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| Monday, December 21, 11:01:40pm | [ VoyUser Login optional ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ] |
| Subject: Missouri mayb ban local regulation of some crops | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 20, 01:10:35pm By CHRIS BLANK The Associated Press Friday, March 17, 2006; 1:58 AM JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- An ordinance from a Northern California county has some Missouri lawmakers worried that local regulation of genetically modified crops could hamper agriculture's future in the state. Voters in Mendocino County, Calif., approved a first-in-the-nation measure to prohibit genetically modified plants and animals in March 2004. Since then, 14 states have barred local regulation of the types of seeds farmers can use, and another five _ including Missouri _ are considering bans. The Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would give the state responsibility for the "registration, labeling, sale, storage and planting of seeds." It would also bar local governments and the state from adopting regulations that exceed federal requirements. A similar bill is pending in a House committee. With half of the states bordering Missouri adopting or considering bans on local regulations, state Sen. David Klindt said Missouri risks falling behind its neighbors in the race to attract agricultural industries and research if local governments enact more restrictive regulations. "We need to continue to send a very clear message that Missouri is very open to biotechnology, because not only will farmers have the ability to produce food, but we will be able to heal people," said Klindt, a farmer who sponsored the bill. After first trying unsuccessfully to grow genetically modified crops in southeast Missouri, a Sacramento, Calif.-based biotechnology company announced it was relocating to Klindt's district in northwest Missouri. Ventria Bioscience planned to cultivate rice containing human genes that would produce proteins used in drugs. But delays in state financing prompted the company to drop its plans. State Sen. Rob Mayer said biotechnology has a promising future, but not when it comes to Missouri's rice. Mayer, a Republican who opposes the bill, said banning all local regulation increases the chances that genetically engineered rice could cross-pollinate with other food crops. He said it could also leave rice farmers unable to sell their product. Some brewers, baby food makers and cereal companies have refused to buy rice that has been genetically altered. Nick Kalaitzandonakes, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said it costs between $7 million and $15 million for researchers to meet federal biotechnology regulations. "Would you let every municipality decide how much fluoride they want to put in the water? Would you let them decide independently whether they drive on the left side or the right side of the road?" Kalaitzandonakes asked. "There are some things that in the absence of a homogenous standard become too expensive to function." Some environmentalists and at least one consumer group argue that federal regulations are consistent because they're almost nonexistent. Rhonda Perry, program director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center in Columbia, said there aren't localized efforts in the state to regulate biologically engineered seeds, so the bill would needlessly trump local control. "We, as local citizens, will be giving up all our rights," she said. |
| Subject: Nepalese Buddha Boy reappears | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 20, 01:01:38pm  A missing Nepalese teenager popularly known as "Buddha Boy" reappeared briefly on Sunday, his followers say. The committee managing the meditation site of Ram Bomjan, 16, released video of its members purportedly meeting the boy near his village in southern Nepal. The boy's meditation and apparent 10-month fast attracted global attention before he vanished in March. Large numbers of devotees flocked to see him to leave offerings. A massive search operation is still under way. 'Not to worry' The chairman of the Om Namo Buddha Tapaswi Sewa Samiti (ONBTSS), Bed Bahadur Lama, told reporters that he and his colleagues had met Bomjan about 3km (2 miles) south-west of his meditation site in Bara district on Sunday. He said Bomjan had spoken to them for half an hour. "He said he would reappear after six years. He has asked monks to perform prayers in the meditation spot," Mr Lama told reporters. "I left because there is no peace here... Tell my parents not to worry," Mr Lama quoted Bomjan as saying. The alleged meeting is the first news of the boy's possible whereabouts since he disappeared on 11 March. District authorities say they cannot confirm the sighting. Bomjan's followers and security personnel have launched a massive search operation in Ratnapuri forest and surrounding areas but have so far failed to locate him. Bomjan's followers claim he was an incarnation of Lord Buddha who was born in Nepal more than 2,500 years ago. His followers say he has been meditating for 10 months without food or water and is immune to fire and snake bites. But these claims have not been independently verified. Scientists were unable to examine the boy as his followers said it would disturb his meditation. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4824530.stm Published: 2006/03/20 11:15:56 GMT © BBC MMVI |
| Subject: An article you should read | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 20, 08:15:30am Government wants jurisdiction over all farm animals By Joyce Morrison February 15, 2006 "Farming is not much fun any more," are the words we hear from agricultural producers across the nation. While organizations such as the Environmental Working Group, are working against agriculture, and falsely leading the public to believe government subsidies are making farmers rich, farmers are asking: "How can we survive, and how much more invasive can the government get?" The government is already using space-based satellites to measure the crops on every farm in the country, and now the United States Department of Agriculture has plans to give an Orwellian touch to owning any type of farm animal. Are we permitting fear to take away another freedom? Whether you are a large commercial producer or your child has a single horse or chicken for a 4-H project, each animal must be registered with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), and the premise where the animal is kept is to be identified in a national data base, according to the USDA. Read: Animal ID Rolls Ahead With Premises Registration. The USDA says that 25 percent of the premises are to be registered by April 2006, and by July, every state is to have an Interstate Certificate of Veterinary Inspection system in place. By January 2008, all premises and all animals are to be registered, and by July 2008, movement of all animals will be tracked. If this is not done by January 2009, the consequences will be severe. Animals that must be identified with a chip or identification mark will be cattle/bison, sheep, goats, swine, horses, poultry/birds, deer/elk, llamas, and alpacas. Animal identification and premise registration is voluntary, until 2009. After that date, there will be a $1,000 per day fine for noncompliance. "The USDA has no legal jurisdiction over your livestock," G. B. Oliver of the Paragon Foundation told the radio audience on the Derry Brownfield Show. "While producers are thinking how they must comply or face a noncompliance fine of $1,000 per day, they should be questioning the legality of the USDA to impose this animal identification system in the first place." In Henry Lamb's excellent article The Mark on the Beast, he said: "The stated purpose of the program is to enable government to trace, within 48 hours, the source of a faulty animal food product. The effect of the program is the transfer of the control of private property to the government – while forcing the property owner to pay the cost of the transfer." These mandates will probably put most small producers totally out of business, as the requirements will be far too costly and time-consuming to be profitable. There will be no such thing as having a few chickens, sheep, pigs, horses, or any other animal, unless you want the headache of compliance. Perhaps, that is the real plan behind this extreme proposal. Many producers rotate their livestock to pastures on more than one farm they own, or rent. Each farm will be required to have an individual premise number, and records will have to be kept on each animal, each time it is moved. The cost and time of the record-keeping alone will be impossible for most. While dogs and cats are not included in the NAIS mandate, many states are now passing extensive chipping, neutering, spaying, and litter laws that are as extreme as the NAIS mandates. If the purpose of all this tracking is to identify diseased animals, how will they handle the identification of deer and elk known to harbor Chronic Wasting Disease? Eating these animals would appear to be far more risky than eating domestically raised animals. In the United States, we have known for quite some time that elk and deer are plagued with Chronic Wasting Disease, a near cousin to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow) in cows and Scrapie in sheep. We are told that these diseases, although similar, are contained within their own species. BSE in cows, Scrapie in sheep, CWD in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans are all a form of spongiform encephalopathy, which is a disease that destroys the brain, and is always fatal. Should we be concerned? Of course, we should – and we expect the USDA to inspect meat to be sold for consumption. But, we need to be rational about how we address this problem, and take into consideration the number of fatalities from this disease, and how many cows in the United States have been found to have the mad cow disease before we cry "the sky is falling." Could this be more about control of property than concern about disease? The following is what the government is requiring from animal owners: National Animal Identification website. Animal Tracking Various species working groups have suggested that certain basic events will trigger the need for reporting animal movements (e.g., change of ownership, interstate movement, multiple owners commingling their animals, etc). Each location will have a Premises Identification Number (PIN), and the responsible party will report the AIN or GIN of all animals that arrive at that premises, and the date of their arrival. There are essentially four pieces of information required to document an animal movement event. The table below shows the four pieces of information that will be stored in a national animal records repository: National Animal Records Repository – Data Elements Animal Identification Number, AIN, or Group/Lot Identification Number, GIN Premises Identification Number, PIN, of the location where the event takes place Date of the event Event type (movement in, movement out, sighting of an animal at a location, termination of the animal, etc) The following table shows the 12 pieces of information that will be stored in a national premises system. National Premises Information Repository – Data Elements Premises ID Number Name of Entity Owner or Appropriate Contact Person Street Address City State Zip/Postal Code Contact Phone Number Operation Type (e.g., production unit, exhibition, abattoir, etc.) Date Activated Date Retired (e.g., date operation is sold, date operation is no longer maintaining livestock) Reason Retired An anti-NAIS grassroots group states that: "... while NAIS's purported goal of disease containment appears to be beneficial, the requirement for American citizens to register privately-owned property for tracking and monitoring purposes has very serious implications on our privacy rights and freedoms." Sources say the Avian Flu virus comes from direct contact with the bird, and to date, it has not mutated from human to human, unless it has been done in a laboratory experiment. How many cases have been reported in the United States? Yet, over the past few months, we have seen nothing but hype about the "bird flu," and the need for a vaccine. Perhaps, we should follow the money trail, and we might see why these programs are so attractive. Consider the dollars to the pharmaceutical companies in providing a vaccine for the Avian flu. According to a current Business Week article, reported by Dr. Len Horowitz: "The U.S. Senate has already approved a $3.9 billion package to buy vaccines and antiviral medications, and the administration is also preparing a request for an additional $6 billion to $10 billion." Missouri resident Doreen Hannes has been researching the funding for NAIS, and found the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 is a major funder for the development of the NAIS plan. She reports the Act gave $380 million to develop the NAIS plan. A USDA veterinarian told Hannes he predicted the plan would cost the taxpayers $33 billion to implement. This would not include the cost of continuation and cost to individuals raising the animals. The states will jump at the $14.3 million in grant money available to them "WASHINGTON, June 21, 2005 – Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today announced that USDA will be accepting funding applications from state and tribal governments to continue registering premises for the national animal identification system (NAIS). Approximately $14.3 million will be available to state and tribal cooperators." This whole scenario is a reminder of Henny Penny when the acorn fell on her head. "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!" cries Henny Penny. "I must run and tell the king." Off she runs to tell the king, and along the way she picks up her friends. They meet Foxy Loxy. He says: "Where are you going Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurky?" When Henny Penny tells him where they are going and why, he says: "Ah, but this is not the way to the palace. Follow me. I will show you." If we are forced to comply with the USDA mandates of putting an identification such as the RFID chip in each animal, and identifying each premise, there will be no Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, or Turkey Lurky, as Foxy Loxy will have made certain the farm is no place for them! Read article here |
| Subject: Tracking chips for farm animals | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 20, 08:02:56am Emilio Zapata  Feb 21, 2006 8:04 am US/Eastern (AP) DOYLESTOWN, PA A federal program to tag farm livestock with satellite tracking chips by 2009 has some farmers warning of cost and privacy concerns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will require the chips for beef cattle, dairy cows, sheep, goats, domesticated deer, hogs, horses, llamas, chickens and turkeys. Dave Griswold of the State Bureau of Animal Health says the chips are needed as an emergency measure to quell outbreaks of disease such as Asian bird flu or foot and mouth. David Wasser, a farm owner in Plumstead, Bucks County, says he’s more concerned about the survival of small-scale livestock producers. Wasser says, “Whenever the government gets involved, you’re looking at additional costs and added bureaucracy, that’s not good for an operation that is already hardly profitable.” |
| Subject: Amish heirloom seeds | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 17, 11:22:56am |
| Subject: Nativity movie | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 17, 11:04:23am March 17, 2006 By Borys Kit Keisha Castle-Hughes has been cast as Mary in "Nativity," New Line Cinema's look at the life of the Virgin Mary before the birth of Christ. Catherine Hardwicke is directing the movie, which is being produced by Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey. The story, to be told with a strong female perspective, will follow Mary and Joseph's life before the birth of Christ as their love, faith and beliefs are tested. The script incorporates their departure from Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem and includes such biblical figures as King Herod, John the Baptist and the three kings from the Orient, among others. Mike Rich wrote the script. Toby Emmerich, Cale Boyter and Michael Disco are overseeing the project, which will begin shooting on May 1 in Morocco and Italy. The studio is eyeing a Dec. 1 release. Castle-Hughes, 15, who is of Australian and Maori descent, became the youngest actress nominated for a best actress Academy Award when she was recognized for her breakthrough role in 2002's "Whale Rider." She also had a brief and silent turn in "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" as Queen of Naboo. "Nativity" marks the first project for Bowen and Godfrey, who left the agency and executive world in January, when they formed a production company and entered a three-year, first-look deal with New Line. |
| Subject: Food Supply | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, March 16, 07:51:53am  Why store? The world we live in today is fast moving, ever changing and full of surprises. On top of this, there has never been a time when the average family has had less food in their homes than now. A hundred years ago, people generally didn’t go to the store very often. As a rule, America was much more agrarian than it is today, with people growing the majority of the plants and animals they ate. Today, many of us would be at our rope’s end after just a couple of days of not being able to go to the grocery store. Listed below are some of the things that have happened within the last couple of years to break up a normal family’s food supply channels: Loss of employment Strikes Fire Floods Droughts Hurricanes Wind Storms Earthquakes Civil unrest Major injury or death of the prime wage earner It’s a good guess that every family will have at least one serious crisis during their life time. During such times, a family shouldn’t have to worry about what they are going to eat. So why not be ready for it? If you were the mayor of a small town during a time of disaster, wouldn’t it be a great relief if 1/2 of the inhabitants of your town had a three day supply of emergency supplies. A month supply? And wouldn’t it be great to know not only you, but all the neighbors on your street had an emergency supply of food and other items? One thing is for sure: When an actual emergency arises, the time of preparation is past. One of the greatest advantages that can come to you from this type of preparation is peace of mind. How much is enough? FEMA suggests at least a three day supply. The rationale is that in the event of a disaster it will take at least three days for emergency personnel to get things going again. In case you must leave your dwelling it needs to be already together and transportable. It’s referred to as a '72 hour kit.' You should have at least three days worth of anything and everything you might need in the worst of conditions. Somewhat on the other end of the spectrum is the LDS Church who believes strongly in self reliance. Spencer W. Kimball, one of the deceased presidents of this church said, "No true Latter-day Saint, while physically or emotionally able, will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else... Maintain a year's supply. The Lord has urged that his people save for the rainy days, prepare for the difficult times, and put away for emergencies, a year's supply or more of bare necessities so that when comes the flood, the earthquake, the famine, the hurricane, the storms of life, our families can be sustained through the dark days... I am not howling calamity, but I fear that a great majority of our young people, never having known calamity, depression, hunger, homelessness, joblessness, cannot conceive of such situations..." Whatever you choose to believe, it is a good idea to put something away for ‘that rainy day,’ as President Kimball called it. Basic rules for home storage: Rule 1: Store what you eat, and eat what you store. It would be too bad to have a supply of food you would only eat with the greatest reluctance. Also, you can spend a lot of money on a supply of food and other provisions now, but after 15 or 20 years it won’t be much good anymore. Which brings us to the second rule. Rule #2: Rotate your food supply. Eat the old and replace with new food. It’s great on the pocket book. Large amounts can be purchased when they are on sale, then used when they are not. This may also require you to change your eating habits just a bit - like eating more whole grain and legume foods that are inexpensive but nutritious. But whatever you choose to store, be sure it's something you can eat or it will never get rotated. Rule #3: Whatever you store, insure it is as nutritious as possible with the 50 essential elements required for good health. You should also consider storing a good mineral/vitamin supplement. Rule #4: Special care should be taken in preserving your emergency supply, especially if you plan on storing it for several years. Generally, if you plan on using it up within a year it should be safe to store your dry grains and beans in the paper or plastic bags it came in. But if you do this, be sure you have a cool, dry place to keep it. Bugs are always a serious concern. If you haven't bug proofed your food you need to check it every few weeks to insure it stays insect free. Aside from packing up your own dry goods, you can also... Can your garden produce in bottles. This works best for fresh vegetables and fruits, and even meat if it is done correctly. However, know that after two years, wet packed foods in cans or bottles lose much of their nutritional value. Rotation is the key! Dehydrate your own foods. Some foods that lend themselves well to this kind of food preservation are potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, and all kinds of fruits. After dehydration, be sure to store them in air tight bags or containers. It would also be a good idea to throw in a couple of oxygen absorber packets. Whatever method you use to preserve your food, Store it in a cool, dry, dark place. Rule 5: Learn to grow a garden now before any hard times come. This way you will get the trial and error out of the way before you really need to eat off your garden. For someone who has never grown a garden before, it is not as easy as it may seem. There is a real art to growing a great garden and this knowledge doesn’t come all at once. Become proficient at it now, and learn now how to preserve what you grow. Getting back to What you should store, someone in the LDS Church wrote a little freeware DOS program (87K) back in 1989 that really spells most of it out. The program is designed to input the number of months storage wanted, and the number of family members with their respective ages. It will then print out the minimum food requirements. What follows is a sample 12 month food supply for an adult couple run by this little program: (Go to Revelar for a high speed food storage program.) (We have also put together a spreadsheet that will be a great help here.) (And here's another nifty one from Brain Brawl Challenge (Zipped Excel inventory spreadsheet. Keep track of your food storage by Glenn Anderson.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STORAGE ITEM YOUR AMOUNT - Wheat 321 lbs - Enriched white flour 29 lbs - Corn meal 71 lbs - Oats, Rolled 71 lbs - Rice 143 lbs - Pearled barley 7 lbs - Spaghetti & macaroni 71 lbs TOTAL FOR GRAINS GROUP 714 lbs - Beans (dry) 50 lbs - Beans, Lima (dry) 2 lbs - Beans, Soy (dry) 2 lbs - Peas, Split (dry) 2 lbs - Lentils (dry) 2 lbs - Dry Soup Mix 10 lbs TOTAL FOR LEGUMES GROUP 68 lbs - Vegetable Oil 4 gal - Shortening 10 lbs - Mayonnaise 2 quarts - Salad Dressing (mayonnaise type) 2 quarts - Peanut Butter 8 lbs TOTAL FOR FATS & OILS 51 lbs - milk, Nonfat dry 28 lbs - Evaporated milk 24 cans (12 oz net wt) (equivalent to 6 lbs dry milk) TOTAL FOR MILK GROUP 32 lbs - Sugar, Granulated 80 lbs - Sugar, Brown 6 lbs - Molasses 2 lbs - Honey 6 lbs - Corn syrup 6 lbs - Jams and preserves 6 lbs - Fruit drink, Powdered 12 lbs - Flavored gelatin 2 lbs TOTAL FOR SUGARS GROUP 120 lbs - Dry yeast 1 lbs (You will want more yeast - Soda 2 lbs if you make lots of - Baking Powder 2 lbs bread) - Vinegar 2 lbs - Chlorine bleach 1 gal - Salt (iodized) 16 lbs (8 lb/person/year) - Water 28 gal (14 gal/person/2 weeks) If you don’t like it’s choices, you can choose your own tastes and this little program will tell you if you have the right amounts. I think this little program is great stuff! It is an excellent tool for anyone who is serious about maintaining a supply of food. Foods & other items I've noticed the program doesn't address and you will have to determine manually: Fruits Vegetables Vitamin & Mineral supplements Yeast culture knowledge Medical supplies Cleaning Supplies/soap (laundry, dish, hand, shampoo, all purpose cleaner, toilet cleaner) Fuel (fire wood, lantern/stove/heater fuel, and gasoline/diesel for your vehicles/generators) Shoes/Clothing/Blankets/Sleeping bags Field Expedient tools: (assortment of knives, garden tools, shovel, ax, hatchet, sledge, wedge, rifle for shooting game, chisels, hand drill w/different sized bits, hammers, a good supply of different size nails, rope, saws, pry bar, chain saw [don’t forget to store extra two cycle oil] Outdoor cooking equipment Back packing equipment Battery radio w/extra batteries Tent & tarps Matches! Something to read: Survival manual, Bible, special interest literature, etc. You should consider as a final goal a well organized neighborhood ready for any problem. Some last things... Wealth does not guarantee happiness Luxury does not build character Pay your tithing. Stay out of debt except for a house or business Live on less than what you earn Save for a time of need Learn to distinguish between needs and wants Develop and live within a budget Work is a wonderful principle, essential for success. Work for what you get. Always be honest - integrity will never go out of style Promote excellence |
| Subject: Heirloom seeds | |
Author: Donald K. [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 15, 01:23:52pm One good way to fight the GM seeds is to buy heirloom seeds from the Amish. |
| Subject: It gets even worse | |
Author: Patricia [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 15, 01:15:21pm Monsanto Terminator Technology -- Worldwide Famine & Starvation Monsanto is in the process of acquiring and patenting their newest technology, known as "Terminator Technology." This technology is currently the greatest threat to humanity. If it is used by Monsanto on a large-scale basis, it will inevitably lead to famine and starvation on a worldwide basis. Billions of people on the planet are supported by farmers who save seeds from the crops and replant these seeds the following year. Seeds are planted. The crop is harvested. And the seeds from the harvest are replanted the following year. Most farmers cannot afford to buy new seeds every year, so collecting and replanting seeds is a crucial part of the agricultural cycle. This is the way food has been grown successfully for thousands of years. With Monsanto's terminator technology, they will sell seeds to farmers to plant crops. But these seeds have been genetically-engineered so that when the crops are harvested, all new seeds from these crops are sterile (e.g., dead, unusable). This forces farmers to pay Monsanto every year for new seeds if they want to grow their crops. In less rich countries, hundreds of millions of people rely heavily on small farms which produce foods for the region. If these farms begin to use Monsanto's terminator technology, and cannot afford to buy new genetically engineered seeds from Monsanto the following year, many of the people in the region may starve. Under normal circumstances, food could be brought in from other regions. However, many of those other regions will likely have the same problems with famine due to Monsanto's terminator technology. "It's terribly dangerous," says Hope Shand, "half the world's farmers are poor and can't afford to buy seed every growing season, yet poor farmers grow 15 to 20% of the world's food and they directly feed at least 1.4 billion people - 100 million in Latin America, 300 million in Africa, and 1 billion in Asia. These farmers depend upon saved seed and their own breeding skills in adapting other varieties for use on their (often marginal) lands." What is even more frightening is that traits from genetically-engineered crops can get passed on to other crops. Once the terminator seeds are released into a region, the trait of seed sterility could be passed to other non-genetically-engineered crops making most or all of the seeds in the region sterile. Camila Montecinos, an agronomist with the Chilean organization, CET, has another concern, "We've talked to a number of crop geneticists who have studied the patent," she says. "They're telling us that it's likely that pollen from crops carrying the Terminator trait will infect the fields of farmers who either reject or can't afford the technology. Their crop won't be affected that season but when farmers reach into their bins to sow seed the following season they could discover - too late - that some of their seed is sterile. This could lead to very high yield losses. If the technology is transmitted through recessive genes, we could see several years of irregular harvests and a general - even dramatic - decline in food security for the poorest farm communities." Because of the worldwide condemnation of terminator seeds, Monsanto appears to be verbally distancing itself from its own technology that it is in the process of acquiring. Even without the threat of this technology Monsanto is contributing significant to the destruction of health and environment around the world. But if this technology is released by Monsanto, it could spell disaster for hundreds of millions of people around the world. How anyone could invest in such a company is difficult to imagine! |
| Subject: OMG genetically altered foods | |
Author: Patricia [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 15, 12:50:25pm From Jeffrey M. Smith's book "Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating"  What the biotech industry doesn't want you to know The explosive exposé Seeds of Deception reveals how industry manipulation and political collusion-not sound science-allow dangerous genetically engineered food into your daily diet. Company research is rigged, alarming evidence of health dangers is covered up, and intense political pressure applied. Chapters read like adventure stories: Scientists were offered bribes or threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted. Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired. Laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the 40 died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests. When a top scientist tried to alert the public about his alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit. Read the actual internal memos by FDA scientists, warning of toxins, allergies, and new diseases-all ignored by their superiors, including a former attorney for Monsanto. Discover how industry studies are designed to avoid finding problems. Learn why the FDA withheld information from Congress after a genetically modified supplement killed nearly a hundred people and disabled thousands. Eating such experimental food is gambling with your health. Find out how you can protect yourself and your family. |
| Subject: Is Bird Flu going human to human? | |
Author: Patricia [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 15, 07:26:33am By JIM AVILA and MEREDITH RAMSEY  March 14, 2006 — - Robert G. Webster is one of the few bird flu experts confident enough to answer the key question: Will the avian flu switch from posing a terrible hazard to birds to becoming a real threat to humans? There are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," he told ABC's "World News Tonight." Webster, the Rosemary Thomas Chair at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., is credited as the first scientist to find the link between human flu and bird flu. Webster and his team of scientists are working to find a way to beat the virus if it morphs. He has even been dubbed the Flu Hunter. Right now, H5N1, a type of avian influenza virus, has confined itself to birds. It can be transmitted from bird to human but only by direct contact with the droppings and excretions of infected birds. But viruses mutate, and the big fear among the world's scientists is that the bird flu virus will join the human flu virus, change its genetic code and emerge as a new and deadly flu that can spread through the air from human to human. If the virus does mutate, it does not necessarily mean it will be as deadly to people as it is to birds. But experts such as Webster say they must prepare for the worst. "I personally believe it will happen and make personal preparations," said Webster, who has stored a three-month supply of food and water at his home in case of an outbreak. Frightening Warning "Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role." Most scientists won't put it that bluntly, but many acknowledge that Webster could be right about the flu becoming transmissible among humans, even though they believe the 50 percent figure could be too high. Researcher Dr. Anne Moscona at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center said that a human form may not mutate this year or next -- or ever -- but it would be foolish to ignore the dire consequences if it did. "If bird flu becomes not bird flu but mutates into a form that can be transmitted between humans, we could then have a spread like wildfire across the globe," Moscona said. No one knows how long or how many mutation changes it would take for bird flu to become a direct threat to humans. "It may not do it. There may just be too many changes. The virus may not be able to be a human virus," Moscona said. But that hasn't stopped Moscona from searching for new types of anti-viral treatments that both prevent and slow the spread of bird flu. "I don't think that once we have human-to-human transmission, it's going to be possible to contain it," she said. That is why nearly every viral scientist in America, perhaps the world, is waiting and watching the avian flu virus to see if it remains just a threat to birds or changes its genetic code and becomes a deadly threat to humans as well. Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures |
| Subject: BEWARE OF CORRUPT EVIL GAME PLAYING POLICE COPS IN TORONTO, CANADA. | |
Author: EL HAJAM [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, March 02, 09:49:10pm BEWARE OF CORRUPT POLICE COPS IN TORONTO, CANADA. BEWARE AND EDUCATE YOURSELVES THROUGH THESE LINKS TO PREVENT EVIL DECEPTORS FROM ACTING SMART WITH YOU AND THROWING THEIR WEIGHT AROUND THRU CHEAP TECHNOLOGY AND BONELESS STOOGES. BEWARE OF CORRUPT POLICE COPS IN TORONTO, CANADA. THEY BARGE INTO YOUR HOMES WITHOUT ANY WARRANT OR A WRITTEN NOTICE OR REASON, THEY FORCE OPEN YOUR DOORS, BEHAVE IMPROPERLY CHEWING GUM AND LAUGHING SINISTERLY ON DUTY, THRIVE IN CONNIVANCE WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS, CREATE DISTURBANCE AND FEAR WAILING SIRENS AROUND WITHOUT ANY VALID REASON, JUST TO RETAIN THEIR JOBS. IF YOU QUESTION THEIR NONSENSE, THEY RESPOND AS FOLLOWS : "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" THEY HAVE BEEN RETORTED WITH: "YOU MAY BE COPS, BUT YOU ARE NOT GODS." AT OTHER TIMES WHEN THE COPS ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO PRIVATE PREMISES HAS BEEN QUESTIONED AND THE RESIDENTS DEMANDED THEIR NAMES OR BADGE NUMBERS, THE COPS REFUSE TO GIVE THEIR NAMES OR BADGE NUMBERS, AND IF YOU TELL THEM THAT YOU WILL REPORT THEIR ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO YOUR PREMISES WITH LADIES AT HOME AND AT UNEARTHLY HOURS, THEY SNEER AND RESPOND: "WHOM ARE YOU GOING TO COMPLAIN AGAINST US? WE ARE THE LAW, WE ARE THE COPS." THE ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR OF COPS WHO THINK THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW BUT ARE ACTUALLY WORSE THAN THIEVES, IS KNOWN BY MANY PEOPLE IN TORONTO, CANADA. CORRUPTION THRIVES IN POLICE DEPARTMENT IN TORONTO, CANADA AS IT THRIVES ELSEWHERE IN CANADA. THE COPS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE GODS; HOWEVER, THEIR PERSONALITIES AND BEHAVIOR AND QUALITY REVEALS THEM TO BE THE WRONG TYPE OF PEOPLE IN THE WRONG SEATS, SAME AS THE POLITICIANS IN CORRUPT REGIMES. WHERE THE POLICE DEPARTMENT ARE INCAPABLE TO TREAT FOREIGNERS ON PAR WITH LOCAL CITIZENS, IT REFLECTS ON THE LACK OF BASIC UPBRINGING, ATTITUDES, HOSPITALITY, AND THE QUALITY OF THE SELF IN THOSE DEPARTMENTS, THE HUMANS RUNNING THOSE DEPARTMENTS, AND THE BASIC QUALITY OF THE NATION ITSELF. TORONTO, CANADA IS FALSELY LABELED AS A FAST PACED ADVANCED COLORFULLY DIVERSE CITY TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD, WHEN THE INSIDE OF IT IS ROTTEN WITH THE SMELL OF RACIAL PROFILING OF FOREIGNERS AND INTER-RACIAL INTOLERANCE DUE TO UNEVOLVED SELVES RIDDEN WITH MATERIAL ARROGANCE, EGOS, JUDGING YOU BY WHO YOU KNOW AND HOW MANY YOU KNOW, I.E. YOUR SO CALLED TEMPORARY EARTHLY RECOMMENDERS, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN CANADA, WHETHER YOU ARE A LANDED IMMIGRANT, A PERMANENT RESIDENT, A CANADIAN CITIZEN, WHITE OR BLACK, CHINESE OR JAPANESE, MUSLIM OR ASIAN. YOU ARE INVITED TO VISIT : THE GREAT DECEPTION http://www.911truth.org POLICING THE POLICE AND THEIR EVIL STOOGES http://www.copwatch.cjb.net WORLD BUSINESS BULLETIN BOARD http://bizbb.com/equalworldcurrencybusinessbulletinboard YOU ARE INVITED TO CIRCULATE THIS INFORMATION TO OTHERS AND TO ADD ANY OTHER INFORMATION OR LINKS YOU KNOW TO PREVENT UNCHECKED ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION OF POWER. |
| Subject: Re: Where's the snow? | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, December 29, 05:48:35pm We had a lot of snow earlier this month but none now. The day after Christmas felt like spring. Can't tell me there's no global warming going on here. |
| Subject: Where's the snow? | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, December 29, 03:16:51pm  Any snow in ya'lls area now? We have nothing. Seems almost like spring here the past few days. |
| Subject: Immigrants Preserve Traditional Remedies | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, December 29, 02:34:57pm  Dec 29, 8:05 AM (ET) By JULIANA BARBASSA (AP) Caritina Cruz stands in a garden of marigolds near a rural church, Nov. 7, 2005, in Madera, Calif.... MADERA, Calif. (AP) - A thick tangle of marigolds reaches chest-high around Caritina Cruz, who plucks one of the deep orange flowers and explains to her little sister how to prepare it in a tea that soothes indigestion. With Cruz's care, the plot eventually will sprout plants that immigrants from Mexico's dozens of indigenous groups may use to treat everything from insomnia to stomach cramps. The garden was planted with the help of a nonprofit group and is part of a larger effort to preserve health care customs that predate the Spanish conquest even as community leaders work to forge ties with the local medical establishment. "I want to keep what we know and be able to use what's here, too," said Cruz, 19, standing in the patch of dirt she hopes will preserve the community's health and its cultural identity. Members of Mexico's 60 Indian groups are even more likely than other recent immigrants to fall outside the reach of the American health care system, said Nayamin Martinez Cossio, of the indigenous organization Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueno. Isolated in remote farmworker settlements and usually uninsured, they often speak languages most Spanish-speaking Mexicans don't recognize. Often discriminated against in Mexico, they also are "at the bottom of the ladder" in the United States, said Jonathan Fox, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The 2000 Census showed there were about 154,362 such immigrants in the state, according to an analysis by researchers at UC Santa Cruz. Mexico's indigenous groups also are making up a growing share of migrants entering the country, according to estimates from the National Agricultural Workers Survey. Between 1993 and 1994, Mexicans from states such as Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero accounted for 9 percent of immigrant farmworkers coming to the country, a figure that rose to 19 percent between 2001 and 2002. "They're difficult to reach and they're difficult to treat because they travel so much," said Norma Penalosa, a communicable diseases specialist with Fresno County's Department of Community Health. "One case can become many cases spread around the country." In 2003, Fresno County health workers identified a tuberculosis outbreak that eventually spread to dozens of Mixtecs. Centro Binacional raised money, held educational meetings and tested more than 1,000 people. Martinez and others with Centro Binacional also have sent 15 immigrants who speak a variety of Indian languages to train as interpreters at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They've delivered workshops in far-flung rural towns on AIDS prevention, diabetes, nutrition, and other health problems farmworkers might come across in the United States. And they brought three traditional healers to California for a November conference where the healers told their American counterparts about how they rely heavily on herbal remedies and rituals to treat diseases. Several doctors attending the conference said having access to traditional medicine can comfort patients by giving them a connection to home - something Western doctors can't do. But they also warned against relying only on traditional healers and herbs. Jesus Rodriguez, a family practitioner at Fresno's Sequoia Community Health, encourages his patients to bring in any herbal remedies they might be taking so he can evaluate them and work them into a regimen that might include conventional medicine. "They'll go to a healer for as long as they can and by the time they come in, they might have advanced diabetes and be at risk for losing a limb," Rodriguez said. Enriqueta Contreras, a Zapotec midwife, said that being in a foreign land where nothing is familiar can itself be a source of physical and mental illness. "They are away from their family, their language. They can't get the herbs they're used to," Contreras said in Spanish. "They don't know who they are anymore. That makes them sick." |
| Subject: Government can track you through your cellphone | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 11, 01:35:55pm December 10, 2005 By MATT RICHTEL Most Americans carry cellphones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset. In recent years, law enforcement officials have turned to cellular technology as a tool for easily and secretly monitoring the movements of suspects as they occur. But this kind of surveillance - which investigators have been able to conduct with easily obtained court orders - has now come under tougher legal scrutiny. In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants. The rulings, issued by magistrate judges in New York, Texas and Maryland, underscore the growing debate over privacy rights and government surveillance in the digital age. With mobile phones becoming as prevalent as conventional phones (there are 195 million cellular subscribers in this country), wireless companies are starting to exploit the phones' tracking abilities. For example, companies are marketing services that turn phones into even more precise global positioning devices for driving or allowing parents to track the whereabouts of their children through the handsets. Not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies want to exploit this technology, too - which means more courts are bound to wrestle with what legal standard applies when government agents ask to conduct such surveillance. Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cellphone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone's position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so. The recent rulings by the magistrates, who are appointed by a majority of the federal district judges in a given court, do not bind other courts. But they could significantly curtail access to cell location data if other jurisdictions adopt the same reasoning. (The government's requests in the three cases, with their details, were sealed because they involve investigations still under way.) "It can have a major negative impact," said Clifford S. Fishman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office and a professor at the Catholic University of America's law school in Washington. "If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death." Prosecutors argue that having such information is crucial to finding suspects, corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts, or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone - especially now that technology gives criminals greater tools for evading law enforcement. The government has routinely used records of cellphone calls and caller locations to show where a suspect was at a particular time, with access to those records obtainable under a lower legal standard. (Wireless operators keep cellphone location records for varying lengths of time, from several months to years.) But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests. Legal experts say that such live tracking has tended to happen in drug-trafficking cases. In a 2003 Ohio case, for example, federal drug agents used cell tracking data to arrest and convict two men on drug charges. Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years - and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate's pen. Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cellphone surveillance. The standard calls for the government to show "specific and articulable facts" that demonstrate that the records sought are "relevant and material to an ongoing investigation" - a standard lower than the probable-cause hurdle. The magistrate judges, however, ruled that surveillance by cellphone - because it acts like an electronic tracking device that can follow people into homes and other personal spaces - must meet the same high legal standard required to obtain a search warrant to enter private places. "Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns, especially when the phone is monitored in the home or other places where privacy is reasonably expected," wrote Stephen W. Smith, a magistrate in Federal District Court in the Southern District of Texas, in his ruling. "The distinction between cell site data and information gathered by a tracking device has practically vanished," wrote Judge Smith. He added that when a phone is monitored, the process is usually "unknown to the phone users, who may not even be on the phone." Prosecutors in the recent cases also unsuccessfully argued that the expanded police powers under the USA Patriot Act could be read as allowing cellphone tracking under a standard lower than probable cause. As Judge Smith noted in his 31-page opinion, the debate goes beyond a question of legal standard. In fact, the nature of digital communications makes it difficult to distinguish between content that is clearly private and information that is public. When information is communicated on paper, for instance, it is relatively clear that information written on an envelope deserves a different kind of protection than the contents of the letter inside. But in a digital era, the stream of data that carries a telephone conversation or an e-mail message contains a great deal of information - like when and where the communications originated. In the digital era, what's on the envelope and what's inside of it, "have absolutely blurred," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group. And that makes it harder for courts to determine whether a certain digital surveillance method invokes Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. In the cellular-tracking cases, some legal experts say that the Store Communications Act refers only to records of where a person has been, i.e. historical location data, but does not address live tracking. Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that has filed briefs in the case in the Eastern District of New York, said the law did not speak to that use. James Orenstein, the magistrate in the New York case, reached the same conclusion, as did Judge Smith in Houston and James Bredar, a magistrate judge in the Federal District Court in Maryland. Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington School of Law and a former trial attorney in the Justice Department specializing in computer law, said the major problem for prosecutors was Congress did not appear to have directly addressed the question of what standard prosecutors must meet to obtain cell-site information as it occurs. "There's no easy answer," Mr. Kerr said. "The law is pretty uncertain here." Absent a Congressional directive, he said, it is reasonable for magistrates to require prosecutors to meet the probable-cause standard. Mr. Fishman of Catholic University said that such a requirement could hamper law enforcement's ability to act quickly because of the paperwork required to show probable cause. But Mr. Fishman said he also believed that the current law was unclear on the issue. Judge Smith "has written a very, very persuasive opinion," Mr. Fishman said. "The government's argument has been based on some tenuous premises." He added that he sympathized with prosecutors' fears. "Something that they've been able to use quite successfully and usefully is being taken away from them or made harder to get," Mr. Fishman said. "I'd be very, very frustrated." |
| Subject: Prince Charles questioned about Diana's death | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 11, 01:25:37pm  David Leppard THE Prince of Wales has been formally interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives investigating the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash in 1997. Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, saw the prince at Clarence House last week to question him for several hours about the events that led up to the death of his former wife. The prince’s spokesman declined to release details of the interview, but it is known that Stevens had planned to ask Charles about his response to the bizarre allegation that he had been part of a plot to murder Diana. Claims of the murder plot are contained in a letter by Diana stating that Charles and his friends had been plotting her death. The letter is an exhibit in the inquiry which was ordered two years ago by Michael Burgess, the royal coroner. In her letter, full details of which were published on the day the inquest opened in January 2004, the princess wrote: “My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury — to make the path clear for him to marry.” Although the car crash that killed the princess has been exhaustively investigated by the French authorities, Burgess ordered his own police investigation to help to separate “fact from fiction and speculation”. The inquiry was duty bound to confront the prince with the allegation contained in the letter which Paul Burrell, Diana’s former butler, said she wrote 10 months before her death. A spokesman for Charles said yesterday: “Clarence House can confirm that Lord Stevens met the Prince of Wales recently as part of his inquiry into the death of the Princess of Wales. Obviously we are not going to comment in any way on the detail. But we don’t want to mislead anyone. We’ve got nothing to hide. We always said he would talk to Lord Stevens and I can confirm that that has now taken place.” A well placed official said that there were no plans for any further interviews between Stevens and the prince. Friends of the prince believe that the interview and inquiry will enable him to put paid to the conspiracy theories. “Hopefully this will allow Charles to put it all behind him,” said a source close to the prince. “He and the two princes deserve to move on.” The princess and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, the son of Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, the London store, died after their chauffeur-driven Mercedes lost control as it was being pursued by photographers in a Paris road tunnel. Their driver, Henri Paul, was killed and the couple’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was critically injured. A lengthy investigation by French police concluded that the death was an accident. It placed the sole blame on Paul and said he was under the influence of drink and drugs. The 8,000-page French report has failed to satisfy the conspiracy theorists, led by Fayed. He has claimed that the princess and his son were victims of a plot orchestrated by the Duke of Edinburgh and carried out by the British intelligence services. The Stevens team has had access to MI5 and MI6 files relating to Diana and has interviewed officers in both services. It is understood that it has established that Fayed’s claims are groundless. Some of Diana’s friends have suggested that if the letter suspecting a plot is authentic it was written years, not months, before her death and thus cannot be taken as evidence of a conspiracy. The prince’s interview marks the final stage of the investigation, believed to have cost more than £2.5m. Stevens’s report is expected to be finished by the spring and the inquest could be resumed. |
| Subject: Life expectancy hits all-time high | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, December 09, 05:34:03am  By MIKE STOBBE Associated Press Writer Dec 08 9:16 PM US/Eastern ATLANTA - After a century of nearly uninterrupted medical improvements and longer lives, it looks like the baby boomers could screw things up. A new government study shows deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, but it also shows that half of Americans ages 55 to 64 _ including the oldest of the baby boomers _ have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. This means that this large group of aging Americans is in worse shape in some respects than those born a decade earlier were when they were the same age. Medical improvements in coming years might offset these problems before they affect life expectancy, but there are no promises, health officials said. "The late 50s and early 60s are a crucial time to focus on disease prevention," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "It's never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle to enjoy a longer, healthier life." The report presents the latest data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and dozens of other health agencies and organizations. Among the findings: Deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the nation's three leading killers, all dropped in 2003. They were down between 2 percent and 5 percent. Americans' life expectancy also increased again. According to the government's calculations, a child born in 2003 can expect to live 77.6 years on average, up from 77.3 the year before. In 1990, life expectancy was 75.4 years. U.S. life expectancy has been rising almost without interruption since thanks to several factors, including extraordinary advances in medicine and sanitation, and declines in some types of unhealthy behavior, such as smoking. Still, health officials are trying to draw attention to unhealthy behavior, and this year chose to break out data on people 55 to 64. The 55-to-64 age group is expected to rise from 29 million Americans in 2004 to 40 million in 2014. That is because of the baby boom, the explosion of births during the prosperous postwar period between 1946 and 1964. The report looked back at data on people who were in the 55-to-64 bracket around the early 1990s _ basically, people born in the 1930s. Researchers compared them to people in that age range today _ essentially people born in the 1940s. "What happens to this group is very important because it's going to affect every other group," said Amy Bernstein of the National Center for Health Statistics, which put out the new report. Among other things, this group will be drawing on Social Security and Medicare, financed by U.S. taxpayers. The center found that rates of hypertension and obesity were higher for the current group of 55-to-64-year-olds. When the 1930s group was tested around 1990, 42 percent had high blood pressure. That compares with 50 percent for the 1940s group. The older group's rate of obesity was 31 percent back then, compared with 39 percent for the 1940s babies now. Because of the advent of cholesterol-lowering drugs, the prevalence of high cholesterol actually went down, from 35 percent for the 1930s group to 23 percent among the 1940s babies. Also noted in the report: _Infant mortality in 2003 dropped slightly to 6.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. Infant mortality has been on a general decline since 1958. _Spending on health care rose 7.7 percent in 2003, to $1.7 trillion. Health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product rose to 15.3 percent in 2003, up from 14.9 percent in 2002. _Prescription drugs were the fastest-growing expenditure. Spending on prescriptions rose 11 percent in 2003. _Twenty-eight percent of all adults reported recent low back pain. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
| Subject: What a jerk... | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, December 09, 05:26:54am  Fri Dec 9, 2005 1:21 AM ET By Carol Giacomo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressing doubt about the Holocaust and suggesting Israel be moved to Europe are appalling and reprehensible, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday. "These latest remarks ... are clearly appalling and reprehensible. They certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said. At the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed shock at the comments attributed to Ahmadinejad, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Annan noted the U.N. General Assembly last month passed a resolution rejecting "any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or in part." He said all nations should educate their populations about the Holocaust in which "one third of the Jewish people were murdered, along with countless members of other minorities." Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying: "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces ... Although we don't accept this claim." "If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe ... to the Zionists, and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe," he said. Annan last month canceled a trip to Tehran because of Ahmadinejad's call in October "to wipe Israel off the map." Ereli said the remarks appeared to be part of a "consistent pattern of rhetoric that is both hostile and out of touch with the values that the rest of the international community lives by." The State Department spokesman said Iran had pledged to uphold international norms and must be held to those standards but he declined to say what, if any, action the United States might be inclined to take in response. Ahmadinejad's comments were reported by IRNA news agency from a news conference he gave in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca. Six million Jews were killed by Germany's 1933-1945 Nazi regime. Ahmadinejad's remarks drew swift rebukes from Israel and Germany as well. The United States accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism, interfering with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and developing a nuclear weapon under the cover of a program Tehran insists is aimed only at producing energy for civilian use. Britain, France and Germany, with U.S. backing, have been trying to defuse the nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations but Iran increasingly has toughened its stance, dimming chances for a compromise. (Additional reporting by Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations) |
| Subject: Arctic people file suit against US | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, December 08, 06:15:57pm  Dec 07 1:28 PM US/Eastern The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit. "For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct," said Robert Corell, who spearheaded an Arctic climate impact assessment. More than 150,000 Inuit, formerly called eskimos, are spread throughout the vast frozen northern territories of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia. These regions have experienced the most rapid and severe climate change on earth, according to Corell's assessment, which was prepared over four years by more than 300 scientists from 15 countries and six indigenous organizations. Global warming has caused the northern ice cover to retreat, making it more dangerous for the Inuit to hunt food animals such as polar bears, seals and caribou, their investigation found. These animals also face decline or extinction, unable to adapt to warmer temperatures as their own access to food sources, breeding grounds and migration routes are altered. And, rising sea levels and flooding threaten coastal Inuit communities. "Inuit are an ancient people. Our way of life is dependent on the natural environment and animals. Climate change is destroying our environment and eroding our culture," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the ICC chair. "But we refuse to disappear. We will not become a footnote to globalization." The petition urges the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to declare the United States to be in violation of the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. It also wants the Commission to recommend that the United States adopt mandatory limits of its greenhouse-gas emission and join international efforts to curb global warming. And it wants the Commission to declare the United States should help the Inuit adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change. If the Commission rules in favour, the impact will be more political than legal, the ICC acknowledged. The panel, part of the Organisation of American States (OAS), is empowered to investigate and comment on human rights abuses, but has no power of enforcement. Rising emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases primarily caused by burning fossil fuels are expected to warm the Arctic about 4-7 C (7.2-12.6 F), about twice the global average rise, over the next century, the ICC report concluded. These dramatic climate changes "violate the Inuit's right to practice and enjoy the benefits of their culture." Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin added to this gloomy tableau. "High in the Arctic, in our interior and along our coasts, the country we know is being transformed," he said. "Winters are growing milder, summers hotter and more severe, there is plant life where before there was none; there is water where before there was ice. Our permafrost is thawing -- and releasing methane gas into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change itself." "Within short decades, the Northwest Passage, the famously un-navigable thoroughfare of history, may be passable -- a striking and unsettling example of our delicate balance succumbing to untenable strain," Martin added. The United States, with only five percent of the world's population, emits some 25 percent of all harmful greenhouse gases. Washington signed the 1992 Rio Convention on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, but refused to ratify the latter. The Inuit petition came as more than 100 ministers gathered Wednesday for the main part of a UN climate change conference in Montreal that has been going on since November 28 and is to end Friday. |
| Subject: The bimbo gets boo'd | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, December 08, 06:03:50pm Packed Jorgensen Hears Shortened Speech By: Frances Morales Issue date: 12/8/05 Section: News  Media Credit: Erin Mizla Political author and commentator Ann Coulter speaks during Wednesday night's event sponsored by the College Republicans in Jorgensen Auditorium. More than 2,000 people streamed through the doors of the Jorgensen Center of Performing Arts Wednesday, all to see, hear, support or criticize the conservative speaker Ann Coulter. Campus police were in attendance to maintain order as College Republicans rounded up their brothers and sisters from chapters across Connecticut and some out-of-state, to lend a hand at the event. Supporters came to hear Coulter, others waited out in the freezing cold weather with their poster boards wisped by the wind, all to protest against Coulter. And the wait was over. Coulter, who came in late due to a delayed flight, strode in from Miami, with a smile, and spoke amongst the mixtures of cheers and boos. Coulter poked fun at liberals and defended President George W. Bush, but her speech was interrupted by boos after she made several comments about gays, only to stir up snickering and boos up on the balcony. "I think we have a long way to go with censorship when we have 'Will and Grace' on TV," Coulter said as she laughed. "I think someone finally got the joke in the liberal section." The event, which was sponsored by Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, lasted less than 30 minutes before her speech was cut short as groups of students seated in the balconies began protesting Coulter shouting, "You suck." One student shouted, "I want my money back." "That was an affecting response by the liberals," she said in response. "And it took them two months to come up with that." A South Park song, "Kyle's mom is a big fat bitch," broke out, and some students jeered. Coulter continued to laugh and said that liberals were "big, fat, taunting babies." "It didn't matter what the song was," Coulter said after the lecture. "I'm giving a speech, they blast something and I can't speak. What does that say of how powerful what it is I have to say. They are so afraid that if someone hears me, they will change their mind. I guess they shouldn't be now that I think about it." The speech went straight into a question and answer session between Coulter and students. Coulter defended Bush in that U.S. is winning the war in Iraq, and said American troops would be out of Iraq, "sooner than Bosnia." One student asked what would Coulter do if she had a gay son. "Did I tell you, you were adopted, " Coulter answered. Another student who said she was a lesbian, called Coulter hot. She later admitted the comment she made about homosexuals was a joke and had made the comments to stir up the people who were already upset. In response to comments made after 9/11 about converting Muslims in Iraq into Christianity, Coulter stood by her comment. "This is what America has done to create freedom," she said. "America was founded on Christian principals, and the idea people could live in freedom." A book signing was held after the lecture. Craig Albert, a political science instructor at UConn, commented on the aftermath of the lecture. "I don't think liberals take her too sensitively," Albert said. "I think they do it for a purpose, but I also think they are extreme with the protest that went on tonight. I think it goes against liberal cause to preach tolerance and go against hate-speech and they show so much hate toward somebody, which I think is hypocritical. Clearly she says things that makes people upset and she too should be held accountable." Coulter commented on the reaction some students who criticized her had during her speech. "Right-wingers are polite," she said. "You would never see that at Cindy Sheehan's speech at a college campus and she calls George Bush the greatest terrorist in the world for Israel for the Jews and America isn't worth fighting for. I promise you no right-wingers would shut down her speech." David Brewster, a 5th-semester political science major and a Coulter-supporter said he did not find her comments to be racist, "but if you take them out of context, it can make it look hateful, but I don't think she is," he said. Others differed in opinion, like Jorge Cruz, a 5th-semester psychology major. "I can't believe we paid to support racism," Cruz said. "She produces hate-crime." There was some confusion whether or not the media were allowed to take photos of Coulter's lecture. Lisa De Pasquale, program director of Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute said that Clare Booth did not prohibit photos to be taken but College Republicans made the decision, amongst confusion and misinterpretation. "I didn't know that until not too long ago," she said. "We want photographers there, we just didn't want video. It is part of our policy that there is no video, so they might have misinterpreted us," De Pasquale said. Copyright 2004 The Daily Campus and College Publisher |
| Subject: Re: Whats wrong with this picture? | |
Author: Foster Mom [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 04, 06:00:27pm I agree Keely, somethign bout Joe Simpson creeps me out to. A man of the cloth should never be a part of pimping his daughters to the media. And how inappropriate can you be to comment on your daughters breasts? Eeeeeewwwwwwwww......yuck!!! |
| Subject: Oh and.... | |
Author: Foster Mom [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 04, 05:56:47pm  Is it okay if I say "Christmas?" Well, I'm saying it anyway! |
| Subject: Re: Whats wrong with this picture? | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 04, 05:33:31pm I've heard about this sick perv and the nasty things he says about Jessica before. And he's supposed to be a Baptist preacher!!! Just hearing the things he says about his daughter turns me off Jessica. I'm sorry but every time I see him and Jessica together in a picture the thought that jumps to my mind is incest. Sorry, but I can't help it.  |
| Subject: Ukraine bird flu | |
Author: Foster Mom [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 04, 05:08:00pm  By Tom Warner in Kiev Published: December 4 2005 18:25 | Last updated: December 4 2005 18:25 Ukraine on Sundayy began combating what appeared to be the biggest outbreak yet in Europe of the deadly strain of bird flu, after more than 2,000 domestic birds died in a remote region of the Crimean peninsula. President Viktor Yushchenko declared a state of emergency in five villages on Saturday after the agriculture ministry said it had identified the H5 subtype of bird flu virus. Officials enforced a quarantine and began culling and burning the villages’ birds on Sunday. But the government’s failure to notice the outbreak earlier is likely to heighten concerns across Europe about Ukraine’s ability to deal with the bird flu problem. Ukrainian villagers who keep birds in their gardens are at particular risk, because they regularly handle birds that may have come into contact with the migratory wild birds that spread the virus. Confirmation that the outbreak was caused by the H5N1 strain that can kill humans was awaiting the results of tests in Britain and Italy. But officials left little doubt that they were dealing with the same deadly strain that has shown up in Romania and other parts of south-east Europe. Olexander Baranivsky, agriculture minister, told a press conference he was alerted on Friday after the villages saw up to 20 per cent of their birds die overnight. “Birds are dying from [the virus] in no more than two to eight hours,” he said. Mr Baranivsky’s ministry has insisted it is keeping careful guard against bird flu by regularly testing wild and domestic birds around the country and making sure the issue gets ample coverage in national and local media. But villagers told television reporters they were mystified by the disease that had been killing their birds for more than a month. Their stories indicated the disease had started spreading around the same time as the first known outbreak of bird flu in Europe, in Romania’s Danube delta region in October. The villagers said they had been eating healthy birds and throwing diseased ones on the village dump, where the carcasses were scavenged by stray dogs. The affected villages are near Lake Sivash, a vast, marshy lagoon next to the Azov Sea where migratory birds stop over each spring and autumn on their way between Russia and Africa or the Middle East. Romania said at the weekend it was dealing with what appeared to be a new H5N1 outbreak in the country’s south-east, its first outside the Danube delta. So far no people in Europe have contracted the H5N1 virus, but it has killed 69 in Asia, including one in Indonesia confirmed on Sunday. Health officials believe people generally are not at risk unless they handle birds, but experts worry that a mutation could enable the virus to spread from human to human and thus cause a worldwide epidemic. |
| Subject: Whats wrong with this picture? | |
Author: Foster Mom [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 04, 04:58:21pm  Jessica Simpson’s dad: “She’s got double D’s! You can’t cover those suckers up!” If you’re not already disturbed by Joe Simpson’s manager/father relationship with his two daughters, don’t read his interview with GQ this month. According to Page Six’s report about the interview, Joe says of Jessica, “Jessica never tries to be sexy. … She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she’s sexy in both. She’s got double D’s! You can’t cover those suckers up! He also reveals his plans for his less-talented and more embarrassing daughter Ashlee, who was to play a lesbian in her first film role until Joe stepped in and saved the day. He says, “She’s going to be a huge movie star. She’s like Meg Ryan or Cameron Diaz, with probably more depth. When we’re done, she’ll play it all.” |
| Subject: More interesting aviain flu facts... | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 28, 06:09:22pm  October 31, 2005: 10:55 AM EST By Nelson D. Schwartz, Fortune senior writer NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world. Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld. The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $47. That's made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer. Rumsfeld isn't the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead's board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005. Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson. "I don't know of any biotech company that's so politically well-connected," says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco. What's more, the federal government is emerging as one of the world's biggest customers for Tamiflu. In July, the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress is considering a multi-billion dollar purchase. Roche expects 2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004. Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon's general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond. As the flu issue heated up early this year, according to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the federal Office of Government Ethics. Those agencies didn't offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something Rumsfeld doesn't believe he possesses. So he's keeping his shares for the time being. |
| Subject: The other side of the Bird Flu issue | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 28, 05:51:06pm NOVEMBER 22, 2005. There are a number of so-called medical reporters who work for newspapers and TV and radio networks. They specialize in finding out what press officers for government health agencies and hospital PR people and university researchers have to say. This, as you may imagine, is not hard to do. It involves using a telephone or a computer. If you can punch in a phone number or access an email account, you're in business. A framed master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism might look good on the wall, but it wasn't really necessary to spend a few years in classes. When a new disease is trumpeted by the CDC or WHO, these reporters plug in and babble. The reporters rarely concern themselves with precisely how the new disease germ was found, or how it is being tested for in humans. It's all rather like getting your car fixed. The dealer or the garage tells you what's wrong, and you suck it up and pay the bill. You don't stand next to the mechanic as he goes under the hood. The operative word would be trust. Of course, you expect, at the end of the day, that your car will now run without stalling or making those strange sounds. In the case of a new disease, when there is yet no vaccine about which enthusiastic lies can be told, the researchers and their PR minions are skating on easy street. They don't have to show a result. All they have to do is report case numbers of the new illness. It's almost as simple as being a medical reporter. About the last thing the reporters want to know is how the test for the new disease works. And yet it doesn't take a genius to realize that everything depends on the test. If you're going to say that 13 people in China died of the bird flu, you should be confident that these people were diagnosed properly in the first place. Death itself is not sufficient proof that a person has a particular disease. People die, for example, after small-plane crashes and after prolonged immersion in water and after being hit on the head by suicidal doctors jumping out of windows. As I've been detailing for a long time in this pages, the two most popular methods of testing for germs are: antibody blood tests, and PCR tests which amplify barely noticeable gene fragments. Neither of these tests is indicative of human disease. Medical reporters don't get close enough to the action to realize this. For them, a mere pronouncement from WHO or a headline in a newspaper five thousand miles away is enough. Out of such inattention are born epidemic scares. West Nile, SARS, bird flu. Predictions of a coming bird-flu pandemic are on the order of: many of us will die of something sometime, and we have to be ready; troops will be needed; new edicts from moronic government officials will be needed; toxic drugs and vaccines must be advance-ordered now, to the tune of several billion dollars. People who get their paychecks because they work for public health agencies are energized by rumors of a new contagious disease. They feel secure. Federal monies will enter their organizations. If you worked for a government group devoted to the counting of red marbles, you would be enthusiastic about tales of illegal shipments of red marbles coming into US ports from China. You wouldn't stop to think about what the marbles mean or why your group exists in the first place. That would be counter-productive. It's a version of build it and they will come. If you work for an outfit that researches the average degree of pressure needed to remove a stem from a cherry, and if you are supported by government funds, you applaud all media output on the subject of cherries. Anything to get your general subject in front of the public. Medical reporters feel a surge when someone somewhere says a new disease has surfaced. "Let's go to press." In other words, there is a need for stories about impending epidemics, because there are various structures already in place that would benefit from such stories, true or false. You have your system, and now you need something to plug into it. Knowing all this, certain players can manipulate the system on behalf of objectives that have nothing directly to do with---in this case---disease. Objectives like increased military presence, mandatory treatment with drugs and vaccines, the creation of a general feeling of helplessness, the creation of a perceived need for protection (control) from Above. It works like a Wurlitzer. Reporters whose job it is to alert the public to lies and scams sit back, defect, and file their perfunctory stories, because they too are part of the Wurlitzer. Some of these reporters are themselves MDs, which adds a luster to their garble. On and off over the last 15 years, I have spoken to these scribes. I have found them to be among the most close-minded jackasses extant anywhere." "Point out an uncomfortable fact to them, and they start braying. Show them an egregious error in logic, and they defer to what "everyone knows." Indicate that they should be more attentive, and they stand up on their hind legs and make flatulent noises to show how insulted they feel. When it comes to new phantom diseases, they exclaim that no one can be sure about what's to come but we must be prepared, just in case. "Can you prove the pandemic won't happen? If not, we should bankrupt ourselves carrying out all the necessary precautions." I like the fact that it's Bush who is leading us toward the edge of this cliff. His clueless ignorance and venal purpose (paying off his pharma money supporters) are so transparent that it lends a brain-dead quality to the charade that is quite in line with the overall con. A cheap con it is. Even though it's costing billions. The chance of you dying of H5N1 bird flu is on the level of you dying from gas escaping from the bubbling end of a Pacific bottom crawler slithering 5000 feet below the waves. On a Tuesday afternoon. At 3 PM. While you're sitting in a Paris cafe sipping absinthe. Reading Rimbaud. Puffing on a Gauloise. Chatting with Picasso." JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com |
| Subject: Bird Flu mutating? | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 28, 05:37:48pm  Nov 28 9:50 AM US/Eastern The H5N1 strain of bird flu seen in human cases in China has mutated as compared with strains found in human cases in Vietnam. Chinese labs have found that the genetic order of the H5N1 virus seen in humans infected in China is different from that found in humans in Vietnam, Xinhua news agency reported Monday. In China's human cases, the virus has mutated "to a certain degree," health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an was quoted as saying. "But the mutation cannot cause human-to-human transmission of the avian flu," he noted. China this month confirmed its first three human cases of bird flu, two of which were fatal. The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003. Health officials fear that the virus could mutate to the extent where it is easily transmitted from human-to-human, an event that could lead to a global pandemic capable of killing hundreds of millions of people. |
| Subject: UFOs in New Mexico?? | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, November 27, 07:56:57pm Washington Post/Richard Leiby | November 27 2005 Maybe. From the state that gave us Roswell, the epicenter of UFO lore since 1947, comes a report from an Albuquerque TV station about its discovery of strange landscape markings in the remote desert. They're etched in New Mexico's barren northern reaches, resemble crop circles and are recognizable only from a high altitude. Also, they are directly connected to the Church of Scientology. (Cue theremin music.) The church tried to persuade station KRQE not to air its report last week about the aerial signposts marking a Scientology compound that includes a huge vault "built into a mountainside," the station said on its Web site. The tunnel was constructed to protect the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded the church in the 1950s. The archiving project, which the church has acknowledged, includes engraving Hubbard's writings on stainless steel tablets and encasing them in titanium capsules. It is overseen by a Scientology corporation called the Church of Spiritual Technology. Based in Los Angeles, the corporation dispatched an official named Jane McNairn and an attorney to visit the TV station in an effort to squelch the story, KRQE news director Michelle Donaldson said. The church offered a tour of the underground facility if KRQE would kill the piece, the station said in its newscast. Scientology also called KRQE's owner, Emmis Communications, and "sought the help of a powerful New Mexican lawmaker" to lobby against airing the piece, the station reported on its Web site. McNairn did not respond to messages requesting comment; an employee said that McNairn was traveling last week, and that no one else from the church would be able to comment. What do the markings mean? For starters, the interlocking circles and diamonds match the logo of the Church of Spiritual Technology, which had the vault constructed in a mesa in the late 1980s. The $2.5 million construction job was done by Denman and Associates of Santa Fe, but company Vice President Sally Butler said of the circles, "If there is anything like that out there, it had nothing to do with us." Perhaps the signs are just a proud expression of the Scientology brand. But there are other, more intriguing theories. Former Scientologists familiar with Hubbard's teachings on reincarnation say the symbol marks a "return point" so loyal staff members know where they can find the founder's works when they travel here in the future from other places in the universe. "As a lifetime staff member, you sign a billion-year contract. It's not just symbolic," said Bruce Hines of Denver, who spent 30 years in Scientology but is now critical of it. "You know you are coming back and you will defend the movement no matter what. . . . The fact that they would etch this into the desert to be seen from space, it fits into the whole ideology." Recall if you will that Scientology traces most of mankind's woes to an evil alien lord named Xenu, a galactic holocaust perpetrated 75 million years ago, and, uh, the field of psychiatry. (The latter is a particular concern, as all of America now knows, of movie star Tom Cruise.) The church maintains two other vaults in California to preserve Hubbard's materials and words, according to Hines and another longtime staff member who also quit a couple of years ago, Chuck Beatty of Pittsburgh. "The whole purpose of putting these teachings in the underground vaults was expressly so that in the event that everything gets wiped out somehow, someone would be willing to locate them and they would still be there," said Beatty, who spent 28 years in Scientology. Some loyalists are tasked specifically with the "super-duper confidential" job of coming back to Earth in the far-off future, he added. The billion-year contracts are signed by members of what Hubbard, a Navy lieutenant in World War II, called the church's Sea Organization. The motto of that cadre, according to Beatty and Hines, who said they were both members, is "We come back." The New Mexico site is about a 2 1/2 -hour drive east of Santa Fe, near the small town of Trementina. The contents of the vault itself are not secret -- they were shown in 1998 on ABC News's "20/20." "Buried deep in these New Mexico hills in steel-lined tunnels, said to be able to survive a nuclear blast, is what Scientology considers the future of mankind," ABC's Tom Jarriel said in his report. "Seen here for the first time, thousands of metal records, stored in heat-resistant titanium boxes and playable on a solar-powered turntable, all containing the beliefs of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard." Other religions preserve their sacred texts. Nothing strange there. Scientology leaders apparently just don't want to misplace theirs, and maybe this is why somebody put the giant circles on the scrubland. Because there's nothing worse than arriving from deep space, and not knowing where to park. © 2005 The Washington Post Company |
| Subject: UFOs in Canada? | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, November 25, 05:58:52pm Thu Nov 24, 7:00 AM ET OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 -- A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.” By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something." Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop." Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide." Hellyer’s speech ended with a standing ovation. He said, "The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today." Three Non-governmental organizations took Hellyer’s words to heart, and approached Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, to hold public hearings on a possible ET presence, and what Canada should do. The Canadian Senate, which is an appointed body, has held objective, well-regarded hearings and issued reports on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage and medical marijuana. On October 20, 2005, the Institute for Cooperation in Space requested Canadian Senator Colin Kenny, Senator, Chair of The Senate Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, “schedule public hearings on the Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, so that witnesses such as the Hon. Paul Hellyer, and Canadian-connected high level military-intelligence, NORAD-connected, scientific, and governmental witnesses facilitated by the Disclosure Project and by the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium can present compelling evidence, testimony, and Public Policy recommendations.” The Non-governmental organizations seeking Parliament hearings include Canada-based Toronto Exopolitics Symposium, which organized the University of Toronto Symposium at which Mr. Hellyer spoke. The Disclosure Project, a U.S.– based organization that has assembled high level military-intelligence witnesses of a possible ET presence, is also one of the organizations seeking Canadian Parliament hearings. Vancouver-based Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), whose International Director headed a proposed 1977 Extraterrestrial Communication Study for the White House of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who himself has publicly reported a 1969 Close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO, filed the original request for Canadian Parliament hearings. The Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, presented by the organizations to a Senate Committee panel hearing in Winnipeg, Canada, on March 10, 2005, proposes that the Government of Canada undertake a Decade of Contact. The proposed Decade of Contact is “a 10-year process of formal, funded public education, scientific research, educational curricula development and implementation, strategic planning, community activity, and public outreach concerning our terrestrial society’s full cultural, political, social, legal, and governmental communication and public interest diplomacy with advanced, ethical Off-Planet cultures now visiting Earth.” Canada has a long history of opposing the basing of weapons in Outer Space. On September 22, 2004 Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin declared to the U.N. General Assembly,” "Space is our final frontier. It has always captured our imagination. What a tragedy it would be if space became one big weapons arsenal and the scene of a new arms race. Martin stated, "In 1967, the United Nations agreed that weapons of mass destruction must not be based in space. The time has come to extend this ban to all weapons..." In May, 2003, speaking before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Lloyd Axworthy, stated “Washington's offer to Canada is not an invitation to join America under a protective shield, but it presents a global security doctrine that violates Canadian values on many levels." Axworthy concluded, “There should be an uncompromising commitment to preventing the placement of weapons in space.” On February 24, 2005, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin made official Canada's decision not to take part in the U.S government’s Ballistic Missile Defence program. Paul Hellyer, who now seeks Canadian Parliament hearings on relations with ETs, on May 15, 2003, stated in Toronto’s Globe & Mail newspaper, “Canada should accept the long-standing invitation of U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio to launch a conference to seek approval of an international treaty to ban weapons in space. That would be a positive Canadian contribution toward a more peaceful world.” In early November 2005, the Canadian Senate wrote ICIS, indicating the Senate Committee could not hold hearings on ETs in 2005, because of their already crowded schedule. “That does not deter us,” one spokesperson for the Non-governmental organizations said, “We are going ahead with our request to Prime Minister Paul Martin and the official opposition leaders in the House of Commons now, and we will re-apply with the Senate of Canada in early 2006. “Time is on the side of open disclosure that there are ethical Extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth,” The spokesperson stated. “Our Canadian government needs to openly address these important issues of the possible deployment of weapons in outer war plans against ethical ET societies.” Canadian Exopolitics Initiative http://www.peaceinspace.net Click here to send your letter to the Parliament of Canada requesting public “ET” Hearings http://exopolitics.blogs.com/star_dreams_initiative/2005/10/the_senate_of_c.html CONTACT NOW: Toronto, Canada: Victor Viggiani, Exopolitics Toronto Symposium Tel: 905-278-5628 http://www.exopoliticstoronto.com Winnipeg, Canada: Randy Kitchur Tel: 204-582-4424 Washington, D.C.: Dr. Steven Greer, The Disclosure Project Tel: (540) 456-8302 (Office) http://www.disclosureproject.org Vancouver, Canada: Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space Tel: 604-733-8134 http://www.peaceinspace.net ICIS Alfred Webre 604-733-8134 E-mail Information |
| Subject: Some favorite posters | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Friday, November 25, 06:07:32am    |
| Subject: Oh ya and...... | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, November 24, 07:21:10pm  |
| Subject: Who gives a .......... | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, November 24, 06:24:26pm Question.......does ANYBODY care that Jessica Simpson and Nick Lackey are getting divorced??? |
| Subject: I still luv ya Bill | |
Author: Renee [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, November 24, 06:21:16pm  Nov 24 3:28 PM US/Eastern ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson is coming clean on his draft record _ the baseball draft, that is, admitting that his claim to have been a pick of the Kansas City A's in 1966 was untrue. For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics. The claim was included in a brief biography released when Richardson successfully ran for Congress in 1982. A White House news release in 1997 mentioned it when he was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported it as fact over the years. But an investigation by the Albuquerque Journal found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A's, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team. Informed by the newspaper of its findings, the governor acknowledged the error in a story in Thursday's editions. "After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's," he said. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos declined to comment when reached by the AP on Thursday. Richardson, a right-handed pitcher who played at Tufts University, said he was actively scouted by several major league teams in the 1960s. He insisted his name appeared on "a draft list of some kind" created by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. He named team scouts, whom he said told him that he "would or could" be drafted. The scouts have since died. Richardson later developed arm trouble, eliminating any possible pro career. In the summer of 1967, he played for the amateur Cape Cod League's Cotuit (Mass.) Kettleers. The words "Drafted by K.C." appear next to his name on a faded team program, the Journal reported. "When I saw that program in 1967, I was convinced I was drafted," Richardson said. "And it stayed with me all these years." Then-general manager Arnold Mycock said the biographical information was supplied by players or their college coaches. On a biographical sheet Richardson completed for Tufts in his junior year, he wrote, "Drafted by Kansas City (1966), LA (1968)." He said he wrote those words because he believed they were true. "I never tried to embellish this," he said. "I never tried to mask it." Richardson, elected governor in 2002, is seeking a second term next year. |
| Subject: CDC Epedemic Rule | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, November 22, 05:22:25pm Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Travelers entering the U.S. with fever and other flu-like symptoms would be reported by the airline or ship that brought them, under new rules proposed today, a U.S. public-health official said. The rules would expand the list of conditions that airlines and ships are required to report among travelers crossing some state lines and for those arriving from abroad, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an e-mailed statement. The regulation changes also clarify an appeals process for people placed under quarantine, the Atlanta-based agency said. The regulations ``will allow the CDC to move more swiftly'' when attempting to avert outbreaks, said Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, on a conference call with reporters today. ``What we have now is a very passive system.'' The proposed changes were prompted by the epidemic of SARS in 2002 and 2003 that sickened 8,096 people and killed 774 on three continents in about nine months. U.S. government officials estimate a global pandemic of avian influenza, if such a virus becomes contagious in humans, would kill as many as 1.9 million Americans and hospitalize 9.9 million. The frequency of international travel will spread the disease, CDC officials said. Symptoms Under the rules, a sick person who should be reported would have a fever of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher that has lasted at least 48 hours or is combined with a rash, swollen lymph nodes, headache or wavering consciousness; diarrhea; or bleeding, jaundice, difficulty breathing or a cough with bloody sputum. When ``compatible symptoms are noticed in a passenger on a flight or ship, there will be a requirement for the captain to report it to the quarantine station that has jurisdiction over that port of entry'' for medical personnel to assess them, Cetron said today. ``We're not talking about quarantining anybody for a sniffle.'' Ideally, a captain would call in a report of an evidently- ill passenger before arriving at the destination, where public- health-service officials could handle the matter, Cetron said. The proposal also outlines procedures for government orders to quarantine people, and for how a person may appeal an order. For example, the CDC director would schedule a hearing within one day of such a request. Quarantine In quarantine, a person's movement and contact with others is restricted for the amount of time it takes a certain disease to incubate, to prevent transmission to others. The person is released if symptoms don't develop during the period. Diseases that qualify for quarantine are: plague, cholera, tuberculosis, yellow fever, diphtheria, smallpox and the hemorrhagic fevers Ebola, Marburg and Crimean-Congo. Influenza, when caused by a new or reemerging viral strain with the potential to cause a pandemic, is also among communicable diseases for which the federal health service is authorized to order a quarantine. The CDC has 18 quarantine stations nationwide. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposed regulations. Industry Costs Ships and airlines also would be required make passenger and crew lists available in electronic format for at least 60 days after arrival, and be able to submit them within 12 hours of a CDC request. The lists should include names, contact information and seat assignments. Cetron said the lists will be vital for tracing contacts quickly during a disease's incubation period, and would improve on the response time achieved during the SARS outbreak, when health officials had to reconstruct contacts based on incomplete and delayed information. The travel and transportation industries would pay the expenses for collecting and storing information, either at the time a ticket is purchased or at departure, and for updating computer systems, according to a government-funded analysis included in the proposed rule. Complying with the changes would cost airlines about $108 million to $356 million a year for 10 years, depending on when they collect passenger information and counting only international flights and interstate flights from large and medium-sized U.S. airport hubs, the report said. Including interstate flights from all U.S. airports might raise the cost to $386 million a year. Estimated costs for cruise lines were as high as $39 million a year. ``The proposed rule would have a significant impact on the private sector, particularly air carriers,'' according to the document's text. To contact the reporter on this story: Geraldine Ryerson-Cruz in Washington at gryerson@bloomberg.net Last Updated: November 22, 2005 17:52 EST |
| Subject: Re: Christine | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 21, 06:26:36pm Whoops. We ate Hot Italian Buns...not that he had hot Italian buns. (Well, actually he did now that I think about it!) |
| Subject: Re: Christine | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 21, 06:23:08pm  Okay, now I'm thinking about old boyfriends and Italian food. rofl He was Sicilian and he was an awesome cook. On my 20th birthday, he cooked me lasagna from scratch and hot italian buns and cheesecake! I can still remember how fantastic it was. Oh yeah...and olives and bananas on the side. (just kidding) |
| Subject: Re: Christine | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 21, 06:04:34pm My Italian boyfriend's mom used to always say eat bananas and olive oil to grease your joints! lol Looks like maybe she was right! |
| Subject: Christine | |
Author: Delicious Ways to Fight Arthritis [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, November 21, 05:33:41pm  From The Everyday Arthritis Solution It's easy to make nutrients part of a sensible daily diet once you learn there's such a variety of them within virtually every food group. As with any nutrient, certain foods will always be richer sources than others. Below are super sources of the nutrients that battle arthritis best. 1. Salmon. Salmon is among the richest sources of healthy fats, making it an ideal source of omega-3 fatty acids, especially because it's less likely than other cold-water fish to harbor high levels of toxic mercury. In addition to its fatty oils, salmon contains calcium, vitamin D, and folate. Besides helping with arthritis, eating salmon may protect the cardiovascular system by preventing blood clots, repairing artery damage, raising levels of good cholesterol, and lowering blood pressure. Focus on freshness. To avoid bacterial contamination, look for glossy fish that are wrapped to prevent contact with other fish. If you're buying fish whole, eyes should be clear and bright, not opaque or sunken, and flesh should not be slimy or slippery. Cuts like steaks and fillets should be dense and moist. In all cases, flesh should be firm and spring back if you press it. Use quickly. Fresh fish spoils fast, so if you can't eat salmon within a day after purchase, double its shelf life by cooking it right away and storing it in the refrigerator. (It is delicious served cold with cucumbers and dill.) Tame total fat. While you want the beneficial omega-3s in fish oil, the fat in fish is also loaded with calories. To keep from adding still more calories during preparation, cook salmon using low-fat methods such as baking, poaching, broiling, or steaming, and season with spices such as dill, parsley, cilantro, tarragon, or thyme. Cook by color. Following the rule of thumb for cooking fish -- to wait until flesh is opaque white or light gray -- is a tougher call with pink-hued salmon. To ensure doneness, cook salmon until it's opaque in its thickest part, with juices clear and watery, and flesh flaking easily with the gentle turn of a fork. 2. Bananas. Bananas are perhaps best known for packing potassium, but they're also good sources of arthritis-fighting vitamin B6, folate, and vitamin C. What's more, this easily digested, dense fruit is a prime source of soluble fiber, an important part of your diet if you're trying to lose weight because it helps you feel full without adding calories. Control ripeness. Bananas are sweetest and easiest to digest when brightly yellowed to full ripeness. To hasten or prolong the period of perfection, put green bananas in a brown paper bag, which encourages natural gases from the bananas to speed the ripening process. Rapidly ripening fruits should be put in the refrigerator, which turns the peel brown, but preserves the fruit inside. Preserve pieces. Bananas are wonderful additions to salads or desserts, but tend to turn brown faster than other ingredients. Try tossing bananas with a mixture of lemon juice and water -- the acid will help preserve them. Turn into drinks. Bananas, particularly ripe ones, make great blender drinks. Combine a banana, a peach or some berries, a few ounces of milk, a few ounces of fruit juice, and an ice cube, and blend for a delicious, healthy drink that is jam-packed with arthritis-friendly nutrients. 3. Sweet peppers. A single green pepper contains 176 percent of your daily needs for vitamin C -- and colorful red and yellow varieties have more than double that amount. That makes them richer in C than citrus fruits, but sweet peppers are also excellent sources of vitamin B6 and folate. Lock in nutrients. Store peppers in the refrigerator: The tough, waxy outer shell of bell peppers naturally protects nutrients from degrading due to exposure to oxygen, but you'll boost the holding power of chemicals in the skin by keeping them cold. Separate seeds. Whether cutting into crudités, tossing into salads, or stuffing whole, you'll want to remove tough and bitter-tasting seeds. They're easily cut when slicing, but when retaining an entire bell for stuffing, cut a circle around the stem at the top of the pepper, lift out the attached membranes, and scoop remaining seeds and membranes with a thick-handled spoon. Jam them in the juicer. You might not think of peppers as juicer giants, but they can add zest to drinks made from other fruits and vegetables, such as carrots. Cook as a side dish. Tired of the same old vegetables at dinner? Slice a pepper or two and do a fast sauté in olive oil, adding a pinch of salt, pepper, and your favorite herb. The heat releases the sweetness, making sautéed peppers a wonderful counterpart to meats and starches. 4. Shrimp. Taste and convenience make shrimp the most popular shellfish around. But shrimp also deserves acclaim as one of the few major dietary sources of vitamin D, with three ounces providing 30 percent of the recommended daily amount -- more than a cup of fortified milk. Shrimp also contains omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin C, along with other nutrients essential for general health, including iron and vitamin B12. Select by senses. When buying fresh raw shrimp, look for flesh that's moist, firm, and translucent, without spots or patches of blackness. Then put your nose to work: Shrimp should smell fresh and not give off an ammonia-like smell, which is a sign of deterioration. If you're buying shrimp frozen, squeeze the package and listen: The crunch of ice crystals means the shrimp was probably partially thawed, then refrozen -- a sign you should find another (less crunchy) package. Eat or freeze. When you get shrimp home, rinse under cold water and store in the refrigerator for up to two days. If you plan to store beyond that, stick to frozen shrimp, which will keep in the freezer for up to six months. Cook quickly. Overcooking makes shrimp tough, so it's best to cook it fast, boiling in water until shells turn pink and flesh becomes opaque, stirring occasionally. Rinse under cold water and serve alone, as part of a seafood chowder, or chilled. Shrimp can also be broiled, grilled, or stir-fried. 5. Soy products. Once relegated to the shelves of health-food stores, soy products such as tofu and tempeh have reached the mainstream largely because they've been shown to have cardiovascular benefits. But soybeans also protect bones, thanks to compounds called isoflavones and significant amounts of both vitamin E and calcium. Long a staple of Asian diets, soy can also be found in soy milk -- a boon for people who want to avoid lactose or cholesterol in regular milk. Make the most of milk. Use soy milk (now sold in many supermarkets next to cow's milk) for puddings, baked goods, cereal, shakes -- just about anywhere you'd use regular milk. But don't mix it with coffee or other acidic foods, which tend to make soy milk curdle. Try them whole. Trust us: Whole soy beans, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, are delicious. They look like large sweet peas but have an even gentler, milder flavor -- nothing at all like the better known but more intimidating products like tofu. Check the freezer aisle for edamame (pronounced "ed-ah-MAH-may") -- they come both in their pods, or shelled. They cook up fast -- about five minutes in boiling water and two minutes in the microwave -- and can be eaten hot or cold as snacks or appetizers, or tossed into salads, stir-fries, casseroles, or soups. Give tofu a few more chances. Many people don't know what to make of tofu. It's an odd color for a vegetable-derived food (white), an odd texture (smooth and moist), and comes in an odd form (usually, a block). Get past all that. Tofu is easy to work with, extraordinarily healthy, and takes on the flavors around it. Easy ideas: Drop half-inch cubes into most any soup; stir into tomato sauces, breaking it up into small pieces; or just cut into cubes, cover with chopped scallions and soy sauce, and eat at room temperature as is. 6. Sweet potatoes. These tropical root vegetables (which, technically, not related to white baking potatoes) are such a nutritional powerhouse, they once topped a list of vegetables ranked according to nutritional value by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Sweet potatoes are a rich source of vitamin C, folate, vitamin B6, and dietary fiber, among other nutrients. Buy fresh. Though you'll benefit from eating sweet potatoes in any form, fresh potatoes are better than canned products, which are packed in a heavy syrup that leaches the vegetable's most valuable nutrients, including vitamins B and C. Keep cool, not cold. Store sweet potatoes someplace dark, dry, and cool -- preferably between 55 and 60 degrees -- but not in the refrigerator: Cold temperatures damage cells, causing the potato to harden and lose some of its nutritional value. Maximize nutrients. Eat cooked potatoes with their skin -- an especially rich source of nutrients and fiber. Handle gently to avoid bruising, then bake or boil, and serve with a touch of fat from butter, oil, or another dish and some salt and pepper. 7. Cheese. Hard or soft, fresh or ripened, cheese in all its variety is an excellent source of calcium for bones, and protein for muscles and other joint-supporting tissues. Depending on type, cheeses (especially hard varieties such as cheddar and Colby) are also a good source of vitamin B6 and folate. The sheer abundance of cheeses makes it easy to get more in your diet -- by, for example, slicing hard cheeses onto crackers or grating them into casseroles, or spreading soft cheeses such as cottage cheese or Brie onto fruits or vegetables. Grease your grater. When you have arthritis, grating cheese is hard enough without the grater becoming clogged. To make the job easier, give the grater a light coating of oil, which keeps the cheese from sticking and makes it easier to rinse the grater clean. Lengthen shelf life. Hard cheeses that are well wrapped and unsliced can last up to six weeks in the refrigerator. (Chilled soft cheeses are best used within a week.) To make cheese last even longer, throw it in the freezer, but expect thawed soft cheese to separate slightly and hard cheese to be crumbly -- ideal for melting into casseroles and sauces but not as good for nibbling. Let it warm. Cheese tastes best when served at room temperature, so if you've been storing it in the refrigerator, take cheese out and let stand at least one hour before serving to enjoy its full flavor. Have a daily cheese platter. Healthy eaters know that every dinner table should have a plate of fresh raw vegetables in addition to all the prepared foods. Consider adding a large hunk of cheese to the platter each night, along with a knife. Sitting there in front of you, it's hard to resist slicing a piece off a few times to round out the meal. 8. Lentils. These dried legumes, with their rainbow of earthy colors, are prime sources of folate, with a single cup providing about 90 percent of your daily needs. But lentils also provide one of the richest plant-based sources of protein, contain large amounts of soluble dietary fiber, and hold significant stores of vitamin B6. These and other nutrients make lentils protect the body against heart disease and cancer in addition to arthritis. Try a few soups. Not many people know a lot of lentil recipes. The most common usage -- soup -- is probably the best place to start for those new to the food. You might be surprised at how easy and tasty lentil soups can be. Add cooked lentils to water or broth, chop in carrots, celery, onions, and a lean meat, add some simple herbs and seasonings, and you are well on your way to a great meal. Buy in bags. Though sometimes sold in bulk from bins, it's best to buy lentils in plastic bags, preferably with most beans shielded from light. Reason: Exposure to light and air degrades nutrients (especially vitamin B6) and open bins invite contamination by insects. Pick the best beans. Even bagged products aren't pristine: Sort through lentils before you use them by spreading them on a baking sheet and picking out those that are shriveled or off-color, along with any small stones that may have gotten mixed in. After that, there's no need to soak, but you should swish beans in a water-filled bowl, discard any floaters, and rinse under cold water in a strainer before cooking. Minimize gas. Thoroughly drain lentils before eating or adding to other dishes: Beans are famous for causing gas due to sugars they contain that the body can't digest, but these sugars are soluble in water and leach out when lentils are cooked. 9. Green tea. This mild, slightly astringent tea contains hundreds of powerful antioxidant chemicals called polyphenols and has been cited for helping prevent problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. But studies also suggest green tea may help prevent or ease symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. In one study of induced arthritis in mice, green tea cut the disease onset rate almost in half, and follow-up studies by the same researchers, at Case Western Reserve University, in Ohio, show promise in humans. Boil water briskly. Tea tastes best when water is at the boiling point, which allows tea to release its flavorful compounds quickly. Water that's cooler than that tends to release flavors more slowly, weakening the tea. Keep steeping short. Let tea steep in hot water for about three minutes -- and no longer than five. This brief steeping time allows tea to acquire a full-bodied flavor and release its nutrients, but withholds compounds that make tea taste bitter. Get a bag bonus. Tea purists favor the fresher flavor of loose tea, but some experts suggest that tea bags release more beneficial nutrients because smaller, ground-up particles expose more of the tea leaves' surface area to hot water. |
| Subject: Jimmy Carter in Kansas City | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, November 13, 10:26:13am  Kansas City, MO - President Jimmy Carter says President Bush's policies conflict with American values. More than a thousand people packed into Unity Temple on the Plaza for the former president to sign a copy of his new book "Our Endangered Values." Reviews call the book biting political commentary, despite the fact that there's an unwritten rule in American politics that former presidents do not criticize current ones. Carter says he wrote this book reluctantly, but did so because he just couldn't stay silent anymore. "In the last 5 years there's been a dramatic and disturbing and radical change in the values of this country," Carter said. For example, he says peace is an American value, not pre-emptive war: "we don't wait until our country is threatened," Carter said, "we publicly announced our new policy is to attack a county, invade a country, bomb a county." He says another American value is human rights. For decades the US has supported the Geneva convention saying we won't torture prisoners, but he says now "our senators are voting to keep torture. It's inconceivable this would happen in the United States of America." Carter also says American politics is being infused with what he calls "fundamentalist" religion. Carter, who is a born again Christian, says blurring the line between church and state is dangerous. Carter says he's not in politics anymore, and his new book is not partisan. He criticizes Democrats for being out of touch on the abortion issue. "I don't think the Democratic party ought to identify itself with freedom of choice, with abortion," he said, "it's a litmus test for many people and I have a problem with abortion." Carter hopes his book helps Americans debate these issues and decide on election day what America's future will look like. Carter's own presidency was controversial, but since then his humanitarian efforts in the world earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. |
| Subject: Diets | |
Author: Bahadur [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, October 03, 01:31:59am Weight Loss Losing Weight Permanent Weight Loss Grape Fruit Diet Dr Phils Diet Blood Test Diet LA Weight Loss Scars Dale Diet Weight Watcher Zone Diet Atkins Diet EDiets Fad Diet |
Subject:  Re: He knew | |
Author: Jul [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, May 03, 06:37:10am You should of know to. Just because you don't like him dose not mean he did some thing worng so git all the info then go and spike. |
Subject:  Re: Ann Coulter | |
Author: Jul [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, May 03, 06:24:47am That is not right being rich thin and republicon is not everything thay say it is. I mate be thin and republicon but I'm not rich and I couldn't be happer. And sine I am only 15 thats good. |
| Subject: www.DRUGS-FOR-HEALTH.com | |
Author: Florence [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, January 04, 05:12:13am http://www.Drugs-For-Health.com is a US licensed pharmacy to buy drugs at incredibly low prices. All drugs are FDA approved and we ship by FedEx Overnight. A free online consultation is provided for each customer. You could try it! GOOD LUCK |
| Subject: How the mighty are fallen | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, October 14, 12:34:44pm    OCTOBER 13--Hours after Bill O'Reilly accused her of a multimillion dollar shakedown attempt, a female Fox News producer fired back at the TV star today, filing a lawsuit claiming that he subjected her to repeated instances of sexual harassment and spoke often, and explicitly, to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. Below you'll find a copy of Andrea Mackris's complaint, an incredible page-turner that quotes O'Reilly, 55, on all sorts of lewd matters. Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O'Reilly's more steamy soliloquies. For example, we direct you to his Caribbean shower fantasies. While we suggest reading the entire document, TSG will point you to interesting sections on a Thailand sex show, Al Franken, and the climax of one August 2004 phone conversation. (22 pages) Join TSG's mailing list. Search The Smoking Gun. E-mail story to a friend. |
| Subject: Was Bush Wired | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Saturday, October 09, 09:10:45pm  Tuesday, October 05, 2004 What's the frequency, Karl? [Editor's Note: Several readers suggested that the site reads better with our initial October 5 post remaining at the top. We made the change, but until we figure out how to effect it on the template, date stamps on subsequent posts will be inaccurate.] *** New as of Friday p.m: mediachannel.org reports Bush campaign media director Mark McKinnon denied that the president has received "audio signals." Salon posted a story early Friday. *** This site is a clearinghouse for discussion of whether President Bush uses an earpiece through which he's fed lines and cues by offstage advisers. His speech rhythms suggest this, as do some of his word choices and interjections, and his constantly shifting eye movements while speaking. And there's another form of evidence: Television viewers have sometimes heard another voice speaking Bush's words before he says them. When Bush spoke at D-Day ceremonies in France last June, for example, viewers watching on CNN, Fox and MSNBC, including mediachannel.org's Danny Schechter, were startled to hear another voice speaking Bush's words as if to prompt him. Some said this continued into a q & a. And on the night of 9/11, when Bush appeared on television to address the nation, viewers of one television station in Quincy, Massachusetts heard another voice speaking, slowly and carefully, a few words at a time -- words which were then recited by the president. The voice was nondescript, male, definitely not the president's voice, says Quincy resident Robyn Miller. This went on for at least four sentences, she says, and then the "extra" feed was cut off. [Postscript: A poster to IsBushWired comments that she heard the prompter for Bush's 9/11 address on a New York station: "I was watching ABC in NYC. I had no cable and I could only get ABC from my antenna at that time (the only station that transmitters on the Empire State instead of WTC). I definitely heard the prompter. I posted about it at the time at Salon."] Reporters should have looked into this long ago. But for the past four years through Bush's first debate last week with John Kerry -- and even in the days after the debate -- the press has ignored the evidence of its eyes and ears, and failed to ask whether the president secretly relies on unseen handlers for some public events, including press conferences. If Bush wore a hidden earpiece to cheat in this way during his first debate with John Kerry (however unsuccessfully), it is urgent that the fraud be exposed before the election. The agreement set by the debate commission barred shots of the candidates from the rear of the stage. (It also specified only hardwired podium microphones for the first debate, i.e. no lapel mics.) The networks refused to comply with the camera angle rules, broadcasting occasional shots of the candidates from behind. The images here are from the Fox video pool feed. Many viewers thus saw a squarish bulge the size of a large battery pack under the back of Bush's suit jacket, with an S-shaped cord appearing to snake up the right side of his back. Several blogs have carried speculation that it was an audio receiver. A poster to NYCIndymedia says, "Think 'passive transducer' earpiece." He writes, "The bulges under his jacket are likely receiver/repeaters that pick up the transmitter (and encrypted?) signals from his handlers and transmit them, at very low power, to the earpiece." "Sure, Bush uses an earpiece sometimes," a top Washington editor for Reuters said to me last spring. "State of the Union -- he had an earpiece for that. Everybody knows it," he said, or assumes it. But everybody doesn't know it, I said. Why hadn't Reuters investigated? The editor shrugged and said it wasn't so different from using a teleprompter. Except that a teleprompter isn't a secret. And Americans have the right to know if the president can't or won't speak in public without covert assistance. Television hosts and news anchors wear earpieces, called IFBs (for internal [or interruptible] foldback, or feedback) which fit in the ear canal and are almost invisibly small, to receive cues from their producers. (Language scientists say that "shadowing," repeating the words someone else is speaking, is not at all difficult, but it is difficult not to move your eyes when listening.) Television journalists would be likely to spot the use of an IFB or at least to suspect it. So, why haven't they raised the question? I suspect it's untouchable in part because asking the question now points up all the years they let go by without asking it. But these are the questions that must be asked now, by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and journalists: Does the president use an earpiece in his meetings with the public and with journalists? Did he wear one in last week's debate? How can members of the public who suspect he wore an earpiece be assured that he will not do so in the next debate? What was the object underneath his jacket? --Ed. |
| Subject: Bush questions Kerry's credibility | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, September 26, 07:39:12pm  JANESVILLE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Democrat John Kerry wrongly questioned the credibility of the interim Iraqi leader, and "you can't lead this country" while undercutting an ally, President Bush said Friday. Bush and interim Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi had hopeful words for the future of Iraq a day earlier, which Kerry characterized as putting the "best face" on a Bush administration policy in Iraq that has gone wrong. "This brave man came to our country to talk about how he's risking his life for a free Iraq, which helps America," Bush said at a campaign event in battleground Wisconsin. "And Senator Kerry held a press conference and questioned Mr. Allawi's credibility. You can't lead this country if your ally in Iraq feels like you question his credibility." Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic nominee, said the president is trying to change the subject. "George Bush has failed to be up front with the American people about what's going on in Iraq, offering fantasyland descriptions of the situation on the ground," he said. "Facts can be stubborn things and when there's a gap between the reality and the words coming out of the White House, we are going to point them out." For the second day in a row, Vice President Cheney also criticized Kerry for his remarks on Allawi. "I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage," Cheney said at an event Friday morning in Lafayette, Louisiana. "Ayad Allawi is our ally. He stands beside us in the war against terror. John Kerry is trying to tear him down and to trash all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive." In his remarks Thursday, Kerry said Allawi's optimistic assessment of postwar Iraq was contradicted by his own past statements as well as the reality on the ground. "I think the prime minister is obviously contradicting his own statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country," Kerry said. "The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story." Bush was also campaigning Friday in Racine. By evening, Bush was to be at his Crawford, Texas, ranch for a weekend of cramming for next Thursday's debate with Kerry, the first of the presidential campaign. The last Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin was Ronald Reagan in 1984. But the traditionally Democratic state has grown more Republican in recent years. Democrat Al Gore won it four years ago, but only by 5,708 votes. That has both campaigns aggressively pursuing the state's 10 electoral votes. Bush's Friday stop was his 16th in the state. An ABC News poll taken last week showed Bush leading Kerry by 10 percentage points in Wisconsin. Kerry has made eight stops in Wisconsin, and he plans to camp out at a Wisconsin resort next week to prepare for the debate. Mike Sheridan, president of the United Auto Workers local in Janesville, said union members would use Friday's visit to show their support for Kerry. "I think it will fire up anti-Bush sentiment even more," Sheridan told the Janesville Gazette. In Janesville, Bush was met by about 250 protesters waving signs that said "Like father, like son. One term" and "We need good jobs now" and "Show us the jobs." Wisconsin is one of the few battleground states that has gained jobs since Bush took office. The unemployment rate is up nearly a percentage point, but Labor Department records show a gain of 200 jobs since January 2001. |
| Subject: Cat Stevens incident a spelling mistake | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, September 26, 06:28:10pm  Saturday, Sep. 25, 2004 The Cat Stevens incident has its origins in a spelling mistake By SALLY B. DONNELLY The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government's "no-fly" antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S. The Transportation Safety Administration alleges that Islam has links to terrorist groups, which he has denied; British foreign minister Jack Straw said the TSA action "should never have been taken." The incident points up some of the real problems facing security personnel as they try to enforce the "no-fly" list. One issue is spelling; many foreign names have several different transliterations into English. And the sheer size of the list is daunting; thousands of names have been added in the last couple months, says one government official, bringing the total up to more than 19,000 names to look out for. That makes it difficult for airlines and government agencies to check all passengers. Within the past six months, several people on the no fly list have been mistakenly allowed to fly. Still, the TSA is learning. It recently acknowledged that a Federal Air Marshall, unable to fly for weeks when his name was mistakenly put on the "no-fly" list, was in fact not a threat, and removed his name from the list. |
| Subject: Message from Garrison Keillor | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, September 23, 07:51:59pm September 19th, 2004 8:46 pm How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk? by Garrison Keillor / In These Times Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor. In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. “Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,” says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy. The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good. Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich. There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time. Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term. This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm. The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger. Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning. |
| Subject: Plane carried 13 bin Ladens | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, September 23, 07:48:44pm July 22nd, 2004 2:45 pm Plane Carried 13 Bin Ladens; Manifest of Sept. 19, 2001, Flight From U.S. Is Released By Dana Milbank / Washington Post At least 13 relatives of Osama bin Laden, accompanied by bodyguards and associates, were allowed to leave the United States on a chartered flight eight days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a passenger manifest released yesterday. One passenger, Omar Awad bin Laden, a nephew of the al Qaeda leader, had been investigated by the FBI because he had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a leader of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which the FBI suspected of being a terrorist organization. The passenger list was made public by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who obtained the manifest from officials at Boston's Logan International Airport. Lautenberg's office was given the document in recent weeks and released it before today's issuance of the final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Although much was already known about the "bin Laden flight," Lautenberg provided additional details, including the information that the plane, a 727 owned by DB Air and operated by Ryan International, began its flight in Los Angeles and made stops in Orlando, Dulles International Airport and Boston before continuing to Gander, Newfoundland; Paris; Geneva; and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The aircraft, tail number N521DB, has been chartered frequently by the White House for the press corps traveling with President Bush. A staff report by the Sept. 11 commission this spring said the flight was one of six chartered flights carrying 142 people, mostly Saudi nationals, from the United States between Sept. 14 and 24 after airspace was reopened. The U.S. government had allowed, before commercial airspace was reopened, at least one domestic flight for Saudis who had feared for their safety, Lautenberg's staff said. The commission reported that there were 23 passengers and three private security guards on the bin Laden flight. However, the manifest lists 25 passengers, plus the three guards employed by CDT Training Inc. of Elmwood Park, N.J. After a request for permission to allow the bin Ladens to leave reached Richard A. Clarke at the National Security Council, the flight departed Logan Airport in Boston at 11 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2001. Dale Watson, former FBI counterterrorism chief, said yesterday that FBI agents "scrubbed the people who were leaving, and I was informed none of them were anybody we needed to detain or not allow to leave." Lautenberg, in a statement, said that Bush "needs to explain to the American people why his administration let this plane leave." White House spokesman Sean McCormack said the contentions that the flight should not have been allowed to leave have been "debunked by the facts." Ron Ryan of Ryan International said yesterday that he is "quite confident" that the Saudi Embassy arranged the flight through a Ryan partner called Sport-Hawk. He said the bin Ladens "were quite concerned for their safety," which alarmed the crew. "The Saudi Embassy offered to pay more money if our crew had a concern," he said. But he said all were reassured because "the FBI and Secret Service were heavily involved. They were in abundance every place we were." The commission staff reported that each of the Saudi flights "was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure." The staff said that 22 people on the bin Laden flight were interviewed by the FBI and that the FBI checked databases for information on the passengers. The commission said none of the passengers was on the terrorist watch list. The flight manifest lists 13 people with the bin Laden surname and others with Brazilian, British, Indonesian and Yemeni passports. Passenger Omar Awad bin Laden had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a nephew of Osama bin Laden who was involved in forming the U.S. branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Alexandria. Federal agents raided the office this spring in connection with a terrorism-related investigation. The FBI has described the group as a "suspected terrorist organization." Among the other passengers was Shafig bin Laden, a half brother of Osama bin Laden who was reportedly attending the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group, a politically connected investment company in Washington, on Sept. 11, 2001. Also on board was Akberali Moawalla, an official with the investment company run by Yeslam bin Laden, another of Osama bin Laden's half brothers. Records show that a passenger, Kholoud Kurdi, lived in Northern Virginia with a bin Laden relative. The bin Laden flight has received fresh publicity because it was a topic in Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." |
| Subject: More on dogs sniffing cancer | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, September 23, 01:44:04pm  Uni of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Beagle Brigade sniffs for illegal goods at Virginia's Dulles airport. With proper training, just about any dog can learn to detect a unique scent—from drugs to explosives, and possibly even cancer in the human body. Photo by Ken Hammond/USDA John Roach for National Geographic News August 20, 2004 Some people say that old dogs can't be taught new tricks. But don't tell that to Larry Myers. A professor of veterinary medicine at Alabama's Auburn University, Myers has trained unwanted dogs to detect everything from drugs and bombs to off-flavor catfish and agricultural pests. Myers says that, with proper training, just about any dog can learn to detect a unique scent—even the odor of certain cancers "Some dogs are more conditioned to training than others. But that's differences between individuals [not breeds]," he said. Myers usually works with dogs rescued from the pound. Funding for this Earth-systems science story was provided by the National Science Foundation. This special series of news stories is produced as a complement to Pulse of the Planet, a daily sound portrait of the Earth broadcast on radio. James Walker, director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University in Tallahassee, says canines' sense of smell is generally 10,000 to 100,000 times superior to that of humans. Walker plans to train dogs to detect prostate cancer in human urine later this year. It's uncertain why dogs are so much better at smelling than humans are. But Walker says it is probably related to how dogs are "wired." Recent research shows that dogs have a greater variety of smelling receptors in their noses. They also have a greater convergence of neurons from the nose to the brain than humans do. "It is clear that the dog has a much greater proportion of its brain devoted to smell than is the case with humans," Walker added. Myers, the veterinary professor, notes that, in general terms, dogs and humans are similarly wired for smelling. But he adds that more research is needed to determine the subtle differences between man and mutt, including the mucus that overlies our different smelling receptors and the molecules that make up those receptors. Cancer Detection Cancer represents the frontier of dog-detection research. Anecdotal evidence suggests it may be possible for dogs to sniff out certain malignancies. But the science still lags, according to Myers. "We hope we can. We think we can. But we don't know that we can." Later this year Walker and his colleague and wife, Dianne, hope to show that canine cancer detection can be done. The husband-and-wife team intend to use a special technique as they study the ability of dogs to detect prostate cancer in human urine samples. The training program uses a chemical stimulus, n-amyl acetate, which smells like bananas. Working with the bananalike scent, which the dogs already recognize, will allow the researchers to prove their dogs are well-trained. Put simply, the duo will steadily lower the concentration of the banana-smelling chemical in test samples, then slowly introduce urine samples with and without cancer cells into the training regimen. "If the dog goes from getting it right about half the time to doing it much better than that, or even showing perfect performance—let's say it takes two months to learn—what that would show is the dog is learning to categorize the urine samples into two classes: normal versus cancer," Walker said. At that point, the researchers would phase out n-amyl acetate altogether and only test dogs on urine samples. Since the urine samples will have already been screened by doctors, successfully trained dogs should only be as good as their medically trained human counterparts. The final step in the dogs' training will require several years of rigorous analysis: Canines must be tested on unscreened urine. Researchers would record the dogs' analysis and track human patients to determine if the dogs are able to diagnose cancer any earlier than conventional medical techniques allow. Walker cautions that the work is preliminary. He adds that it will be at least another five years before dogs, or any canine-inspired technology, greet people who visit their doctor's office for cancer screening. |
| Subject: Dogs can smell cancer? | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, September 23, 01:34:47pm April 22, 2001 Nottingham, UK A new report will be published this month, entitled "Sniffer Dogs in the Melanoma Clinic." In this report, Professor Howell Williams of Queen's Medical Centre cites two cases in which a dog was able to detect a cancerous growth in a human. In one instance, he describes how a border collie saved a woman's life: "The woman had a mole on her leg for several years and her dog would repeatedly lick or sniff it. "One day the dog tried to bite the mole off. At this point the lady was so concerned that she went to see her GP." The woman was referred to Professor Williams, who found that the mole was malignant melanoma—an aggressive skin cancer. Professor Williams believes that dogs can smell the infinitesimally subtle changes in cancerous cells. He has recommended that dogs be used as a diagnostic aid. |
| Subject: Big Brother Watch | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, August 29, 09:23:27am The Leader-Chicago Bureau CHICAGO -- Monday, July 19, 2004 This week, a series of public forums on a program requiring all pregnant women and children through age 18 years to be tested for mental health needs is being held this week in five different locations statewide. Orwellian program in Illinois seeks to place all pregnant women and children through compulsory screening for "mental defectives."- One group of parents learned about the state's plans to proceed with this program and on Monday issued an alarm asking for parents and citizens concerned about the new program to voice their opinions at the forums. "We're moving toward social training over academic training with this program," Larry Trainor, a Mt. Prospect parent of four children and a contact for Citizens Commission on Human Rights, based in Los Angeles, said today. TOP "Since psychiatric involvement in education, SAT scores have gone down for the past few decades. Evaluating mental conditions is not based on scientific evidence, it's subjective," he said. The $10 million plan for the setup of the Children's Mental Health Act of 2003 is being considered at this week's public forums starting Monday, July 18 in Champaign. Signed into law, the bill passed the Illinois General Assembly last spring, sponsored in the House by State Representatives Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) and Patricia Bellock (R-Westmont). State Senator Maggie Crotty (D-Oak Forest) and Susan Garrett (D-Highwood) shepherded the legislation through the Senate. The legislation passed the House with a 107 to 5 vote, and the Senate unanimously. "What if they find a student has a math disorder, a reading disorder. Would that be a mental health disorder, one that would cause the parents to put their children with a drug for a condition they may or may not have?" Trainor asked. The mental health program will develop a mental health system for "all children ages 0-18 years," provide for screening to "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of young children's social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools." Also, all pregnant women will be screened for depression and thereafter following her baby's birth, up to one year. Follow-up treatment services will also be provided. Trainor said that he is trying to get parents and citizens out to voice their opinion about the new program. Apparently, children's mental health will be assessed along with their academic standards in the new proposed testing. The Illinois State Board of Education has been given the responsibility to develop the appropriate tests, according to last year's legislation. The Task Force hosting the public forums this week are to send a recommendation to Governor Blagojevich by the end of the summer, according to the Act (HB 2900). The above is Copyright © 2004 the Illinois Leader™, All Rights Reserved This is a Developing story . . . Thank you to We Hold These Truths for alerting us WHY YOU NEED TO BE CONCERNED If you haven't noticed yet, the majority of new laws and policies being implemented are sold on fear through the necessity of good intentions and as a way to protect you by allowing your government to take care of you, as if the government is a better steward of your body, soul and mind. Each is euphemized to seem harmless and necessary. Every time a law is passed, you give up a portion of your freedom. This is a fact. Some laws are necessary to allow society to function toward a common good. Laws like murder is bad. Stealing is unjust and beating a child unacceptable. These create the commonalities that define civilization. Since September 11th, 2001 our governments, state, local and federal continue to push through resolutions, legislation and ideas directly in contradiction to the rules we've already established for America, set forth in our Constitution. In effect, each of these chips at our civil liberties, forcing us further away from our values and principles. This law in Illinois represents one such example. Without a doubt the women pushing it through created it with the best of intentions; yet anytime something becomes mandatory, intentions become abuses. The following are the key reasons I believe the citizens of Illinois and the rest of us in the United States must object to this legislation. If we allow it to pass in one state without confronting it, others will follow. 1) This is profiling: Segmenting society based upon subjective ideals, this opens up the ability to create a caste system based upon the mental health results of women and children. This means your child's future, the classes he or she takes and the opportunities open to them could be limited simply based upon test results at a given point in time. It segments society into mentally healthy and various degrees of mentally unhealthy. The potential for abuse of this information is immense. TOP 2) It is compulsory, meaning you do not have a choice: The mental health of your children, yourself if female or your wife will now be on state records. Once in state records, you now open yourself up to abuse based upon these tests and increase the likelihood of such information being used to screen for employment, benefits or privileges such as a driver's license, college admissions, retirement or health care. 3) The state determines whether you are mentally healthy or not: This is not a good idea. For example: A close friend of mine was thrown into an alcohol treatment program ten years ago after a 20-minute diagnosis. Her life was falling apart and she was sinking into deep depression, prompting the visit to the Psychiatrist. The defining factor being she mistook the shakes one gets from drinking too much coffee or taking diet pills for delirium tremors, which she didn't even know existed until she arrived at the treatment facility. The question asked, have you ever had the shakes? She answered yes thinking of ephedrine and caffeine. She also had driven twice after drinking and engaged in a one-night stand, answering yes to the question, "Have you ever done something you regretted after drinking?" She did not have a problem with alcohol, but was not allowed to leave the treatment center until she confessed her alcoholism. At twenty-seven, she'd only been drunk nine times in her life, all during college. Once sent to a treatment center the insurance company required completion and sign off by the facility before they would pay. After thirty-days she finally made up a story and got out. TOP Her real problem was the fact she had been raped and molested several times in her teens and had been suppressing it for twelve years, which did come out in her first step. She lived abroad at this time and women didn't have the same rights as they do in the United States so she was told it was her fault and silenced, thus allowing the abuse to continue unchecked. Sixty-eight handwritten pages delved into this. Now she knew the problem causing her depression, anger and erratic behavior. But the treatment center made her write a new first step because hers didn't deal with alcohol abuse. When she insisted alcohol wasn't involved, which it wasn't; they insisted she was in denial. Eventually she figured it out and that first step did allow her to realize what was really going on with her, but her employer, insurance company and doctors now had her flagged as an alcoholic and this designation has haunted her ever since all because she answered questions according to her experience and they interpreted according to theirs. This is why mental health is subjective, not objective. The diagnosis is only as good as the information given, the context taken and the skill of the mental health professional. 4) This is a violation of your privacy. Your children do not have a choice; the state decides if they are "healthy" and channels them into programs it deems appropriate. One example of how this may work is something I went through in high school when I was wrongly channeled based upon aptitude and personality tests, which I document in this essay on The Gifts of Math. With this legislation, even adult women, you do not have a choice. By simply becoming pregnant you give up your right to personal privacy and become part of the system. 5) It is unconstitutional The Bill of Rights guarantees every American and person living in the United States the right to be secure in their own person and protected against unreasonable search and seizure, this includes thought police. One of the dangers of our invading Iraq as a pre-emptive deterrent is we have now established in our society a precedence, a Minority Report scenario by which we engage and justify based on possibility rather than addressing the action after it occurs. The fear of maybe drives this. It's an irrational fear. THE PRICE OF IRRATIONAL FEAR Last year 43,220 people died in US traffic accidents and over 195,000 deaths due to hospital error. Do we wage a war on prescription mix-ups, unsafe driving or medical misdiagnosis, a real threat to Americans? No, the state of Illinois opens up its women and children to more potential hospital mix-ups and we wage a war on international terrorism which killed 0 people in the United States during 2002 and 2004. It killed less than twenty in 2003 with the DC Sniper case. We punish based upon the 'what if', rather than holding accountability only to those who do. This mental health screening is a personal pre-emptive strike aimed at women and children, a collective punishment for all to find the one Andrea Yates or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold among us. TOP In return for this "safety", we lay our rights down and trample them over the fear of what might happen but probably won't. This is not what the United States is about and we're seeing more and more legislation like this which strips us of rights, categorizes us and channels us into different risk areas including CAPPS II, The Trusted Traveler, Homeless tagging with RFID's and Mexico's doing of the same with its judicial workers. Of course, do not forget the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II. This is what happens when people become too afraid to deal with the issues causing problems, willingly sacrificing their rights to self-determination over to a government whose sole purpose is to protect itself. George Washington warned us of this. Henry David Thoreau warned us of this. George Orwell warned us of this. President Eisenhower warned us of this and people like Patrick J. Buchanan, Ralph Nader and Karen Kwiatkowski continue to warn us. Unfortunately the reality seems to fall on deaf ears. One of the results of this is the above legislation in Illinois, no doubt one day coming to a state near you. Related Story Offsite: TINY CAMERAS SOON TO BE AMONG CHICO POLICE TOOLS August 6, 2004 By Chico ER (California) Federally subsidized law enforcement now blur the difference between terrorism and crime watch. |
| Subject: Henry Kissinger quote | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Saturday, August 21, 08:51:41am  Congressman Ron Paul Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State (Nixon & Ford) Director, National Security Council (1969-1973) Address to Bilderberg Group Evian, France; 21 May 1992 Transcript from Swiss delegate's tape recording |
| Subject: McGreevey's Missteps Aided in Downfall | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Saturday, August 14, 03:52:33pm  Aug 14, 4:10 PM (ET) By ROBERT TANNER From liberal Massachusetts to conservative Arizona, gay politicians have gone public and survived. New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey's decision to come out on live television could have made him the most prominent among them - the nation's first openly gay governor. But there was much more to it than McGreevey's sexual orientation - allegations of sexual harassment and rumors of being blackmailed, on top of months of fund-raising investigations and indictments. And that, say gay activists and political strategists, is what made all the difference: It wasn't McGreevey's homosexuality but his political missteps that mean the end of his career.  "I think gayness is being used," said Alan Rosenthal, a Rutgers University political science professor. "It's not the root cause of his resignation. And it's certainly not the root cause of McGreevey's demise." Many things force politicians out of office - allegations of corruption, sex, infidelity. Rarely is it all of them. If it were homosexuality alone, there's much to argue he could have stayed. Rep. Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, declared his orientation in 1996 as a gay magazine prepared to "out" him, and has not lost a race since. Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was reprimanded for hiring a male prostitute as an aide (with his own money), but has held his office since 1980. "Why would you resign just because the public now knows you're gay?" said Jennifer Veiga, a Democratic Colorado state senator who came out to her constituents while seeking her fourth term as a state House member. She's won two elections since. "Generally, there's a sentiment, when public officials come out it's a positive thing," she said. "It's a question of people seeing gay and lesbians in public life and understanding that we are the same as them, we share the same values. And we even make mistakes." McGreevey himself, in a painfully revealing confession with his wife and parents by his side, said his sexual orientation should be no bar: "It makes little difference that as governor I am gay." Rather, it was "the circumstances surrounding the affair" that made the office "vulnerable to false allegations and threats of disclosure." Those circumstances the first-term Democrat chose not to explain, taking no questions after his brief announcement Thursday. Sources close to the governor have said only anonymously that the man involved in the affair was Golan Cipel, an Israeli poet who briefly was the state's homeland security adviser. A senior McGreevey political adviser told The Associated Press that Cipel threatened McGreevey several weeks ago that unless he was paid "millions of dollars," Cipel would file a lawsuit charging the governor with sexual harassment. On Friday, Cipel's lawyer claimed the governor made repeated sexual advances toward his former employee and has now made him the victim of a "smear campaign." Cipel's ties to the governor had already brought complaints, after he got the security post in 2002 without any background check or official announcement, and a $110,000 salary. He was reassigned a few months later and soon after left government. That controversy was followed by questions about other McGreevey associates, appointees, friends and fundraisers caught in scandals, investigations or indictments. The most lurid, until now, was when the governor's top campaign donor was charged with trying to thwart a federal campaign-finance investigation by luring a witness - his own brother-in-law - into a compromising position with a prostitute and sending the video to the man's wife. "You've got to put this in context with the difficulties he was facing," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican political strategist. "He was just political toast." The governor said his resignation wouldn't take effect until Nov. 15 to avoid a special election, a delay Republicans have criticized. "I don't think it has to do with being gay, or even an extramarital affair," said Rosenthal, who has studied New Jersey politics for years. "This was just the last thing. People got together - Democratic leaders got together - and let the governor know they've just got to have another candidate." If the gay revelations are really just a distraction from McGreevey's larger political failures, it's a stunning step in a country where, in the past, homosexuality was something to be denied at all costs. And the larger debates over homosexuality continues, over adoptions, discrimination and marriage. For many gay politicians, the poignant speech and resignation is a missed opportunity for a successful gay governor. Still, all stress the difficulties of coming out and that each person must find their own next step. "Every time there's a new disclosure or acknowledgment that someone is gay or lesbian, it further demystifies who gay people are," said Colorado state Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, a Democrat who came out after 19 years in office. "It's a reminder that gay Americans are just like straight Americans." For better and for worse. |
| Subject: Woman filed rape lawsuit against Bush | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, August 08, 07:45:52pm By Jackson Thoreau opednews.com Early one Saturday afternoon in July 2003, I made a simple phone call to Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a rape lawsuit against George W. Bush in December 2002. I expected to leave a message on a machine, so I was caught a little offguard when Schoedinger answered. She, too, sounded somewhat surprised I had called, saying she hadn't heard from many other reporters. But she talked to me for a few minutes about the legal action. "I am still trying to prosecute [the lawsuit]," said Schoedinger, a 38-year-old African-American woman who lived in the Houston suburb of Missouri City. "I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life." Well, Schoedinger hasn't gone on with her life. In fact, three months after I spoke to her, she died in an apparent suicide. And this matter remains unsettled. When I asked her in July 2003 about the lack of media coverage, Schoedinger said she wasn't seeking publicity. She said she did not even know about a December 2002 article in the Fort Bend Star, the only U.S. mainstream media outlet that covered this story, to my knowledge. The Fort Bend reporter, LeaAnne Klentzman, said she even went to Schoedinger's home and talked to a man there, who said she could not come to door. While I reached and spoke to Schoedinger on my first attempt, maybe she wasn't ready to talk back in December. Anyways, Schoedinger said she was surprised the case wasn't covered more because "it is true......People have to be accountable for what they do, and that's why I'm pursuing it." To be sure, Schoedinger's accusations - which include being drugged and sexually assaulted numerous times by Bush and other men purporting to be FBI agents - are bizarre and hard for most people to believe. But her story fits in with those told by a growing number of people who say they were used as guinea pigs or whatever by members of the CIA or another U.S. agency who wanted to test out the latest mind-controlling drug or just have a strange form of release. And her death - let's just say government agents have made murders look like suicides before. In her court petition, Schoedinger said police in Sugar Land, another Houston suburb where she said some assailants linked to Bush attempted to unsuccessfully abduct her from her car shortly before the 2000 election, refused to take a report or do anything about that incident. She filed a lawsuit against the Sugar Land department and said that in preparing its defense, Sugar Land police found out that she dated Bush as a minor. I didn't get a chance to ask Schoedinger about that tie and didn't meet her in person, but her driver's license listed her as being 5-foot-8 and weighing 125 pounds, for what that's worth. The Fort Bend Star story quoted a Sugar Land police captain saying his department had no record of any complaints by Schoedinger. All he had to do was what I did - go to the Fort Bend County Internet site and do a simple search on Schoedinger's name in the area of civil court records. I found the lawsuit Schoedinger filed in December 2000 against Sugar Land police, and it even had numerous responses by the department's attorneys in that case. Just wait. This story gets stranger. When I started asking Schoedinger about certain details of the case, such as alleged surveillance at her home and if she was still legally representing herself, she politely ended our conversation. "I need to see what has been written," Schoedinger said. "I feel like it's best for me to end our conversation." Obviously, she had learned to be careful about what she said and to whom she said it. I could understand her being leery about talking about her situation with a stranger over the phone. But I remember being puzzled by Schoedinger's attitude after hanging up the phone. I wondered that if she had made up such a wild story, why she didn't come up with something a little less outlandish, in which people couldn't necessarily dismiss her as a kook. I wondered why she didn't seek publicity to at least provide some form of protection. I've long learned that being as public as possible is one of your best defenses against rogue intelligence agents. But she didn't even seem to want any media to cover her story. I told several writers I knew, some of whom tried to contact Schoedinger. None succeeded, as far as I know. I remember thinking, "I hope she doesn't wind up on the wrong side of a gun." And sure enough, in late September, Schoedinger did. The Houston Chronicle wrote a bare-bones obituary that stated only that Schoedinger "expired" on Sept. 22, 2003, and her burial was at Houston Memorial Gardens. I called the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, and a clerk told me the cause of death: a "suicide" by a "gunshot wound to the head." I hung up amid bombs going off in my mind. For one, using a gun to commit suicide is predominantly executed by males, according to psychiatrists and other sources like pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Women are more likely to overdose on drugs, although the number of gunshot suicides among women has increased in recent years. Besides Pravda and Internet ezines - one of whom referred to Schoedinger as "deranged" - I haven't seen stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead nine months later. I can't say I'm surprised. Or even angry. I don't know what the hell to think. All I know is I was one of the last - if not the last - reporters to speak to Schoedinger, and she didn't sound "deranged" to me in July 2003. She sounded like someone who had gone through something weird and was trying to sort it out. She sounded like someone who wanted the truth to come out. And now she's dead. If this had happened to Clinton when he was in the White House, do you think the story would have been covered non-stop on FOX, CNN and the right-wing talk shows? Do you think we'd have reporters asking Clinton and his people about this death in press conferences? Is FOX unfair and imbalanced to the point of being "deranged?" There are some more odd twists to this case. I also found a 2002 criminal case related to Schoedinger in which Christopher Schoedinger, her husband, allegedly struck her. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year in jail. Christopher Schoedinger had also filed for divorce. Then since 1997, Margie Schoedinger had filed for at least five assumed business names for various ventures - including a communications firm, health and beauty business, travel agency and publishing company. Could a "deranged" person start all those businesses or even know how to file a lawsuit? Schoedinger's lawsuit can still be viewed on the Fort Bend County site at http://ccweb.co.fort-bend.tx.us/localization/menu.asp - then go down to the bottom and click on civil court. Then type "schoedinger" in the plaintiff box and click search. You should find another lawsuit she filed against Sugar Land police, as well. I can really understand media members being intimidated, even frightened, of the Bush administration. As I've detailed before, these are not Boy Scouts running the show. The Schoedinger death is just the latest in a string of strange ones surrounding the Bush family - Bush biographer J.H. Hatfield, Sen. Paul Wellstone, Sen. Mel Carnahan, and others that are detailed on various sites, including at http://members.boardhost.com/gwbush/msg/362.html . For the record, I contacted Bush's media office about Schoedinger and have yet to hear back. Now that I live in the Washington, D.C., area, I can go down to the White House in person and try to get someone to speak to me about this case. As expected, I haven't had much luck with the Fort Bend County and other Texas authorities. So maybe I'll stand outside the White House, holding a sign saying, "Who killed Margie Schoedinger?" and passing out copies of my column on the case. It would make about as much sense as anything else in this matter. For all I know, maybe Schoedinger did kill herself. Maybe she dreamed up a lot of this stuff. But I don't know, am I "deranged" to think it's weird that in this mass-media, detailed-information age, so few people are even asking any questions about how a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the president could be dead less than a year later? Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html. Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html. He can be contacted at jacksonthor@yahoo.com or jacksonthor@justice.com . |
| Subject: please | |
Author: dustin [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 04, 10:19:48pm Please no: Read here why not: http://freecalifornia.typepad.com/freecalifornia/2004/02/mark_loves_hill.html |
| Subject: Republican's plan for IRS | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Monday, August 02, 02:36:21pm  XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN AUG 01, 2004 21:01:25 ET XXXXX **Exclusive** A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE. "People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday. "Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad," Hastert declares in SPEAKER: LESSONS FROM FORTY YEARS IN COACHING AND POLITICS. "“If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don’t want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total number of people who are in the same boat. You can’t. No one can because precise numbers don’t exist. But we can stipulate that we’re talking about a huge amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and make the process of paying taxes much easier." "By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations." Developing... " |
| Subject: Kerry's speach | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, July 29, 07:27:23pm I'm watching Kerry give his speach at the DNC. I like Kerry but I wish he had Clinton's knack for speaking. He's a little dull.... but heck, he just started so I guess I should give him a chance. :) I just hoped he'd have a little more fire and a more exciting speach tonight. |
| Subject: RON REAGAN RIPS BUSH IN ESQUIRE ESSAY | |
Author: Phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Thursday, July 29, 04:34:22pm  XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU JULY 29, 2004 10:24:25 ET XXXXX Ron Reagan has written a scathing, sweeping, 4,100 word critique of President Bush (not on stem cell) that will be appearing in next month's ESQUIRE magazine. Reagan doesn't hold back in this candid piece where he shares his real feelings towards our 43rd President. "The Bush Administration cannot be trusted." "George W. Bush and his administration have taken normal mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience." "They traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on." "When Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos." "Given candidate Bush's remarks, it was hard to imagine him, as president, flipping a stiff middle finger at the world and charging off adventuring in the Middle East." "Even as of this writing, Dick Cheney clings to his mad assertion that Saddam was somehow at the nexus of a worldwide terror network." "What followed was the usual administration strategy of stonewalling, obstruction and obfuscation." "But image is everything in this White House, and that image of George Bush as a noble and infallible warrior in the service of his nation must be fanatically maintained, because behind the image lies*nothing?" "He is ineloquent not because he cannot speak but because he doesn't bother to think." "His Republican party, furthermore, seems a far cry from the current model, with its cringing obeisance to the religious Right and its kill-anything-that-moves attack instincts." Impacting... ----------------------------------------------------------- Filed By Matt Drudge Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereport.com for updates (c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004 |
| Subject: Medicare Plans to Cut Pay for Cancer Drugs | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, July 27, 04:28:31pm By MARK SHERMAN .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration announced plans Tuesday to cut Medicare payments to cancer doctors, saying taxpayers have been paying the physicians up to twice what they should for certain medications. The proposed changes would save the government $530 million and Medicare beneficiaries $270 million next year, said Mark McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Medicare spent $10.5 billion last year on prescription medicines administered in physician offices and clinics. Cancer doctors and patient advocates said the proposal could force a dramatic change in care, with patients forced to get treatment in hospitals, sometimes far from their homes, rather than in physicians' offices. ``A patient of mine in rural Illinois may have to drive another 50 miles,'' said Dr. Edward Braud, a medical oncologist who was interviewed by telephone Tuesday from his clinic in rural Jacksonville, Ill. Ellen Stovall, a two-time cancer survivor who is president and chief executive of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, said, ``Our concern is that whatever cost-savings may be realized will come at the expense of quality care for patients.'' Cancer specialists' revenues could decline 2 percent to 8 percent, McClellan said. Payments for some treatments for prostate cancer would be cut in half under the proposal. Drugs dispensed in doctors' offices to treat lung illnesses, for which Medicare pays 90 percent more than the sales price, also would be affected by the proposed changes, he said. ``We're going to get more for our money,'' McClellan said. Doctors have long acknowledged that the payment system has been out of whack for cancer care administered in their offices. Several studies have documented that drug reimbursements were tied to an inflated price rather than to what doctors paid. Yet the government allowed the overpayments to continue because it acknowledged that doctors were underpaid for their practice expenses, such as nurses, equipment and treatment rooms. Last year's Medicare law decreed that the problem be fixed. ``In the current system, beneficiaries sometimes paid more in co-payments than the physician or supplier paid to acquire the drug,'' said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, an architect of that law. Reimbursement for practice expenses has increased, although almost all of a temporary 32 percent increase for those costs expires at the end of the year. Cancer specialists have asked Congress essentially to freeze payments at current levels until various agencies complete studies of the new pricing system. The prospects for a freeze are dim as Republican leaders say no changes will be made in Medicare law this year McClellan said his agency could adjust reimbursements before making the regulation final in the fall. The proposed regulations issued Tuesday also would set the terms for introductory physical examinations and other new preventive screenings for Medicare patients; boost payments to physicians in areas with substandard medical help; and increase doctor payments generally by 1.5 percent to an estimated $55 billion next year. These provisions all were part of last year's Medicare law, which Grassley and other lawmakers had insisted must contain special help for rural Medicare clients. The law also placed more emphasis on preventive care, including a first-ever physical exam when people turn 65 and join the government-run health care program. The government will not automatically pay for the physical. Medicare clients must pay the first $110 of nonhospital expenses next year before their benefits begin, according to the proposal. Medicare allots up to $124 for the exam, which includes an electrocardiogram but no blood tests. The proposal also would cover a cholesterol test once every five years, to screen for cardiovascular problems, and diabetes screening for people considered susceptible. The physician payment increase for 2005 is mandated by the law, but Medicare put off costly decisions to make permanent changes in doctor compensation. Analysts estimate the changes would cost tens of billions of dollars. On the Net: Medicare: http://www.medicare.gov |
| Subject: He's got it better than some US prisoners | |
Author: Foster Mom [Edit] |
Date Posted: Sunday, July 25, 08:12:34pm  · First account of Iraqi despot's life in jail ·He is in good health but 'demoralised' Michael Howard in Baghdad Monday July 26, 2004 The Guardian Saddam Hussein is spending his time in solitary confinement writing poetry, gardening, reading the Qur'an and snacking on American muffins and cookies. One of his poems is about his arch-enemy George Bush. The intriguing glimpse of the former dictator's daily routine as he awaits trial on charges of war crimes and genocide was given to the Guardian yesterday by Iraq's human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, who visited Saddam in detention on Saturday. Mr Amin, a longtime Iraqi human rights campaigner who had family members killed by the former regime, said he could not bring himself to speak to Saddam but observed that he was "in good health and being kept in good conditions". However, Mr Amin said the former president "appeared demoralised and dejected". Saddam is being held in a white-walled air-conditioned cell, three metres wide and four metres long, Mr Amin said. He is kept apart from the other prisoners, who can mix freely with each other during the daily three-hour exercise periods. Since appearing in court, Saddam had taken to reading the Qur'an and writing poetry, Mr Amin said. "One of the poems is about George Bush, but I had no time to read it." Saddam's health was "generally good" but he was being treated for high blood pressure and had suffered a chronic prostate infection for which he had received antibiotics. The former president had refused a biopsy to test for signs of cancer. Mr Amin said Saddam "was regaining weight again" after a self-imposed diet in which he "resisted all fatty foods and had lost 11lb". Like the other high-value detainees, Saddam's day begins with a substantial breakfast, an MRE (meal ready to eat), which provides 1,300 calories. He also gets hot food twice a day, which could consist of rice or potato and broccoli, along with either fish, beef or chicken. For dessert, there might be oranges, apples, pears or plums, but the former leader has developed a penchant for American snacks such as muffins and cookies. There is regular access to showers and a barber, and a personal grooming kit that includes soaps, toothpaste, comb, shampoo and deodorant, and plastic sandals. For relaxation there are no newspapers, TV or radio, but there are 145 books - mainly novels and travel books - donated by the Red Cross, which visits the detainees every six weeks. Mr Amin said Saddam works out in his cell and then uses the daily exercise period to tend a small garden in an outside yard. "He is looking after a few bushes and shrubs and has even placed a circle of white stones around a small palm tree," said Mr Amin, a Kurd from Kirkuk, who is the first member of Iraq's new interim government to visit Saddam. "His apparent care for his surroundings is ironic when you think he was responsible for one of the biggest ecocides when he drained the southern marshes." In televised proceedings on July 1, Saddam and 11 other former regime members were arraigned in a Baghdad courtroom on charges that include killing rival politicians, gassing Kurds in Halabja, invading Kuwait and suppressing Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991. Mr Amin said the prisoners were technically under Iraqi jurisdiction but would remain at the US military prison until Iraqi authorities are ready to take physical custody of them. US and Iraqi officials have said that the former president has not provided extensive information during interrogation. Some of Saddam's aides have been more cooperative. They include Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, who reportedly gave the orders to use chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s; Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti; as well as Hussein's influential personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti. Mr Amin said that during his visit he was approached by Barzan al-Tikriti, who was standing next to Ali Hassan al-Majid. "Mr Minister, what am I doing here?" Mr al-Tikriti said. "I am not like the others, I am not like Ali Hassan al-Majid. Please tell that to [the Kurdish leaders] Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani and to Ayad Allawi [the new prime minister]." Mr al-Tikriti was once head of Saddam's intelligence service and is suspected of involvement in the murder of several thousand members of the Barzani clan in the 1980s. "I tried to control my emotions, but to be honest I wanted to vomit," Mr Amin said. "There before me were the men responsible for the industrial pain of Iraq - mass murderers who were responsible for turning Iraq into a land of mass graves." But he insisted: "There will be a just trial and a fair trial, unlike the trials that he inflicted on his enemies, on the Iraqi people." |
| Subject: __ Overweight? __ No money? __ I weighed 250 __ Until... | |
Author: Catt [Edit] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 11:52:08am I used to weigh 250. Yuck. I felt so BIG. I knew I needed to change, but I hated change. I didn't want to take on a big "weight loss plan" - in front of everyone - and what if it didn't work? Ugh. I felt so ugly and "stuck". The last thing I wanted to do was to be "seen" doing anything. (Plus I had no money to put toward a big plan.) It's not easy when you're that overweight and feeling poorly about yourself, not to mention having a great lack of energy. I didn't like how I was, and I HAD to figure something out for myself. The result was a perfect, private mini work-out that only takes 12 seconds to do. No kidding - but they are an intense 12 seconds! It fit my lifestyle and helped me to lose my weight in PRIVATE (which was very important to me). No "dieting", no weird pills or drinks, no big change. And, the best thing about it is that after doing each little work-out throughout the day, I found that it actually revitalized my energy level and, thus, my desire to feel healthy, keeping me on track with watching my weight. It really amazed me. If you're having weight issues like I was, please visit my web page for more information on trying my 12 second work-out for yourself. http://www.geocities.com/catts_way/ Best of luck, everyone. |
| Subject: Ann Coulter | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, July 20, 06:43:02pm  Hehe. I luv this one. |
| Subject: Ann Coulter | |
Author: Keely [Edit] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, July 20, 06:14:33pm  Is Ann Coulter the biggest B*TCH that ever walked, or what?? She's on Hannity and Colmes right now flapping her gums and I want to snatch her out of the TV and slap her face off. Geez...what a mean woman! |
| Subject: Re: American's Decapitation Shown on Internet | |
Author: phoenix [Edit] |
Date Posted: Saturday, July 17, 06:25:02pm Actually, this isn't such big news. Michael Savage's website has had a link to this video since Johnson was decapitated. In fact, at one time he was showing still photos of Daniel Pearl after his decapitation. That link didn't stay up for long though....someone must have threatened him or somthing. Sickening... |
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