March 5 & 12, 2007
Whole Body Health
March 19, 2007
March 26, 2007
Congressional sources have obtained evidence that the Mexican government is instrumental in getting the U.S. attorney general's office to prosecute U.S. Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officers involved in incidents in which illegal aliens have been injured while crossing into the U.S. or while smuggling aliens or illegal drugs.
Documents obtained indicate that Mexican consular officials have demanded that border agents, while enforcing U.S. law along the border, who wounded illegal aliens or smugglers be prosecuted for the violating their civil rights.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.) said he has "long suspected that Mexican government officials ordered the prosecution of our law enforcement agents. . . . Mexico wants to intimidate our law enforcement into leaving our border unprotected and we now have confirmation in writing."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said:
"It appears we are giving more credence to directions from Mexican government officials than we are to the dictates of our own Constitution and the security of the people of the U.S."
Rohrabacher, along with several other House members, are requesting that the Judiciary Committee conduct an investigation into Mexican government interference in U.S. immigration enforcement.
The California congressman has led the fight to get presidential pardons for Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who are, combined, serving more than 20 years in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler after catching him sneaking a half-ton of drugs into the United States. Ramos was recently badly beaten by six Hispanic thugs while confined among the general population at the federal correctional center in Yazoo City, Miss.
As it turns out Ramos and Compean are not the only Border Patrol agents who have been prosecuted by the U.S. government for doing their job.
Border Patrol Agent David Sipe is trying to get his job back after his conviction for using excessive force and causing bodily injury of a "transporter" of other illegal aliens across the border was reversed on appeal.
The incident occurred at the U.S. border near Penitas, Tex., on April 5, 2000. Sipe and his partner, Lorraine Gonzales, at 4 a.m. were alerted by a sensor alarm along the border that illegal aliens were trying to sneak into the United States. A second alarm was tripped alerting two other agents, Christopher Cruce and James Smith.
The agents caught up with 12 to 15 illegal aliens near a pump house along a levy, but, when Sipe ordered them to stop, they scattered. Some were captured and put in a Border Patrol van but one, Jose Guevara, removed his white shirt to make him less visible to the agents and hid in some heavy reeds. Sipe caught up with Guevara and the two struggled. Sipe struck Guevara with his flashlight while defending himself, resulting in Guevara being sent to a nearby hospital where he received five stitches for an injury to his head.
Smith told authorities that he had recognized Guevara as someone he had stopped the night before in the same area. On Nov. 14, 2000, Sipe was indicted and eventually found guilty of using excessive force after a six-day trial in federal court for the Southern District of Texas.
Sipe appealed his conviction and, on April 18, 2003, he was granted a new trial based on the fact that the U.S. attorney had withheld evidence.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that, while Sipe was waiting for his appeal, Guevara was again stopped by Border Patrol agents while traveling with other illegal aliens. This time, the court discovered, he was let go after he flashed immunity-from-prosecution credentials he had received from U.S. officials for his testimony against Sipe.
In ordering the new trial the Court of Appeals wrote:
"His arrest with illegal aliens was evidence that he was a transporter, as well as evidence of the extent of the government's support accorded him in order to obtain his testimony against Sipe.
"The government stated in writing that the aliens were allowed to remain and work in the United States pending trial and specified that ‘no other promises or advantages' had been given," the court found. However, the judge concluded, "That was not true."
According to the appellate court, shockingly, the prosecution had given Guevara and the two others Social Security cards, witness fees, permits allowing them to travel to and from Mexico and North Carolina without challenge, living expenses and free use of U.S. government telephones.
Sipe maintains that the government turned its back on him while "rolling out the red carpet" for the illegals. And now he wants his job back, although many wonder why. Meanwhile, Guevara is living on his own ranch in Mexico, financed with $80,000 of U.S. taxpayers' money given to him by the U.S. government.
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the plight of family farmers is well documented in this country. Dairy farmers have been hit especially hard by regulators and multinational food conglomerates, which have conspired against them to reduce their price at the expense of quality. In a recent case, a group of family dairy farmers, who banded together to fight back by offering the highest quality, unrefined product to consumers, was subjected to the kind of treatment reserved for illicit drug dealers.
In this age of almighty government, nearly every blade of grass is regulated, oftentimes heavy-handedly, as Michigan farmer Richard Hebron found out when the Michigan department of Agriculture (MDA), on Oct. 13, 2006, carried out a highly orchestrated sting operation against him for transporting unpasteurized , unprocessed milk of the highest quality to enthusiastic consumers. That day, his wife also was served a warrant in the dragnet.
Hebron spoke with AFP Feb. 27, recalling that state police and federal officials pulled his truck over during his weekly milk delivery to an Ann Arbor distribution site, served him a search warrant for his truck's contents and confiscated 453 gallons of raw milk. At the same time he was stopped, a state police officer and four plain-clothes agents served his wife, Annette, with a search warrant on their farm, seizing their computer, records of all cow shares, cow-herd release agreements, all stored raw-dairy products, the rolodex and several other items.
"Later that afternoon, in Ann Arbor, four additional agents, also armed with a search warrant, rummaged through a warehouse that was Hebron's destination when he was pulled over, seizing more business records," according to an account by David Gumpert, a Business Week columnist who has been closely watching this issue.
Hebron manages the 5-year-old Family Farms Cooperative (FFC), a private membership co-op. He leases a herd of 70 cows owned by Amish farmer David Hochstetler in nearby Middlebury, Indiana. It is against the law to sell "ras milk" - milk that has not been subject to pasteurization - to American consumers. To get around this, FFC members buy shares in the herd in order to receive the raw milk for personal consumption. It is considered to be the highest quality milk produced, and no retail sales are involved.
Michigan State Police and Agriculture Department officials were opposed to the program, so they set up an elaborate scheme to shadow Hebron in the summer and fall of 2006, keeping tabs on his weekly truck hauls of raw milk from Vandalia, Michigan to ann Arbor, an east-west trek of about 140 miles. The MDA even hired an undercover agent to infiltrate the group that deals with Hebron.
An MDA warrant noted that the raw milk was tested by the MDA several times, confirming that the milk was indeed raw - and of the highest quality. And an affidavit left with Mrs. Hebron cited an instance of illness among the children of one of the co-op member families as a reason for the investigation. This was not true, however. The illness had occurred in the spring of 2006 but could not be traced to raw-milk consumption. The affected Ann Arbor family had missed the previous week's raw milk delivery and had purchased pasteurized organic milk from a grocery store. Three days later all the children became ill with gastrointestinal symptoms. Chinese food was the assumed culprit, Hebron said.
When it comes to policing raw-milk distribution, Ohio perhaps has even surpassed Michigan in going after farmers who might make it available in any form - as pet food via herd-share leasing programs, or even giving it away.
David Cox, a Columbus lawyer, said authorities are treating raw milk like it's heroin or crack. According to Cox, who has been active in several Ohio cases, a common element is an apparent sense of "vindictiveness" by Ohio's Department of Agriculture (ODA).
"There has been a huge outcry," Sally Fallon, of the Weston A. Price Foundation, told AFP on Feb. 26. She added that the Michigan attorney general in recent years issued an opinion that the MDA has no jurisdiction over cow-share arrangements. Michigan law only gives officials the authority to ban retail sales of raw milk and related dairy product, not to ban co-ops from sharing raw milk among members.
AFP also contacted Ann Arbor attorney Steve Bemis, who has helped the Hebrons legally and also is a raw-milk consumer, due to his FFC membership. What's particularly noteworthy is that Hebron, despite the Oct. 13 search and seizure operation, still has not been charged with a crime and is delivering raw milk to this day, Bemis said.
"If they can't come up with anything in five months, there must not be much of a charge," Hebron told AFP.
The federal Food and Drug Administration also got in on the act , sending a warning letter to David Hochestler, an Indiana dairy farmer who supplies the Family Farms Cooperative with raw milk. According to Bemis, the FDA's regulation of milk sales, under the timeworn "interstate commerce" clause that regulators read into the U.S. constitution, comes from case law - not a stature - in this instance from a 1987 Public Citizen lawsuit that forced the FDA to regulate interstate milk sales.
Fallon told AFP that the Weston A. Price Foundation mid-wifed the creation of what activists see as an important weapon to help family farmers figh back against bureaucratic meddling - the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense fund, modeled after the well-known Home School Legal Defense fund. The web site, ftcldf.org, is under construction.
Today, there's a patchwork of laws out there: Eight states
allow retail sales of raw milk: California, Washington, Arizona,
New Mexico, Maine, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
Two-thirds of the states allow sales right on the farm, though
a retail state isn't necessarily and on-the-farm state. Raw milk
can be obtained via herd-share programs in Michigan, Indiana,
Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia. This is all for human
consumption, and can be for per consumption. Raw milk can be purchased
as pet food in Florida and North Carolina yet North Carolina doesn't
allow herd-sharing nor does Utah. Raw milk can be bought on the
farm in Utah. And California-based organicpastures.com ships raw milk anywhere,
but only as pet food.
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Iran's claims that the United States and Britain are arming and financing terrorists to carry out attacks inside Iran may not seem so far fetched in light of new allegations by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh that Vice President dick Cheney's office is secretly funding Sunni Guerrilla fighters in Iraq in order to combat Iran's growing influence in the region.
According to Hersh writing in The New Yorker magazine dated March 5, 2007, money is being channeled to our supposed enemies to enable them to carry out covert attacks on Iran and its Shiite allies, including Hezbollah. The objective is to stem Shiite influence, resulting from the ill-advised and illegal overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The growth of Shiite influence was always going to be a natural outcome of the overthrow of Saddam, but the Bush administration, totally ignorant of the complexities of Middle East history, failed to anticipate it. Back in 2002, the White House was dismissive when the Saudis, who are Sunnis, warned leading neo-cons like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and douglas Feith that toppling Saddam would increase Iran's power in Iraq and Lebanon.
Now, a picture is emerging of a clandestine U.S. strategy to wage a secret, undeclared war against Iran. According to an explosive article by Hersh, while the Pentagon has been secretly planning for a shock-and-awe-type bombing of Iranian nuclear and military facilities - possibly to include upwards of 400 targets - the White House has been masterminding a secret war in Iran and Lebanon, including sending Special forces into Iran to map out targets.
Hersh alleges that Cheney's office, without congressional approval, has been funding three Sunni groups to attack Hexbollah in Lebanon to create a civil war of the type raging between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. It has been suggested that in tandem with a U.S. attack on Iran, Israel would launch another invasion of Lebanon to take more territory.
Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, says some of the money reaching Sunni groups carrying out attacks on Shiites has been provided by Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar, a close friend of the White House. If that is true it contrasts sharply with one of the tragic ironies of the war in Iraq, namely that the majority of U.S. casualties have been caused by Sunni guerrillas, who have been supported by U.S. allies like the Saudis.
One of Hersh's most startling allegations is that former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte moved to the post of deputy secretary of state when he learned of the secret funding of our "enemies." For Hersh, the job transfer was Negroponte's way out of a possible Iran-Contra type scandal. If it can now be shown that Cheney secretly diverted Iraq funds to sunni guerrilla fighters, a major congressional investigation could be initiated on a scale to match the Iran-Contra hearings of several decades ago. The Iran-Contra arms transfer secretly bypassed Congress.
The Hersh allegations come in the wake of similar claims by the Iranians that terrorists trained by the United States and Britain have been carrying out attacks in Iraq. In one attack, a bus was bombed killing 12 and injuring dozens, most of them members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Documents and other items recovered from a hideout by Iranian police will be handed over to UN representatives and officials from Human Rights Watch.
From an Iranian perspective, the terror attacks were aimed at fomenting sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites within Iran and were part of a broader U.S. Middle East policy to weaken Shiites by forcing them to turn on their religious opposites.
Major policy misjudgments and the continued determination of Bush, Cheney and fellow neo-cons to bring about regime change in Iran by fighting a new war before the end of this presidency could well produce an even wider Middle East conflict. A year ago, Israel was making all the noises about Iran, threatening an Attack on its nuclear facilities. Now Israel is silent. To some observers, this is evidence that Israel has directed the United States to bomb Iran.
There is also evidence that al least one Kurdish group opposed to Iran was encouraged by the United States to mount attacks on Iran from bases in Iraq. While in the past the finger of blame was pointed at the CIA for running shadowy wars, it seems this one is being run from the office of the vice president, utilizing secret elements of the U.S. military and elements of the intelligence community.
The big issue now facing Congress is to determine what constitutional
framework is being used by the Bus administration to justify funding
guerrilla fighters - the same people who are blowing up U.S. soldiers
- and launching covert operations inside Iran.
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It has long been known that folate and vitamin B-12 are important to the healthy functioning of the nervous system. Now a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that the interaction between these nutrients may play a significant role in protecting cognitive function as a person ages.
The study, conducted by the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition research center on aging at Tufts University found that among seniors with adequate vitamin B-12 levels of blood folate were associated with better congnitive function. Among seniors woth low B-12 levels, however, scores on tests of cognitive function actually decreased with increasing folate levels.
"For seniors, low vitamin B-12 status and high seru folate was the worst combination," said Martha Savaria Morris, one of the study's authors.
The researchers studied data on people over the age of 60 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1999 in 2002. Cognitive speed, attention spam, visual spatial skills, associative learning and memory.
Morris cautioned that the study did not allow researchers to draw conclusions about causation. She also noted that high levels of folate in the blood may come from high intake, poor absorption or both.
"Our finding support the often-expressed idea that many
seniors would benefit from more folate," said senior author
Jacob Selhub, "but the research shows that we must look at
the effects this would have on seniors with age-related vitamin
B-12 deficiency.... there are also indications that too much folic
acid and too little B-12 is a general phenomenon that affects
other systems in the body, and might be a factor in some other
diseases."
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Soaring medical, housing and energy costs in the 1990s, coupled with easily available high-interest rate credit cards and even higher interest rate "pay day" looans, have taken the gold out of the golden years for many seniors. Consumer debt related to these rising costs is a worrying trend, according to economists, and may drag the country down faster than federal spending or financial collapse.
According to an article by Kathy Chu in USA Today on Jan. 24, the percentage of households of senior citizens with excessive debt grew faster than the overall population between 1992 and 2004 according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The average credit card debt for the over 65 group more than doubled from 1992 to $907 in 2004 according to Demos, a New York think tank. Some Baby Boomers approaching retirement are carrying debt loads that would horrify their parents.
Our energy costs have been soaring in large measure because we have not buiilt one nuclear power plant in 30 years. We have had, and still have, the capability of ensuring at least 100,000 years of cheap power by building breeder reactors. Our lawmakers have ignored the fact that nuclear power plants are much safer than coal-fired power plants, and that the vast majority of us actually need more ionizing radiation than we are getting. Perhaps this is because, being mostly lawyers, and not knowledgeable about technology, they depend on advocacy group "experts" for their information.
Housing costs have also soared in large measure because our Federal Reserve consortium of private banks has generated a housing bubble. Their low interest rates and easy credit policies were used to produce the illusion of prosperity while the jobs supporting our shrinking middle class were being exported.
To add insult to injury, local taxing authorities like those in upstate New York have recognized an opportunity. They have reassessed properties at the peak of the bubble, substantially increasing their property tax income. This action is forcing many of the elderly to attempt to sell their homes, usually their major asset, in a fading market.
Medical cost are also high because what is called health care today is managed by a sickness industry. Increasing profits depend on increasing numbers of patients who need increasing amounts of drugs, tests and other medical services. Congress and state legislatures have given power to the American Medical Association, the FDA and the Federal trade Commission, which has been openly abused.
Dan Haley's book Politics in Healing provides evidence that these entities have conspired with the pharmaceutical industry to prevent the public from enjoying the benefits of effective, relatively inexpensive therapies and medical technologies.
The pharmaceutical industry has been very profitable. Gary Trudeau, in his book Natural Cures, What They Don't Want You to Know suggests that one reason may be that Congress has passed laws exempting members from penalties like those given to Martha Stewart.
Remember that Ms. Stewart was not even convicted of insider trading. A judge ruled that there was no evidence to indicate she had done anything wrong, Instead, she was sentenced to prison because prosecutors said she had lied to them.
Trudeau alleges that many congressmen and senators profited from fluctuations in the price of pharmaceutical stocks besides receiving large contributions to campaign funds from the pharmaceutical industry.
An increasing number of Americans over 65 are seeking bankruptcy protection. Unfortunately for them, recent changes in bankruptcy laws give must less protection to insolvent and more to the banks who hold most of the credit card debt. Credit car debt is one of the major reasons for senior bankruptcies. When they fail to keep up with minimum payments on their 20% credit cards, interest rates rise and penalties are assessed. To avoid these penalties some seniors take on "pay day" loans at 180% interest. In the 1950s U.S. law limited bank interest rates to 6% while Mafia "vigorish" was only 20%.
Our seniors are now paying the price for lack of interest in what their "servants" in Washington were doing when usury laws were discarded.
The founding Fathers warned that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Thomas Jefferson warned that a central bank would result in destitution of the people through manipulation of interest rates. Benjamin Franklin printed paper money which required no interest payments for government authorities before the Revolution. Abraham Lincoln had greenbacks printed, which required no interest payments to finance the Civil War. President Wilson facilitated the establishment of the Federal Reserve to help him finance world War I. He gave it the power to do what Lincoln did but also charge interest for the service. And today, the federal Reserve System uses debt to increase the amount of money available.
Franklin said that those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. The liberty of choosing the kind of healthcare that we want has largely been ceded to the governments, the AMA and insurance companies, presumably to ensure that everyone is taken care of. In return we are getting poor quality care, according to the World Health Organization, and, in addition, many people are up to their eyeballs in debt at the end of their lives because of the existence of what seems to be a medical monopoly.
Judge Learned Hand once said: "Liberty lies in the hearts
of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law,
no court can save it....or even do much to help it.
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Poisoning from prescription drugs has risen to become the second-largest cause of unintentional deaths in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In its "Morbidity and Mortality weekly Report," researchers found that deaths from prescription drugs rose from 4.4 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.1 per 100,000 in 2004.
This increase represents a jump from 11,000 people to almost 20,000 in the spam of five years.
Among the 20,000 who died, more than 8,500 - double the number from 1999 - were from "other and unspecified drugs."
Psychotherapeutic drugs, like antidepressants and sedatives, nearly doubled from 671 deaths to 1,300.
Age-wise, the biggest jump was among people aged 15 to 24, which the CDC report says relates to recreational prescription drug use and a jump in cocaine use.
BABY BOOMERS
However, all other age groups except the elderly over-75 group saw increases of more than 35% on a per 100,000 scale in prescription drug deaths - including a nearly 90% jump for the late Baby Boomer generation (ages 45 to 54) and a more than 90% increase for people aged 55 to 64.
Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, said that the drug industry is freely killing Americans.
"The entire drug industry. Including the monopolistic drug giants and their FDA co-conspirator, has clearly become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people," Adams said. "And yet the FDA continues to push more drugs onto more Americans than ever before, all the while pretending these drugs are safe and effective when, in reality, they are neither. Today's pharmaceutical industry is a massive fraud being perpetrated against the American people, propped up by illegal trade practices, monopolistic behavior andoutright criminal behavior on the part of the FDA."
One caveat of the report is that the data used did not allow suicides to be separated from other drug deaths, meaning there may be inherent errors because it was impossible to tell after death the intent or reason for a person's death from prescription drugs.
"Some of these deaths might have been suicides, although not classified as such, and some deaths categorized as suicides or of undetermined intent might have been unintentional and therefore not analyzed in this study. The extent of this error is not known," the report states.
However, statistics from the web site suicide.org show that in 2001, nearly 5,200 deaths came from self-poisoning, which includes not only abusing prescription drugs but also overdosing on over-the-counter drugs and ingesting lethal chemicals.
This article appeared on the alternative health news web
site NewsTarget.com
. M.T. Whitney is a writer who reports on heath-related issues
for NewTarget
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A respected doctor and state legislator in Tennessee has issued a stern warning to water districts throughout the state advising that fluoride should no longer be added to municipal water.
In his letter, Dr. Joe Hensley, a representative in the state House, assessed the risks associated with fluoride in water, stating: "information is now coming out showing that the health risks associated with drinking fluoridated water significantly outweigh fluoride's limited cavity fighting action."
He added: "water fluoridation is medication added to water....Giving an unmeasured amount of fluoride through drinking water and not monitoring people's response to it makes no sense at all and violates fundamental principles of toxicology, pharmacology and ethics."
Hensley was citing a recent report from the National Research Council (NRC) that states that children already receive three to four times the dose of fluoride compared to adults. The fluoride comes from many different sources, according to the NRC - virtually any food product that has been processed in water.
Hensley's admonition comes as other cities across America are working to eliminate fluoride from their public water. So far, officials in Albany, N.Y., Martin County, Fla., and Juneau, Alaska have rejected adding this toxic substance to their water supplies.
The American Dental Association has followed suit and quietly issued its own recommendations regarding infants, noting that powered substitutes for mothers' milk, aptly named "formula," should not be mixed with fluoridated city water. According to the ADA, fluoride is increasingly causing a condition known as "dental fluorosis," a defect in the enamel of teeth caused by an excessive intake of fluoride during a child's development.
Fluoride is actually a highly toxic gaseous byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry. At one time, it leedched into soil and waters around fertilizer plants, killing plants and animals in neighboring areas. However, new pollution laws passed some 50 years ago forced the industry to clean up its act - sort of.
Today, the hazardous material is liquefied, barreled up and
sold for profit to local communities, where it is then dumped
int water supplies. According to the Centers for Disease Control,
67% of Americans now consume this toxic substance in minute doses
in public water, sharing in the slow poisoning that once plagued
only the towns unlucky enough to be situated near fertilizer plants.
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On Aug. 18, 2006, the FDA approved a viral cocktail to be sprayed on foods we eat. This is the first time viruses have been approved for use as food additives. The FDA wants you to believe it will be safe to consume these viruses very day for the rest of your life with no adverse health effects. This is a monumental announcement by the FDA, indication they are throwing all caution to the wind regarding the safety of our food supply.
Are you willing to stand in line for a virus-laden sandwich? How do you like the idea of buying virus-infested food for your family? The first virally contaminated foods entering our food supply with the blessing of the FDA will be luncheon meat and poultry. Live viruses will be sprayed on foods such as cold cuts, sausages, hot dogs, sliced turkey and chicken.
At issue is the very real problem of a poor quality FDA-approved food supply that is already full of diseased and sickly animals, many of them imported from other countries. The use of antibiotics during growth and radiation during food processing is required by the fast-food animal farms owned by multinational companies to cover up the horrendous health of the animals they wish to feed to Americans. Animals in poor health are a friendly place for bacteria to grow and prosper, especially after such meat goes to market. Rather than address the source of the problem, the FDA wants to add another adulteration into our food supply.
The stated goal of the new FDA-approved viruses is to kill the rare bacterium known as Listeria monacytogenes. This bacterium is killed by cooking; however, it poses a problem in meats that are cooked during processing and not cooked again prior to consumption, so it can readily infect foods such as deli meats.
Yes, the FDA plans to use one infectious organism to fight another. The carnage of battle will end up in your digestive tract along with the victorious live viruses, which the FDA assures us will not attack human cells. However, they cannot possibly be certain the viruses will not attack the friendly bacteria that make up the linign of your digestive tract. The FDA approval was based on scant human testing, mostly from unrelated medical experiments. Such safety data is woefully inadequate to determine safe ingestion of a specific product by humans over the course of a lifetime.
The company that produces these biotech viruses is Baltimore-based Intralytix, Inc. The viruses are known as bacetriophages, viruses that kell bacteria, or phages for short. Phages have been around a long time, living as parasites inside many bacteria.
Intralytix uses biotechnology to grow viral phages in a culture with Listeria, in theory teaching the viruses to recognize the bacteria. The FDA-approved cocktail contains six different viruses intended to attack one strain of bacteria.
This concoction is then sprayed on food. If Listeria is present in the food, the bacteria will ingest the virus. This results in massive viral replication inside the bacteria, until such point as the bacteria simply bursts. This battle results in significant production of bacterial poisons called "endotoxins," as the bacteria tries to defend itself. When the bacteria burst, these endotoxins are released. These, along with the victorious live viruses, will now be on the food that will be eaten.
The FDA and Intralytix would like us to believe that these viruses will only attack the specified bacteria they are intended to kill and will be harmless to humans. I'msorry to burst their bubble, but they can't possibly guarantee such safety. It is true that the viruses, al least at this time, cannot recognize human cells. However, the virus can potentially recognize normal bacterial cells in the human digestive tract and may be able to adapt to infect one or more of these friendly bacteria.
The FDA had some concerns about the amount of bacterial endotoxin in the Intralytix product before it is sprayed. However, FDA test apparently showed that the product was adequately pruified and so they declared it safe if used as approved. Will the FDA diligently monitor the quality of this product once it is on the market, or will it go the path of many FDA-approved drugs that the agency can't keep track of?
There is certainly a risk that humans will be exposed to excessive amounts of endotoxin. This could come from the manufacturing of the viral cocktail, the interaction of the viruses with bacterial avter being sprayed on food, and/or the interaction of the viruses with bacteria in the digestive tract.
The human immune system is highly reactive and sensitive to bacterial endotoxins. They provoke allergy, asthma, autoimmune problems, and elevate cholesterol. They also interfere with the healthy function of cells lining the digestive tract. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of bacterial endotoxins can start cancer in the colon.
Additionally, the human immune system reacts directly to viral phages. Thus, a person who eats a lot of processed deli meat is certain to evoke an immune reaction to the viruses. What will this reaction be? Allergy? Asthma? Autoimmunity? Cancer? How can the FDA approve a food additive that it knows can induce a variety of human immune responses? Phages are so good at disrupting normal immunity that they are being considered for use as part of organ transplant medicine.
The ingestion of significant amounts of viral phages into the human digestive tract is a wild card full of unknown outcomes. For example, it is certainly possible that these phages, which constantly mutate in order to survive, are likely to find a way to infect bacteria they were not intended to infect. Since phages are parasites, they could hijack the friendly bacteria of the digestive tract and turn them into viral machines, constantly generating viral particles that are likely to cinfuse the human immune system, if not directly infect the body. We know from history that these viral phages can turn innocuous bacteria into a killer, which is how cholera occurs.
Furthermore, the Listeria bacteria are not going to take the issue lying down. They will develop resistance to the viruses over time, as we have seen with the overuse of antibiotics. Sooner or later we will inadvertently create deadly new super-strains of bacteria or parasitically infect the human digestive tract with an untreatable infection.
There is also the very real possibility of unintended viral recombination. What happens when a person with viral stomach flu eats food containing a dose of this viral food additive? It is certainly possible for the genetic material of the flu virus to interact with the genetic material of the vital phages, provoking an undesirable new viral infection.
The FDA won't tell us which foods in the food supply contain genetically modified organisms (GMO). Seventy percent of the packaged food on grocery shelves already contain GMO adulterated food. These foods have viral romoter genes woven into the DNA of every cell, a technique used to implant a pesticide toxin into every cell of this fake food. What new virus will be encouraged to form?
Keep in mind that the FDA wants to conduct this experiment on our food supply to protect a small minority, only about 2,500 people, who are made seriously ill by this infection each year. The ill are mostly pregnant women, elderly with compromised immunity and small children. It would be a lot more to the point if the FDA would simply warn such people that eating these foods, due to their poor quality of production, may be dangerous. What the FDA should really do is improve the quality of our food supply, the true source of the problem. Why expose millions of Americans to an unproven ingestion of live viruses for the benefit of so few?
The FDA has failed miserably for the past century to protect the public from the adulteration of our food supply by vested interests.
Intralytix has an agenda for the American food supply, as well as for healthcare in general. This recent FDA ruling allows Intralytix and other similar biotech companies to get their foot in a door that shold be slammed shut and bolted.
The company is also seeking FDA approval for viral sprays to treat foods that could be contaminated with E. Coli and Salmonella, which means that similar "trained" viruses could end up in a majority of the protein foods in our food supply.
Intralytix sees financial opportunity. They have already licensed their now FDA-approved viral spray to an undisclosed multinational company for use arounbg the world. When the Ceo of Intralytix, John Vazzara, was recently asked about this partner company, he refused to disclose their name. The grand profit-driven biotech experiment on the health and well being of all Americans is now in full-swing.
Vazzara also owns sock in, as well as provided seed money to start, SteelCloud Inc. (formerly Dunn Computer Corporation). SteelCloud is a defense contractor with lucrative deals with the Department of defense, and recently contracted with the Department of Homeland Security.
Congress should investigate the finandial ties and backroom dealings that would allow this bizarre food additive approval by the FDA.
Of course, we will need new wonder drugs to combat the new bio-tech produced infections. Americans will stay sick and the sickness-driven bio-tech industry will flourish. The bio-tech industry will make people sick on the fron end and treat them on the back end. It's a win-win situation for profit on illness.
It is quite clear that the Bush agenda has been to promote American biotech companies as the new future for American prosperity. Administrative opinions have trumped science in virtually every situation wherein safety conflicts with profit. The FDA acts to foster profits for biotech companies and the growth of the biotech industry. This is a betrayal of the public trust.
The leaders of the FDA are personally responsible and need to be held accountable. This means Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., temporary head of the FDA, and his chief science officer, Scott Gottlieb, M.D. These men are not only obsessed with approving risky drugs for the benefit of Big Pharma, it is now clear that they are willing to allow obvious adulteration of the food supply.
The FDA does not truly know how safe viral phages are to consume on a regular basis. They have no idea of the cumulative effect over the course of a lifetime, especially as more of these viral cocktails are added to the food supply. They have no way to measure how this new type of adulteration in the food supply will interact with the poor digestive and immune health of half the American population, in combination with all the other serious adulterations already approved by the FDA. The FDA lacks due diligence in honoring its mandate to protect the American public.
The only hope americans have is to resurrect the quality of our food supply. Doing so is against the odds, as there are billions of dollars of profit-mongering taking our food supply in the wrong direction.
Get connected to the sustainable family farms in your community. Buy meat that is range raised without antibiotics and synthetic growth hormones. Demand that the food you are eating is labeled with a country of origin. Buy american. Buy locally-produced whenever possible. Support those who truly believe in being the stewards of our land and food for our people and for future generations.
These good people are being squashed out of existence by multinational agribusiness, companies that could truly not care less about the quality of our food supply or the security and health of Americans.
How you spend your money is your most powerful vote. Vote for those who care.
Byron J. Richards, founder and director of Wellness Resources,
is a boad-certified clinical nutritionist and nutritionist and
nationally renowned health expert, radio personality, educator
and author.
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A new proposal that allows Mexican truckers to make deliveries in their rigs throughout the United States is a stepping stone to the North American Union, a scheme to merge the United States with Canada and Mexico.
Now, anti-globalization activists are sounding the alarm, urging farm, labor and trucking advocates and other citizen groups to contact their senators and representatives in an effort to trounce this troubling proposal.
Alarmed by the Bush administration's call for allowing Mexican truckers to go beyond the limited commercial zone where they currently exchange freight with U.S. truckers, retired agricultural foreign service worker Abner Deatherage is activating his National Grassroots Demonstration (NGD)-in which phone calls, faxes and personal visits to local congressional offices are utilized, instead of having the usual "march on Washington."
This time, the NGD call-in takes place for two days March 12-13, which intensifies the pressure on "the patricians on the Potomac."
Repeating the approach used during his last NGD in late January 2007, Deatherage makes key contacts in the farm, labor and trucking fields and urges them to use the phone-tree approach by calling their members, family, friends and anyone else who can help. Everyone taking part is encouraged to call their legislators themselves, especially on those two days, while urging others to do likewise in ever-widening circles.
Deatherage told AFP that it's best for people to keep faxing, calling and visiting the district offices of their representatives and senators beyond March 12 and 13. He believes contacting the local offices is more effective than calling Capitol Hill.
Deatherage said that the trucking issue is especially urgent. Allowing Mexican truckers to deliver their freight anywhere in the United States-a proposal that many Americans fear will weaken national security and make the highways and roads less safe due to the often substandard condition of Mexican trucks-is part of a larger political scheme.
"This is a big step toward the North American Union, and by golly we've got to stop this thing," he told AFP. Deatherage was referring to the proposed merger of the United States, Canada and Mexico by transnational elites whose own writings, meetings and plans indicate an economic and political consolidation of the world, diminishing national sovereignty, treating national borders as essentially meaningless relics of the nation-state, and trashing the Consitution.
Deatherage said he has already been in touch with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the transportation subcommittee that started hearings on the Mexican trucking issue March 8.
Landline magazine, published by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, or OOIDA, noted on Feb. 27, 2007: "After years of roadblocks that all but prevented Mexico-domiciled trucks from operating throughout the U.S., the border will be opening to 100 Mexican motor carriers in two short months."
On Feb. 22, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced that U.S. officials would be inspecting Mexican motor carriers in Mexico. A major sticking point keeping the border closed to Mexican-domiciled trucks has been "who will inspect the trucks and where they will be inspected before they are allowed into the states," Landline noted.
Shortly after Peters' announcement, OOIDA officials learned "that the pilot program was moving full-steam ahead, and that 100 Mexican-domiciled motor carriers were going to be allowed to operate freely within the U.S.," Landline added.
"This has been a White House goal since President Bush was first elected," OOIDA Vice President Todd Spencer told AFP. He said that while U.S. Transportation Department officials have made assurances that Mexican trucks and drivers will be held to the same strict standards adhered to by their American counterparts, OOIDA has its doubts.
"Based on our knowledge of how truckers operate in Mexico, they're still sorely lacking," Spencer added. "There's no meaningful safety regime."
Spencer understands that drug testing and hours-of operation regulations for truckers in Mexico are substandard and that Mexican truckers' personal backgrounds from living and working in Mexico will not be known to U.S. authorities if and when the truckers start driving stateside.
Spencer noted that Mexican truckers have been known to use large auxiliary fuel tanks. He said it's likely that they will fuel up in Mexico and be able to drive further into the United States without buying gas and paying the U.S. fuel taxes that finance the very highways that these truckers will use.
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Mexico, due to systemic corruption and violence, is a far greater threat to the United states, in the view of experts here and abroad, than Iraq, where Americans die daily, or Iran, which neo-conservatives want to invade.
Mexico is both an economic and security threat to the United States, as millions of illegal aliens stream across the U.S. border each year. These migrants include drug dealers, violent criminals and even terrorists. Reports indicate that a handful of bomb-wielding terrorists have been seized on the border, but how many entered unnoticed?
America has corruption, but it is not part of accepted public policy. A dozen congressmen and several bureaucrats are in prison because of corrupt behavior. But in Mexico, corruption is embraced by those in the government. That's why there is a huge upperclass of wealthy criminals, almost no middle class and a country awash in poverty.
Drug warlords from Mexico are polluting this country and are protected by their government, despite some sideshow pretensions. Government policy in Mexico is to send their impoverished citizens here illegally, where they can get access to social services and medicine at the expense of U.S. taxpayers while sending wages back home in the form of remittances to enhance the Mexican economy.
Mexican President Vicente Fox boasted of this at the Kennedy Center in Washington.. He said Mexicans will send home $24 billion this year, making the cash transfers the fastest-growing sector of the economy. Oil is still the top sector but is in decline.
Speaking to the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership, Fox called them "paisanos,"or fellow countrymen - this was appropriate, since these groups exploit illegal aliens for cheap labor. "I salute my paisanos in the United States," Fox said. "They are great, great people...working, building the American dream."
The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that up to 20 million Mexicans are in the United States illegally and, on average, the family of four costs taxpayers more than $4,000 a year in health and welfare costs.
Predictably, fox opposed border control, saying "we should have the wisdom not to keep building walls but to build partnerships." He endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) And his amnesty proposal. Asked who he would like to see Americans elect President, Fox said "McCain is a great friend of mine, a great believer in immigration solutions."
DISEASES
Many impoverished Mexicans are also coming to the United States with deadly diseases that have been wiped out in the United States.
Federal researchers say neurocysticerosis, a brain infection caused by pork tapeworm, is a "growing public health problem in the U.S.," especially in states bordering Mexico, where the disease is endemic. It is the "most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system," according to a joint study by the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and California public health officials.
U.S. officials warned that "international travel and immigration are bringing this disorder to areas where it is not endemic, such as America. They said 85% of patients who died were foreign-born and 62% emigrated from Mexico. Among Hispanics and Latinos, the disease accounts for 13.5% of U.S. emergency room visits for seizures.
In addition, Hispanics are bringing Chagas disease into the United States in great quantities, according to the CDC. A study of 5,000 blood donations in border states found nearly one in 5,000 testing positive. Chagas disease affects an estimated 11 million people throughout Latin America and nearly a third suffer cardiac or gastroinestinal illnesses. The disease is caused by insects know as kissing bugs.
ROOTED IN CORRUPTION
According to Transparency International, which monitors government corruption worldwide, Mexico is the most corrupt country in the Western Hemisphere, competing with African nations where corruption is also a way of life and part of government policy.
"Corruption is not endemic - it's more epidemic," said Eduardo Bohotquez, head of Transarency in Mexico.
"Corruption is so deeply embedded in the society that there's no prospect of eliminating it or even curbing it. Corruption seems to be part of our DNA," said Jorge Chabat, a political analyst for The San Luis Obispo Tribune.
"Corruption has been a force in public life there since colonial times," said Caludio Lomnitz, professor of history at Chicago University. While in Mexico, he said, people complained about corruption but said they would get on the gravy train if they could.
An American, Bernard wasw, was driving with his wife to the airport in Mexico City in slow, bumper-to-bumper traffic when he was stopped for "speeding." The cop threatened to seize his drivers license immediately, displaying a stack of others in his hand. Wasow handed him fir $20 bills and the cop waved him on. It is common, he said to see cops taking bribes from locals and tourists.
But while millions of Mexicans enter this country illegally, Mexican politicians say Americans must show still more generosity. However, there is no such hospitality in Mexico.
Foreigners entering Mexico illegally are called "felons" and are hunted down and jailed. Protests, demonstrations and waving of any foreign flags are prohibited, and you can make no negative comments about the government or its leaders or you will be deported to your country of origin.
If foreigners want to purchase land, it must be approved. They cannot purchase waterside property - that's reserved for Mexicans.
Foreigners are no burden to Mexican taxpayers. There is no welfare, food stamps, health care or other government welfare programs.
If you travel to Mexico, you almost have to speak Spanish. There are no bilingual programs and all business is conducted in Spanish. Mexican immigration laws dictate that you must be a professional - no unskilled labor is allowed.
Sound like a double standard?
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Adm. William Fallon, President Bush's new commander of military forces in the Middle East, is looking for an "incident" that wold excuse a U.S. attack on Iran, according to sources within the Pentagon, Congress and Iran, according to sources within the Pentagon, Congress and the White House. They cite Fallon's blind faith in Israel, and its constant lobbying for an attack on Iran. Efraim Eitan, a member of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, bluntly told The Washington Times that Israel will attack unless the U.S. or some other foreign power stops Iran from developing nuclear arms or other powerful weapons.
These sources expect the U.S. military attack to be solely from the air and with no ground troops involved. Not only are the suspected sites of nuclear development to be targeted, but missiles and bombs will strike "great swaths" of Iran, sources said. Their claim has been independently substantiated by recent reports from Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker.
Vice President Dick Cheney has parroted claims made by Israeli officials that Iran is working on nuclear weapons that would be turned on Israel. This is similar to the discredited claims of "weapons of mass destruction" in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq.
U.S. officials deny that an attack on Iran is imminent even as Bush repeats that "No options are off the table" when it comes to Iran. At the same time, however, Bush was provoking Iran by ordering the nuclear-equipped aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower into the Persian Gulf and otherwise building up the military presence in the region, where it has no business.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly wanted Fallon in charge because he would establish a "new focus on regional initiatives to reassre allies and deter adversaries, particularly Iran," The New York Times reports.
"If Iran is dumb enough to shoot down some helicopters and kill some of our soldiers, it could help justify a ‘quick response' that could quickly evolve into all-out war," one source said. "The Bush administration could be arranging that."
One source asked: "Remember how we all believed that the Gulf of Tonkin incident really occurred when President Lyndon Johnson made a speech in 1964? Years later, after being discharged, sailors aboard the ship all said it had never happened."
Could explosives found by U.S. forces in Iraq and attributed to Iran be part of that set up for war?
The original hawk, Donald Rumsfeld, did not disappear when he resigned as secretary of defense. He still maintains an office at the Pentagon with a staff of 14. They are busy planning an attack on Iran while Gates calms Congress.
Working with rumsfeld to bring the United States into a war with Iran are the usual cast of neo-conservatives and high priests of war: Douglas Feith, Rummy's former No. 3 man as a Bilderberg regular; Richard Perle, another Bilderberg boy; David Wurmser; and Elliot Abrams, now a Middle East specialist at the National Security Council.
It was this group and others in the Israeli lobby who exposed their motives in a revealing paper for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "A Clean Break; A New strategy for Securing the Realm." It called for Israel to continue to occupy Palestinian lands, for excalating the fight with the Palestinians and their Arab supporters and for encouraging the United States to attack Iran so Israel "will not only contain its foes, it will transcend them.
Journalist George Packer's book The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq concludes that "For Feith and Wurmser, the security of Israel was probably the prime mover."
On Feb. 13, the Beltway think tank Strategic Policy Consulting sponsored an event in Washiton to promote a book by Iranian "dissident" Alireza Jafazadeh, titled The Iran Threat: President Almadinegad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis. Jafarzadeh denies that he is explicityly calling for war but threatens a mushroom clud if nothing is done. Sound familiar? It should. It was the same technique used to inflame public opinion for a war with Iraq. The book drew lavish praise from Sen. May Landrieu (D-La) and Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), among others .
Significantly, a new caucus has been established in Congress, calling itself the "Congressional Christian allies Caucus," a bipartisn group of 14 members formed to work with Israel-first Christian leaders on Israeli security. It was founded by Reps. Dave Weldon(R-Fla.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). The caucus met Feb. 14 with members of the Israeli Knesset and representatives from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. They discussed Israeli security, which transdates into attacking Iran for the benefit of Israel and multinational oil companies.
Israel wants to know about Iranian influence in the Middle East which has grown since the United States eliminated two enemies, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, in Afghanistan. The official policy of Israel and its supporters in the United States is to sow confusion and infighting among Arabs and Persians in the middle East so that it can establish control over the entire region, including the invaluable oil deposits. The neo-conservatives who control U.S. policy are using the powerful U.S. military to facilitate this.
American Free Press readers learned of this impending
disaster months ago through the weekly column of Paul Craig Roberts.
But his work is being forced into the mainstream. Syndicate columnist
Georgie Anne Geyer says frankly that the neo-cons "are now
pushing us into war with Iran."
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The Chinese are now eyeing expanded access to the St. Lawrence Seaway, which permits access to U.S. and Canadian inland ports on the Great Lakes, from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake superior. This report follows up on previous articles by AFP reporters, who detailed China's plans to take control of trade routes servicing the United States - a disturbing proposition considering the unprecedented growth of the communist country in the past years.
The seaway, with its connecting links of smaller canals and passages to the five Great Lakes, provides access to cities in U.S. northern states and Canadian provinces stretching nearly halfway across the North American continent, including such major cities as Toronto, Montreal, Buffalo, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago.
The seaway was first used on April 25, 1959, at a ceremony presided over by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II. At that time, the seaway was considered the largest engineering feat of its kind, including the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal.
Now, the seaway is badly in need of modernization, with channel depths and limited lock sizes restriction its use by many larger ocean-going ships. Proposals to expand and improve it have been pending since the 1960s but have been rejected as being too costly. The delays due to costs provided an opening for the Chinese to become involved in its operations.
Already, the Chinese have gained control of the Panama Canal and have approached the Egyptians about getting control of the Suez Canal.
Currently, the seaway is maintained by a conglomeration of U.S. and Canadian governmental and commercial entities. However, a "friendship agreement" has been signed by the Chinese, which culminated in a seek-long binational trade meeting in Shanghai which involved officials from throughout the Great Lakes St. Lawrence seaway system.
According to a press release put out by the parties involved, "The agreement aims to establish a cooperative partnership between U.S. and Canadian ports in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System and the Port of Shanghai. The forms of cooperation will include discussion for expanding marine transportation and trade, communications on ways to improve port management and economic development, exchanges of information and materials to improve inland waterway navigation and vessel standardization, and discussions focusing on the construction of the inland waterway and transportation system. The agreement takes effect immediately."
A highlight of the signing ceremony was a dinner hosted by the Seaway and which was attended by various Chinese officials, including executives of the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), a commercial entity with ties to the Chinese military. COSCO is also linked to the Hong Kong-based Hutchinson-Whampoa Company, which now maintains control over operations of the Panama Canal and has port facilities at both ends of that vital waterway.
COSCO has shipped missile technology and biological warfare components to countries such as North Korea, and its container ships have served as carriers for smuggling operations around the world. In 1996, U.S. Customs agents confiscated more than 2,000 AK-47 rifles aboard COSCO ships that were bound for California street gangs.
Members of Congress, inclusing Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) Who represents the area of northern New York adjacent to the seaway, have written the White House in the past, warning that two Chinese military officers were quoted in a Beijing newspaper saying Panama would be an ideal launching pas for a "no-limits" war against the United States.
The two officers have written a book, Unrestricted War,
in which they outline different options on how to attack the United
States. Those options, the congressmen warned, range from terrorism
and biological warfare to drug trafficking, environmental degradation
and computer hacking.
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This news article is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced here,
but it can be read on the Internet at: http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070228_lost.htm
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The rash of prosecutions of U.S. Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement by Justice Department attorneys, along with Mexico's interference in enforcement of U.S. Immigration laws and border security, will be the focus of upcoming congressional hearings in Washington in the next several weeks.
American Free Press has learned from the office of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, that the subcommittee chairman, Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), has approved hearings to investigate interference from Mexican officials into border enforcement and irregularities in prosecutions of U.S. Border Patrol officers by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for the Western District of Texas.
The subcommittee, according to Rohrabacher spokesperson Tara Stetmayer, will be looking into irregularities in Sutton's prosecution of Border Patrol agents for supposed violations of their official duties and for his dealings with Mexican consular officials, who have been influencing the prosecutions, much of which has been highlighted in recent issues of American Free Press.
In addition, in its investigation of the border situation, AFP has discovered other targeted prosecutions by Sutton and his subordinates.
They include a massive cover-up involving an out-of control, murderous government informant in a drug trafficking case under investigation by his office. All of this was known by Sutton, who turned a blind eye to the killings.
Sutton, probably the most powerful of all of the country's U.S. attorneys, has close ties to President George W. Bush, dating back for decades. Sutton oversees 260 employees including 115 assistant U.S. attorneys in a district that is composed of 93,000 square miles and extends along 660 miles of border with Mexico.
Sutton gained considerable power as chairman of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee (AGAC), which plays a significant role in determining policies and programs of the Department of Justice and in carrying out the national goals set by the president and the attorney general. Sutton also serves on the Border and Immigration Law Enforcement Subcommittee of the AGAC.
As one critic of Sutton aptly noted, "George and Johnny are virtually connected at the hip."
From 1995 to 2000, when Bush was governor of Texas, Sutton was the criminal justice policy coordinator, advising the governor on all criminal justice issues in the areas of criminal law, prison capacity and management, parole and criminal trial procedures and initiatives.
And just before his appointment as a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas on Nov. 30, 2001, Sutton was the associate deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice in Washington and was a policy coordinator for the Bush transition team assigned to the Department of Justice.
JAILING AGENTS
Most recently, Sutton has made the national news for his prosecution
of two U.S. Border Patrol agents. Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean
are collectively serving 22 years in federal prison for shooting
and wounding a Mexican drug smuggler after catching him sneaking
marijuana and cocaine into the United States. Ramos shot the man
and wounded him while he was fleeing across the Rio Grande River
into Mexico after the agent said he saw
the man aim what appeared to be a gun at him.
Ramos was sent to the federal correctional center in Yazoo City, Miss., where numerous illegal alien criminals are confined. Ramos was put in the general population area of the prison. He was attacked and savagely beaten in early February by inmates, some of whom were reportedly illegal aliens.
Bush has ignored appeals to pardon Ramos and Compean from more than a hundred members of Congress. Sutton used the testimony of the drug smuggler to prosecute the two Border Patrol agents. The drug runner was given immunity and is now suing the Border Patrol for $5 million, claiming they violated his civil rights.
American Free Press has turned up other cases where Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement officials have been charged with crimes while performing their duties protecting the border from illegal aliens and drug traffickers.
Currently Border Patrol Agent David Sipes is trying to get his job back after he was first convicted of using excessive force and causing bodily injury of a "transporter" of illegal aliens. He had struck a man in the head with his flashlight.
Sipes was convicted after a six-day trial. However, the ruling was recently reversed after it was revealed that the prosecution had withheld evidence. According to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, it was also determined that the prosecution had presented evidence "that was not true."
Rohrabacher and others looking into the prosecutions of Border Patrol agents say they have documentation that Mexican consular officials played a key role in the cases.
Take the case of Edwards County, Texas, Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, who was found guilty in another Sutton-prosecuted case.
Last December Hernandez was charged with shooting a woman and, according to the indictment, deprived her "of a right protected and secured by the Constitution of the United States."
What actually happened was that Hernandez had pursued a vehicle that had failed to stop for a stop sign. When the deputy pulled the car over and got out to approach it, he noticed that there were several people hiding inside.
Only the driver could be seen through the window. The rest of the people were hiding on the floor or in the back of the SUV. He immediately suspected the driver was smuggling illegal aliens.
But before he could confront the vehicle, the driver sped away, attempting to run the deputy down in the process. Hernandez drew his pistol and fired four shots at the car, shooting out the rear tire. The vehicle then skidded to a halt, and the occupants got out and ran in all directions.
When Hernandez got to the car, there was one woman left lying on the floor in the rear cargo area. A bullet had grazed her lip. Hernandez's conviction is currently being appealed as he sits in a city lockup in Del Rio, Texas.
Border Patrol agent Gary Brugman became a target of a Sutton prosecution while working a shift in the area of Eagle Pass, Texas, when 10-12 illegal aliens were spotted crossing through an orchard. They started running when Border Patrol officers approached them. After a brief chase, they were caught and ordered to sit down, but two were just squatting on one knee and were reported to have been making movements in the direction of Brugman.
Brugman kicked the leg of one of the illegal aliens and forced him off balance and to the ground. Six weeks later, Brugman played a key role in the apprehension of four drug smugglers. One of the smugglers reportedly resisted arrest and fought the Border patrolman. Brugman struck him in the face to subdue him.
The man was eventually turned over to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and was convicted on four felony counts. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison. The story does not end there, however. A short time later, Brugman was called into his watch commander's office and was relieved of his service weapon. He was told he was under investigation. For 14 months, the situation remained in limbo, with Brugman believing he was under investigation for striking the drug smuggler.
It turns out Brugman was indicted for violating the civil rights of and using excessive force against the illegal alien he had forced to the ground earlier.
However, the case of the drug smuggler was not forgotten in Brugman's trial, as Brugman relates:
"The first thing that Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Bauman did, under the direction of Johnny Sutton, along with Department of Justice Trial Attorney Brent Alan Gray, was ask that the incident involving the narcotics smuggler . . . be introduced as evidence. I objected due to the fact that he was a convicted drug smuggler, whom I had arrested. . . .[I was the primary reason he was already serving time in the first place."
The context didn't matter to the Justice Department lawyers, however. The fact that Brugman had struck the drug smuggler was used to insinuate that he was prone to using excessive force.
During a break in the proceedings, Brugman went to the restroom, where he encountered Justice Attorney Gray. Brugman said he asked Gray, "‘Why are you doing this to me?' And Gray said that ‘It's not a matter of if you're going to prison, it's a matter of how long you're going to prison for. I have a $50 million budget to make sure you're going.'"
Brugman remained out of jail as his case was being appealed. But on April 7, 2003, a team of U.S. marshals kicked in his door and carted him away, after pushing his 72-year-old mother onto a bed. It would be two years before he would be a free man again.
Brugman, like agent Ramos, spent time in the Yazoo City correctional facility, where, he said, he had to make a vest out of newspaper and tape in order to protect himself.
"Every very morning I would wake up and ask myself if I was really there," said Brugman. "I still have a hard time accepting what happened. It's extremely hard to find a time and place to cry when you're a grown man in prison."
It is the contention of many congressmen that the prosecution of the Border Patrol agents and the sheriff deputy was conducted in close cooperation with the Mexican consulate, the depth of that cooperation being the object of the upcoming congressional subcommittee hearings.
Rohrabacher is not the only person seeking a congressional investigation of Sutton's activities. On Feb. 24, 2004, Sandy Gonzalez, the special agent in charge of the DEA office in El Paso, Texas, wrote a letter to his counterpart at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE), John Gaudioso, outlining his outrage over what has come to be known as the "House of Death" episode, in which Sutton played a key role.
In 2000, agents from ICE recruited Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, known as "Lalo," to work as an informant for ICE as part of its investigation into a Mexican drug cartel that operated close to the Texas border. They paid "Lalo" more than $220,000 to work as a spy for them. His cartel bosses ordered him to murder a Mexican lawyer, which he did while wearing a U.S. law enforcement wire.
After the murder, the ICE agents sought permission to continue using "Lalo" as their informant. Permission was granted by high-level Justice Department officials in the Texas office run by Sutton and in Washington.
According to one reliable account, "the information went up the chain of command, eventually reaching Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Malcolm. It passed through the office of Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for Western Texas, a close associate of George W. Bush."
Permission was given to continue with "Lalo," who over the course of the next six months participated in the murders of 13 different people, including a Mexican living legally in the United States. He was snatched from his home in El Paso, driven across the border to Mexico, and was murdered along with two other people. It turned out that the men who had been kidnapped and murdered, were the wrong people, in a case of mistaken identity. The murders were committed across the border from El Paso in a house in Ciudad Juarez, and the bodies were buried in the yard there.
In his letter to the ICE agent in charge, DEA Agent Gonzalez stated:
"I am writing to express to you my frustration and outrage at the mishandling of [this] investigation that has resulted in unnecessary loss of life and endangered the lives of special agents of DEA and their immediate families. There is no excuse for the events that culminated on the evening of January 14 . . . and I have no choice but to hold you responsible."
As a result of the letter, Gonzalez was told that Sutton was "extremely upset." Gonzalez was then sent a letter by his DEA bosses in Washington, which said that if he quietly retired he would be given a "positive" reference for future employment. If he refused, his superiors would not be so nice.
Gonzalez did resign, and then he initiated a lawsuit as well as a continuing appeal for a congressional investigation into the murders of the innocent people.
These actions taken against the Border Patrol and local police have sent a strong message to U.S. law enforcement, demoralizing those who carry out the law along the border with Mexico.
A spokesman for Rohrabacher described the morale of U.S. officers on the border as "horrible," indicating that Sutton has put out the word that Border Patrol agents are not to involve themselves in drug enforcement.
Andy Ramierez, who heads the Friends of the Border Patrol, told AFP that the border situation is out of control and that many U.S. officials on the supervisory level are "on the take" from the Mexican drug cartels. No one seems to know how high this corruption goes.
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In a decision issued Feb. 27, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati has unanimously upheld a lower court's judgment stripping historian and pacifist Ernst Zundel of his right to be heard on a petition for writ of habeas corpus which was filed when Zundel was first arrested by U.S. authorities in February 2003.
The court held that the controversial German publisher had effectively bargained away his right to appear before a court because he last entered the United States under the Visa Waiver Pilot Program (VWPP) in May 2000. The court of appeals ignored Zundel's arguments based on the U.S. Constitution and rejected his argument based on the expiration of the VWPP April 30, 2000.
Zundel has asserted that, because the VWPP had sunset by the time of his May 2000 entry, the attorney general and INS could not have permitted him entry as a "visa waiver" alien in May 2000, and were not entitled to enforce the agreement that "visa waiver" candidates have to enter into as a condition for not having to obtain a visa. Zundel was in a routine waiting period for U.S. permanent residence through his U.S. citizen wife, Ingrid, at the time of his arrest.
"Once again, Ernst Zundel has been betrayed by a federal judiciary which, in its rush to judgment, has tread roughshod on the Constitution and the letter and intent of the law in order to achieve a politically correct result," said Zundel's attorney, Bruce Leichty.
There is no precedent for denying an individual of Zundel's immigration status a hearing on a habeas petition, said Leichty, who noted that the courts have routinely extended habeas rights even to illegal immigrants.
Recent appellate decisions have focused on whether enemy combatants held outside the United States have the right to habeas proceedings, but Zundel was never labeled as an enemy combatant or terrorist—despite ultimately being declared a "national security" risk by Canadian authorities after his summary removal from the United States.
"The law in this area is well established," said Leichty, "and a different panel of the Sixth Circuit recognized in an earlier decision that immigrants like Zundel can obtain habeas hearings even after they are deported if they face a 20-year bar like the one imposed on Mr. Zundel. But this panel was not willing to apply the law.
"At the time of his arrest, Ernst Zundel was a target of several countries based on his controversial historical views about ‘the Holocaust,' and even though he was protected by the First Amendment in the United States, those protections have proved meaningless without judges willing to uphold them," notes Leichty.
If the decision is allowed to stand, Zundel would be banned from reentering the United States until 2023. He is currently 67 years old.
Just weeks before the Sixth Circuit decision, he was convicted in a German courtroom of "inciting racial hatred" because of his Holocaust revisionist views. Zundel asserted that he is a pacifist who is neither anti-Semitic nor racist but that he is simply a champion of his German people, and that he has the right to express different views about what happened during the World War II, including what happened to Jews.
Zundel will seek a rehearing from different judges at the Sixth Circuit based on the unconstitutional suspension of his habeas rights and on known conflicts of interest of at least two members of the panel, says Leichty. One of the judges gave a prohibited campaign contribution to the Bush reelection campaign after being appointed to the federal bench and another has a daughter working in Tennessee for the U.S. attorney's office, which handled the opposition against Zundel's petition in a Knoxville federal court.
Zundel's attorney says he discovered both facts after the case was argued in January 2007. The judges adopted almost to the letter the argument of the Justice Department that sought to assert a distinction between the expiration of a "Visa Waiver Pilot Program period" and the expiration in April 2000 of the attorney general's visa waiver authority itself—a distinction which was farcical, says Leichty.
The February appellate decision was issued "per curiam," meaning that none of the judges acknowledged writing the decision, and it was designated "not for publication." There have been recent attempts to limit the extent to which federal judges can issue unpublished decisions because it is believed that judges are less accountable to the law if they know their decisions will not be widely read and inspected, notes Leichty.
Only if Zundel was found to have entered the United States under the VWPP could the authorities have even thought about arresting him without a hearing, says Leichty. Typically, persons alleged to be deportable get hearings in front of immigration judges. Moreover, Leichty adds, even as to visa waiver entrants there are no published federal court decisions in which a court has ever denied jurisdiction over a habeas petition filed by someone who overstayed his visitor status.
Leichty states that at the time of Zundel's arrest, INS had a policy of not taking deportation action against immigrants awaiting permanent residence through U.S. citizen spouses, even if they had overstayed visa waivers. Zundel had been given work authorization in the United States and permission to leave and reenter. Because a Knoxville judge and now the Sixth Circuit have claimed not to have jurisdiction, however, he has never been able to present those arguments. When Zundel challenges the latest decision, that will mean that he will have legal challenges pending in three countries. He has appealed his German "thought crime" conviction, and is also hoping to benefit from a recent Canadian Supreme Court decision which held that the "security certificate" proceedings under which he was detained in Canada are unconstitutional, because they permit secret evidence.
After a Canadian court declared him to be a national security risk, the Canadian government spent over $100,000 on a charter plane to fly Zundel to Germany, where he was promptly arrested on criminal speech charges for views expressed in Canada and the United States.
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A federal appeals court has struck down Washington's 30-year-old gun ban, which could ultimately result in Second amendment rights being protected throughout the nation because the supreme court is likely to be the final arbiter.
"The Second Amendment would be an inexplicable aberration if it were not read to protect individual rights as well," the 58-page ruling said, referring to claims that the reference to "militia" means only police and the military are protected.
The 2-1 decision by a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned a 2004 lower-court decision against six residents who sued to keep guns for their protection.
"The district insists that the phrase ‘keep and bear arms' should be read as purely military language, and thus indicative of a civic, rather than private, guarantee," ruled the judges. "The term "bear arms' is obviously susceptible to a military construction. But it is not accurate to construe it exclusively so."
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said he is "outraged" at the decision. It "marks the first time in the history of the United States that a federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second amendment grounds," Fenty said.
"We're happy to see there's a crack in the door for Washington to join the rest of the country in full constitutional freedom," said Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. The NRA will be "watching the appeals process," he said.
The ruling is a "tremendous victory for te civil rights of all Americans,' said Alan Gura, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
"The case has implications far beyond the Second amendment's
right to keep and bear arms," Gura said. "Had the city
prevailed, no individual right would be secure from governmental
claims that it is no longer practical or beneficial, or from arguments
that ‘the people' protected in the Bill of Rights are merely
a euphemism for government."
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On March 9, a federal appeals court in Washington issued a ruling that hopefully will result in the restoration of second amendment rights in the nation's capital. It appears the Court rejected the District of Columbia's nonsensical argument that the Second amendment confers only a "collective right," something gun control advocates have asserted for years.
Of course we should not have too much faith in our federal courts to protect gun rights, considering they routinely rubber stamp egregious violations of the First, Fourth, and fifth amendments, and allow Congress to legislate wildy outside the bounds of its enumerated powers. Furthermore, the D.C. case will be appealed to the Supreme court with no guarantees. But it is very important nonetheless for a federal court in the land to recognize that gun rights adhere to the American people, not to government-sanctioned groups. Rights, by definition, are individual. "Group rights" is an oxymoron.
Can anyone seriously contend that the founders, who had just expelled their British rulers mostly by use of light arms, did not want the individual farmer, blacksmith, or merchant to be armed? Those individuals would have been killed or imprisoned by the king's soldiers if they had relied on a federal armed force to protect them.
In the 1700s, militias were local groups made up of ordinary citizens. They were not under federal control. As a practical matter, many of them were barely under the control of colonial or state authorities. When the Second Amendment speaks of a "well-regulated militia," it means local groups of individuals operating to protect their own families, homes, and communities. They regulated themselves because it was necessary and in their own interest to do so.
The founders themselves wrote in The Federalist Papers about the need for individuals to be armed. In fact, James Madison argued in Federalist Paper 46 that common citizens should be armed to guard against the threat posed by the newly proposed standing federal army.
Today, gun control makes people demonstrably less safe - as any honest examination of criminal statistics reveals. In his book More Guns, Less Crime, scholar John Lott demolishes the myth that gun control reduces crime. On the contrary, Lott shows that cities with strict gun control - like Washington - experience higher rates of murder and violent crime. It is no coincidence that violent crime flourishes in the nation's capital, where the individual's right to defend himself has been most severely curtailed.
Understand that residents of D.C. can be convicted of a felony and put in prison simply for having a gun in their home, even if they live in a very dangerous neighborhood. The D.C. gun ban is no joke, and the legal challenges to the ban are not simply academic exercises. People's lives and safety are at stake.
Gun control historically serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants
from Hitler to Mao to stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens,
for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control.
Our founders, haveing just expelled the British army, knew that
the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right.
This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun
control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.
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Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is pushing legislation t scare you into silence, Rev. Ted Pike warns. Waxman's executive branch Reform Act (H.R. 984) would "erode citizens' involvement in the democratic process shattering free engagement from the grassroots level," he warns at truthtellers.org
Waxman's bill labels every American a "citizen lobbyist" whose comments to the federal government must be recorded and made public. Thus, only congressmen could speak freely.
Federal employees would have to keep records of any conversations that might be construed as an attempt to influence national policy - "even conversations during work, at a bar afterwards, or with their spouses in bed," Pike warns. Any conversation between a citizen and a congressman is an attempt to "influence policy" or obtain a favor.
"This sinister legislation sabotages free exchange between
citizens and those who govern, helping create a ‘Big Brother'
police state," says Pike. "The government will know
everything abut us, while we will be afraid to raise our heads
and comment for fear of even greater federal control over our
lives."
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If you had been at the Washington convention Center in the nation's capital over the weekend of March 10-12, you might have been reminded of a pig auction at an old-fashioned down-home country fair somewhere in middle America. However, the "pigs" for sale, in this case, were politicians eager to slop at the trough of some mighty powerful "farmers and ranchers" - some 6,00 of the most politically influential people in America, perhaps even on the face of the entire planet.
The "auction," you see, was the annual conclave of the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC), the well-funded and energetic official front-line lobby for Israel. And the politicians - Democrats and Republicans alike - were on hand, eagerly pushing one another aside like swine rushing to their swill even as the AIPAC luminaries were deciding which "swine" to put their money on.
Vice President Dick Cheney was perhaps the "star" of the event, but two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) And Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), made a big splash by hosting what were described as "dueling receptions" for AIPAC's heavy hitters. It really need not be noted that both Obama and Clinton declared themselves just absolutely devoted to Israel and awfully upset about Iran.
It would be a sawte of ink and print space to repeat their shamelessly sycophantic rhetoric, which is standard for every American politician who bows and scrapes before AIPAC and other illegal pro-Israel lobby groups such as the anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress, to name just a few.
In the meantime, sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who hopes to be the GOP's presidential candidate in 2008, also whipped up a reception for the AIPAC bigwigs.
He, too, preaches enthusiastic support for Israel and is perhaps best remembered for once having pondered legislation to set up a formal federal tribunal to investigate incidents on college campuses where professors and student wer charged with making criticisms of Israel, something Brownback and pro-Israel organizations deem to be "anti-Semitism."*
The fight between Obama and Clinton for the support of pro-Israel elements - particularly in the realm of campaign contributions - is heating up, with Mrs. Clinton recently having faced the embarrassment of several pro-Israel heavy hitters in the Hollywood motion picture community, notably producer David Geffen, who have lent their support to Obama.
Actually this is no surprise. Contrary to widespread misperception, even among some otherwise informed observers, pro-Israel big money elements (even in New York, which Clinton represents in the Senate) have never been enamored of the former first lady, especially after she once declared herself in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state.
In fact, Forward, New York's prestigious Jewish community newspaper, revealed during Clinton's first run for the Senate in 2000 that many traditional Jewish sources of democratic campaign money known to be major supporters of New York's Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer were actually backing Clinton's Republican challenger, then-Rep. Rick Lazio. In the end, Clinton barely carried a majority of the Jewish vote itself, even as democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was winning 80% of the Jewish vote statewide in New York.
At the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, Clinton went out of her way to assure the bug money folds that she is definitely in Israel's camp.
Presidential politics aside, every year an overwhelming majority of the members of the Hose of Representatives and the Senate rush to AIPAC's confab. Even if those politicians aren't featured as speakers on the pocium, AIPAC makes a big show of herding the captive politicians together and introducing them one by one to the assembly, aloud and ostentatious way of demonstrating AIPAC's clout.
Yes, make no mistake about it: These members of congress are eager to rub elbows with - and beg for campaign contributions from - the notably well-heeled AIPAC members and supporters who, along with other like-minded American advocates for Israel, are historically known to be those who are the chief sources of political campaign money on American soil.
As far back as 1974, writing in his book, Jews in American Politics, highly regarded Washington Post reporter Staphen Isaacs revealed that, even then, well over 50% of the Republican Party's campaign money on a national level came from Jewish sources, somewhat less than the estimated 70% to 80% of Jewish funding for the Democratic Party. In recent years, however, top pro-Israel fundraisers have increasingly lent their support to Republicans.
This year at the AIPAC gathering, many attendees from the Jewish community loudly proclaimed that they were "against the Iraq war and that an unstable Iraq was a danger to the Middle east and particularly to little Israel. This is disingenuous. As far back as Jan 28, 1991, the eminently pro-Israel Wall Street Journal was reporting that AIPAC was a prime mover behind the first war against Iraq. And it's no secret that Israel's Mossad advocates were leading proponents of the more recent assault on Iraq in the spring of 2003.
In addition, it is no secret among Military tacticians and geopolitical analysts worldwide that Israel has long nurtured a not-so-secret policy of encouraging chaos and dissent inside nearby Arab and Muslim states; the theory being that an enemy divided within is the best kind of enemy to have.
*The full story of Brownback's proposed with-hunt is told in
a chapter in Michael collins Piper's 375-page book, The Judas
Goats, available at $25 per copy from First amendment Books.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/FAB/html/fab.html
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