad use a different type of imaging technology,
called millimeter wave, that uses less powerful, non-ionizing radiation
that does not pose the same risk.

But those machines also produce images that are less clear. And in
the wake of the attempted bombing of an airplane traveling to Detroit
from Amsterdam on Dec. 25, the United States is turning to backscatter
scanners for routine security checks. Congress has appropriated funds
for 450 scanners to be placed in American airports. On Thursday,
President Obama called for greater use of “imaging
technology” to spot weapons and explosives.

Full article here

Was Maurice Vellacott right about abortion?

Gloria Galloway
Globe And Mail
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott issued a release this week to say
he had been vindicated by the National Cancer Institute for making the
controversial claim that there is a link between induced abortion and
breast cancer.

And Mr. Vellacott may be right.

Three years ago, the Saskatchewan MP helped to bring an American
doctor and activist to Parliament Hill to tell Canadian women that
abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. It turned out that the
doctor, Angela Lanfranchi, was speaking from a defined religious point
of view that had little apparent basis in science.

And, at the time, the link between the procedure and the disease had
been discounted by the National Cancer Institute in the United States,
the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (and their
U.S. counterparts), as well as the Canadian Cancer Society and the
Canadian Breast Cancer Network.

But a study released last fall (available here but only for a fee)
by the respected Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle
by a number of distinguished cancer experts including Louise Brinton,
the chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch of the
National Cancer Institute lists induced abortion as being
“associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.”
Background documents further suggest that it increases the risk of the
disease by 40 per cent.

Full article here

Airline Group Protests Airport Body Scanners, Australian Says

Nichola Saminather
Bloomberg
Saturday, January 9th, 2010

The Asia-Pacific airline industry group is protesting the
introduction of full-body scanners at airports, saying it treats all
passengers as potential terrorists, the Australian newspaper reported.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines said there is insufficient
evidence about the effectiveness of the scanners and automatic
explosive detection systems to justify their use, the newspaper said.

US preparing military for possible Iran conflict

HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Jerusalem Post
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

The US does not want to see confrontation with Iran but
is still preparing its military for that possibility, America’s
top uniformed officer said Thursday.

“We’ve looked to do all we can to ensure
that conflict doesn’t break out there, while at the same time
preparing forces, as we do for many contingencies that we understand
might occur,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said during an appearance at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy.

Mullen had been asked whether the US military was stretched too thin
to take further action in trouble spots beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’re very hard-pressed right now” because of the
two wars, he noted, but added that it is primarily ground troops that
have been deployed, and “the likelihood that our ground forces
would have to go somewhere in these kinds of numbers in some other part
of the world, or even in the same region, I think is pretty low.”

Full article here

Secretive food firms risk public backlash, Lords warn

Mark Henderson
London Times
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

The secretive attitude of food companies towards nanotechnology
research risks starting a consumer backlash against products that could
improve health and reduce waste, a parliamentary inquiry has found.

Nanomaterials that are 800 times finer than a human hair have the
potential to deliver foods that are very low in fat and salt and
packaging that changes colour when food is spoiled because of the
strange properties of molecules at such a small scale. Their
development, however, has also raised safety concerns because their
effects on humans are poorly understood.

These fears have inspired a culture of secrecy about nanotechnology
in the food industry because it is worried about a repeat of the GM
crop safety scare, according to a report from the House of Lords
Science and Technology Committee. This lack of transparency could
encourage exactly the sort of mistrust that companies hope to avoid.

The committee also found significant gaps in scientific
understanding of the toxicology of nanomaterials, which need to be
addressed urgently with new research so that they can be regulated
effectively.

Full article here

Taser’s new weapon: mobile phone monitoring

AFP
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Stun gun maker Taser wants to help parents, not with jolts of
electricity but with a tool which allows parents to effectively take
over a child’s mobile phone and manage its use.

“Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and
bringing it into the mobile world,” Taser chairman and co-founder
Tom Smith said at the Consumer Electronics Show here, where the Arizona
company unveiled the new product.

“Because when you give your child his mobile phone you
don’t know who they’re talking to, what they’re
sending or texting, all of those things,” Smith told AFP.

The phone application, called “Mobile Protector,” allows
a parent to screen a child’s incoming and outgoing calls and
messages, block particular numbers and even listen in on a conversation.

Full article here

Privacy activists score victories against more detailed body scanners at airports

John C. Hayes
Chicago Tribune
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

WASHINGTON — – The government has promised
more and better security at airports after the near-disaster Christmas
Day, but privacy advocates are not prepared to accept the use of
full-body scanners as the routine screening system at the
nation’s airports.

“We don’t need to look at naked 8-year-olds and
grandmothers to secure airplanes,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah,
said Friday. “Are we really going to subject 2 million people per
day to that? I think it’s a false argument to say we have to give
up all of our personal privacy in order to have security.”

The balance between privacy and security tilts after each major
terrorism incident in favor of greater security. But in the past
decade, privacy advocates have been successful in blocking or stalling
government plans for more searches.

A conservative freshman in the House, Chaffetz won a large,
bipartisan majority last year for an amendment to oppose the
government’s use of body-image scanners as the primary screening
system for air travelers. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties
Union, which said the scanners are the equivalent of a “virtual
strip search.”

The pro-privacy stand does not follow the traditional ideological
lines; Republicans and Democrats have united on the issue now and in
the past.

Full article here

Whole-body airport scanners are basically safe—or are they?

John C. Hayes
Diagnostic Imaging
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Since the attempted explosion of an airliner as it was
landing in Detroit on Christmas Day by an alleged terrorist from
Nigeria, global air safety experts have been scrambling to enact new
safety measures. A quick answer has come in the form of whole-body
scanners that use low-level radiation to allow screeners to see through
clothing to identify hidden weapons or explosives.

These things have been around for a while, but, outside of a few
pilot locations, haven’t really gained much attention until now.
Given the circumstances of the Detroit incident, we shouldn’t be
surprised that airports all over the world are rushing these systems
into use.

Most of the press has been concerned with privacy issues—the
systems essentially strip passengers naked—and focused far less
on health safety matters. Still, the safety issue is starting to engage
the public. Recent news reports have suggested the new scanners are
basically safe. But a more nuanced look at the question suggests the
answers are not yet all that clear.

There are two technologies in use in the U.S.: Backscatter
technology uses x-rays delivering less than 10 microrem of radiation
per scan, equivalent to the radiation one receives inside an aircraft
flying for two minutes at 30,000 feet, according to the American College of Radiology.
Another approach relies on millimeter-wave technology, which uses radio
waves in the millimeter-wave spectrum. Two rotating antennae cover the
passenger from head to toe with low-level radiofrequency energy.

The ACR said it was not aware that either of the scanning
technologies that the Transportation Security Agency is considering
would present a significant biological threat for passengers screened.
Indeed, ACR chair Dr. James Thrall was quoted on ABC news as saying,
“the individual x-rays themselves are very low energy. And unlike
the x-ray spectrum that we use in medicine, the backscatter x-rays
don’t really penetrate to the organs in the body.” Click here for the article.

Full article here

Geithner’s Fed told AIG to hide “backdoor bailout”

Michael Hampton
Homeland Stupidity
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, during its $180 billion
bailout of American International Group, Inc., instructed AIG to omit
details of its purchase of certain toxic assets from a December 24,
2008, Securities and Exchange Commission filing, according to e-mails between the company and the Fed released Thursday.

Using bailout money provided by the Fed, AIG paid a number of banks
100 percent of the face value of credit-default swaps, contracts tied
to subprime home loans, at a time when other institutions were
negotiating deep discounts for the paper. The names of the banks were
also omitted from the SEC filing.

The information was finally disclosed in March 2009 after the SEC
challenged AIG’s filing, prompting lawmakers and analysts to call
the transactions a “backdoor bailout” of the banks. Topping
the list of banks which benefited from the backdoor bailout of their toxic paper were Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale SA.

AIG New York

The e-mails, released Thursday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.),
ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
show the Fed wanted a number of other details about the AIG bailout
withheld or their disclosures delayed.

The coverage from Bloomberg News has all the gory details,
including a non-denial denial that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,
who was then chairman of the New York Fed, had anything to do with the
cover-up.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has called the disclosure “troubling” and plans to hold hearings on the issue, though he publicly maintains full confidence in Geithner.

“The new details revealed today regarding AIG’s bailout
in 2008 come as no surprise to those of us who believe that the
American people deserve full transparency from the Federal
Reserve,” Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said in a statement. “My strong suspicion is that secret arrangements between cronies like this are not an anomaly, but the norm.”

The Fed, as you’ll recall, fought disclosure of the information, claiming that it would erode market confidence. No such thing happened, of course.

If dollar investors aren’t already spooked enough to run like
hell, it’s hard to see what would convince them that the dollar
isn’t nearly as safe as they seem to think.

“The status quo has made it entirely too easy and too tempting
to behave recklessly with public funds in total secrecy,” Paul
said. “The system needs radical change,
but we should start with honesty, transparency and accountability to
the American people about how their money is being handled.”

Update: TheNew York Times reported Friday that the Treasury department explicitly denied Geithner had anything to do with it. TheTimes quoted
Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly as saying Geithner “played no
role in these decisions and indeed, by Nov. 24, he was recused from
working on issues involving specific companies, including A.I.G.”

Ron Paul: End The Fed

Forbes
Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul wants to see if the valuations of the Federal Reserve’s transactions were fair.

Steve Forbes: What precisely will your bill on auditing the Fed do and not do? Let’s just clear that up.

Paul: As a matter of fact, it’s a pretty weak bill when you think about it.

Forbes: It seems pretty mild.

Paul: But from their viewpoint it is horrendous because we know what
they’ve been doing. You know? And they don’t want us to
know what they’ve been doing. The big argument has always been
they don’t want transparency because they’ll lose their
independence. And independence means secrecy. If they lose their
secrecy then the people and the Congress won’t know what
they’ve been doing. Who gets bailed out at what price? … I
put an explicit statement in there that we have no intention of
monitoring monetary policy even though I have different views. But, you
know, when you think of it, Bernie Sanders was a cosponsor in the
Senate. He and I don’t see eye to eye on the market. But we see
eye to eye on transparency. So we wouldn’t agree on monetary
policy, but we agreed on this bill. But in order to clarify that
Bernanke would say, “Well what we don’t need is Congress
coming in the day after we have a FOMC meeting and finding out who said
what and why because everybody would be hesitant.” And one of the
arguments is, “If Congress had anything to do with this,
they’d keep interest rates too low too long.”

Full article and video here

Venezuelan F-16 Fighter Jets ‘Intercept US Warplane’

‘Venezuela has scrambled two F-16
fighter jets to ward off a US ‘military plane’ amid reports of
“US trespassing the country’s airspace.” President
Hugo Chavez has ordered the fighters to confront a US P-3 maritime
patrol aircraft that had purportedly violated Venezuela’s airspace,
Reuters quoted the Venezuelan president as saying on Friday.

“They are provoking us … these are
warplanes,” Chavez noted, showing a picture of the plane, which he
said, had taken off from US military bases on the Netherlands’
Caribbean islands and from neighboring Colombia on two separate
occasions.’

Mossad Tied to ‘Underwear Bomber’

‘“His explosives
couldn’t have blown up his own seat. Even if full power, it
wouldn’t have worked.” These were the words relayed to me
during a Jan. 2 interview with military analyst and counterinsurgency
specialist Gordon Duff in regard to the attempt of Christmas Day
underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab [sometimes referred to as
Abdulmutallab] to ignite 80 grams of the explosive PETN on a flight
destined for America. He also explained how the patsy’s country
of origin, Nigeria, is clandestinely controlled by the Israeli army and
Mossad.

These entities train the
military, sell weapons, run the airports, and wield power over DICON
(Defense Industries Corporation). Furthermore, Mutallab’s father
is a Mossad partner and Israel’s No. 1 contact in Nigeria. As the
former CEO of his country’s most influential bank and the man who
ran their national arms industry, Mr. Mutallab also harbors extremely
close relationships with the U.S. ambassador and CIA chief in Nigeria.’

We’re All Icelanders Now

‘If voters in the US or the UK had been
given a vote on whether their governments should inject trillions of
dollars into their banks (in the form of loans, guarantees and
investments), it is pretty likely that those referenda would have been
lost.

Most opinion polls indicated that citizens were furious with their
banks – and were not persuaded that letting them fail would wreak the
kind of economic havoc that would impoverish all of us. So most
economists, central bankers and finance ministers would probably say
that we should be grateful that in America and Britain the people
aren’t quite as sovereign (if that makes sense) as in Iceland.’

Author: NW0.eu

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