http://www.nofluoride.com/
"I would advise against fluoridation.. Side-effects cannot be excluded .. In
Sweden, the emphasis nowadays is to keep the environment as clean as possible with regard to pharmacologically active and, thus, potentially toxic substances."
- Dr. Arvid Carlsson, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine (2000)
"The American Medical Association is NOT prepared to state that no harm
will be done to any person by water fluoridation. The AMA has not carried out any research work, either long-term or short-term, regarding the possibility of any side effects." - Dr. Flanagan, Assistant Director of Environmental Health, American Medical Association. [letter]
"I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs.
Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a
long range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable."
- Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, Past President of the American Medical Association.
"E.P.A. should act immediately to protect the public, not just on the cancer
data, but on the evidence of bone fractures, arthritis, mutagenicity and other effects." - Dr. William Marcus, Senior Toxicologist at E.P.A.
"Water contains a number of substances that are undesirable, and fluorides are just one of them" stated Dr. F. A. Bull, State Dental Director of Wisconsin, speaking at the Fourth Annual Conference of State Dental Directors.
These are strong, deliberate statements.
They are made by the top medical authorities in our nation
based on the latest medical research
.(More quotes by Medical Authorities & Research Scientists)
"There are 4 main arguments against water fluoridation:
Any purported benefits of fluoridation are in scientific controversy. Studies from 50 years ago do not pass muster under today's standards for safety or effectiveness. Research from the same era also "proved" cigarettes don't cause cancer.
Even the AMA concedes that no studies were done to determine any side effects caused by fluoridation. [letter]
The fluoride used for water fluoridation does not have FDA approval and is considered by the FDA as an "unapproved drug". The proper use of any drug requires an understanding of how much is too much. Since fluoride is already in many foods and beverages, an estimated total intake of existing fluoride amounts is imperative. Research shows fluoridation is unnecessary since we're already receiving 300% or more of the American Dental Association's recommended daily amount.
Constitutional and Civil liberty issues regarding the forced mass medication of the population when alternative means of reducing cavities are easily available, such as tooth brushing. Even so-called mandatory school immunizations provide exemptions for parents who wish not to participate.
The chemicals used for fluoridation are not high
purity, pharmaceutical quality products. Rather they are byproducts of aluminum and fertilizer manufacturing and contain a high concentration of toxins and heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and chromium. All proven to be carcinogens.
There have been many government sponsored reports - U.S., England and Canada - which have reviewed the various aspects of fluoridation and all have questioned the practice. Even UNICEF, the health arm of the United Nations, warns of fluoride's negative effects.
Unfortunately, most dental professionals have a difficult time accepting that new medical and scientific understanding often change what we held to be true decades earlier. This is just human nature.
Dennis Mountjoy, a California Assemblymember, sponsored AB1565, a bill which required fluoride compounds to tested and approved for safety and effectiveness. Unfortunately, his colleagues thought his idea was too radical! They believed our children's health was a secondary consideration when confronted by industry lobbyists. [read his letter]
Several environmental groups are also on record as opposing fluoridation due to its impact on plants and animals, including people.
The Center for Children's Health and the Environment, a part of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, demonstrates the relationship between exposure to toxic chemicals and childhood illness.
"Of the thousands of synthetic chemicals on the market, relatively few have been tested for safety. And even fewer have been tested in combination with other chemicals. For our health, for our children’s health, such testing should be in place for all chemicals." - Center for Children's Health
One of the arguments by those advocating fluoridation is that it's needed to help the poor kids. The latest report by the Surgeon General, "Oral Health in America" (May 2000) stated "..80 percent of Medicaid kids don't receive dental care because few dentists take Medicaid." Perhaps the money used to fluoridate could be better used to subsidize dental care.
Delta Dental, the largest dental insurance company in California advocates fluoridation and gives grants to cities to who fluoridate. In our local area, we estimate they given away over $1 million. In what can only be considered a hypocritical action, Delta Dental advocates fluoridation but won't pay for any dental repair work caused by fluorosis.
And in a new devious twist, the American Dental Association, acting like teenage hackers, bought the domain name "www.fluoridealert.com" and "www.fluoridealert.net" to deceive web surfers away from fluoridation opponents' website, http://www.fluoridealert.org. Instead, with a slip of a "dot com," unsuspecting web surfersare tricked to the American Dental Association's pro-fluoridation information.
Dr. Hirzy, EPA Sr. Scientist, called for a "moratorium on fluoridation" as he testified before the U.S. Senate on June 29, 2000 about the dangers of water fluoridation. Citing numerous studies he said that when the relative toxicity levels of lead, fluoride, and arsenic were compared, fluoride is slightly less toxic than arsenic and more toxic than lead. The federal maximum contaminant level (MEL) for lead is 15 parts per billion (pub), with the EPA recommending 5 pub for arsenic; yet the maximum contaminant level for fluoride has been established by EPA at 4000 pub.
Even the federal government is concerned about fluoridation. The U.S. Army Medical Command, MEDCOM, which is in chargeof the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. and three other major in stallations are concerned about fluoridating the water supply of Fort Detrick, Maryland. They contacted an acknowledged expert in neurotoxicity, Dr. Mullenix, and requested an expert opinion concerning fluoridation. Dr. Mullenix's revealing analysis stated that "fluoride exposures today are out of control," and ".. there are no advantages to water fluoridation. The risks today far exceed the hoped for benefit." Dr. Mullenix cites data from 18 clinical studies in her analysis.
A Toxicological Profile done by the Department of Health and Human Resources, revealed that certain people may be unusually susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride and its compounds. These populations include the elderly, people with deficiencies of calcium, magnesium, and/or vitamin C, and people with cardiovascular and kidney problems. Other studies show some people do have an allergic reaction to fluoride.
Dr. Mullienix is not alone. Dr. James B. Patrick, a Harvard Ph.D and former NIH (National Inst. of Health) scientist, testified in front the U.S. Congress in 1982 about why most European nations reject fluoridation.
In Sweden the government sought the opinion of the Nobel Medical Institute, one of the most prestigious in the world. The Institute recommended against fluoridation, based largely toxicity, and Swedish water remains unfluoridated. In a similar manner the French government consulted the Pasteur Institute. That Institute strongly recommended against fluoridation and France also remains unfluoridated.
The respected magazine Newsweek, advised the public that "political decisions [about fluoridation] were at odds with expert advice" and "fluoride from your tap may not do much good-and may cause cancer."
In 1992, Newsweek published another fluoride safety related article, "Is Science Censored?", a look at how political considerations influence what scientific studies get published.
A quote from the leading paid advocate for fluoridation,
"a most flagrant abuse of the public trust occasionally occurs when a physician or a dentist, for whatever personal reason, uses their professional standing in the community to argue against fluoridation, a clear violation of professional ethics, the principles of science and community standards of practice" (Michael Easley, Director of the National Center for Fluoridation Policy & Research).
Comments like these led the associate technical director for Consumers Union, Dr. Edward Groth, to conclude that
"the political profluoridation stance has evolved into a dogmatic, authoritarian, essentially antiscientific posture, one that discourages open debate of scientific issues." (Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate, 1991)
The University of California at Davis also has interesting things to say regarding the deceptive use of statistics to promote fluoride. [letter]
No fluoride advocate ever discusses how much fluoride is already being consumed in the food and beverages we drink. If they did, the truth would be known that we already consume excessive amounts of fluoride from our diets. The need for water fluoridation would be unnecessary.
For example, if you have cereal with milk and a Coke, you have overdosed on fluoride. You have exceeded the American Dental Association's recommended daily dose by over 130%.
Many juices our children drink are loaded with fluoride, just look at the list and you can see for yourself. A number of laboratory analysis are available.
If we examine an average elementary school lunch in a nonfluoridated community, we can get an estimate of how much fluoride our children are actually receiving. The facts clearly show an overdose of the "recommended" amount of fluoride in just one school meal.
In Ireland, the Chairman and six other councillors of the Kildare County Council took a urine test to check the current level of fluoride in their system after a lecture by a British expert discussed how we are already overdosed on fluoride. The test showed they had enough fluoride to cause medical concern even though their community isn't fluoridated.
In 1993, the Environmental Studies and Toxicology Board of the National Research Council (NRC) reported that fluoridation of municipal drinking water supplies may result in dental fluorosis in about 10% of the population. You have a 1 in 10 chance of experiencing tooth damage from water fluoridation!!
Even UNICEF, a United Nations organization, cautions that excess fluoride exposure negatively affects children's health. In their official position statement, they state, "But more and more scientists are now seriously questioning the benefits of fluoride, even in small amounts."
See what mild fluorosis looks like and then decide if it's o.k. for your children's teeth to be disfigured.
In 1993, the National Research Council stated African-American children experience twice the prevalence of dental fluorosis as white children and it tended to be more severe.
Fluoride advocates also don't want you to know that the chemicals used for fluoridation are not pharmaceutical quality, rather they are derived from the waste byproducts of fertilizer manufacturing. Unfortunately, they also contain heavy metals, such as lead and arsenic. Chemifloc Ltd., a fluoridation chemical manufacturer, clearly states this in a letter.
NSF, a corporation which developed drinking water standards stated the "most common contaminant in [fluoridated water] is arsenic" along with other significant contaminants, such as lead. The chemicals used for fluoridation exhibit similar toxicity as lead and arsenic but are permitted in 100x quantities.
Children exposed to lead at levels now considered safe scored substantially lower on intelligence tests, according to researchers who suggest one in every 30 children in the United States suffers harmful effects from the metal.
“There is no safe level of blood lead,” said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, lead author of the lead study presented Monday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported that the vast majority of cancers (50%) are caused .. by environmental and behavioral factors such as chemical pollutants.
Here's an plant in Florida where fertilizer is processed and fluoride is created as a waste byproduct. Other plants are in Juarez, México. Even more interesting is the published description, by a large manufacturer, of various uses of this fertilizer byproduct, such as "Rust and Stain removal for textiles" and "Wood preservative"
The City of Palo Alto California, home of Stanford University, is well aware of the dangers of fluoridation. In Palo Alto's published water analysis, they also identify the source of fluoride, fertilizer manufacturer, and states that fluoridation damages water pipes [because it dissolves lead out of the pipes and/or solder joints]
Several states, including Nevada, have laws that identify chemicals used for pesticides. Included is sodium fluoride, a chemical used for water fluoridation.
The fluoride controversy isn't new. In 1997, the city of Natick Mass. considered the fluoridation of the town's water supply. In order to sort out conflicting claims, they commissioned a respected team of top scientists to analyze the data and make recommendations. The widely read analysis is known as the Natick Report. The panel of doctors and scientists made 12 very specific recommendations. In summary, the scientists "emphatically" recommended the water supply "not be fluoridated." Their analysis also concluded a host of other medical problems may ensue from artificially fluoridating the water.
In March 2000, Wilmington Massachusetts also reviewed both sides of the fluoridation issue and decided against it. The town's Board of Health cited many critical concerns in their five page summary.
The City of Auburndale Florida was so concerned about the health of workers handling fluoridation chemicals, they changed what they were doing.
Most recently, the York Report, a review of several hundred selected papers on fluoridation was published. Profluoridationists touted the report as "proving" fluoridation was safe. So misleading were their statements, that in an unusual step, the Chairman in charge of the York Report had to issue a statement a month later clarifying what was stated in the report, including "The review did not show water fluoridation to be safe."
Natick, Wilmington and Auburndale aren't alone. Over 80 cities have rejected fluoride since 1996, including Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Mtn. View California in 1985. This includes a number of towns which already were fluoridated.
In an 1998 fluoridation advisory vote in Mtn. View, a small town in northern California, population 75,000, the American Dental Association (ADA) spent over $50,000 in a political campaign to promote fluoridation. They paid almost $5 for every yes vote they received, an expensive campaign by any standards. Perhaps the money would be better spent towards subsidizing dental care for those who can't afford it instead of purchasing slick campaign brochures.
The ADA states fluoridation is 100% safe (if not swallowed). Dentists cannot give a professional opinion of the safety of fluoridated ingested water. The California Board of Dental Examiners recently issued a letter (Dec. '99) stating that "Effects of ingested fluoride is not within the purview of dentistry!!" Dentists can not give a professional opinion as to the safety of fluoridated water as they would be practicing medicine without a license.
Why doesn't your dentist warn you about the negatives? The ADA simply refuses to discuss any negatives of fluoridation with member dentists or the public and wants no public discussion.
According to Section 20 of the American Dental Association Code of Ethics, "Dentists' non-participation [ in fluoridation promotion] is overt neglect of professional responsibility." In recent years, several dentists who have testified on the anti-fluoridation side have been reprimanded by their state dental officers. If a dentist speaks out against fluoridation, he could lose his license. This is professional and scientific censorship.
It's also impossible to discuss or debate any ADA member. They simply refuse to attend any town debate where fluoridation is the topic. Their strategy is not to expose the subject to common sense. When open minded people hear both sides, the ADA's arguments fall flat and fluoridation fails.
Perhaps this is why the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) “retaliated” against Dr. Marcus, an EPA Senior Toxicologist, by firing him in May 1992 for his scientific reports which recommended removing fluoride from drinking water. The EPA was sued and found by the Court to have destroyed key documents and lied about other evidence.
The best proof as to which side current science supports is to prove it in court with expert witnesses. There were three landmark cases adjudicated since 1978 in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Texas.
Testimony in the Texas case filled 2800 transcript pages and fully described the benefits and risks of water fluoridation. Judge Flaherty issued an injunction against fluoridation in the case, but the injunction was overturned on jurisdictional grounds but his findings of fact were not disturbed by appellate action.
Here's what Texas Judge Farris said was PROVEN in court.
"That the artificial fluoridation of public water supplies, such as is contemplated by [Houston] City Ordinance No. 80-2530, may cause or may contribute to the cause of cancer, genetic damage, intolerant reactions, and chronic toxicity, including dental mottling, in man; that the said artificial fluoridation may aggravate malnutrition and existing illnesses in man; and that the value of said artificial fluoridation is in doubt as to the reduction of tooth decay in man." - Judge Farris
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Gulf Stream And North Atlantic Current Dying
Gulf Stream And North Atlantic Current Dying- Gulf of Mexico Loop Current Already Dead
Extreme Heat/Drought In Russia, Flooding In Asia,
Killing Cold in South America All Connected To BP Oil Disaster
By The Earl of Stirling
9-2-10
Extreme Heat/Drought In Russia, Flooding In Asia,
Killing Cold in South America All Connected To BP Oil Disaster
By The Earl of Stirling
9-2-10
[Influence of paternal age]
J Gynecol Obstet Biol Reprod (Paris). 2010 Apr;39(1 Suppl):36-8.
[Influence of paternal age]
[Article in French]
Velez de la Calle JF, Broussin B, Lelaidier C, Fallet C.
Unité FIV, Clinique Pasteur, 34, Rue du Moulin à Poudre, Brest, France.
Abstract
Father's age increase miscarriage, malformation, risk of autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar troubles in children.
PMID: 20728806 [PubMed - in process]
Publication Types
[Article in French]
paternal age]
Velez de la Calle JF, Broussin B, Lelaidier C, Fallet C.
Unité FIV, Clinique Pasteur, 34, Rue du Moulin à Poudre, Brest, France.
Abstract
Father's age increase miscarriage, malformation, risk of autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar troubles in children.
PMID: 20728806 [PubMed - in process]
Publication Types
[Influence of paternal age]
[Article in French]
Velez de la Calle JF, Broussin B, Lelaidier C, Fallet C.
Unité FIV, Clinique Pasteur, 34, Rue du Moulin à Poudre, Brest, France.
Abstract
Father's age increase miscarriage, malformation, risk of autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar troubles in children.
PMID: 20728806 [PubMed - in process]
Publication Types
[Article in French]
paternal age]
Velez de la Calle JF, Broussin B, Lelaidier C, Fallet C.
Unité FIV, Clinique Pasteur, 34, Rue du Moulin à Poudre, Brest, France.
Abstract
Father's age increase miscarriage, malformation, risk of autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar troubles in children.
PMID: 20728806 [PubMed - in process]
Publication Types
Why Is Wheat Gluten Disorder on the Rise? by Dr. Mercola
September 3, 2010
Why Is Wheat Gluten Disorder on the Rise? by Dr. Mercola
Posted by tempestodimare under Alternative Health, Survival, Toxic food, food contamination, health | Tags: celiac disease, Dr. Mercola, gluten, gluten intolerance |
1 Comment
Drina’s note: In my personal experience and in my work as herbalist, I have seen blood tests for gluten intolerance to be highly inaccurate. As posted previously, a naturopathic doctor I used to work with agreed with me, saying that food allergy elimination tests are much more accurate and reliable than the blood tests, which she said are “not sensitive”. This article, however, offers excellent information, including some symptomatic information of note like ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and cancer in connection with gluten intolerance. Links to sources of hidden gluten in foods, including those labeled “gluten-free” (watch out!) and much more. A very informative and important read! I hope you enjoy this and that it’s helpful to you or to someone else. —Drina
A study using frozen blood samples taken from Air Force recruits 50 years ago has found that intolerance of wheat gluten, a debilitating digestive condition, is four times more common today than it was in the 1950’s.
The findings contradict the conventional wisdom that the sharp increase in diagnoses of wheat gluten intolerance has come about because of greater awareness and detection. It now seems likely that dramatic changes in the American diet have played a role.
The disease occurs in people whose bodies cannot digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The undigested protein triggers the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine, causing diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain.
The researchers who conducted the study also found that the recruits who had the undiagnosed digestive disorder, called celiac disease, had a four-fold increase in their risk of death.
Sources:
Minneapolis Star Tribune July 1, 2009
Gastroenterology July 2009; 137(1):88-93
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
According to statistics from the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, an average of one out of every 133 otherwise healthy people in the United States suffers from the digestive disease known as celiac disease (CD).
Previous studies have found that this number may be as high as 1 in 33 in at-risk populations.
Unfortunately, despite its rapidly increasing prevalence, it still takes an average of four years to reach a diagnosis if you’re symptomatic. This delay in proper diagnosis can dramatically increase your risk of developing other diseases such as autoimmune disorders, neurological problems, osteoporosis, and even cancer.
For example, if you’re diagnosed with celiac disease after the age of 20, your chances of developing an autoimmune condition skyrocket from the average 3.5 percent to 34 percent.
Additionally, according to this latest study, undiagnosed CD was associated with a nearly four-fold increased risk of premature death.
What Causes Celiac Disease?
Celiac disease, also more casually referred to as wheat- or gluten intolerance, occurs when your body cannot digest gluten, a protein most commonly found in wheat, rye and barley. However, it’s very important to realize that these are not the only culprits that can cause severe problems. Other grains such as oats and spelt also contain gluten, and gluten can be found in countless processed foods without being labeled as such.
“Gluten” comes from the Latin word for glue, and its adhesive properties hold bread and cake together. But those same properties interfere with the breakdown and absorption of nutrients, including the nutrients from other foods in the same meal.
The result is a glued-together constipating lump in your gut rather than a nutritious, easily digested meal.
The undigested gluten then triggers your immune system to attack the lining of your small intestine, which can cause symptoms like diarrhea or constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain.
In more recent years it’s been shown that the condition can also cause a much wider array of symptoms that are not gastrointestinal in nature, further complicating proper diagnosis.
Over time, your small intestine becomes increasingly damaged and less able to absorb nutrients such as iron and calcium. This in turn can lead to anemia, osteoporosis and other health problems.
The rapid increase in celiac disease and milder forms of gluten intolerance is no surprise considering the modern Western diet, which consists in large part of grain carbohydrates.
Additionally, modern wheat is very different from the wheat your ancestors ate. The proportion of gluten protein in wheat has increased enormously as a result of hybridization.
Until the 19th century, wheat was also usually mixed with other grains, beans and nuts; pure wheat flour has been milled into refined white flour only during the last 200 years.
The resulting high-gluten, refined grain diet most of you have eaten since infancy was simply not part of the diet of previous generations.
The Many Symptoms of Gluten-Intolerance
In addition to nausea, diarrhea, constipation and abdominal pain, celiac disease may manifest clinically with an array of non-gastrointestinal symptoms, such as:
Osteoporosis or osteopenia Tooth enamel defects Vitamin K deficiency
Central and peripheral nervous system disease Dementia, and impairments in mental functioning that could cause or aggravate autism, Asperger’s syndrome, ADD or schizophrenia Dermatitis Herpetiformis (DH), a skin condition that causes intense itching and blistering
Anemia of various types Infertility, and earlier menopause Organ disorders
Weight loss or gain Depression Fatigue
How to Treat Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease
The treatment for celiac disease or gluten intolerance is a gluten-free diet, which means abstaining from grains and any food that contains gluten. A blood test can verify whether or not you actually have the condition.
Typically, avoiding gluten for a week or two is enough to see significant improvement.
However, in my experience, about 75-80 percent of ALL people benefit from avoiding grains, even whole sprouted grains, whether you have a gluten intolerance or not. This is because, typically, grains rapidly break down to sugar, which causes rises in insulin that exacerbate health problems such as:
· Overweight
· High cholesterol
· High blood pressure
· Type 2 diabetes
· Cancer
The only consistent exceptions would be those whose nutritional type is a carb type and you don’t suffer symptoms of intolerance. However, it’s still important to realize that there is a major difference between vegetable carbs and grain carbs, even though they’re both referenced as “carbs.” Unlike vegetables, grains convert to sugar, which is not something anyone needs in their diet in high amounts.
The rising prevalence of celiac disease is clear evidence that we’re simply not designed to consume such vast amounts of starch- and sugar-rich foods so many now indulge in.
In short, most people are consuming far too much bread, cereal, pasta, corn (a grain, not a vegetable), rice, potatoes and Little Debbie snack cakes, with very grave health consequences.
Yes, this even includes organic stone ground whole grains. Obviously these are healthier for you for a large number of reasons, but ultimately they cause the same problems through two mechanisms. Reaction to the protein gliadin in the wheat, and adverse impact on insulin metabolism.
The fact is that two-thirds of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, and one in four Americans is diabetic or pre-diabetic. These are clear signs that our diets have strayed too far from the norm of what your body actually needs.
Fortunately there are communities in the US where overweight people are the minority. I spent ten days in Aspen, Colorado in early July and my guess is that less than 5 percent of the population is overweight. Of course many European communities have levels this low, but it is very uncommon in the US.
Hidden Sources of Gluten
In order to combat gluten intolerance, it’s not enough to simply avoid grains. You must also pay attention to the quality of all the other foods you eat.
Remember, 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is for processed foods. When you choose foods like this, not only are you bound to experience physical complications in one way or another, but if you have celiac disease it’s even more imperative you avoid processed foods due to hidden gluten.
Unfortunately, food manufacturers are not required by law to identify all possible sources of gluten on their product labels, so reading the label may not be enough.
Gluten may still be hiding in processed foods like ready-made soups, soy sauce, candies, cold cuts, and various low- and no-fat products, just to name a few, under labels such as:
· Malts
· Starches
· Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
· Texturized vegetable protein (TVP)
· Natural flavoring
Celiac.com has a long list of label ingredients that typically contain hidden gluten.
For helpful tips and guidelines on how to approach food companies for more detailed information about their ingredients, see The Gluten Solution site. They also offer more detailed information about the current state of gluten-free labeling legislation.
That said, your best bet is to stick to a diet of fresh, whole foods (preferably organic whenever possible). Not only will you keep your celiac disease under control, but you will also experience numerous other benefits such as increased energy, enhanced mood, and a lower risk of chronic illness.
If you want more information about celiac disease, the following web sites are good places to start:
· www.celiaccenter.org
· www.celiac.com
· UK Web site for sufferers of celiac disease: www.coeliac.co.uk
Dr. Mercola is the founder of the world’s most visited natural health web site, Mercola.com. You can learn the hazardous side effects of OTC Remedies by getting a FREE copy of his latest special report The Dangers of Over the Counter Remedies by going to his Report Page.
Related Links:
The Prevalence of Celiac Disease In At-Risk Groups of Children In the United States
Is Your Stomach Often Upset? You May Have Subclinical Celiac Disease
Study Finds Enzyme to Control Celiac Disease
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using this product.© Copyright 2010 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
Why Is Wheat Gluten Disorder on the Rise? by Dr. Mercola
Posted by tempestodimare under Alternative Health, Survival, Toxic food, food contamination, health | Tags: celiac disease, Dr. Mercola, gluten, gluten intolerance |
1 Comment
Drina’s note: In my personal experience and in my work as herbalist, I have seen blood tests for gluten intolerance to be highly inaccurate. As posted previously, a naturopathic doctor I used to work with agreed with me, saying that food allergy elimination tests are much more accurate and reliable than the blood tests, which she said are “not sensitive”. This article, however, offers excellent information, including some symptomatic information of note like ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and cancer in connection with gluten intolerance. Links to sources of hidden gluten in foods, including those labeled “gluten-free” (watch out!) and much more. A very informative and important read! I hope you enjoy this and that it’s helpful to you or to someone else. —Drina
A study using frozen blood samples taken from Air Force recruits 50 years ago has found that intolerance of wheat gluten, a debilitating digestive condition, is four times more common today than it was in the 1950’s.
The findings contradict the conventional wisdom that the sharp increase in diagnoses of wheat gluten intolerance has come about because of greater awareness and detection. It now seems likely that dramatic changes in the American diet have played a role.
The disease occurs in people whose bodies cannot digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The undigested protein triggers the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine, causing diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain.
The researchers who conducted the study also found that the recruits who had the undiagnosed digestive disorder, called celiac disease, had a four-fold increase in their risk of death.
Sources:
Minneapolis Star Tribune July 1, 2009
Gastroenterology July 2009; 137(1):88-93
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
According to statistics from the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, an average of one out of every 133 otherwise healthy people in the United States suffers from the digestive disease known as celiac disease (CD).
Previous studies have found that this number may be as high as 1 in 33 in at-risk populations.
Unfortunately, despite its rapidly increasing prevalence, it still takes an average of four years to reach a diagnosis if you’re symptomatic. This delay in proper diagnosis can dramatically increase your risk of developing other diseases such as autoimmune disorders, neurological problems, osteoporosis, and even cancer.
For example, if you’re diagnosed with celiac disease after the age of 20, your chances of developing an autoimmune condition skyrocket from the average 3.5 percent to 34 percent.
Additionally, according to this latest study, undiagnosed CD was associated with a nearly four-fold increased risk of premature death.
What Causes Celiac Disease?
Celiac disease, also more casually referred to as wheat- or gluten intolerance, occurs when your body cannot digest gluten, a protein most commonly found in wheat, rye and barley. However, it’s very important to realize that these are not the only culprits that can cause severe problems. Other grains such as oats and spelt also contain gluten, and gluten can be found in countless processed foods without being labeled as such.
“Gluten” comes from the Latin word for glue, and its adhesive properties hold bread and cake together. But those same properties interfere with the breakdown and absorption of nutrients, including the nutrients from other foods in the same meal.
The result is a glued-together constipating lump in your gut rather than a nutritious, easily digested meal.
The undigested gluten then triggers your immune system to attack the lining of your small intestine, which can cause symptoms like diarrhea or constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain.
In more recent years it’s been shown that the condition can also cause a much wider array of symptoms that are not gastrointestinal in nature, further complicating proper diagnosis.
Over time, your small intestine becomes increasingly damaged and less able to absorb nutrients such as iron and calcium. This in turn can lead to anemia, osteoporosis and other health problems.
The rapid increase in celiac disease and milder forms of gluten intolerance is no surprise considering the modern Western diet, which consists in large part of grain carbohydrates.
Additionally, modern wheat is very different from the wheat your ancestors ate. The proportion of gluten protein in wheat has increased enormously as a result of hybridization.
Until the 19th century, wheat was also usually mixed with other grains, beans and nuts; pure wheat flour has been milled into refined white flour only during the last 200 years.
The resulting high-gluten, refined grain diet most of you have eaten since infancy was simply not part of the diet of previous generations.
The Many Symptoms of Gluten-Intolerance
In addition to nausea, diarrhea, constipation and abdominal pain, celiac disease may manifest clinically with an array of non-gastrointestinal symptoms, such as:
Osteoporosis or osteopenia Tooth enamel defects Vitamin K deficiency
Central and peripheral nervous system disease Dementia, and impairments in mental functioning that could cause or aggravate autism, Asperger’s syndrome, ADD or schizophrenia Dermatitis Herpetiformis (DH), a skin condition that causes intense itching and blistering
Anemia of various types Infertility, and earlier menopause Organ disorders
Weight loss or gain Depression Fatigue
How to Treat Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease
The treatment for celiac disease or gluten intolerance is a gluten-free diet, which means abstaining from grains and any food that contains gluten. A blood test can verify whether or not you actually have the condition.
Typically, avoiding gluten for a week or two is enough to see significant improvement.
However, in my experience, about 75-80 percent of ALL people benefit from avoiding grains, even whole sprouted grains, whether you have a gluten intolerance or not. This is because, typically, grains rapidly break down to sugar, which causes rises in insulin that exacerbate health problems such as:
· Overweight
· High cholesterol
· High blood pressure
· Type 2 diabetes
· Cancer
The only consistent exceptions would be those whose nutritional type is a carb type and you don’t suffer symptoms of intolerance. However, it’s still important to realize that there is a major difference between vegetable carbs and grain carbs, even though they’re both referenced as “carbs.” Unlike vegetables, grains convert to sugar, which is not something anyone needs in their diet in high amounts.
The rising prevalence of celiac disease is clear evidence that we’re simply not designed to consume such vast amounts of starch- and sugar-rich foods so many now indulge in.
In short, most people are consuming far too much bread, cereal, pasta, corn (a grain, not a vegetable), rice, potatoes and Little Debbie snack cakes, with very grave health consequences.
Yes, this even includes organic stone ground whole grains. Obviously these are healthier for you for a large number of reasons, but ultimately they cause the same problems through two mechanisms. Reaction to the protein gliadin in the wheat, and adverse impact on insulin metabolism.
The fact is that two-thirds of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, and one in four Americans is diabetic or pre-diabetic. These are clear signs that our diets have strayed too far from the norm of what your body actually needs.
Fortunately there are communities in the US where overweight people are the minority. I spent ten days in Aspen, Colorado in early July and my guess is that less than 5 percent of the population is overweight. Of course many European communities have levels this low, but it is very uncommon in the US.
Hidden Sources of Gluten
In order to combat gluten intolerance, it’s not enough to simply avoid grains. You must also pay attention to the quality of all the other foods you eat.
Remember, 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is for processed foods. When you choose foods like this, not only are you bound to experience physical complications in one way or another, but if you have celiac disease it’s even more imperative you avoid processed foods due to hidden gluten.
Unfortunately, food manufacturers are not required by law to identify all possible sources of gluten on their product labels, so reading the label may not be enough.
Gluten may still be hiding in processed foods like ready-made soups, soy sauce, candies, cold cuts, and various low- and no-fat products, just to name a few, under labels such as:
· Malts
· Starches
· Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
· Texturized vegetable protein (TVP)
· Natural flavoring
Celiac.com has a long list of label ingredients that typically contain hidden gluten.
For helpful tips and guidelines on how to approach food companies for more detailed information about their ingredients, see The Gluten Solution site. They also offer more detailed information about the current state of gluten-free labeling legislation.
That said, your best bet is to stick to a diet of fresh, whole foods (preferably organic whenever possible). Not only will you keep your celiac disease under control, but you will also experience numerous other benefits such as increased energy, enhanced mood, and a lower risk of chronic illness.
If you want more information about celiac disease, the following web sites are good places to start:
· www.celiaccenter.org
· www.celiac.com
· UK Web site for sufferers of celiac disease: www.coeliac.co.uk
Dr. Mercola is the founder of the world’s most visited natural health web site, Mercola.com. You can learn the hazardous side effects of OTC Remedies by getting a FREE copy of his latest special report The Dangers of Over the Counter Remedies by going to his Report Page.
Related Links:
The Prevalence of Celiac Disease In At-Risk Groups of Children In the United States
Is Your Stomach Often Upset? You May Have Subclinical Celiac Disease
Study Finds Enzyme to Control Celiac Disease
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using this product.© Copyright 2010 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
Evidence-based vaccinations: A scientific look at the missing science behind flu season vaccines
Evidence-based vaccinations: A scientific look at the missing science behind flu season vaccines
Thursday, September 02, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews) As someone with a good deal of education in scientific thinking and the scientific method, I have put considerable effort into attempting to find any real scientific evidence backing the widespread use of influenza vaccines (flu season shots). Before learning about nutrition and holistic health, I was a computer software entrepreneur, and I have a considerable scientific background in areas such as astronomy, physics, human physiology, microbiology, genetics, anthropology and human psychology. One of my most-admired thought leaders is, in fact, the late physicist Richard Feynman.
I don't speak from a "scientific" point of view on NaturalNews very often because it's often a dry, boring presentation style. But I do know the difference between real science and junk science, and I find examples of junk science in both the "scientific" side of things as well as the "alternative" side of things.
For example, so-called "psychic surgery," as least in the way it has been popularized, is nothing more than clever sleight-of-hand where the surgeon palms some chicken gizzards and then pretends to pull diseased organs out of the abdominal cavity of some patient. The demonstrations I've seen on film are obvious quackery.
Similarly, flu season vaccines are mainstream medicine's version of psychic surgery: It's all just "medical sleight of hand" based on nothing more than clever distractions and the obfuscation of scientific facts. Flu season shots, you see, simply don't work on 99 out of 100 people (and that's being generous to the vaccine industry, as you'll see below).
A year ago, I offered a $10,000 reward to any person who could find scientific proof that H1N1 vaccines were safe and effective (http://www.naturalnews.com/027985_H...). No one even made a claim to collect that reward because no such evidence exists.
Conventional medicine, they say, is really "Evidence-Based Medicine" (EBM). That is, everything promoted by conventional medicine is supposed to be based on "rigorous scientific scrutiny." It's all supposed to be statistically validated and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works as advertised. And in the case of flu vaccines, they are advertised as providing some sort of absolute protection against influenza. "Don't miss work this flu season. Get a flu shot!" The idea, of course, is that getting a flu shot offers 100% protection from the flu. If you get a shot, they say, you won't miss work from sickness.
This implication is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it's just flat-out false. As you'll see below, it's false advertising wrapped around junk science.
You see, there was never an independent, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study proving either the safety or effectiveness of the H1N1 swine flu vaccines that were heavily pushed last year (and are in fact in this year's flu shot cocktail). No such study has ever been done. As a result, there is no rigorous scientific basis from which to sell such vaccines in the first place.
To try to excuse this, vaccine hucksters claim that it would be "unethical" to conduct a placebo-controlled study of such vaccines because they work so well that to deny the placebo group the actual vaccine would be harmful to them. Everybody benefits from the influenza vaccine, they insist, so the mere act of conducting a scientifically-controlled test is unethical.
Do you smell some quackery at work yet? This is precisely the kind of pseudoscientific gobbledygook you might hear from some mad Russian scientist who claims to have "magic water" but you can't test the magic water because the mere presence of measurement instruments nullifies the magical properties of the water.
Similarly, vaccine pushers often insist it's unethical to test whether their vaccines really work. You just have to "take it on faith" that vaccines are universally good for everybody.
Yep, I used the word "faith." That is essentially what the so-called scientific community is invoking here with the vaccine issue: Just BELIEVE they work, everybody! Who needs scientific evidence when we've got FAITH in vaccines?
Forget about evidence-based medicine. Forget about any rational cost-benefit analysis. Forget about the risk-to-benefit ratio calculations that should be part of any rational decision making about vaccines. No, the vaccine industry (and its apologist bloggers) already know that vaccines are universally good for you, therefore no such rigorous scientific assessment is even required!
The Scientific Method, in other words, doesn't really apply to the things they already believe in. Faith can override reason in the "scientific" community, if you can believe that! What's next, are they going to claim vaccines work because some sort of "vaccine God" makes them work?
Here, take your vaccine shot. And don't forget to pray to the Vaccine God because that's how these things really work. Vaccine voodoo, in other words. (Hey, that would have been a great title for the vaccine song, come to think of it...)
Unethical to find out if they work?
I got to wondering about the whole explanation of how it would be "unethical" to test whether the H1N1 vaccines actually work. This deflection strikes me as particularly odd, because it comes with an implied follow-up statement. Here's what they're actually saying when they invoke this excuse:
#1) It is "unethical" to conduct placebo-controlled studies on seasonal flu vaccines to find out if they actually work.
#2) But at the same time, it is entirely ethical to give these shots to hundreds of millions of people, even while lacking any real evidence that they are safe or effective.
In other words, it's unethical to conduct any real science, but entirely ethical to just keep injecting people with a substance that might be entirely useless (or even harmful). That's just a hint of the kind of warped logic and failed ethics that typify our modern vaccine industry.
Vaccine advocates claim that H1N1 vaccines are so effective that NOT giving vaccines to a placebo group would "put their lives at risk." That alone is apparently enough reason to avoid conducting any real science on these vaccines.
But I'm not buying this. I think it's just a cover story -- an excuse to avoid subjecting such vaccines to rigorous scientific inquiry because, deep down inside, they know vaccines would be revealed as an elaborate medical fraud.
So I poked around to see if there were other randomized studies being conducted that might actually put people's lives at risk. It didn't take long to find some. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published two studies regarding post heart-attack patient cooling which seeks to minimize brain damage by physically lowering the temperature of the brain of the heart attack patient until they can reach the acute care technicians at a nearby hospital.
In two studies, researchers who already knew that "cooling" would save lives nevertheless subjected 350 heart attack patient to a randomized study protocol that assigned comatose (but resuscitated) patients to either "cooling" temperatures or normal temperatures.
In one study, while half the cooled patients recovered with normal brain function, only a quarter of those exposed to normal temperatures did. In other words, patient cooling saved their brains. And yet the importance of knowing whether or not this procedure really worked was apparently enough to justify withholding the treatment from over a hundred other patients, most of whom suffered permanent brain damage as a result.
You see, when scientists really want to know the answers to questions like, "Does this brain cooling work?" they have no qualms about subjecting people to things like permanent brain damage in a randomized clinical trial. The knowledge gained from such an experiment is arguably worth the loss of a few patient brains because, armed with scientific evidence, such procedures can be rolled out to help save the brains of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients in subsequent years.
But when it comes to testing vaccines like the recent H1N1 variety, the official explanation is that it's too dangerous to withhold vaccines from a treatment group. They say it's not really important to determine if vaccines are statistically validated, and it's not worth the "risk" of withholding vaccines from anyone in a randomized clinical trial.
Now, sure, there have been some clinical trials done on many different vaccines over the years, but most of those are industry funded, and there are almost never rigorous trials conducted on each year's seasonal flu vaccines before they are released for public consumption. As a result, each year's vaccine is a brand new experiment, carried out across the guinea pig masses of patients who just do whatever they're told without questioning whether it's backed by real science.
Because, of course, it isn't. And I'm not the only one who recognizes this inconvenient fact.
The Cochrane Collaboration
The Cochrane Collaboration, as described on its own website, is, "...an international, independent, not-for-profit organization of over 28,000 contributors from more than 100 countries, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide."
"We are world leaders in evidence-based health care," the site goes on to say, followed by a quote from The Lancet which states, "The Cochrane Collaboration is an enterprise that rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine."
Working for the Cochrane Collaboration, an epidemiologist named Dr. Tom Jefferson decided to take a close look at the scientific evidence behind influenza vaccines (seasonal flu vaccines).
The objectives of the study were to: "Identify, retrieve and assess all studies evaluating the effects of vaccines against influenza in healthy adults."
The Search Criteria: "We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2010, issue 2), MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2010) and EMBASE (1990 to June 2010)."
Selection Criteria (for inclusion in the study): "Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs comparing influenza vaccines with placebo or no intervention in naturally-occurring influenza in healthy individuals aged 16 to 65 years. We also included comparative studies assessing serious and rare harms."
The Total Scope of the study encompassed over 70,000 people. And just so you know, these the results may strongly favor the vaccine industry. The author even went out of his way to warn that "15 out of 36 trials [were] funded by industry (four had no funding declaration)."
In other words, close to half of the studies included in this analysis were funded by the vaccine industry itself, which as we know consistently manipulates data, bribes researchers or otherwise engages in scientific fraud in order to get the results they want.
The author even goes on to warn how industry-funded studies always get more press, saying, "...industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size."
See the study detail page at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co...
Study results show influenza vaccines are nearly worthless
Now here comes the interesting part: Even though nearly half the studies were funded by the vaccine industry itself, the study results show that in most circumstances, influenza vaccines are virtually worthless:
"The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)" say the study authors. And by "poor vaccine matching," they mean that the strain of influenza viruses in the vaccine are a poor match for the strains circulating in the wild. This is usually the case in the real world because the vaccine only incorporates last year's viral strains and cannot predict which strains will be circulating this year.
In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people showing influenza symptoms by just one. For ninety-nine percent of the people vaccinated, the vaccine makes no difference at all!
In a "best case" scenario when the viral strain in the influenza vaccine just happens to match the strain circulating in the wild -- a situation that even the study authors call "uncommon" -- the results were as follows: "4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%)."
In other words, the matching vaccine (which is uncommon in the real world) reduced influenza infections in 3 out of 100 people. Or, put another way, 97% of those injected with the vaccine received no benefit (and no different outcome).
Furthermore, the study's conclusions go on to state:
• "Vaccination had... no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates."
• "Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost."
• "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions..."
• "There is no evidence that [influenza vaccines] affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission." (Got that? Vaccines do not affect transmission of the disease, yet that's the whole reason vaccines are pushed so heavily during pandemics -- to block disease transmission.)
• "In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms."
And finally, the study author's summary concludes with this whopper of a statement: "Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited."
In other words, taking into account the industry bias, the actual results may be that vaccines prevent influenza symptoms in only 1 out of 1,000 people.
Putting it in perspective
So let's put all this in perspective in a rational, intelligent way. This far-reaching analysis of influenza vaccine trials shows that under common conditions, seasonal influenza vaccines have no benefit for 99 out of 100 people.
Furthermore, even this result is describe as being "an optimistic estimate" because nearly half of the vaccine trials were funded by the vaccine industry which tends to "produce results favorable to their products."
Furthermore, some of the studies were carried out in "ideal" viral matching scenarios that rarely happen in the real world.
And finally, some evidence of harm from vaccines was simply thrown out of this analysis, resulting in a "harms evidence base" that was quite limited and likely doesn't reveal the full picture.
Are you getting all this? Even with industry-funded studies likely distorting the results in their favor, if you take a good hard look at the scientific evidence surrounding the effectiveness of vaccines, you quickly come to realize that influenza vaccines don't work on 99 out of 100 people. (And the real answer may be even worse.)
Now that's a far cry from the false advertising of the vaccine industry, which implies that if you get a shot you're "protected" from influenza. They claim you won't miss work, you'll stay well, and so on. Through these messages, they are cleverly implying that vaccines work on 100% of the people.
But based on the available scientific evidence, these are blatantly false statements. And the wild exaggeration of the supposed benefits from vaccines crosses the threshold of "misleading advertising" and enters the realm of "criminal marketing fraud." Where is the FTC or FDA on speaking out against this quackery?
Vaccine marketing is, essentially, scientific fraud. To claim that vaccines protect everyone when, in reality, they may reduce symptoms in only one out of 100 people is intellectually dishonest and downright fraudulent.
It is, simply put, just pure B.S. quackery.
Now, imagine if an herbal product were advertised on television as offering some health benefit, but it turned out that the product only worked on 1 out of 100 people who took it. That herbal product would be widely branded as "quackery" and the company selling it would be accused of false advertising. The company owners might even be charged with criminal fraud.
But vaccines get a free pass on this issue. While an herbal product might be heavily investigated or even confiscated by the FDA, vaccines that only work on 1% of the people receive the full backing of the FDA, CDC, WHO, FTC and local hospitals and clinics to boot. The fact that the vaccine is pure quackery apparently doesn't matter to any of these organizations: It's full speed ahead, regardless of what the science actually says.
Once you understand all this, you now understand why it is an accurate statement to say "The FDA promotes medical fraud."
Similarly, "The CDC promotes medical fraud." As does the WHO.
These are scientifically accurate statements, assuming you agree that a product that only works on 1 out of 100 people fits the definition of "fraud" when it is marketed as if it helped everyone. And most people would agree with that reasonable definition of fraud.
It's a totally different story if the efficacy ratio is higher. If influenza vaccines actually produced some benefit in 25 out of 100 people, that might be worth considering. But it's nowhere near that.
The FDA, by the way, will often approve pharmaceuticals that only produce results in 5 percent of the clinical trial subjects. The world of modern medicine, in fact, is full of pharmaceuticals that simply don't work on 95% of the patients who take them.
Read the Cochrane summary yourself at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co...
It's entitled, "Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults"
Authors: "Tom Jefferson, Carlo Di Pietrantonj, Alessandro Rivetti, Ghada A Bawazeer, Lubna A Al-Ansary, Eliana Ferroni"
Enter the vaccine zombies!
With these study results in mind, take a look at some of the lyrics in my recent hip hop song, "Vaccine Zombie" (http://www.naturalnews.com/vaccine_...)
I forgot how to think for myself
I don't understand a thing about health
I do the same as everyone else
I'm a vaccine zombie, zombie
Now you can see where these lyrics come from. If influenza vaccines are worthless for 99 percent of those who receive them, then why are people lining up to get injected?
The answer is because they fail to think critically about vaccines and their health. They don't understand health, so they just go along with everybody else and do what they're told. Hence their earning of the "Vaccine Zombie" designation.
The song goes on to say:
I'm a sucker for the ads, a sucker for the labs
A sucker for the swine flu jabs
and I don't mind followin' a medical fad
Cause livin' without a brain ain't half bad
Yes, people who line up for influenza vaccines are "suckers" who have been bamboozled by fraudulent vaccine propaganda. But they're following a "medical fad" and it's easier to just do what you're told rather than engage your brain and think critically about what you're doing.
"Livin' without a brain ain't half bad" because it takes the burden of decision making out of the loop and allows you to just rely on whatever the doctors and health officials tell you to do.
How the scientific community lost touch with real science
But what if they were all lying to you? Or what if they, themselves, were ignorant about the fact that influenza vaccines are worthless on 99% of those who receive them? (Very few doctors and scientists, it turns out, are aware of this simple truth.)
Or what if the vaccine pushers had all convinced themselves of a falsehood? What if they truly believed that vaccines were really, really good for everyone but that belief was based on wishful thinking rather than rigorous scientific review?
Because that, my friends, is exactly what has happened. We have an entire segment of the scientific community that has been suckered into vaccine propaganda. They've convinced themselves that seasonal flu shots really work and that virtually everyone should be injected with such shots. And they believe this based on irrational faith, not on scientific thinking or rigorous statistical evidence.
They are, in other words, pursuing a vaccine religion (or cult). The is especially curious, given that most vaccine pushers don't believe in God or any organized religion -- except for their own vaccine religion, where real scientific evidence isn't required. All you gotta do is believe in vaccines and you can join their religion, too.
And so all across the 'net, so-called "science bloggers" embarrass themselves by promoting near-useless influenza vaccines as "evidence-based medicine," apparently unaware that the evidence shows such vaccines to be all but worthless.
They might as well say they support vaccines "Just 'cuz."
And "just 'cuz" is no reason to inject yourself with a chemical cocktail that even the industry admits causes extremely dangerous neurological side effects in a small number of vaccine recipients.
Vitamin D would actually make vaccines work better
To top this all off, here's the real kicker of this story: You can beat the minimal protective benefits of vaccines with a simple, low-cost vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D, you see, is the nutrient that activates your immune system to fight off infectious disease. Without it, vaccines hardly work at all.
In fact, the very low rate of vaccine efficacy (1%) is almost certainly due to the fact that most people receiving the vaccines are vitamin D deficient. (Anywhere from 75% - 95% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, depending on whom you ask.)
Hilariously, the way to make vaccines work better would be to hand out vitamin D supplements to go along with the shots! Even more hilariously, if people were taking vitamin D supplements, they wouldn't need the vaccine shots in the first place!
Influenza vaccines, in other words, have no important role whatsoever in preventing influenza infections. This goal can be accomplished more safely, reliably and at far lower cost by promoting vitamin D supplements for the population at large.
What we really need to see from the scientific world is a study comparing vitamin D supplements to influenza vaccines (and using realistic vitamin D doses, not just 200 or 400 IUs per day). I have absolutely no doubt that healthy-dose vitamin D supplementation (4000 IUs a day) would prove to be significantly more effective than influenza vaccines at preventing flu infections.
But such a study will almost certainly never be done (at least not anytime soon) because it would expose the false propaganda of the vaccine industry while giving consumers a far better way of protecting themselves from influenza that doesn't involve paying money to vaccine manufacturers.
In medicine, as in war, truth is often the first casualty. And when the lies are repeated with enough frequency, they begin to be believed. The flu shot lie has been repeated with such ferocity and apparent authority that it has snookered in virtually the entire "scientific" community.
That even rational-minded scientists can be so easily hoodwinked by the vaccine industry is causing more and more people to question the credibility of not just modern medicine, but the entire scientific community as well.
Because if so-called "rational" scientists and thought leaders can be so easily suckered into an obvious falsehood, what other fictions might they be promoting as fact?
Medicine, you see, makes all the other sciences look bad. The obvious scientific fraud going on in the name of "science" in the pharmaceutical industry makes a mockery of real scientific thought. The ease of which medical scientists have been hoodwinked by the drug industry calls into question the rationality of all sciences.
And in doing so, it brings up an even bigger question: Is science the best path to gaining knowledge in the first place? This is obviously a philosophical question, not a scientific question, and it's beyond the scope of this article, but it's one I will likely visit here on NaturalNews very soon in an upcoming article.
There are many paths to truth, you see. Science -- good science -- is one of them, but it is not the only one. Any scientist who believes that science has a monopoly on all knowledge is himself a fool. Just read a little Feynman and you'll quickly come to discover that the very brightest minds in the history of science consistently recognized there were other pathways leading to truth.
I believe if Feynman were alive today and saw the vaccine propaganda taking place in the name of "science," he would respond with something like, "Surely you're joking."
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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams launched NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Evidence-based vaccinations: A scientific look at the missing science behind flu season vaccines
Flu vaccines don't work on 99% of people
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews) As someone with a good deal of education in scientific thinking and the scientific method, I have put considerable effort into attempting to find any real scientific evidence backing the widespread use of influenza vaccines (flu season shots). Before learning about nutrition and holistic health, I was a computer software entrepreneur, and I have a considerable scientific background in areas such as astronomy, physics, human physiology, microbiology, genetics, anthropology and human psychology. One of my most-admired thought leaders is, in fact, the late physicist Richard Feynman.
I don't speak from a "scientific" point of view on NaturalNews very often because it's often a dry, boring presentation style. But I do know the difference between real science and junk science, and I find examples of junk science in both the "scientific" side of things as well as the "alternative" side of things.
For example, so-called "psychic surgery," as least in the way it has been popularized, is nothing more than clever sleight-of-hand where the surgeon palms some chicken gizzards and then pretends to pull diseased organs out of the abdominal cavity of some patient. The demonstrations I've seen on film are obvious quackery.
Similarly, flu season vaccines are mainstream medicine's version of psychic surgery: It's all just "medical sleight of hand" based on nothing more than clever distractions and the obfuscation of scientific facts. Flu season shots, you see, simply don't work on 99 out of 100 people (and that's being generous to the vaccine industry, as you'll see below).
A year ago, I offered a $10,000 reward to any person who could find scientific proof that H1N1 vaccines were safe and effective (http://www.naturalnews.com/027985_H...). No one even made a claim to collect that reward because no such evidence exists.
Conventional medicine, they say, is really "Evidence-Based Medicine" (EBM). That is, everything promoted by conventional medicine is supposed to be based on "rigorous scientific scrutiny." It's all supposed to be statistically validated and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works as advertised. And in the case of flu vaccines, they are advertised as providing some sort of absolute protection against influenza. "Don't miss work this flu season. Get a flu shot!" The idea, of course, is that getting a flu shot offers 100% protection from the flu. If you get a shot, they say, you won't miss work from sickness.
This implication is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it's just flat-out false. As you'll see below, it's false advertising wrapped around junk science.
You see, there was never an independent, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study proving either the safety or effectiveness of the H1N1 swine flu vaccines that were heavily pushed last year (and are in fact in this year's flu shot cocktail). No such study has ever been done. As a result, there is no rigorous scientific basis from which to sell such vaccines in the first place.
To try to excuse this, vaccine hucksters claim that it would be "unethical" to conduct a placebo-controlled study of such vaccines because they work so well that to deny the placebo group the actual vaccine would be harmful to them. Everybody benefits from the influenza vaccine, they insist, so the mere act of conducting a scientifically-controlled test is unethical.
Do you smell some quackery at work yet? This is precisely the kind of pseudoscientific gobbledygook you might hear from some mad Russian scientist who claims to have "magic water" but you can't test the magic water because the mere presence of measurement instruments nullifies the magical properties of the water.
Similarly, vaccine pushers often insist it's unethical to test whether their vaccines really work. You just have to "take it on faith" that vaccines are universally good for everybody.
Yep, I used the word "faith." That is essentially what the so-called scientific community is invoking here with the vaccine issue: Just BELIEVE they work, everybody! Who needs scientific evidence when we've got FAITH in vaccines?
Forget about evidence-based medicine. Forget about any rational cost-benefit analysis. Forget about the risk-to-benefit ratio calculations that should be part of any rational decision making about vaccines. No, the vaccine industry (and its apologist bloggers) already know that vaccines are universally good for you, therefore no such rigorous scientific assessment is even required!
The Scientific Method, in other words, doesn't really apply to the things they already believe in. Faith can override reason in the "scientific" community, if you can believe that! What's next, are they going to claim vaccines work because some sort of "vaccine God" makes them work?
Here, take your vaccine shot. And don't forget to pray to the Vaccine God because that's how these things really work. Vaccine voodoo, in other words. (Hey, that would have been a great title for the vaccine song, come to think of it...)
Unethical to find out if they work?
I got to wondering about the whole explanation of how it would be "unethical" to test whether the H1N1 vaccines actually work. This deflection strikes me as particularly odd, because it comes with an implied follow-up statement. Here's what they're actually saying when they invoke this excuse:
#1) It is "unethical" to conduct placebo-controlled studies on seasonal flu vaccines to find out if they actually work.
#2) But at the same time, it is entirely ethical to give these shots to hundreds of millions of people, even while lacking any real evidence that they are safe or effective.
In other words, it's unethical to conduct any real science, but entirely ethical to just keep injecting people with a substance that might be entirely useless (or even harmful). That's just a hint of the kind of warped logic and failed ethics that typify our modern vaccine industry.
Vaccine advocates claim that H1N1 vaccines are so effective that NOT giving vaccines to a placebo group would "put their lives at risk." That alone is apparently enough reason to avoid conducting any real science on these vaccines.
But I'm not buying this. I think it's just a cover story -- an excuse to avoid subjecting such vaccines to rigorous scientific inquiry because, deep down inside, they know vaccines would be revealed as an elaborate medical fraud.
So I poked around to see if there were other randomized studies being conducted that might actually put people's lives at risk. It didn't take long to find some. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published two studies regarding post heart-attack patient cooling which seeks to minimize brain damage by physically lowering the temperature of the brain of the heart attack patient until they can reach the acute care technicians at a nearby hospital.
In two studies, researchers who already knew that "cooling" would save lives nevertheless subjected 350 heart attack patient to a randomized study protocol that assigned comatose (but resuscitated) patients to either "cooling" temperatures or normal temperatures.
In one study, while half the cooled patients recovered with normal brain function, only a quarter of those exposed to normal temperatures did. In other words, patient cooling saved their brains. And yet the importance of knowing whether or not this procedure really worked was apparently enough to justify withholding the treatment from over a hundred other patients, most of whom suffered permanent brain damage as a result.
You see, when scientists really want to know the answers to questions like, "Does this brain cooling work?" they have no qualms about subjecting people to things like permanent brain damage in a randomized clinical trial. The knowledge gained from such an experiment is arguably worth the loss of a few patient brains because, armed with scientific evidence, such procedures can be rolled out to help save the brains of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients in subsequent years.
But when it comes to testing vaccines like the recent H1N1 variety, the official explanation is that it's too dangerous to withhold vaccines from a treatment group. They say it's not really important to determine if vaccines are statistically validated, and it's not worth the "risk" of withholding vaccines from anyone in a randomized clinical trial.
Now, sure, there have been some clinical trials done on many different vaccines over the years, but most of those are industry funded, and there are almost never rigorous trials conducted on each year's seasonal flu vaccines before they are released for public consumption. As a result, each year's vaccine is a brand new experiment, carried out across the guinea pig masses of patients who just do whatever they're told without questioning whether it's backed by real science.
Because, of course, it isn't. And I'm not the only one who recognizes this inconvenient fact.
The Cochrane Collaboration
The Cochrane Collaboration, as described on its own website, is, "...an international, independent, not-for-profit organization of over 28,000 contributors from more than 100 countries, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide."
"We are world leaders in evidence-based health care," the site goes on to say, followed by a quote from The Lancet which states, "The Cochrane Collaboration is an enterprise that rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine."
Working for the Cochrane Collaboration, an epidemiologist named Dr. Tom Jefferson decided to take a close look at the scientific evidence behind influenza vaccines (seasonal flu vaccines).
The objectives of the study were to: "Identify, retrieve and assess all studies evaluating the effects of vaccines against influenza in healthy adults."
The Search Criteria: "We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2010, issue 2), MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2010) and EMBASE (1990 to June 2010)."
Selection Criteria (for inclusion in the study): "Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs comparing influenza vaccines with placebo or no intervention in naturally-occurring influenza in healthy individuals aged 16 to 65 years. We also included comparative studies assessing serious and rare harms."
The Total Scope of the study encompassed over 70,000 people. And just so you know, these the results may strongly favor the vaccine industry. The author even went out of his way to warn that "15 out of 36 trials [were] funded by industry (four had no funding declaration)."
In other words, close to half of the studies included in this analysis were funded by the vaccine industry itself, which as we know consistently manipulates data, bribes researchers or otherwise engages in scientific fraud in order to get the results they want.
The author even goes on to warn how industry-funded studies always get more press, saying, "...industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size."
See the study detail page at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co...
Study results show influenza vaccines are nearly worthless
Now here comes the interesting part: Even though nearly half the studies were funded by the vaccine industry itself, the study results show that in most circumstances, influenza vaccines are virtually worthless:
"The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)" say the study authors. And by "poor vaccine matching," they mean that the strain of influenza viruses in the vaccine are a poor match for the strains circulating in the wild. This is usually the case in the real world because the vaccine only incorporates last year's viral strains and cannot predict which strains will be circulating this year.
In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people showing influenza symptoms by just one. For ninety-nine percent of the people vaccinated, the vaccine makes no difference at all!
In a "best case" scenario when the viral strain in the influenza vaccine just happens to match the strain circulating in the wild -- a situation that even the study authors call "uncommon" -- the results were as follows: "4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%)."
In other words, the matching vaccine (which is uncommon in the real world) reduced influenza infections in 3 out of 100 people. Or, put another way, 97% of those injected with the vaccine received no benefit (and no different outcome).
Furthermore, the study's conclusions go on to state:
• "Vaccination had... no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates."
• "Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost."
• "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions..."
• "There is no evidence that [influenza vaccines] affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission." (Got that? Vaccines do not affect transmission of the disease, yet that's the whole reason vaccines are pushed so heavily during pandemics -- to block disease transmission.)
• "In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms."
And finally, the study author's summary concludes with this whopper of a statement: "Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited."
In other words, taking into account the industry bias, the actual results may be that vaccines prevent influenza symptoms in only 1 out of 1,000 people.
Putting it in perspective
So let's put all this in perspective in a rational, intelligent way. This far-reaching analysis of influenza vaccine trials shows that under common conditions, seasonal influenza vaccines have no benefit for 99 out of 100 people.
Furthermore, even this result is describe as being "an optimistic estimate" because nearly half of the vaccine trials were funded by the vaccine industry which tends to "produce results favorable to their products."
Furthermore, some of the studies were carried out in "ideal" viral matching scenarios that rarely happen in the real world.
And finally, some evidence of harm from vaccines was simply thrown out of this analysis, resulting in a "harms evidence base" that was quite limited and likely doesn't reveal the full picture.
Are you getting all this? Even with industry-funded studies likely distorting the results in their favor, if you take a good hard look at the scientific evidence surrounding the effectiveness of vaccines, you quickly come to realize that influenza vaccines don't work on 99 out of 100 people. (And the real answer may be even worse.)
Now that's a far cry from the false advertising of the vaccine industry, which implies that if you get a shot you're "protected" from influenza. They claim you won't miss work, you'll stay well, and so on. Through these messages, they are cleverly implying that vaccines work on 100% of the people.
But based on the available scientific evidence, these are blatantly false statements. And the wild exaggeration of the supposed benefits from vaccines crosses the threshold of "misleading advertising" and enters the realm of "criminal marketing fraud." Where is the FTC or FDA on speaking out against this quackery?
Vaccine marketing is, essentially, scientific fraud. To claim that vaccines protect everyone when, in reality, they may reduce symptoms in only one out of 100 people is intellectually dishonest and downright fraudulent.
It is, simply put, just pure B.S. quackery.
Now, imagine if an herbal product were advertised on television as offering some health benefit, but it turned out that the product only worked on 1 out of 100 people who took it. That herbal product would be widely branded as "quackery" and the company selling it would be accused of false advertising. The company owners might even be charged with criminal fraud.
But vaccines get a free pass on this issue. While an herbal product might be heavily investigated or even confiscated by the FDA, vaccines that only work on 1% of the people receive the full backing of the FDA, CDC, WHO, FTC and local hospitals and clinics to boot. The fact that the vaccine is pure quackery apparently doesn't matter to any of these organizations: It's full speed ahead, regardless of what the science actually says.
Once you understand all this, you now understand why it is an accurate statement to say "The FDA promotes medical fraud."
Similarly, "The CDC promotes medical fraud." As does the WHO.
These are scientifically accurate statements, assuming you agree that a product that only works on 1 out of 100 people fits the definition of "fraud" when it is marketed as if it helped everyone. And most people would agree with that reasonable definition of fraud.
It's a totally different story if the efficacy ratio is higher. If influenza vaccines actually produced some benefit in 25 out of 100 people, that might be worth considering. But it's nowhere near that.
The FDA, by the way, will often approve pharmaceuticals that only produce results in 5 percent of the clinical trial subjects. The world of modern medicine, in fact, is full of pharmaceuticals that simply don't work on 95% of the patients who take them.
Read the Cochrane summary yourself at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co...
It's entitled, "Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults"
Authors: "Tom Jefferson, Carlo Di Pietrantonj, Alessandro Rivetti, Ghada A Bawazeer, Lubna A Al-Ansary, Eliana Ferroni"
Enter the vaccine zombies!
With these study results in mind, take a look at some of the lyrics in my recent hip hop song, "Vaccine Zombie" (http://www.naturalnews.com/vaccine_...)
I forgot how to think for myself
I don't understand a thing about health
I do the same as everyone else
I'm a vaccine zombie, zombie
Now you can see where these lyrics come from. If influenza vaccines are worthless for 99 percent of those who receive them, then why are people lining up to get injected?
The answer is because they fail to think critically about vaccines and their health. They don't understand health, so they just go along with everybody else and do what they're told. Hence their earning of the "Vaccine Zombie" designation.
The song goes on to say:
I'm a sucker for the ads, a sucker for the labs
A sucker for the swine flu jabs
and I don't mind followin' a medical fad
Cause livin' without a brain ain't half bad
Yes, people who line up for influenza vaccines are "suckers" who have been bamboozled by fraudulent vaccine propaganda. But they're following a "medical fad" and it's easier to just do what you're told rather than engage your brain and think critically about what you're doing.
"Livin' without a brain ain't half bad" because it takes the burden of decision making out of the loop and allows you to just rely on whatever the doctors and health officials tell you to do.
How the scientific community lost touch with real science
But what if they were all lying to you? Or what if they, themselves, were ignorant about the fact that influenza vaccines are worthless on 99% of those who receive them? (Very few doctors and scientists, it turns out, are aware of this simple truth.)
Or what if the vaccine pushers had all convinced themselves of a falsehood? What if they truly believed that vaccines were really, really good for everyone but that belief was based on wishful thinking rather than rigorous scientific review?
Because that, my friends, is exactly what has happened. We have an entire segment of the scientific community that has been suckered into vaccine propaganda. They've convinced themselves that seasonal flu shots really work and that virtually everyone should be injected with such shots. And they believe this based on irrational faith, not on scientific thinking or rigorous statistical evidence.
They are, in other words, pursuing a vaccine religion (or cult). The is especially curious, given that most vaccine pushers don't believe in God or any organized religion -- except for their own vaccine religion, where real scientific evidence isn't required. All you gotta do is believe in vaccines and you can join their religion, too.
And so all across the 'net, so-called "science bloggers" embarrass themselves by promoting near-useless influenza vaccines as "evidence-based medicine," apparently unaware that the evidence shows such vaccines to be all but worthless.
They might as well say they support vaccines "Just 'cuz."
And "just 'cuz" is no reason to inject yourself with a chemical cocktail that even the industry admits causes extremely dangerous neurological side effects in a small number of vaccine recipients.
Vitamin D would actually make vaccines work better
To top this all off, here's the real kicker of this story: You can beat the minimal protective benefits of vaccines with a simple, low-cost vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D, you see, is the nutrient that activates your immune system to fight off infectious disease. Without it, vaccines hardly work at all.
In fact, the very low rate of vaccine efficacy (1%) is almost certainly due to the fact that most people receiving the vaccines are vitamin D deficient. (Anywhere from 75% - 95% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, depending on whom you ask.)
Hilariously, the way to make vaccines work better would be to hand out vitamin D supplements to go along with the shots! Even more hilariously, if people were taking vitamin D supplements, they wouldn't need the vaccine shots in the first place!
Influenza vaccines, in other words, have no important role whatsoever in preventing influenza infections. This goal can be accomplished more safely, reliably and at far lower cost by promoting vitamin D supplements for the population at large.
What we really need to see from the scientific world is a study comparing vitamin D supplements to influenza vaccines (and using realistic vitamin D doses, not just 200 or 400 IUs per day). I have absolutely no doubt that healthy-dose vitamin D supplementation (4000 IUs a day) would prove to be significantly more effective than influenza vaccines at preventing flu infections.
But such a study will almost certainly never be done (at least not anytime soon) because it would expose the false propaganda of the vaccine industry while giving consumers a far better way of protecting themselves from influenza that doesn't involve paying money to vaccine manufacturers.
In medicine, as in war, truth is often the first casualty. And when the lies are repeated with enough frequency, they begin to be believed. The flu shot lie has been repeated with such ferocity and apparent authority that it has snookered in virtually the entire "scientific" community.
That even rational-minded scientists can be so easily hoodwinked by the vaccine industry is causing more and more people to question the credibility of not just modern medicine, but the entire scientific community as well.
Because if so-called "rational" scientists and thought leaders can be so easily suckered into an obvious falsehood, what other fictions might they be promoting as fact?
Medicine, you see, makes all the other sciences look bad. The obvious scientific fraud going on in the name of "science" in the pharmaceutical industry makes a mockery of real scientific thought. The ease of which medical scientists have been hoodwinked by the drug industry calls into question the rationality of all sciences.
And in doing so, it brings up an even bigger question: Is science the best path to gaining knowledge in the first place? This is obviously a philosophical question, not a scientific question, and it's beyond the scope of this article, but it's one I will likely visit here on NaturalNews very soon in an upcoming article.
There are many paths to truth, you see. Science -- good science -- is one of them, but it is not the only one. Any scientist who believes that science has a monopoly on all knowledge is himself a fool. Just read a little Feynman and you'll quickly come to discover that the very brightest minds in the history of science consistently recognized there were other pathways leading to truth.
I believe if Feynman were alive today and saw the vaccine propaganda taking place in the name of "science," he would respond with something like, "Surely you're joking."
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• Are mandatory vaccinations acts of violence against children?
• Ten questions about flu vaccines that doctors and health authorities refuse to answer
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Evidence-based vaccinations: A scientific look at the missing science behind flu season vaccines
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Friday, September 3, 2010
Prepare for the Most Dangerous Session in Congress
Prepare for the Most Dangerous Session in Congress
September 3, 2010 by ppjg
Live Link: Liberty Matters
Liberty Matters | Sept 1, 2010 -
The final weeks of the 2010 second session of the 111th Congress could be the most dangerous in our history. In view of the current outlook for mid-term elections, this may be the last chance Senator Reid has to push through Cap ‘n Trade, the Clean Water Restoration Act, the Wildlife Corridors Act, the CLEAR Act, and Food Health bills that will strangle the farming industry.
The Senate will reconvene September 13th and adjourn October 8th. They return after the election recess on November 15th and work until the week of Thanksgiving. Then work continues in December. While these bills can be brought up any time during the critical days ahead, our property rights and interests are most vulnerable during the sessions following election.
This issue of Liberty Matters has been prepared to give you a heads up on the key anti-private property bills we expect to come up for passage during the final quarter of this critical year.
Read the list of the most threatening bills including the CLEAR Act and the Fake Food Safety bill, S.510 here….
The Clean Water Restoration Act (SB 787):
The most devastating element of this bill is the way it amends the Pollution Control Act to expand Corps of Engineers authority over all land that is “adjacent to, near, is affected by, or affects” any body of water. In other words, every piece of land in the United States would be put under Corps permit authority.
It would be the most inclusive, all encompassing land use control ever attempted by Congress. Under such authority, the Corps could require permits to mow residential lawns. Proponents of the bill say that such statements are ridiculous because the “agency would never attempt such local control.” We believe if a bureaucrat is allowed to do something by Congress, he will eventually or immediately carry this out.
This Act removes the “navigable” element currently required to establish a body of water as “waters of the United States.” The new definition would destroy the precedents set in the Cook County Solid Waste decision of the U. S. Supreme Court that set aside a Corps of Engineers regulation imposed on a non-interstate, non-navigable quarry in Cook County, Illinois because migrating birds landed in the quarry.
The definition of “waters” will include even “dry desert potholes” and any location that has water, or might have water even for a temporary period of time.
The bill is sponsored by Senator Feingold (WI). It passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee but, Senator Mike Crapo (ID) placed a hold on the bill keeping it from receiving a vote on the Senate floor earlier this year.
The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010 (HR 5101):
The bill establishes a “Corridor Information Program” to gather data as to wildlife migratory patterns in order to establish and develop corridors. HR 5101 not so subtly implements a concept first proposed by radical environmentalists over twenty years ago known as the Wildlands Project that advocates minimum or no human activity within these wildlife corridors.
The bill calls for federal and state governments to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate the impacts on fish and wildlife habitat and corridors in siting energy development, water, transmission, transportation and other land use projects,” to “assess the impacts of existing development on habitats and corridors” and to “develop management strategies to enhance the ability of native fish, wildlife, and plant species to migrate or respond to shifting habitats within existing habitats and corridors.”
The Bill specifically amends forest management acts, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and Transportation Acts.
It amends FLPMA by making the corridors “critical areas of environmental concern,” or ACE’s which are highly restrictive. This will undermine every grazing and recreational use of the corridors. In addition, it amends forest acts to make the corridors an integral part of every forest management plan to be preserved and protected in their “natural state.” The bill itself does not set forth its power; it simply amends existing law in such a way that the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management becomes the “hit men” to keep the wildlife corridors free of human use.
Also, by amending the Transportation funding acts, it makes the wildlife corridors an integral part of all funding for highway construction, so that animals can safely cross highways. Still, the real impact is the provision that highway designs have to provide for linkage and continuity of corridors themselves.
In plain words, the bill will endanger every farming, ranching, housing, water, and energy project, even those uses existing when the Bill is passed.
The CLEAR Act (HR 3534):
This Bill has already passed the House, been placed on general orders in the Senate and can be brought up and voted on at any time. The legislation appropriates $360 Billion dollars over 40 years without requiring any further annual appropriation. The money is set aside to buy private property and place this into government ownership. A call to action was issued and the bill summarized by American Stewards during the last days of the August session.
The House bill, as introduced, included provisions that would extend protection to species that are neither special, threatened nor endangered. During the final debate, this provision was removed from the House Bill, but this can be easily added back in by the Senate, to be finalized in Conference.
Lobbying watchdog organizations reported that 38 different organizations, from oil companies to conservation groups lobbied on this bill. The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Trust for Public Land, Environment America, Southern Environmental Law Center, National Parks Conservation Association, and Open Space Institute all lobbied strongly for passage.
Clean Energy Technology Act (SB 3738):
Last session, Senator Reid announced that “cap ‘n trade is dead.” His statement followed the failure by Senators Kerry, Liebermann and Graham to put together a bill that could get the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. However, Senator Kerry’s new strategy is to take smaller bites at the apple making his new bill, the Clean Energy Technology Leadership Act of 2010, an ideal vehicle to slip back into legislation the “Cap ‘n Trade” concept that will tax carbon emissions.
The 73 page bill is represented to be simply a tax incentive for clean energy. However, Politico, a Capitol Hill political blog, reported on August 6, 2010 that:
“He [Senator Kerry] simply won’t quit: In the wake of his failed climate change push, John Kerry today drops a clean energy financing bill, which extends tax incentives for energy efficient buildings, natural gas vehicles and biodiesel, and provides an additional $3.5 billion for renewable energy bonds. His ‘Clean Energy Technology Act’ will likely be one in a long line of bills in the coming year from climate control advocates who recognize that the political landscape will make it impossible to move a comprehensive bill before 2012, and will in the meantime take smaller bites at the apple.”
Those “smaller bites” can be disastrous to ranchers, farmers and all landowners. The bill will have to be watched very carefully for amendments that add taxes on carbons that will devastate agricultural production.
Farm Bill Legislation:
The Environmental Defense Fund has urged inclusion of financing for preserving wildlife corridors in various pieces of farm legislation. They point with pride to the funding in last session’s farm bill of activities that will put private land into government ownership or control.
The Fund’s Report, “The Need for Greater Attention to Wildlife ‘Corridors’,” states that “the Western Governors’ Association, state and federal agencies, conservation groups, sportsmen and many others recognize the importance of these vital wildlife corridors and are taking action to protect them. The urgency of taking action on corridors is highlighted by the fact that climate is indeed warming and the creation of linkages between large blocks of habitat is among the most important adaptation strategies for wildlife.”
The Fund recommends support by conservation groups of government purchase or condemnation of private lands, the extension of conservation easements, financing of “stewardship practices” (as in habitat management plans) and retirement of agricultural uses through long-term contracts.
Every agricultural related bill must be reviewed carefully for amendments even in very technical language that can accommodate the attack on private ownership and control of land use.
The Food Safety Modernization Act (SB 510):
The 118 page bill provides for extreme enlargement of the regulatory authority of agencies regarding the safety of food products. Even though it’s early provisions exempt farms and ranches, close attention must be paid to this bill and others like it.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has issued an “Action Alert” based on a report they have that a deal has been struck to push this bill through during the September-December session on a “unanimous consent” agenda. We will be carefully reviewing and analyzing this bill and other “food safety” bills that are pending in various stages of the Congressional Process from which they could spring on to an agenda for passage.
September 3, 2010 by ppjg
Live Link: Liberty Matters
Liberty Matters | Sept 1, 2010 -
The final weeks of the 2010 second session of the 111th Congress could be the most dangerous in our history. In view of the current outlook for mid-term elections, this may be the last chance Senator Reid has to push through Cap ‘n Trade, the Clean Water Restoration Act, the Wildlife Corridors Act, the CLEAR Act, and Food Health bills that will strangle the farming industry.
The Senate will reconvene September 13th and adjourn October 8th. They return after the election recess on November 15th and work until the week of Thanksgiving. Then work continues in December. While these bills can be brought up any time during the critical days ahead, our property rights and interests are most vulnerable during the sessions following election.
This issue of Liberty Matters has been prepared to give you a heads up on the key anti-private property bills we expect to come up for passage during the final quarter of this critical year.
Read the list of the most threatening bills including the CLEAR Act and the Fake Food Safety bill, S.510 here….
The Clean Water Restoration Act (SB 787):
The most devastating element of this bill is the way it amends the Pollution Control Act to expand Corps of Engineers authority over all land that is “adjacent to, near, is affected by, or affects” any body of water. In other words, every piece of land in the United States would be put under Corps permit authority.
It would be the most inclusive, all encompassing land use control ever attempted by Congress. Under such authority, the Corps could require permits to mow residential lawns. Proponents of the bill say that such statements are ridiculous because the “agency would never attempt such local control.” We believe if a bureaucrat is allowed to do something by Congress, he will eventually or immediately carry this out.
This Act removes the “navigable” element currently required to establish a body of water as “waters of the United States.” The new definition would destroy the precedents set in the Cook County Solid Waste decision of the U. S. Supreme Court that set aside a Corps of Engineers regulation imposed on a non-interstate, non-navigable quarry in Cook County, Illinois because migrating birds landed in the quarry.
The definition of “waters” will include even “dry desert potholes” and any location that has water, or might have water even for a temporary period of time.
The bill is sponsored by Senator Feingold (WI). It passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee but, Senator Mike Crapo (ID) placed a hold on the bill keeping it from receiving a vote on the Senate floor earlier this year.
The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010 (HR 5101):
The bill establishes a “Corridor Information Program” to gather data as to wildlife migratory patterns in order to establish and develop corridors. HR 5101 not so subtly implements a concept first proposed by radical environmentalists over twenty years ago known as the Wildlands Project that advocates minimum or no human activity within these wildlife corridors.
The bill calls for federal and state governments to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate the impacts on fish and wildlife habitat and corridors in siting energy development, water, transmission, transportation and other land use projects,” to “assess the impacts of existing development on habitats and corridors” and to “develop management strategies to enhance the ability of native fish, wildlife, and plant species to migrate or respond to shifting habitats within existing habitats and corridors.”
The Bill specifically amends forest management acts, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and Transportation Acts.
It amends FLPMA by making the corridors “critical areas of environmental concern,” or ACE’s which are highly restrictive. This will undermine every grazing and recreational use of the corridors. In addition, it amends forest acts to make the corridors an integral part of every forest management plan to be preserved and protected in their “natural state.” The bill itself does not set forth its power; it simply amends existing law in such a way that the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management becomes the “hit men” to keep the wildlife corridors free of human use.
Also, by amending the Transportation funding acts, it makes the wildlife corridors an integral part of all funding for highway construction, so that animals can safely cross highways. Still, the real impact is the provision that highway designs have to provide for linkage and continuity of corridors themselves.
In plain words, the bill will endanger every farming, ranching, housing, water, and energy project, even those uses existing when the Bill is passed.
The CLEAR Act (HR 3534):
This Bill has already passed the House, been placed on general orders in the Senate and can be brought up and voted on at any time. The legislation appropriates $360 Billion dollars over 40 years without requiring any further annual appropriation. The money is set aside to buy private property and place this into government ownership. A call to action was issued and the bill summarized by American Stewards during the last days of the August session.
The House bill, as introduced, included provisions that would extend protection to species that are neither special, threatened nor endangered. During the final debate, this provision was removed from the House Bill, but this can be easily added back in by the Senate, to be finalized in Conference.
Lobbying watchdog organizations reported that 38 different organizations, from oil companies to conservation groups lobbied on this bill. The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Trust for Public Land, Environment America, Southern Environmental Law Center, National Parks Conservation Association, and Open Space Institute all lobbied strongly for passage.
Clean Energy Technology Act (SB 3738):
Last session, Senator Reid announced that “cap ‘n trade is dead.” His statement followed the failure by Senators Kerry, Liebermann and Graham to put together a bill that could get the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. However, Senator Kerry’s new strategy is to take smaller bites at the apple making his new bill, the Clean Energy Technology Leadership Act of 2010, an ideal vehicle to slip back into legislation the “Cap ‘n Trade” concept that will tax carbon emissions.
The 73 page bill is represented to be simply a tax incentive for clean energy. However, Politico, a Capitol Hill political blog, reported on August 6, 2010 that:
“He [Senator Kerry] simply won’t quit: In the wake of his failed climate change push, John Kerry today drops a clean energy financing bill, which extends tax incentives for energy efficient buildings, natural gas vehicles and biodiesel, and provides an additional $3.5 billion for renewable energy bonds. His ‘Clean Energy Technology Act’ will likely be one in a long line of bills in the coming year from climate control advocates who recognize that the political landscape will make it impossible to move a comprehensive bill before 2012, and will in the meantime take smaller bites at the apple.”
Those “smaller bites” can be disastrous to ranchers, farmers and all landowners. The bill will have to be watched very carefully for amendments that add taxes on carbons that will devastate agricultural production.
Farm Bill Legislation:
The Environmental Defense Fund has urged inclusion of financing for preserving wildlife corridors in various pieces of farm legislation. They point with pride to the funding in last session’s farm bill of activities that will put private land into government ownership or control.
The Fund’s Report, “The Need for Greater Attention to Wildlife ‘Corridors’,” states that “the Western Governors’ Association, state and federal agencies, conservation groups, sportsmen and many others recognize the importance of these vital wildlife corridors and are taking action to protect them. The urgency of taking action on corridors is highlighted by the fact that climate is indeed warming and the creation of linkages between large blocks of habitat is among the most important adaptation strategies for wildlife.”
The Fund recommends support by conservation groups of government purchase or condemnation of private lands, the extension of conservation easements, financing of “stewardship practices” (as in habitat management plans) and retirement of agricultural uses through long-term contracts.
Every agricultural related bill must be reviewed carefully for amendments even in very technical language that can accommodate the attack on private ownership and control of land use.
The Food Safety Modernization Act (SB 510):
The 118 page bill provides for extreme enlargement of the regulatory authority of agencies regarding the safety of food products. Even though it’s early provisions exempt farms and ranches, close attention must be paid to this bill and others like it.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has issued an “Action Alert” based on a report they have that a deal has been struck to push this bill through during the September-December session on a “unanimous consent” agenda. We will be carefully reviewing and analyzing this bill and other “food safety” bills that are pending in various stages of the Congressional Process from which they could spring on to an agenda for passage.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
More War Lies
September 2, 2010 Targeting Iran: The US is Preparing World War III
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20862
More War Lies
by David Swanson
Global Research, September 1, 2010
warisacrime.org
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Lies aren't used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening.
Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then "terrorist" Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently caught up in. Uh huh.
U.S. participants in this crime are heroes, always and everywhere. That's sacred. The troops' mission has involved protecting the Iraqi people, and by golly they've done a superb job, as long as we don't mention the complete devastation of Iraq, the million dead, the millions of refugees, and the intense resentment of those remaining toward our country for what we've done to theirs.
The Iraqi people now (dead, in exile, in a ruined nation) have a chance that they supposedly didn't have before we destroyed their country, a country that was actually a better place to live in in every way in 2003 than it is now, and in 1989 than in 2003. To hear President Obama, this war has been for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and these wars have been about al Qaeda and 9-11.
Obama slid into nonsense about al Qaeda after discussing Iraq and before mentioning Afghanistan, a Bushian maneuver if ever I saw one:
"No challenge is more essential to our security than our fight against al Qaeda."
Never mind that al Qaeda barely existed before these wars became recruiting tools. "We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda" in Afghanistan, the president promised, even though al Qaeda isn't there. Troop reductions in Afghanistan will begin next August, he said, although the prepared transcript said July, and will be determined by conditions on the ground, even though Afghanistan is not yet as bad as Iraq is.
Obama modeled the future bloodletting in Afghanistan on the myth of the successful escalation in Iraq, ignoring factors that have contributed to the reduction of violence in Iraq, including the promise of complete withdrawal, the beginning of withdrawal, and prior to those factors the incredible level of death and displacement, negotiations and bribes. The test for a "surge" in Afghanistan failed in Marja, and Obama simply behaves as if it succeeded.
And here at home "it is time to turn the page." Never mind the commission of the supreme international crime of aggression. Never mind the mass murder. Obama said he talked with George W. Bush earlier in the day. Obama lied that the two of them had never agreed on the war, a war Obama voted to fund repeatedly in the Senate. And he lied that Bush was committed to U.S. security, knowing full well that this war has made us all less safe.
"There were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq's future."
Except for the majority of Americans who believe the war never should have begun, that it should be immediately ended, and that its architects -- starting at the top with Bush, not the bottom with the troops -- must be held criminally accountable. Participation in this crime is not a service to anyone.
The most honest part of the speech was this:
"We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation's long-term competitiveness is put at risk."
That's a remarkable point for the president to dare to make. But there was no mention of the hundreds of billions yet in the works to be wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Pakistan and numerous other countries deserving of our favors.
The big lie, of course, is that the combat mission is, once again, completed. The soldiers in Iraq and the mercenaries and contractors are there for combat. That there are fewer soldiers is movement very much in the right direction, and very much to be applauded, but pretending that those remaining are something else is not accurate. Many of them may see less combat, but I'll believe they're not there for combat when their weapons are taken away.
The big question, of course, is what will be done about the deadline of December 31, 2011. Here's what Obama said on this key point:
"Going forward, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq with a different mission: advising and assisting Iraq's Security Forces; supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our civilians. Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year. As our military draws down, our dedicated civilians -- diplomats, aid workers, and advisors -- are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world. And that is a message that Vice President Biden is delivering to the Iraqi people through his visit there today. This new approach reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq -- one based upon mutual interests, and mutual respect. Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission."
Violence will not end. We just won't call it combat. It'll be an overseas contingency. But what about all U.S. troops leaving by the end of next year? Obama doesn't seem to hedge on this the way he does later in the speech on a future withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that will be "subject to conditions on the ground." And that's a good thing. The same day as this speech, the war-loving Washington Post printed a column by Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, which pushed for a longer occupation with these words:
"And it may be that a new Iraqi government will request a U.S. military presence beyond the end of 2011. If so, I hope we will listen carefully."
Maybe we should start listening very careful right now. The president speaks of a long-term partnership with Iraq. How do you have that if you're gone? The answer may be that you aren't gone, that you maintain a significant military force in the country consisting of mercenaries employed by the State Department.
Here's what the Bush-Maliki Unconstitutional Treaty says:
"All U.S. forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi territory, water and airspace no later than the 31st of December of 2011."
However, the same document, as Raed Jarrar pointed out to me, carefully defines U.S. forces to allow exceptions:
"Definition of Terms . . .
'U.S. Forces' refers to the entity that includes all the personnel of the American Armed Forces, the civilian personnel connected to them and all their possessions, installations and equipment present on Iraqi territory.
'Member of the U.S. Forces' refers to any person that belongs to the army of the United States, its navy, air force, marine force or coast guard.
'Civilian element member' refers to any civilian working for the U.S. Department of Defense. And this term does not include the personnel usually resident in Iraq."
The trick is that not all imaginable U.S. forces have to work for the so-called Department of Defense. If they work for any other department, they're in the clear. But Iraqis are in their gun sights.
David Swanson is the author of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org
http://warisacrime.org
http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319
http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson
http://youtube.com/afterdowningstreet
David Swanson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by David Swanson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20862
More War Lies
by David Swanson
Global Research, September 1, 2010
warisacrime.org
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
digg
Lies aren't used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening.
Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then "terrorist" Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently caught up in. Uh huh.
U.S. participants in this crime are heroes, always and everywhere. That's sacred. The troops' mission has involved protecting the Iraqi people, and by golly they've done a superb job, as long as we don't mention the complete devastation of Iraq, the million dead, the millions of refugees, and the intense resentment of those remaining toward our country for what we've done to theirs.
The Iraqi people now (dead, in exile, in a ruined nation) have a chance that they supposedly didn't have before we destroyed their country, a country that was actually a better place to live in in every way in 2003 than it is now, and in 1989 than in 2003. To hear President Obama, this war has been for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and these wars have been about al Qaeda and 9-11.
Obama slid into nonsense about al Qaeda after discussing Iraq and before mentioning Afghanistan, a Bushian maneuver if ever I saw one:
"No challenge is more essential to our security than our fight against al Qaeda."
Never mind that al Qaeda barely existed before these wars became recruiting tools. "We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda" in Afghanistan, the president promised, even though al Qaeda isn't there. Troop reductions in Afghanistan will begin next August, he said, although the prepared transcript said July, and will be determined by conditions on the ground, even though Afghanistan is not yet as bad as Iraq is.
Obama modeled the future bloodletting in Afghanistan on the myth of the successful escalation in Iraq, ignoring factors that have contributed to the reduction of violence in Iraq, including the promise of complete withdrawal, the beginning of withdrawal, and prior to those factors the incredible level of death and displacement, negotiations and bribes. The test for a "surge" in Afghanistan failed in Marja, and Obama simply behaves as if it succeeded.
And here at home "it is time to turn the page." Never mind the commission of the supreme international crime of aggression. Never mind the mass murder. Obama said he talked with George W. Bush earlier in the day. Obama lied that the two of them had never agreed on the war, a war Obama voted to fund repeatedly in the Senate. And he lied that Bush was committed to U.S. security, knowing full well that this war has made us all less safe.
"There were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq's future."
Except for the majority of Americans who believe the war never should have begun, that it should be immediately ended, and that its architects -- starting at the top with Bush, not the bottom with the troops -- must be held criminally accountable. Participation in this crime is not a service to anyone.
The most honest part of the speech was this:
"We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation's long-term competitiveness is put at risk."
That's a remarkable point for the president to dare to make. But there was no mention of the hundreds of billions yet in the works to be wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Pakistan and numerous other countries deserving of our favors.
The big lie, of course, is that the combat mission is, once again, completed. The soldiers in Iraq and the mercenaries and contractors are there for combat. That there are fewer soldiers is movement very much in the right direction, and very much to be applauded, but pretending that those remaining are something else is not accurate. Many of them may see less combat, but I'll believe they're not there for combat when their weapons are taken away.
The big question, of course, is what will be done about the deadline of December 31, 2011. Here's what Obama said on this key point:
"Going forward, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq with a different mission: advising and assisting Iraq's Security Forces; supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our civilians. Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year. As our military draws down, our dedicated civilians -- diplomats, aid workers, and advisors -- are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world. And that is a message that Vice President Biden is delivering to the Iraqi people through his visit there today. This new approach reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq -- one based upon mutual interests, and mutual respect. Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission."
Violence will not end. We just won't call it combat. It'll be an overseas contingency. But what about all U.S. troops leaving by the end of next year? Obama doesn't seem to hedge on this the way he does later in the speech on a future withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that will be "subject to conditions on the ground." And that's a good thing. The same day as this speech, the war-loving Washington Post printed a column by Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, which pushed for a longer occupation with these words:
"And it may be that a new Iraqi government will request a U.S. military presence beyond the end of 2011. If so, I hope we will listen carefully."
Maybe we should start listening very careful right now. The president speaks of a long-term partnership with Iraq. How do you have that if you're gone? The answer may be that you aren't gone, that you maintain a significant military force in the country consisting of mercenaries employed by the State Department.
Here's what the Bush-Maliki Unconstitutional Treaty says:
"All U.S. forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi territory, water and airspace no later than the 31st of December of 2011."
However, the same document, as Raed Jarrar pointed out to me, carefully defines U.S. forces to allow exceptions:
"Definition of Terms . . .
'U.S. Forces' refers to the entity that includes all the personnel of the American Armed Forces, the civilian personnel connected to them and all their possessions, installations and equipment present on Iraqi territory.
'Member of the U.S. Forces' refers to any person that belongs to the army of the United States, its navy, air force, marine force or coast guard.
'Civilian element member' refers to any civilian working for the U.S. Department of Defense. And this term does not include the personnel usually resident in Iraq."
The trick is that not all imaginable U.S. forces have to work for the so-called Department of Defense. If they work for any other department, they're in the clear. But Iraqis are in their gun sights.
David Swanson is the author of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org
http://warisacrime.org
http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319
http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson
http://youtube.com/afterdowningstreet
David Swanson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by David Swanson
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