A theme I've been touching on more and more lately is to break free from this psychological dependency we have on other people to think for us. Nothing epitomizes this more than the latest government push to label mercury as harmless or even beneficial. You don't need 12 years of medical education to figure out this is a lie.
Mercury is a vicious neurotoxin and the most toxic non-radioactive metal on the periodic table. It literally obliterates neurons. Yet the FDA, infested by lobbyists from big pharma and Monsanto, tells us mercury is harmless in amalgam fillings, and mercury in fish and, as seen below, vaccines, is beneficial to pregnant women and children with developing brains. You need not look any further for proof of a eugenics plot to stupefy you and especially your children. This is not a bureaucratic SNAFU, this is not incompetence; it's malice aforethought.
First, watch the news report on the American Journal of Pediatrics 'studies' claiming mercury "improves behavior and mental performance" in children. Yes, in the eyes of eugenicists, it indeed does improve behavior and mental performance. It makes them weak and incapable of thinking.
Now, watch a demonstration showing mercury vapor eminating from amalgam fillings:
And finally, this demonstration on the effects of mercury on the brain:
It was a hoax perpetrated by eugenicists as an excuse to engineer every facet of our lives and curb the population. It might've worked too, except the sun didn't cooperate.
BBC of course says it's not the sun, but you can either defer to your common sense or you can defer to the 'experts' with an agenda who would lose all funding and credibility if they dared question the current dogma on climate 'science'. Are you intelligent enough? Listen, if Al Gore can crown himself king of the global warming cult, knowing no more about climatology than you do, then yes, absolutely, you can make your own determinations.
Average temperatures have not increased for over a de
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.
Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Ocean cycles
What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.
In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.
But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.
Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."
So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.
They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.
But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.
The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.
In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.
In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.
To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume
Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.
But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.
So what can we expect in the next few years?
Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.
It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).
Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.
One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.
Oh yeah ...you can expect to be inundated with lies, propaganda, and fearmongering for years to come. You may not get your dose this year, but there's always next year.
It could take years for the World Health Organisation to downgrade the H1N1 flu from a pandemic to seasonal-like virus, the U.N. agency said on Friday.
The WHO moved its six-point pandemic alert level to the top rung in June [ID:nLC321991] in response to the spread of the new virus widely known as swine flu, which has killed at least 4,500 people, especially in North America.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said that health warning would stay in place until people can better fend off infection from the H1N1 strain.
"At some point in the future, there would be a recognition of the fact that if it's no longer circulating on a sustainable basis in communities. Then you would lower the pandemic level," he said, while stressing: "There is absolutely no indication yet of that happening."
In previous pandemics, Hartl said, it has taken time for worrisome flu strains to become less contagious. The slowdown generally comes from people having some prior exposure to the virus or gaining protection from a vaccine.
"Eventually a pandemic virus becomes more like a seasonal virus and that normally will take something like two to three years," Hartl said. "Once enough people either have been vaccinated or have contracted the virus, then it becomes more difficult to spread. It starts acting like a seasonal flu."
National health authorities conduct regular monitoring of flu viruses and research on the circulating strains is used by pharmaceutical companies who sell seasonal flu shots, which normally contain a mixture of a few viruses.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L), Novartis (NOVN.VX), Baxter (BAX.N), AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and CSL (CSL.AX) are among the firms now scrambling to develop and sell H1N1 flu shots, yielding them billions of dollars in government orders. [ID:nL7604472] China began the world's first mass vaccination programme in late September and Australia and the United States have also launched campaigns targeting children and health workers first.
Hartl said there was no sign yet that the pandemic strain had mutated into a more dangerous or more mild form than the one first identified in Mexico and the United States.
"So far the virus has remained quite homogenous," he said.
In its latest snapshot of the spreading virus, also released on Friday, the WHO said there has been an unusually early start of flu-like illness in the northern hemisphere this autumn.
Influenza viruses thrive in colder climates and normally pack the biggest punch in winter.
In recent weeks some countries in Europe seen higher than normal respiratory disease activity and Japan's flu pattern is above its, especially in big cities. The United States, Mexico and Canada have also had higher than normal illness rates for the time of year, the WHO said in the statement.
Flu transmission has stayed steady in tropical parts of the Americas and Asia, with "high intensity respiratory diseases activity" reported in Colombia, Cuba and El Salvador.
But in the southern hemisphere, flu infections have waned with the end of the winter season, the WHO said, describing subsided transmission in Chile, Argentina and New Zealand and falling rates of illness in South Africa and Australia.
Why should the government be worried about people who choose not to get vaccinated if those that do take the vaccine will be safe from swine flu?
Even setting aside concerns about mercury, autism, squalene and all the other nasties, when the White House science czar is on record calling for sterilants to be put into the water supply to reduce population, is the government really that surprised that over a third of parents are refusing to make their kids take the H1N1 shot?
On his show today, Glenn Beck covered the H1N1 virus and vaccine. He said he would not take a stand on if you should submit to the vaccination.
Beck asked his guests about the attenuated virus in the nasal spray version of the vaccine. Marc Siegel, M.D., who has written a book on the swine flu — and Fox naturally peddled, thus giving the audience the idea he is an expert — said the live virus in the vaccine is not capable of spreading the disease in healthy people. “No claws on it,” Siegel insisted, “it has been totally deactivated. It is alive and it can get you sick if you are immunally compromised or if you have asthma or you are pregnant. You can only take it if you are totally healthy. It cannot morph into the flu itself.”
It is estimated 60 percent of the U.S. population is immunodeficient in one way or another, but doctor Siegel did not mention this. He also did not mention concerns on the part of other doctors and health care professionals about the attenuated virus.
Siegel also did not say how health care providers will prevent the immunodeficient from getting the virus. Due to government and corporate media hype about H1N1, it is likely millions of less than healthy people will be demanding they be vaccinated.
As a responsible doctor instead of a Fox News talking head, Mr. Siegel would have mentioned the FluMist insert. It states that FluMist “recipients should avoid close contact with immunocompromised individuals for at least 21 days,” in particular immunocompromised people living in the same house.
In other words, it is inevitable millions of immunocompromised people will get sick.
Millions of Americans suffer from eczema, allergies, cancer, HIV infection or AIDS, emphysema, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, herniated spinal discs, acute muscular pain syndromes, and all types of rheumatoid and autoimmune diseases. As much as 60% of the entire population could be considered to be “chemically immunosuppressed,” according to experts.
The FluMist campaign now underway will be the “most intense, direct-to-consumer marketing campaign ever waged for a vaccine,” costing an estimated $25 million over the next 2.5 months. Big Pharma plans a three-year, $100 million campaign to encourage use of the nasal flu vaccine among physicians, notes Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.
“Apparently, the goal seems to center around frightening — or inducing enough guilt — that everyone would begin to demand the vaccine as soon as it is available,” including the immunodeficient.
But is not merely the risks to the immunosuppressed. As Dr. Tenpenny notes, an ever greater concern about FluMist is the contents within the vaccine. In addition to the live, attenuated influenza virus — the average dose contains between 10 million and 100 million viral particles — the culture media the viral strain was developed in may not be free of pathogens not tested for. In addition, the risk that the vaccine may contain contaminant avian retroviruses is present. Add to this concern the fact a stabilizing buffer containing potassium phosphate, sucrose (table sugar) and nearly 0.5 mg of monosodium glutamate (MSG) is added to each dose, according to the FluMist package insert.
“The pharmaceutical companies do not necessarily always do a reasonable job of considering the ‘down side’ when they are pushing new drugs or new vaccines,” writes Tenpenny. “FluMist has the potential for causing the worst, most severe flu epidemic seen in years. Parents tell their young children not to put things up their noses because they might cause them harm. It would be wise to consider that advice for adults. With all the risks involved, one should be extremely cautious about what one allows to be sprayed in one’s nose.”
Dr. Rima Laibow calls FluMist a “recipe for pandemic. (It) contains 3 live viruses. You shoot it up your nose and your immune system gets a chance to make antibodies to three live, weakened viruses while the manufacturer hopes against hope that one of these three actually causes a disease this year…. Of course, if you are immune compromised or go near someone who is, you will get sick or infect them with the virus and they can get the flu.”
“Laibow and others also warn that Flu Mist risks potential brain damage, making it an extremely hazardous drug,” writes Stephen Lendman. “The nasal passage olfactory tract is a direct pathway to the brain. Ingesting viruses through it risks encephalitis, a viral-induced acute brain inflammation.”
None of this was brought up on the Fox News segment — and for good reason. The government wants a preponderant number of people to get vaccinated against a non-existent pandemic by a virus that has so far killed less people than the regular flu season.
Fox News, just like CNN, MSNBC and the rest, function as CIA disinformation, propaganda, and brainwashing organs for a global elite who are eugenicists and believe the planet is populated with too many useless eaters.
“As the federal government launches the most ambitious inoculation campaign in U.S. history, several surveys indicate the public is decidedly ambivalent,” the Washington Post reported last week. “A nationally representative poll of 1,042 adults released Friday by the Harvard School of Public Health found that only 40 percent were sure they would receive the vaccine and that about half were certain their children would. Recent research by the University of Michigan and by Consumer Reports yielded similar results.”
Americans are not stupid. They know there is something rotten in Denmark — or the District of Criminals — when the government gives billions of their tax dollars to giant pharmaceutical companies and fills the public airwaves with PSAs featuring Elmo urging them to have their children injected with an experimental vaccination.
Editor’s note: As documented by the late Antony C. Sutton, Russian Marxism was created by Wall Street. “The question now in the readers’ minds must be, were these bankers also secret Bolsheviks? No, of course not. The financiers were without ideology. It would be a gross misinterpretation to assume that assistance for the Bolshevists was ideologically motivated, in any narrow sense. The financiers were power-motivated and therefore assisted any political vehicle that would give them an entree to power.” This effort “appears to be the foreign counterpart of Carroll Quigley’s claim that J.P. Morgan infiltrated the domestic left. Morgan also infiltrated the international left,” Sutton claims.
This amazing interview was done back in 1985 with a former KGB agent who was trained in subversion techniques. He explains the 4 basic steps to socially engineering entire generations into thinking and behaving the way those in power want them to. It’s shocking because our nation has been transformed in the exact same way, and followed the exact same steps.
War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. - Orwell
It's redundant to call the Noble Peace Prize a joke, having been awarded to numerous war criminals and murderers - Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Woodrow Wilson, to name a few. So, while we can't help but be shocked, we shouldn't be, even if Obama was nominated only ten days into his presidency, indicating, as the Los Angeles Times puts it, that the Nobel committee is recognizing "aspirations" for peace over achievements.
But Obama has achieved much during his 9 months in office; his "aspirations" were nothing but rhetoric. Surely the most notorious murderers in history had "aspirations" for peace, mostly by wiping out anyone who would oppose them - an effective means to that end, indeed. So while Obama claimed he wanted to end the war in Iraq, he has continued and expanded it. The troops he redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan were replaced by private contractors, and military bases were "moved" outside of city limits by simply redrawing the maps. In Afghanistan, the slaughter of innocents, along with our own troops, has accelerated. Surely Obama knows that bin Laden is dead, and that our government has no hard evidence he was behind 9-11 - first and foremost because it was perpetrated by criminal elements within our own government, not bin Laden or al Qaeda. Obama has expanded the Afghan war into Pakistan and the administration continues to beat the war drums against Iran. An attack appears imminent. Meanwhile, though candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay, end torture and rendition, and restore habeas corpus, he has broken all of these promises, and, of course, expanded all of Bush's grotesque constitutional and human rights violations, promising a pre-crime detention program to arrest people for crimes they may or may not have committed were they not detained. This is "peace". Strange days have found us.
But let me back up a little; the votes were cast only 10 days into Obama's presidency. So we're left to wonder: did the Nobel committee actually believe his soaring campaign rhetoric, hypnotized by the cult of personality along with his mob of adoring fans? Or, as Samuel Adams put it, has the tools of the tyrant perverted the plain meaning of words?
I don't want to downplay the intelligence of our youth today, despite the mindblowing chemicals we dumb them down with from the time they're born, not to mention hard-core statist indoctrination, which clearly shows through on this CNN video. But it's impossible for kids this young, who are still at home with their parents, in school, to understand the complexities of this issue, or, you know, figure out that, like nearly every crisis which besets our republic today, the healthcare crisis was caused by government, therefore cannot be fixed by government, and that any attempt by government to "reform" it will only exacerbate the problem. Especially when the main reason they're even in school is not to learn, but to become mindless worker bees for the State.
This is the AP headline, not mine, and nowhere in the article is she actually quoted as saying this, so take that with as many grains of salt you wish. But the fear mongering is supercharged. This flu will kill you. Actually, compared to other viruses it really doesn't kill anyone who isn't already sick, and shhh...don't tell anyone, but it kills people with vitamin D deficiencies. There's your vaccine, people: vitamin D.
In the coming weeks I'll be watching for the turnout to get this vaccine, the number of injuries and deaths from it, and the number of deaths from the virus.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation against a surging swine flu threat, calling the vaccine "safe and secure."
Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it "has been made exactly the same way seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out."
Appearing on morning news shows to step up the Obama administration's campaign for vaccinations, Sebelius said that "the adverse effects are minimal. ... We know it's safe and secure. ... This is definitely is a safe vaccine for people to get."
Sebelius was asked on CNN about surveys showing many parents were wary of getting their children vaccinated for fear the vaccine has been too hastily prepared and wasn't safe. She replied that it was targeted specifically at the H1N1 virus and was "right on target with an immune response."
The HHS secretary appeared as new cases of the flu, particularly among younger people, have been appearing recently. Some 600 people have died so far from the flu in this country, and the government has targeted roughly 90,000 sites to receive the swine flu vaccine by the end of this month.
"This flu is a younger person's flu," Sebelius said on NBC's "Today" show. "Kids have no immunity to the flu ... children are great carriers of bugs and viruses."
Because of the danger of easy transmission, especially in school and day-care settings, Sebelius said, "We strongly urge parents to take precautionary steps. Flu kills every year ... and we've got a great vaccine to deal with it."
"There's going to be plenty of vaccine," the secretary said. "It's rolling off the production lines right now ... ahead of schedule, and that's good news... By the end of October we should have a substantial amount available and begin to vaccinate a wider population of folks."
Said Sebelius: "There's no question the disease is out there, which is why today we're rolling out PSAs (public service announcements) ... to make sure people take steps to help prevent the spread of the disease, and in the meantime we will push the vaccine out as quickly as we get it off the production lines."
Appearing on CBS's "The Early Show," she said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the President's Advisory Committee on Immunizations have identified five target populations: pregnant women, health care workers, children with underlying health conditions ages 6 months to 24 years, older Americans with underlying health conditions.
"That's a lot of people," Sebelius said. "That's about half the population."
"By the end of this week," she added,"we'll begin to have injectable vaccine also available. We're dealing with five production companies. That's very good news. But the vaccine will become available as the lines clear up. So as soon as we have any vaccine available, we're pushing it out to 90,000 sites around the country. The early going is a little bumpy but we'll have a good supply by October."
Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.
But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.
Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.
Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.
Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.
Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Actuality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.
Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.
Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.
Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?
Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.
Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.
No evidence vaccines are to blame for this "surprising" new data, and those suggesting they are are just a "vocal minority". Instead let's focus on whether these children even have autism, and never address the fact that, even if they are being misdiagnosed at times, these are still children with cognitive dysfunction, and of course play completely dumb about what could possibly be causing it all. Like the explosion in cancer, and alzheimers, it's not really due to anything other than a faulty genealogy; all completely normal. Just shut up and live with it. I guess give credit to Newsweek on this one. The Atlantic story didn't mention vaccines at all; Newsweek gives it a whopping one sentence, if only to attempt to discredit the notion outright.
Sometimes I wish I was still plugged in, so I could just read a simple news story without noticing that every word of it is a lie, including "and" and "the".
For years the autism community's most powerful public-relations weapon has been a striking statistic: an estimated 1 in 150 children have the diagnosis. Now it appears that estimate is actually too small. According to two new studies, the number of kids diagnosed with autism or a related disorder in the U.S. is closer to 1 in 100.
The new data has everyone who cares about autism abuzz. But, as with so many issues connected to the disorder, no one can quite agree on what it means.
One of the new studies, published in Pediatrics, is based on a survey of more than 78,000 parents. Researchers asked them if doctors had ever diagnosed any of their children with autism or a related disorder on the autism spectrum, such as Asperger syndrome. More than 1,400 of the parents said yes. If those numbers represent the population at large, that means 673,000 American kids likely have a form of autism.
Parent surveys often yield unreliable data because respondents may misremember or misunderstand what doctors have told them. But the Pediatrics study is backed up by a second, more reliable set of data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The full results aren't out yet, but on Friday, CDC researchers reported that one in 100 8-year-olds has been labeled with a disorder on the autism spectrum. That number is based on the same methods that yielded the original 1-in-150 statistic—so using CDC data alone, it's certain that autism diagnoses are on the rise.
That, however, is where the certainty stops. In the contentious autism community, two debates are constantly simmering: How many more children actually have autism now than had it in the past? And what are the underlying causes? The new numbers don't just fail to resolve either of these debates—they turn up the heat on both.
A rise in autism spectrum diagnoses doesn't necessarily mean a precisely corresponding rise in actual cases. Doctors may be inflating the numbers inadvertently by diagnosing the disorder more readily than they used to. Many doctors now diagnose autism and related disorders in children they might once have classified differently. Also, they may be more likely to give a child a diagnosis if they think that will help the child's parents obtain special-education services from public schools. Some are even willing to diagnose autism as a co-morbid condition in "people with clearly identifiable genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome—which is something that nobody would have dreamed of doing in the past," says Roy Grinker, a George Washington University anthropologist (and father of a child with autism) who believes the new numbers largely reflect an increase in diagnosis rather than actual illness.
At the same time, there's good evidence that more children actually are suffering from autism. In January, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, analyzed a seven- to eightfold increase in diagnoses in their state since 1990. Fully 56 percent of that increase could be explained by doctors' diagnosing milder cases they might not have diagnosed before, says Irva Hertz-Picciotto, who led the study. Another 24 percent came from doctors diagnosing cases in younger children. But that still leaves 20 percent of the huge increase unexplained—and, says Hertz-Picciotto, that part is real.
Scientists know something about the genetics of autism. They've found genes that are loosely linked to the disorder on practically every chromosome. But they know less about environmental factors, which could include heavy metals, pesticides, flame retardants, or many other culprits. A vocal minority of advocates, of course, is also concerned about vaccinations, although there's no solid evidence that vaccines are linked to autism. "More than ever, environmental factors are being recognized as important," says Cathy Rice, a CDC researcher who led the agency's new study. "But our research tools just are not as good for understanding them."
Many autism research advocates feel that environmental factors have gotten short shrift from the National Institutes of Health, which has largely focused on genetics so far. The new data may help them make their case as the government winds up a review of its research priorities. The new numbers don't explicitly point toward any single environmental factor, but genetics alone can't account for such a steep rise in the number of cases, because genes don't change that quickly.
Still, that's no reason to stop doing genetic research and focus exclusively on the environment. The two types of research can complement each other. If scientists can figure out which genes are turned on or off (or up or down) in autism, they'll be able to narrow their long list of potential environmental villains and focus on those that affect the relevant genes.
Here's where the second debate comes in: if more kids are developing autism-spectrum disorders, what's causing the increase? As with most illnesses,both genetics and environmental factors almost certainly play a role: As the popular analogy goes, genetics loads the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. Kids may be genetically predisposed to autism, but they won't develop it unless they're exposed to outside factors that affect the activity of their faulty genes.
Amidst the controversy over how much of the increase in autism diagnoses is real and what's causing it, there's a third puzzle in the new data that's been generally overlooked: the phenomenon of "lost diagnoses." Why did 38 percent of parents in the Pediatrics study whose children were at one time diagnosed with autism report that their kids no longer had the condition? Geri Dawson, chief scientific officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, says it's possible that these kids no longer have classic symptoms of autism but continue to have other problems—anxiety disorders, tics, or forms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. "We really don't know how children who lose their diagnosis fare after time," she notes. It's possible that some were misdiagnosed in the first place. It's also possible that there's good news hiding in the Pediatrics study—that many of the kids who started with an autism diagnosis managed to get better, probably after extensive behavioral therapy.
Ultimately, there's only one thing that everyone in the autism community agrees on—the need for more funding. That's something people outside the community seem to agree with, too. In February, the federal government funneled $85 million in stimulus grants toward new autism research at the National Institute of Mental Health. The Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also has $48 million in new funding for autism research this year. It'll be a long time before any of that money translates into findings that can help kids with autism and send the 1-in-100 number back down. But perhaps new research will tell us how the number got so high in the first place.
It would never occur to the average brain-dead neocon to ask how a bunch of disorganized bedouins, whose most sophisticated weaponry is a pick-up truck, could attack the United States? Unless of course we give them passports and ship them in. Maybe hook them up with some bombs. Nor would it ever occur to them to wonder how "al Qaeda", which means "the database" or, the CIA's database of mercenaries in Afghanistan, became "linked" to a bunch of barbarians in eastern Africa.
They could strike the United States. That grim assessment is the first time the FBI director or any other senior law enforcement or intelligence official has stated on the record that the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab is no longer content to strike within the East African nation of Somalia.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if members of al-Shabaab, which translates as "mujahideen youth," would send American recruits back to the U.S. to launch attacks.
"I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia," Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Mueller said he is "absolutely" concerned that Americans who traveled to Somalia to train as terrorists would have U.S. legal status and would therefore be able to return to the United States and carry out attacks.
A U.S. counterterrorism official told FOX News that al-Shabaab has exploded since 2006, and it is becoming a full-fledged Al Qaeda affiliate, similar to Al Qaeda in Iraq. Initially the group's militias fought against the Somali government and Ethopian forces who are against an Islamic state in East Africa, the official said, but now the group's focus is turning toward the establishment of a "caliphate" or broad Islamic state not limited to Africa.
In fact, in an exclusive briefing on Thursday, a U.S. counterterrorism official told FOX News that al-Shabaab's leadership is bona fide Al Qaeda. In many cases, the operatives who guide the group in East Africa have pledged allegiance to Usama Bin Laden in person, and in some cases the Al Qaeda leader has entrusted them with missions outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to the official.
Training camps are now well-established in Somalia, and as many as 1,100 foreign fighters have joined the al-Shabaab movement, the president of Somalia's transitional government told a crowd gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Wednesday.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said there are other troubling developments. A recent videotape from al-Shabaab pledged a formal allegiance to bin Laden, and the intelligence community is now monitoring jihadist Web sites to see if bin Laden will respond and "officially" bless their relationship, the official said.
In addition, the use of simultaneous attacks and suicide bombings -- the signature of al Qaeda -- has now taken hold in Somalia.
In October last year, a Minneapolis man, Shirwa Ahmed, became the first known American suicide bomber, according to the FBI. Ahmed, who travelled from Minnesota to the training camps of al-Shabaab, is one of nearly two dozen men from the United States who authorities believe joined the group.
The FBI is currently investigating another man, an 18-year-old from Seattle, who may be the second documented case of an American suicide bomber. Investigators are comparing the man's DNA with remains from an attack in the Somali capital last month.
In early September, FOX News exclusively identified the American mouthpiece for al-Shabaab as a native of Daphne, Ala. Born Omar Hammami, the big-eared and bright-eyed teenager now goes by the name Abu Mansour al-Amriki, or simply "The American."
After FOX News uncovered al-Amriki's identify, his family told a local TV station in Mobile, Ala., that their son traveled to Somalia with his wife but lost his passport there, where he became indoctrinated by al-Shabaab. One source within Mobile's Muslim community said that, after dropping out of college, Hamammi travelled to Toronto, where he eventually married a Somali woman and became indoctrinated there by "angry" individuals.
Both Hammami's family and the source within Mobile's Muslim community said Hammami has not spoken to his family in years.
Just days after a Consumer Reports poll that stated two-thirds of American parents would either not get their kids vaccinated or would wait for more information on this improperly tested vaccine, Harvard comes out with a new poll saying parents are going to fall over themselves to get this vaccine. I leave it to you to decide which to take seriously. I think you could guess with reasonable certainty where I'm leaning.
Ask yourself: why is the establishment so desperate to get you injected with their vaccine for this relatively benign virus, which is known to only kill people with compromised immune systems, respiratory illnesses, and, in all cases, vitamin D deficiencies? Do you believe them when they say Americans would be more willing to get vaccinated for swine flu than for seasonal flu, even though seasonal flu kills many times the number of people - about 36,000 a year in the United States alone - than the swine flu, which has only killed a few thousand worldwide? I certainly don't. But the perception is created in the untrained mind: you want this vaccine, because everyone else wants this vaccine.
Days before the swine flu vaccine becomes available, more than half of U.S. adults say they will get the vaccine for themselves and 75 percent will get it for their children, according to a survey released on Friday.
Forty percent said they would not get the H1N1 vaccine, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health found.
"These findings suggest that public health officials need to be prepared for a surge in demand for the H1N1 vaccine if the H1N1 flu becomes more severe," said Harvard's Robert Blendon, who led the study.
The survey conflicts with one published earlier this week by Consumer Reports showing only 35 percent of Americans would definitely have their children vaccinated.
The Harvard researchers polled 1,042 U.S. adults for what they said was a representative sample of national opinion late last month.
The poll results suggest more people would get a swine flu vaccine than usually get vaccinated against seasonal influenza in the United States, where flu kills an estimated 36,000 mostly elderly people a year.
H1N1swine flu was declared a pandemic in June and it has circulated globally ever since.
Companies have been rushing to make and distribute vaccines for H1N1 and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the first 600,000 doses will arrive in cities, states and counties that ordered them next week.
The U.S. government has ordered about 250 million doses from five companies -- Sanofi-Aventis SA, CSL Ltd, AstraZeneca Plc's MedImmune unit, Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline.
The vaccines will trickle in at a rate of about 20 million doses a week, and officials are unsure how many Americans will actually get them. The U.S. government is providing them for free but clinics and retailers may charge to administer them.
Make sure you watch this on an empty stomach, because the term 'bootlicker' is an understatement. Shep really goes to bat for the State here, and falls over himself trying to convince the viewership that the CDC is infallible and healthcare workers are just plain idiots and fearmongers. It's really grotesque.
A theme I've been touching on more and more lately is to break free from this psychological dependency we have on other people to think for us. Nothing epitomizes this more than the latest government push to label mercury as harmless or even beneficial. You don't need 12 years of medical education to figure out this is a lie.
