Unspeakable grief and horror
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Know them by their fruit:
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Unspeakable grief and horror
Know them by their fruit: |
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Inhumane raid was just one of many
By Carol Rose and Christopher Ott | March 26, 2007
IF THE CHAOTIC immigration raid in New Bedford earlier this month troubled you, we have news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, is just getting warmed up.
We know this because the New Bedford raid was part of a frighteningly ambitious plan laid out by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 — and it hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny.
The plan is called Endgame, and its details are available online on our group's website www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf.
It's a 10-year campaign to track down and deport all the immigrants to the United States who are living and working here without proper documentation, by the year 2012.
Let's be clear: This means expelling roughly 12 million people.
We've seen Endgame at work already in other parts of the country, with ICE conducting more and bigger raids.
In December, for example, the agency raided Swift & Company slaughterhouses in six states, arresting about 1,300 workers and deporting roughly half of them.
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Already, on any given day, ICE holds approximately 26,000 people in detention.
And on March 6, we got a chance to see Endgame at work on a large scale here in Massachusetts.
We saw the human cost of an operation directed at 361 people.
The pace of raids will need to accelerate, however, in order to meet Endgame's aggressive deportation goals over the next five years.
We'll see more of the surreal New Bedford-style tactics: arrest first, ask questions later.
We'll hear more stories of the human suffering that results from such tactics: of nursing babies who become dehydrated when separated from their mothers, of 7-year-olds frantically looking for their missing mothers, and of minors being flown to distant states without adequate protection.
We'll see more people's rights trampled, and more families torn apart by ICE's race to deport in order to meet Endgame's staggering goal.
Obviously, the United States has the right to control who enters our country, as well as the right to deport those who are not authorized to be here.
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But the US Constitution also says that everyone's fundamental rights must be respected while it is being determined whether or not they have a right to be here.
Even most US citizens could not prove their citizenship on demand.
If ICE raided your workplace, could you?
If you're like most people, you don't carry documents such as your passport or birth certificate with you at all times.
And in a free society, you shouldn't have to.
That's why those detained by ICE need protections such as the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, legal representation, and, when necessary, interpretive services.
They need time and a fair chance to prove their case.
It's also critical to make provisions for the children and other dependents of those arrested.
Some of those dependents are US citizens, even if the detainees themselves are not — and all of them are human beings.
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The pandemonium of the raid in New Bedford was deeply troubling in this regard.
If ICE couldn't handle 361 detainees without violating people's rights and tearing families apart, how will they cope with millions?
The simple answer is they can't.
There is no way to expel 12 million people without terrorizing and compromising the civil liberties of anyone who "looks foreign."
Even US citizens, as well as immigrants who are here legally, will live with the fear of arrest.
ICE tactics call to mind sinister human rights abuses from other parts of the world.
The United States went to war to stop Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo in 1999.
We should ask ourselves how, just eight years later, we came to be carrying out a policy that involves such similar tactics — lightning raids, mass arrests, packed detention centers, and mass deportations.
We must stop it. It's time to bring operation Endgame itself to an end.
We need an immigration policy that balances the right to control our borders with the civil liberties we must preserve in order to remain free.
Carol Rose is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Christopher Ott is communications director. © Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. |
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Free Trade Enslaving Poor Countries
Sanjay Suri LONDON, Mar 20 (IPS)
The new free trade agreements being signed up between rich and poor countries are proving far more damaging to the poor than anything envisaged within WTO talks, Oxfam said in a report Tuesday.
"Poor countries are being forced into very deep tariff cuts," Emily Jones, author of the Oxfam report 'Signing Away the Future' told IPS.
"These are often being reduced to zero under reciprocal so-called free trade agreements they are being forced to sign with rich countries."
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That means poor countries are having to open up their markets to subsidised agricultural products from places like the EU, she said.
There are already more than 250 regional and bilateral agreements in existence and more under negotiation, the report says.
Regional and bilateral trade deals now govern more than 30 percent of world trade, and 25 developing countries have now signed free trade agreements with developed countries.
"An average of two bilateral investment treaties are signed every week, the report says.
"Virtually no country, however poor, has been left out."
The agreements undermine moves to development, the report says.
"In an increasingly globalised world, these agreements seek to benefit rich-country exporters and firms at the expense of poor farmers and workers, with grave implications for the environment and development," it says.
The United States and the EU are pushing through rules on intellectual property that reduce poor people's access to life-saving medicines, increase the prices of seeds and other farming inputs beyond the reach of small farmers, and make it harder for developing-country firms to access new technology, the report says.
Governments are sometimes showing themselves powerless against such moves.
"Some developing countries find themselves between a rock and a hard place," said Jones.
"Many are signing up to these so-called economic partnership agreements for fear of losing preferences," Jones said.
Many of these countries have been offered export preferences in return for dropping tariffs against imports from developed countries.
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The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought 1.3 million job losses in Mexico in ten years, Jones said.
Increased exports to the United States have failed to generate growth, and some studies show that the real wages in 2004 were less than in 1994, Jones said.
The rules on liberalisation of services in such agreements threaten to drive local firms out of business, reduce competition, and extend the monopoly power of large companies, the report says.
"When Mexico liberalised financial services in 1993 in preparation for NAFTA, foreign ownership of the banking system increased to 85 percent in seven years, but lending to Mexican businesses dropped from 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.3 per cent, depriving poor people living in rural areas of vital sources of credit."
Governments in developing countries usually come under strong political pressure to sign up to such deals, Simon Ticehurst from Oxfam in Bolivia told IPS.
"But a lot depends also on the type of development models that governments present to their people," he said.
"Colombia and Peru have been signing up to these agreements. Others are more reluctant.
"You now have a small country like Bolivia and many new governments across Latin America beginning to challenge the logic of free trade agreements."
Oxfam has demanded the following:
— Recognise the special and differential treatment that developing countries require in order to move up the development ladder.
— Enable developing countries to adopt flexible intellectual-property legislation to ensure the primacy of public health and agricultural livelihoods and protect traditional knowledge and biodiversity.
— Exclude essential public services such as education, health, water and sanitation from liberalisation commitments.
— Recognise the right of governments to regulate the entry of foreign investors to promote development and the creation of decent employment, and include commitments to enforce core labour standards for all workers.
— Ensure mechanisms for extensive participation of all stakeholders in the negotiating process, with full disclosure of information to the public, including the findings of independent impact assessments.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. |
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Vicious, discredited economic programs Thirty-two corporations, all of them based in G8 countries, dominate the exploitation |
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Brazilian government is sponsoring construction of a 1,100-mile roadway into dying Amazon for Mulitnational Corporations.
Much of the world's soya production goes to feed animals living in unspeakable horror in intensive farming compounds.
Animals tortured for eating by humans.
Soybean production for intensive farmed animal eating is also destroying the remaining large rainforest of Earth, the Sumatra Indonesia rainforest. |
Greens hail landmark victory in fight to save Amazon rainforests By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles Published: 26 March 2007 One of the world's largest agribusiness giants was forced to close a soy export terminal in Brazil's Amazon region this weekend, marking a major victory for environmentalists who have argued for years that the plant was built illegally and became a significant cause of rainforest depletion. Brazilian police and environmental officers swooped on the Cargill terminal in Santarem, a deep-water port in the lower Amazon about 850 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. They said they met no resistance as they set about closing operations.
On Friday, a Brazilian judge ruled that Cargill - a US multinational that posted more than $70bn (£36bn) in revenues last year - had failed to submit a legally required environmental impact assessment when it built the terminal in the first few years of this decade.
It was not the first time the courts had ruled against Cargill on the question, but the company had never previously been forced to suspend its operations.
The Santarem terminal has been the target of a Greenpeace environmental protection campaign from the day it opened in 2003.
A Greenpeace report last year, entitled "Eating Up the Amazon", accused Cargill of being directly or indirectly responsible for slave labour, illegal land grabs and deforestation at a rate of six football pitches per minute.
Greenpeace's Amazon campaign coordinator in Brazil, Paulo Adario, was understandably delighted at the court ruling and closure.
"A big step forward has been taken in enforcing the responsible use of natural resources and bringing greater governance in the Amazon," he said.
Cargill, which argues it is an important engine of economic growth in an impoverished region, said it would appeal the ruling which it said was based on a misunderstanding about who — the state of Para or the Brazilian federal government — needs to sanction environmental impact reports for big projects.
"When we built the facility, the permits were issued by the state," a Cargill spokeswoman, Lori Johnson, told the Associated Press.
"Since that time the federal prosecutor has said we should have done another kind of environmental assessment, and that is the issue before the courts."
The chief prosecutor in the Cargill case, Felicio Pontes, has sided with Greenpeace in seeing the Santarem terminal as illegal.
"Cargill believed that because they were a powerful multinational, they could disrespect both Brazilian legislation and the environment," he said.
Since the Santarem terminal opened, land prices in the region have jumped 18-fold, prompting many landowners to sell to Cargill and other soy-growing multinationals, and spurring a major leap in soy production.
Millions of acres of rainforest have been turned over to soy bean fields.
The soy is used principally to supply European livestock farms.
Cargill argues that soy production covers only 6 per cent of the Amazon area - a price it believes is worth paying for one of Brazil's key export crops.
Brazil is the world's second largest producer after the US.
The Brazilian government appears to agree, and is sponsoring construction of a 1,100-mile roadway leading from Mato Grosso, the country's top soy-growing state, to the Cargill export terminal.
20 per cent of Amazon rainforest destroyed
An estimated 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed, and about 6,500 square miles more was lost between 2005 and 2006.
That represented a slight slowing in the rate of destruction from the year before — a trend experts attribute to the weakening of soy bean prices and the strengthening of Brazil's currency on world markets.
©2007 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved |
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Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
By Gunther Latsch March 22, 2007 A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous. |
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Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios.
Professional Beekeepers Association.
He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.
And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."
The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture.
Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.
As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote:
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.
No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical.
For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing — something that is so far only harming beekeepers.
But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire.
No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.
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Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a regional beekeepers' association in Bavaria, recently reported a decline of almost 12 percent in local bee populations.
When "bee populations disappear without a trace," says Kriechbaum, it is difficult to investigate the causes, because "most bees don't die in the beehive."
There are many diseases that can cause bees to lose their sense of orientation so they can no longer find their way back to their hives.
Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, almost simultaneously reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations throughout Germany.
In isolated cases, says Hederer, declines of up to 80 percent have been reported.
He speculates that "a particular toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees.
Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers.
Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case — for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February — their complaints are still largely ignored.
Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.
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But that could soon change. Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality.
Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.
In an article in its business section in late February, the New York Times calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out.
Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated the value bees generate — by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover — at more than $14 billion.
Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts.
A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed.
But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."
One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished. In most cases, all that's left in the hives are the doomed offspring.
But dead bees are nowhere to be found — neither in nor anywhere close to the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, told The Independent that researchers were "extremely alarmed," adding that the crisis "has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry."
It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees' death is accompanied by a set of symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."
In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared.
Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi — a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.
The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched.
Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold.
"This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.
Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that "besides a number of other factors," the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States could be playing a role.
The figure is much lower in Germany — only 0.06 percent — and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg.
Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.
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The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004.
The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees.
A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests.
The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations."
But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened.
According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry — or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."
Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen.
In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.
Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding.
"Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research," says the professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2007
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Belgium removes the term 'weapon' from legislation due to US thermonuclear bombs stored on US Air Force base at Kleine Brogel in their country
On March the 7th, 2007, the Belgian Chamber Commission on National Defence voted unanimously in favour of banning the use of depleted uranium 'inert ammunitions and armour plates on Belgian territory.'
Although Belgium isn’t a user of DU, it is the home of NATO and regularly has US DU shipments travelling through its port of Antwerp.
Acknowledging the Precautionary Principle, the deputies agreed that the manufacture, use, storage, sale, acquisition, supply and transit of these conventional weapon systems should be prohibited.
At the last minute, the term 'weapon' was deleted to make sure that the law proposal would not cover the US thermonuclear bombs that are stored on the Air Force base of Kleine Brogel.
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Does anybody know what this means?
I am serious.
If the elections are proven to be fraudulent — no matter what the supreme court said in december 2000 — I mean is there anything that can be done or are we forced to consider that legal solutions have failed.
Consider that some lunatic has stolen a gun and taken over a house and refuses to give up.
If the administration’s power is held illegitimately, what do we do — is there any precedent — I don't know of one.
I mean we all know that it is — we all know that he has won no national election
Gore won the 2000 election and Kerry won in 2004 — 2004 shouldn't even count because of 2000 right?
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Photo: www.denverpost.com/Nathan W. Armes |
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Hives holding a secret
By Claire Martin Denver Post Staff Writer 03/04/2007 Like other Colorado beekeepers, Jeff Theobald knows that between 2 percent and 10 percent of his bees typically won't survive winter, but this year, the loss rate is 40 percent and rising as entire colonies vanish without a trace. |
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"It's just bizarre," said Theobald, who runs Grand Mesa Honey Farm in Delta.
"I've had hives that had dead bees in them — 4,000 to 5,000 dead bees — and hives that were completely empty.
The bees were just gone."
Regional disasters have afflicted beekeepers in the past, but baffled entomologists and agricultural experts call this the first national crisis, with potentially grave consequences.
Approximately $14.6 billion worth of U.S. nut, fruit and vegetable crops depend on bee pollination.
Throughout the U.S., honeybee colonies, including approximately 30,000 colonies in Colorado, are affected by what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder.
To date, the disorder has been identified in 24 states.
"The map changes almost daily," said Jerry Bromenshenk, president of Bee Alert Technology, a research company affiliated with the University of Montana.
"Almost every time the phone rings, we say, 'Is that another state calling in with a problem?"'
The accounts are eerily identical: A bee colony that appeared perfectly strong and healthy during a late 2006 inspection abruptly disappears when beekeepers make their first bee-yard rounds in 2007.
One commercial beekeeper with hives in Oklahoma and Texas lost 80 percent of his 13,000 colonies.
"One day, you look at the bees and they're good," Bromenshenk said.
"The next time you look in the box, you take a second look, pull the cover off, and you might have a queen and three young bees trying to keep things going.
If it was a pesticide or a virus, you'd expect to find piles of dead bees in the box, and in the bee yard.
But this looks like someone swept the bottom board clean."
"We wish we knew"
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Where are the missing bees?
Nobody knows.
What's causing them to leave the hive?
Nobody knows that, either.
How many bees are missing?
"We wish we knew, and we wish we had a means of collecting statistics," Bromenshenk said.
"The problem is (that) the beekeepers we hear from are the ones who have a problem.
And another problem is that we're not hearing from the beekeepers who aren't owning up, because they don't want growers to know."
Still, there are few secrets in the relatively small, close-knit beekeeping community, one of the last agricultural domains still dominated by family dynasties.
"Dad knows so many beekeepers, and a bunch of his friends have already had big losses," said Jeff Johnston, whose Colorado Honey Company processes honey from Colorado colonies kept by relatives and friends with operations from the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope.
His father, Lyle, is currently in California, where almond growers pay $125 to $165 per hive.
Lyle Johnston's business is based in Rocky Ford.
He normally stays close to home to serve the farmers and ranchers who hire his bees, but the California almond crop is too lucrative to ignore.
The Johnstons are among a handful of this state's commercial beekeepers whose colonies pollinate Eastern Plains alfalfa crops, Western Slope peaches, Rocky Ford cantaloupe and other crops that depend on honeybees.
Hundreds of other hobbyist beekeepers maintain an average of a few dozen hives each throughout Colorado.
As bees die, the price of replacement bees — which has already quadrupled in the past decade because so many bees succumb to mite infestations — is escalating.
"If we don't have bees, then all (that) those folks in California have got is fancy shade trees," Theobald said.
"I'm afraid attention won't be paid, and we'll be going to South America for fruits and vegetables."
Long-ignored regulations?
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Theobald and his brother, Tom, a Niwot beekeeper for more than three decades, believe that colony collapse disorder is the result of long-ignored environmental regulations.
When growers violate pesticide restrictions, the chemical residue poisons bees.
Until the disorder was identified, pesticides and parasitic mites were the chief causes of colony die-offs.
When Colorado's apiary program lost its funding in the early 1980s, government bee inspections ceased, leaving no one but the beekeepers to monitor the mite infestation or pesticide abuse.
"Until then, I did routine disease inspections, and since the program went under, there've been all kinds of problems," said state entomologist Jerry Cochran.
Tom Theobald agrees.
He refers to the existing system as "the (Hurricane) Katrina model of management."
"We've known this problem was coming for a long time," he said, "and the people in charge have not discussed the problems openly.
"It's not colony collapse disorder.
It's industry collapse disorder, and it's very serious."
THE GOOD BUZZ ON BEES
$14.6 billion
Annual value of bee pollination to the agricultural industry.
80%
Amount of insect crop pollination estimated to be done by honeybees.
Source: National Honey Board
Copyright 2007 The Denver Post
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Photo: www.denverpost.com/Nathan W. Armes |
March 22, 2007
That Steak and the Hole in Your Head
By MICKEY Z
This is Your Brain on Meat |
The March 21, 2007 edition of the New York Times featured an article called "Prevalence of Alzheimer's Rises 10% in 5 Years."
It began: "More than five million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, a 10 percent increase from the last official tally five years ago, and a number expected to more than triple by 2050."
Alzheimer's disease, it seems, now afflicts 13% of people 65 and over, and 42% of those past 85.
The piece also reported "the startling finding that 200,000 to 500,000 people younger than 65 have some form of early onset form of dementia, including a rare form of Alzheimer's disease that strikes people in their 30s and 40s."
The Times adds: "Apart from early onset cases, the primary risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is age."
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But, dear reader, there's a cow-shaped risk factor sitting in the corner-ignored by the newspaper of record (and essentially all major media outlets). And it's a very mad cow.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has earned the pithy nickname "mad cow disease" thanks to the invidious symptoms presented in affected cattle, i.e. staggering, tremors, involuntary muscle spasms, bewilderment, hypersensitivity to auditory and tactile stimuli, and other examples of seemingly "mad" behavior.
Like BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is also a transmissible, invariably fatal spongiform encephalopathy with a prolonged incubation period that leaves sponge-like holes in a victim's brain.
CJD, however, is the human version and this includes a newly identified variant of CJD, linked to BSE in British cattle.
"In humans," says author and environmentalist, Peter Montague, "the BSE-like disease is called 'new variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease,' or nvCJD for short. CJD has been recognized for a long time as a rare disease of the elderly-very similar to Alzheimer's disease-but nvCJD is different.
It has somewhat different symptoms, a different pattern of disintegration in the brain, and it strikes young people, even teenagers.
Between 1995 and early 1998, at least 23 people died of nvCJD in Britain and at least one in France, the oldest of them age 42 and the youngest 15."
(Yet the Times is "startled" by the rise in dementia in younger and younger people.)
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"CJD robs victims of lucidity, control and life over a period ranging from six months to three years from the onset of symptoms, which can take from 10 to 40 years to manifest," writes journalist Gabe Kirchheimer.
According to Nobel Prize winner Stanley B. Prusiner, fatal neurodegenerative diseases of animals and humans (like BSE and CJD) are thought to be caused by infectious proteins called "prions."
Perhaps what is most disquieting about this hypothesis is that, unlike viruses and bacteria, prions remain infectious even after being baked at 680° F for on hour (enough to melt lead), bombarded with radiation, and/or soaked in formaldehyde, bleach, and boiling water.
"CJD is 100 percent fatal," adds Kirchheimer.
"There is no treatment or cure.
As no blood test for the living is available, CJD has been definitively diagnosed only through brain biopsy."
Studies cited by Kirchheimer indicate it is likely that "tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are dying right now of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed CJD."
Government figures estimate approximately 200 to 300 cases of CJD have been diagnosed in the U.S.
Before you take comfort in that modest figure, bear in mind the findings of John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.
The authors of Mad Cow USA learned that while some four million Americans (at the time) had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, autopsies revealed roughly 25% of alleged Alzheimer's deaths were caused instead by other forms of dementia.
One percent of these misdiagnosed deaths have been ultimately attributed to CJD.
If this trend is extrapolated and one percent of the now five million Americans with Alzheimer's actually have CJD (or nvCJD), the nationwide estimate rises dramatically from 200 to 50,000 cases.
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You do the math
"It would be rather straightforward to design and execute significant studies to answer the urgent questions of which dementia diseases people have, and in what numbers, but to my knowledge no one in the scientific, medical or public health communities are even proposing this," says Stauber.
"Especially now that we have found mad cow disease in the U.S., along with mad deer, mad elk, and mad sheep disease, we should be launching ongoing studies nation-wide to aggressively search for cases of CJD in the human population.
We should be testing our human population for CJD; CJD should be made a carefully reported disease nationwide."
How safe are Americans from being exposed to the human variant of mad cow disease? In France, a nation with only 5.7 million cows, 20,000 are tested each week with 153 found infected in the year 2000. Out of the nearly 40 million U.S. cattle slaughtered annually, only about 1000 are tested.
You do the math.
Kirchheimer concludes: "The growing number of British victims of 'new variant' CJD, mostly young people in their prime who contracted the brain sickness from tainted meat, is a grim precursor to an uncertain future."
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net/ |
Watering the lettuce Humans and animals — a chicken might be of value |
US black budget special operations — continuing in Iraq
March 21, 2007
Bomb rips through Kia passenger bus in Baghdad, as mysterious bombings increase. Russian expert cites US special services as source of sectarian tension in Iraq. In a dispatch posted at 1:20pm Makkah time Tuesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a bus carrying civilian passengers exploded in the Baghdad district of al-Karradah according to an announcement by the puppet police. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported the source as saying that a bomb went off in a Kia vehicle in a shopping center near the al-Karrahda area, which is predominantly Shi‘i. The source said that two people were killed and four more wounded. The injured were ambulanced to nearby hospitals.
The bombing was one of a growing number of mysterious attacks that have rocked Baghdad on a daily basis, killing or wounding thousands of Iraqis amidst claims that regional powers are attempting to keep sectarian violence raging in the country.
Since no groups of the Resistance take responsibility for the mysterious blasts, suspicions are widely expressed that intelligence services are behind the bombing campaign.
Russian geostrategic expert Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov alluded to precisely this reality in an interview with the RIA-Novosti Press Agency correspondents Valery Yarmolenko and Zalina Tsopanova on Monday.
Ivashov, who is Vice-President of Russia’s Academy of Geopolitical Problems, reviewed America’s military and political defeat in Iraq and noted the failure of US troops to counter the guerrilla movement, despite America’s advanced technological edge and the primitive armament of the Resistance.
Ivashov remarked that, “the only thing that is working is not being done by the US troops but by their special services, namely to organize fighting between Shi‘ah and Sunnis.”
Mysterious car bomb explodes in Baghdad.
In a dispatch posted at 1:11pm Makkah time Tuesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier a car bomb that had been parked by the side of a road in Baghdad blew up near the ash-Shaykh ‘Umar puppet police station, inflicting numerous civilian casualties.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the explosion killed or wounded 22.
The blast was also positioned close to an elementary school.
All the injured were taken to nearby al-Kindi Hospital as puppet police cordoned off the area.
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Published on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Blowback from Ohio's 2004 Stolen Election is Escalating
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
In a bold move "to restore trust to elections in Ohio," Ohio's newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has requested the resignation of all four members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
The two Democrats and two Republicans were formally asked to resign by the close of business on March 21.
Cuyahoga County includes the heavily Democratic city of Cleveland. Brunner is a Democrat who was elected to be Ohio's Secretary of State in November, 2006.
Felony convictions have also resulted in 18-month prison sentences for two employees of the Cuyahoga BOE as a result of what the county prosecutor in the case calls the "rigging" of the outcome in the recount following the 2004 presidential election.
Further problems surfaced in the conduct of Cuyahoga County's May, 2006 primary, in the wake of which Michel Vu, Executive Director of the county's Board of Elections recently resigned.
In tandem, the shake-up in Ohio's biggest county reflects a widening storm surrounding the outcome of the 2004 presidential election and the conduct of elections overall in the nation's most pivotal state.
Among those Brunner has asked to resign is Cuyahoga County BOE Chair Robert Bennett, who chairs Ohio's Republican Party. Voting rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck and others have long charged that Bennett worked closely with White House advisor Karl Rove and Ohio's then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to secure Bush's 2004 victory in Ohio.
Bennett responded to Brunner by saying that he will refuse to resign.
He has placed the blame for the May 2006 primary problems on private voting machine vendors, including Diebold. Bennett claims the rigging of the 2004 presidential recount was caused by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
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If Bennett and other Board members refuse to resign by Wednesday, Brunner says they "will face a complaint and public hearing to be conducted in Cleveland…"
In the 2004 presidential election, Cuyahoga County suffered serious election irregularities that worked to the disadvantage of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Among them: the purging of 24.93% of all the voters in the city of Cleveland, where Kerry won 83% of the vote; mysterious and suspect vote totals for third party candidates in majority African American wards; unexplained "security" problems that caused the last-minute shift of voting locations in the inner city Cleveland Public School polling places; improbably low apparent turnouts in heavily Democratic inner city wards, and more.
Brunner's request for the resignations comes a week after two Cuyahoga County election workers were each sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging the recount of the 2004 election in Ohio's biggest county.
These are the first prison terms issued in the escalating scandal over the vote count that gave George W. Bush a second stay in the White House.
The two women are out on bail pending appeal.
But the substantial jail time demanded by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan indicates there may be more trials and convictions yet to come, especially in light of new evidence unearthed by the Free Press in other counties around the state.
Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were each convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct by an election board employee.
Maiden, 60, was the Cuyahoga Board of Elections' third-highest ranking employee.
Dreamer, 40, was ballot manager. Maiden and Dreamer were also convicted of a separate misdemeanor.
A third defendant in the case was acquitted of all charges.
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The Free Press has unearthed evidence indicating possible criminal misconduct by a wide range of election officials throughout the state, including Blackwell.
Under the law, election boards are required to do recounts by choosing 3% of a county's voters at random for sampling.
But throughout the state, apparently with the explicit knowledge and approval of Blackwell, precincts were hand-counted for recounting, a criminal act.
This non-random sampling in essence voided the recount, for which backers of the Green and Libertarian Parties paid more than $100,000.
According to the prosecution in the case against Maiden and Dreamer, this method of action led to the recount being illegally "rigged."
When investigators working with the Free Press attempted to audit the Cuyahoga County ballots from the 2004 election last summer, BOE officials were unable to find the ballots for four full days.
The investigation team, led by Richard Hayes Phillips, had to find the ballots on their own.
Under Ohio law, the ballots were to be locked in a known location, and secured by two keys, one controlled by each major party.
Brunner says she acted in part because she is concerned that many of the problems from 2004 and 2006 might resurface in the upcoming 2008 election.
"With maximum 18-month prison sentences being handed down to two Cuyahoga County election workers last week, for their role in the 2004 presidential recount, the tremendous problems that surfaced in the May 2006 primary that delayed even the unofficial vote count for five days, and the uncertain future of this board as another Presidential election looms on the near horizon, it is incumbent on me as Secretary of State to provide the direction needed to get this troubled board on track," she says.
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"The voters of Cuyahoga county deserve it, the citizens of Ohio expect it and the rest of the nation will be watching."
In the 2006 primary, Cuyahoga County used the controversial Diebold touchscreen voting machines. These machines suffered a well-publicized meltdown, in which many malfunctioned.
A report from the Election Science Institute (ESI) documented significant differences between votes actually cast on the machines as opposed to those officially counted.
Immediately following the election, 562,498 votes were reported cast in Cuyahoga County, with 30,791 listed as absentee or provisional ballots.
But the official results show just 468,056 counted.
This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared in the official tallies, representing a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast in Cuyahoga.
Michael Vu, who was the Cuyahoga BOE executive director, came under intense criticism for the bitter controversies surrounding both the 2004 and 2006 elections.
Last month, he resigned "to pursue future career growth," according to a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections release.
In an interesting and perhaps telling statement coming from a Republican who was commenting on an appointee supported by the Democratic Party, Bennett said "Michael Vu has worked hard and accomplished a great deal on behalf of Cuyahoga County votes and will, I am sure, continue to have success in his career of public service.
"Michael oversaw a difficult transition period at the Board including the implementation of a new electronic voting system county-wide in the May (2006) primary followed by a near flawless general election," Bennett concluded.
Brunner's action underscores a growing sentiment that the unraveling of what happened during and after the 2004 election has only just begun.
The Free Press has learned that Brunner's office is also investigating an unexplained undercount in the 2006 general election in six Ohio counties which all used the Diebold TSX DRE voting machines.
In Montgomery County, where the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland beat Blackwell, the Republican nominee, by 107,593 to 76,189, there was an abnormally high 13.76% of the machines registering no vote for the state's highest office.
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Problems are also under investigation in Adams, Darke, Highland, Mercer and Perry Counties.
With stiff prison terms, forced resignations and widespread investigations underway, there is a well-founded sense in Ohio that much more is yet to surface about the disputed presidential election of 2004 and what has come after it.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (New Press) and of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via www.freepress.org. |
US voting procedures America — Election corruption |
U.S. v Gore Bush steals 2000 election |
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US black budget special operations — its fingers are everywhere
March 21, 2007
Residents of Mogadishu gather around the body of a puppet US installed goverment Somali soldier who was killed during heavy fighting in the Somalia capital. The escalation of resistance saw as many as 14 people killed with the bodies of dead soldiers burned and dragged through the streets.
Residents of Mogadishu look at the body of a US paid pro-government militia member who was killed by gunfire in the streets of Somalia's capital.
Somalia has overtaken Iraq as the world's most dangerous country for minority groups.
Resistance forces stepped up attacks on the US paid puppet government forces in Somalia's capital March 18, 2007, hours after a police chief was shot dead in the southern port of Kismayo. |
Iraqi Resistance Report
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
Al-Anbar Province
Al-Fallujah
Resistance bomb destroys US military vehicle in al-Fallujah Monday morning.
In a dispatch posted at 5:40pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol in al-Fallujah, 60km west of Baghdad on Monday morning.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying tha a bomb that had been planted by the side of a road in the ad-Dubbat neighborhood went off by a passing patrol of several American vehicles.
The explosion totally destroyed one Humvee, wounding all aboard.
Local residents said that the blast was big, and with so massive a blast deaths among the troops was regarded as likely.
But US forces quickly surrounded the entire area and hauled the wrecked vehicle, making precise information on the nature of casualties impossible to obtain. |
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Al-Qa’im
Puppet policeman shot to death in al-Qa’im.
In a dispatch posted at 5:22pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that armed men attacked the home of a puppet policeman in al-Qa’im near the Iraqi border with Syria, killing him and two of his brothers in the house.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported from the al-'Ubaydi area near al-Qa’im that the men killed the puppet policeman 'Uthman Subhi Latif, born in 1983, whose post was to guard the puppet police building.
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Ar-Ramadi
Resistance bomb disables Bradely armored vehicle in ar-Ramadi Sunday.
In a dispatch posted at 3:26pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US Bradley armored vehicle in ar-Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad, on Sunday.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in the 17 Street area as saying that a bomb that had been planted by the side of the road went off by a patrol of several US Humvees with a Bradley in the middle of the column.
The blast struck the Bradley directly destroying a large part of it and setting it on fire.
Residents said that the crew was injured but could not be more specific due to the cordon that the Americans laid down immediately after the attack.
Thirty-one beheaded bodies found in ar-Ramadi.
In a dispatch posted at 3:06pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that puppet policemen found a mass grave containing 31 bodies, most of them beheaded, east of the city of ar-Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad.
The ar-Ramadi correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a medical source as saying that the bodies belong to members of the puppet police and of the al-Bu Sudah tribe in the city. All were found in one place and were identified.
Puppet "al-Anbar Salvation Council" police raided the Juwaybah area 15km east of ar-Ramadi on Sunday evening. There they found nine beheaded bodies in the deserted post office building (see story below).
The medical source said that the bodies had not in fact been buried but dumped on the ground and covered with cardboard and metal sheets. All had been dead about two or three weeks.
Nine puppet policemen found dead near ar-Ramadi.
In a dispatch posted at 12:49pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a puppet police patrol found the bodies of nine puppet policemen near the city of ar-Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that the patrol found the beheaded bodies – their hands and feet bound – in a vacant post office in the Juwaybah area near ar-Ramadi.
The sources said that the bodies, all puppet policemen, were taken to the local hospital morgue.
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The sources said that the bodies, all puppet policemen, were taken to the local hospital morgue. |
Baghdad
US-backed puppet regime plans to execute Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan before dawn Tuesday morning.
In a dispatch posted at 10:22pm Makkah time Monday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a lawyer with the Saddam Husayn Defense Committee announced on Monday evening that Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan was to be executed by the American-installed puppet regime at dawn on Tuesday morning.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported Badi' 'Arif as saying that the Americans had informed one of the defense lawyers representing Taha Yasin Ramadan that he must be ready for the execution of the Iraqi Vice President at 2:30am local time Tuesday morning, according to a dispatch from Agence France Presse (AFP) and monitored by Mafkarat al-Islam.
On 25 November 2006, the Iraqi Vice President was sentenced to a prison term by the puppet "court" that tried the Iraqi President Saddam Husayn and other Iraqi leaders late in 2006.
All the prisoners were labeled "criminals" by the US-installed regime for their involvement in punishing a group that plotted the assassination of the Iraqi President and the overthrow of the regime in 1988.
The prison term for Taha Yasin Ramadan was later changed to a death sentence by the American-backed regime, in a complete reversal of international legal norms.
The lawyer reported that Ramadan spoke by telephone with members of his family on Monday night, informing them of the puppet regime’s plan to execute him.
Mortar shells land at bus stop, killing four in Baghdad midday Monday.
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In a dispatch posted at 5:39pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that four Iraqis were killed and five more wounded when several mortar rounds landed at a taxi and bus stop in the middle of occupied Baghdad.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported puppet police sources as saying that four mortar shells blasted into the al-'Allawi taxi area, killing four civilians and wounding five more of them.
The sources said that the puppet police and ambulances raced to the scene and evacuated the wounded to a nearby hospital. No further details on the attack or who carried it out or why were available.
Bomb kills three near mosque in busy commercial area of central Baghdad Monday afternoon.
In a dispatch posted at 4:19pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier a bomb exploded by a mosque in the middle of Baghdad, killing or wounding 13 civilians.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported wholesale candy sellers whose shops are located in the ash-Shurjah area as saying that a bomb planted in a garbage bag exploded near worshippers at a mosque there, killing three and wounding 10 more. The victims were taken to a nearby hospital.
The ash-Shurjah area in central Baghdad, home to dozens of shops and stores, is an important commercial area in the occupied Iraqi capital. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that the area has seen numerous attacks by pro-Iranian Shi'i sectarian militias against Sunni shopkeepers.
Resistance blasts PUK separatist party headquarters in Baghdad Monday morning.
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In a dispatch posted at 1:11pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces fired three 82mm mortar rounds at a headquarters of the pro-American Kurdish separatist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in Baghdad on Monday morning.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that the PUK headquarters in the al-'Allawi district of Baghdad suffered damage in the attack but denied that there were any casualties. The PUK is headed by US-appointed Iraqi puppet "President" Jalal Talibani.
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Salah ad-Din Province
Ad-Dawr
In a dispatch posted at 5:56pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet army patrol in the area of ad-Dawr, 150km north of Baghdad.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in ad-Dawr as saying that the blast killed two puppet troops and wounded three more of them. The witnesses said that after the attack, puppet troops surrounded the area and cut it off. They then transported the wounded to a puppet army base.
Tikrit
Puppet "Oil Protection Policeman" killed in attack on observation post near Tikrit.
In a dispatch posted at 5:56pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that armed men driving three civilian cars attacked an observation post manned by Iraqi puppet oil installation troops in the al-'Alam area east of Tikrit, about 180km north of Baghdad.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that one puppet Oil Installation Protection policeman was killed in the attack.
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Samarra’
Resistance blasts US headquarters in Samarra’ with mortars at dawn Monday.
In a dispatch posted at 1:12pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces fired about six mortar rounds at a US headquarters in the city of Samarra’, 120km north of Baghdad at dawn on Monday.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in the city as saying that the US headquarters set up in the al-Buhayrah Hotel in the northwest of the city apparently took direct hits from the shells, which ignited a fire in part of the building and sent plumes of smoke and dust rising over it.
Four US troops reported killed in Resistance bombing in Samarra’ Sunday.
In a dispatch posted at 5:03pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol in Samarra’, 120km north of Baghdad.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses who live in the area as saying that a bomb that had been placed in a large bag blew up as US troops on a foot patrol came up to investigate it on Sunday.
The explosion killed four soldiers on the spot.
Then, the witnesses said, Resistance fighters pounced on the patrol sparking a 15-minute battle in which the Resistance men fired S5K rockets, RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
The battle left one more American soldier wounded. The Resistance fighters then withdrew having suffered no losses.
After the clash, US troops carried out extensive searches of home located near the scene of the attack but found none of the attackers.
After two hours on the scene and after evacuating their dead and wounded comrades, the Americans finally pulled out.
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Ad-Dulu'iyah
Resistance fighters raid, blow up two puppet police stations in northern ad-Dulu'iyah early Monday morning.
In a dispatch posted at 12:38pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Resistance fighters surrounded two puppet police stations in ad-Dulu'iyah, about 90km north of Baghdad, at 6am local time Monday morning and proceeded to take control of them.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in the city as saying that the armed Resistance men surrounded the two puppet police stations located in the northern districts of the city.
The puppet police put up virtually no resistance before laying down their arms.
The attackers seized their weapons and a quantity of communications devices. They then planted explosives around the police stations and blew them up.
The witnesses said that the Resistance attackers let the captured puppet police go unharmed.
Diyala Province
Khanaqin
Resistance car bomber kills three puppet "National Guards" in Khaniqin.
In a dispatch posted at 4:51pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier, an Iraqi Resistance fida’i fighter drove an explosives-laden car by a puppet "National Guard" checkpoint in the Tawlah Furush area near the Khanaqin textile mill in Khanaqin, 180km northeast of Baghdad, near the Iranian border.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a local puppet police source as saying that the blast killed three puppet "National Guards" and wounded eight more of them.
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Al-Khalis
Armed attackers kill man in al-Khalis car park Monday morning.
In a dispatch posted at 12:41pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that unknown armed men opened fire on civilians in al-Khalis, about 60km north of Baghdad on Monday morning.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that a group of unknown armed men in a civilian car stormed into the al-Khalis bus stop parking area and opened fire with light machine guns on a man in his forties.
The man died instantly and another individual was seriously wounded in the same attack. That person was taken to hospital for treatment.
The puppet police did not release the identities of either man nor indicate why they might have been targeted.
The attackers drove away from the scene leaving no indication of their identity.
Ba'qubah
Unknown armed men attack civilians in Habhab, near Ba'qubah, Sunday afternoon.
In a dispatch posted at 12:13pm Makkah time midday Monday, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that unknown armed men attacked a group of civilians in Habhab, 30km north of Ba'qubah – which is 65km northeast of Baghdad – on Sunday afternoon.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that unknown armed men killed seven people and wounded four more.
The puppet police sources provided no other information on the identity of the attackers or the reason for the killing, adding only that the injured people were taken to hospital for treatment.
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At-Ta’mim Province
Kirkuk
Resistance bombwounds two puppet policemen in Kirkuk late Sunday afternoon.
In a dispatch posted at 1:11pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet police patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk at 6pm local time Sunday afternoon.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that the bomb was panted by a road in the middle of the city.
When it exploded, it damaged a patrol vehicle and wounded two puppet policemen who were then taken to hospital as the area where the attack occurred was cordoned off.
Resistance bomb kills two puppet policemen in Kirkuk.
In a dispatch posted at 12:41pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet police patrol southwest of Kirkuk.
The Kirkuk correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that a bomb that had been planted on the main road between Tazah and ar-Rashad near the Kirkuk-Tikrit Road blew up by a puppet police patrol.
The blast heavily damaged a patrol vehicle and killed two puppet policemen and wounded two more of them.
The injured men were taken to hospital for treatment.
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Al-Huwayjah
US blockades al-Huwayjah, launches massive campaign of raids, searches.
In a dispatch posted at 1:16pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US troops surrounded the al-Huwayjah area, southwest of Kirkuk, on Sunday afternoon, preventing anyone from entering or leaving.
Then on Monday morning began an extensive campaign of raids and searches there.
The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that US forces backed by puppet "Iraqi National Guards" and puppet police began their extensive raids and searches on Monday morning.
As of the time of reporting there was no word as to whether any arrests had been made.
Ninwa Province
Al-Mawsil
Resistance bomb kills puppet policeman in al-Mawsil Sunday.
In a dispatch posted at am Makkah time Monday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet police patrol in the northern city of al-Mawsil Sunday evening.
The al-Mawsil correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a puppet police source as saying that a bomb that had been planted in the as-Sukkar neighborhood in northeastern al-Mawsil went off by a patrol out of the Abu Tammam puppet police station.
The explosion severely damaged a patrol vehicle and seriously wounded one puppet policeman who was then taken to hospital.
He died shortly thereafter.
Sources of report — click here |
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More reports of US special operations planting ' suicide ' bombs in cars
March 18, 2007
www.uruknet.de and www.roadstoiraq.com First reported in English by www.roadstoiraq.com An American sniper on the roof of one the buildings in Ahdamiya neighborhood opened fire on a small bus, the bullet caused the burning of the bus. The passengers who were traveling with the bus [a family] and the driver, miraculously managed to escape the fire.
He got suspicious because the Americans call him ask if he is already in the market
Iraqirabita tell a story about an Iraq interpreter working in an American military base was sent to the city by his bosses to by computer hardware, he took the car but he stopped by friends.
He got suspicious because the Americans call him every now and then asking him if he already in the market, he parked the car in the middle of nowhere and answered yes, few minutes after that the car exploded. The guy left the country after that to Turkey.
To see the Iraqirabita article in Arabic, click here
For more information in English on American black budget special operations money being used to set up so called suicide bombing, TheWE.biz reproduces the following from its archives — below.
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Sick strategies for senseless slaughter
The cat is out of the bag now
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by John Kaminski
May 27, 2005
The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11 (See. http://globalresearch.ca/
articles/KHA505A.html ).
The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info , which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca , which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news.
Clear window who is perpetrating this inexplicable violence
Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq.
Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations.
I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense.
Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship.
Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist.
So who's doing all these demented deeds?
As if we didn't know ...
www.johnkaminski.com/ |
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Khadduri's report went like this:
Told him to report to an American military camp
"A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license.
The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car.
He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour.
At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him:
'OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs.
Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing.
Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license.
At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now.
Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work".
(http://globalresearch.ca/
articles/KHA505A.html )
The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him.
He stopped the car and inspected it carefully.
He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.
The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad.
The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated "hideous attack by foreign elements".
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She recounts:
"The last two weeks have been violent .... The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening.
There have also been several assassinations — bodies being found here and there.
It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places.
Many people will tell you its not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river.
That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night.
It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.
The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics — several of them well-known.
People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war.
Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later — apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.
One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad.
It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and bit more.
It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher's shop.
Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.
I didn't think much about the story — nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper — hardly an anomaly.
The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later.
Man taken away because he knew too much
People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb.
Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion.
Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued.
He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it.
He was promptly taken away.
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The bombs are mysterious.
Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs.
One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers.
The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs — they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs.
All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions.
Some will tell you they are resistance.
Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them.
Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.
In any case, they are terrifying.
If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things.
Then the wails begin — the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.
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Then there was this one.
On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson.
Stopped at an American check point
They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount.
An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes.
Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.
A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers.
The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point.
He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes.
He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier.
Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car.
Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear.
He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.
Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head.
He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb.
"They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'.
Taint the Resistance
I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story.
They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance after failing to defeat it militarily.
Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir."
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
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Rumsefeld — Satanic shenanigans
The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined in Frank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi 'Insurgents' — and Global Terrorism," by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.
Morales writes:
Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large.
How could he be so sure of that?
Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld.
According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.
http://globalresearch.ca/
articles/MOR505A.html
We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others.
Nor have we ever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitated one of the great slaughters in history.
Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman.
Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA.
Sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate
Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion and destruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City.
The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it.
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There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat.
That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Warren Buffett.
These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately.
And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or their ignorance, support them.
Deliberate provocations to prevent peace
The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understand how the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience, thrives on war and profits from the misery of others.
The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran — which some predict will happen in June — and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela.
The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding.
By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in the homes of our choice.
So now that you know, what are you going to do about it?
You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you.
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The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues... | |||
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