Salmon on the Seine

Salmon return to Paris - they must be in Seine
Atlantic salmon
Charles Bremner in Paris


It is not quite a return to the days when dolphins and even whales were seen making their way upstream to Paris, but the Seine is welcoming back at least one long-lost visitor: the Atlantic salmon.

A fish that in the Middle Ages abounded in the river is returning in healthy numbers after efforts to clean the polluted waters.

“There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine. This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined,” said Bernard Breton, the secretary-general of the National Federation for Fishing. “I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark.”

It may be a while, however, before le pavé de saumon Notre Dame becomes a local delicacy. Salmon may be allowed to frolic in the Seine but levels of pesticide, lead and bacteria remain too high for people to risk it.
Times Archive 1897 Can the Thames again become a salmon river?

Probably the last salmon taken in the Thames was that caught near Monkey Island in 1823 and sent to the King at Windsor


Even overheated patrons of Paris Plage, the summer beach on the Right Bank, are warned to stay clear of the waters in which Louis XIV used to take his mistress for moonlight dips.

Those who ignore the rules are taken to hospital for checks once they have been hauled out by police.

Not so long ago, the Seine was connected to the famed sewers that the writer Victor Hugo called “a world of slime without human form”.

Efforts have been made in the past 30 years to end the fouling of the Seine with organic pollution and chemical run-off from industry and agriculture. Most species of fish had disappeared from the city’s waters by the 1920s.

Today the surface is cleaned regularly and there is a system that pumps oxygen into fish-friendly stretches when floodwaters run into the river.

Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris, called the return of the Atlantic salmon a triumph for the Seine purification effort after the INRA, the leading state research institute, issued its study on the fish.

A statement on the mayor’s website said: “Without any project to reintroduce them we see that several species of migratory fish, including salmon, have come back up the Seine. This is a sign of a clear improvement in the quality of water in the river.”

The gradual return of about 30 species of fish — the Atlantic salmon made a tentative appearance a few years ago — has encouraged an urban angling boom. At weekends the Île Saint Louis, opposite Notre Dame, and the Left Bank by the Eiffel Tower are thick with anglers casting for bream, carp, pike, perch, catfish and sea trout.

“They do not eat them,” Stephanie Hofer, of the fishing federation, told The Times. “They throw them back — but that’s what 80 per cent of the anglers in France do.”

Central Paris hosted the world angling championship in 2001. No salmon were caught and few have since been hooked by the registered 7,000 fishermen in Paris.

The return of the salmon was spectacularly illustrated last October when a 15½lb (7kg) fish was caught in Suresnes, on the western downstream edge of the capital.

From genetic samples and age measurements, the INRA reported that all the Atlantic salmon were found to have swum up, or back up, the Seine via the estuary to the Channel in Le Havre after months or years in the sea. Some were born in French rivers, others farther afield.

The researchers said that the return was significant because the Atlantic salmon were bioindicators — creatures whose choice of habitat indicate a healthy environment.

Practical Guide to Free-Energy

Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices
by Patrick J. Kelly
The purpose of this web site is to provide you with an introduction to a series of devices which have been shown to have very interesting properties and some are (incorrectly) described as 'perpetual motion' machines.

What's that you say - perpetual motion is impossible? My, you're a difficult one to please. The electrons in the molecules of rock formations have been orbiting steadily for millions of years without stopping - at what point will you agree that they are in perpetual motion?

source

So, why don't electrons run out of energy and just slow down to a standstill? Quantum Mechanics has shown that the universe is a seething cauldron of energy with particles popping into existence and then dropping out again. Knowing that E = mC2, we can see that a tremendous amount of energy is needed to create any form of matter. Scientists remark that if we could tap even a small part of that energy, then we would have free energy for our lifetime.

The Law of Conservation of Energy is undoubtedly correct when it shows that more energy cannot be taken out of any system than is put into that system. However, that does not mean that we cannot get more energy out of a system than we put into it. A crude example is a solar panel in sunlight. We get electrical power out of the panel but we do not put the sunlight into the panel - the sunlight arrives on its own. This example is simple as we can see the sunlight reaching the solar panel.

If, instead of the solar panel, we had a device which absorbs some of the energy which Quantum Mechanics observes and gives out, say, electrical power, would that be so different? Most people say "yes! - it is impossible!" but this reaction is based on the fact that we cannot see this sea of energy. Should we say that a TV set cannot possibly work because we cannot see a television transmission signal?

Many people have produced devices and ideas for tapping this energy. The energy is often called "Zero-Point Energy" because it is the energy which remains when a system has its temperature lowered to absolute zero. This presentation is introductory information on what has already been achieved in this field: devices which output more power than they require to run. This looks as if they contradict the Law of Conservation of Energy, but they don't, and you can see this when you take the zero-point energy field into account.

The material on this web site describes many different devices, with diagrams, photographs, explanations, pointers to web sites, etc. As some of the devices need an understanding of electronic circuitry, a simple, step-by-step instruction course in electronics is also provided in Chapter 12. This can take someone with no previous knowledge of electronics, to the level where they can read, understand, design and build the type of circuits used with these devices.

This is a very interesting field and the topic is quite absorbing once you get past the "it has to be impossible" attitude. We were once told that it would be impossible to cycle at more than 15 mph as the wind pressure would prevent the cyclist from breathing. Do you want to stay with that type of 'scientific' expert? Have some fun - discover the facts.

There are many, many interesting devices and ideas already on the web. This site does not mention them all by any means. What it does, is take some of what are in my opinion, the most promising and interesting items, group them by category, and attempt to describe them clearly and without too many technical terms. If you are not familiar with electronics, then some items may be difficult to understand. In that case, I suggest that you start with Chapter 12 and go through it in order, moving at whatever speed suits you, before examining the other sections. I hope you enjoy what you read.



Note: When you have finished reading any of the sections shown below, use the 'Back' button of your browser
to return to this page. You will need a recent version of the Adobe 'Acrobat' reader to display these sections.
It can be downloaded free from: Adobe


THE INFORMATION PRESENTED ON THIS WEB SITE IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. SHOULD YOU DECIDE TO PERFORM EXPERIMENTS OR CONSTRUCT ANY DEVICE, YOU DO SO WHOLLY ON YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY -- NEITHER THE COMPANY HOSTING THIS WEB SITE, NOR THE SITE DESIGNER ARE IN ANY WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS OR ANY RESULTING LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY DESCRIPTION, SHOULD ANY OCCUR AS A RESULT OF WHAT YOU DO.


The main information on this web site has been gathered together into a standard book format. You can download the main set of information, including the patents, as an eBook, using this link Book Release 11.0. The document contains over 2,000 pages and has a file size of about 26 Mb which means that it will take some time to download. It is also possible to use a background download from fileFactory. Alternatively, you can pick individual chapters as you wish. May I suggest that you store anything you download on your local drive as web sites do not remain in place for ever.

Chapter 1 Magnet Power: Introduction, Contents, Overview, COP, the Wang magnet motor, Bedini magnet motor, Ecklin-Brown magnetic generator, the Phi Transformer, Howard Johnson magnet motor, Carousel magnet motor, Robert Tracy magnet motor, Ben Teal electromagnetic motor, Jines magnet motor, Invention Intelligence magnet motor, Stephen Kundel's magnet motor, Charles Flynn's magnet motor, the Asymmetrical magnet motor, Lines of Magnetic Force, Steele Braden's magnet motor, Emil Hartman's magnetic track, Howard Johnson's magnetic track, James Roney's shielded stator magnets, the shielded twin-rotor idea, Don Kelly's magnet motor patent and the Perendev Magnet Motor. size 1.1 Mb, 7 Jun 2009 HTML

Chapter 2 Moving Pulsed Systems: The Adams motor, Harold Aspden's modifications of the Adams motor, Raymond Kromrey's No-drag Generator, Teruo Kawai's motor, self-powered 800 watt generator, the Muller motor, the RotoVerter, Phil Wood's energy pick-up, Phil Wood's DC motor RotoVerter modification, the David Kousoulides energy pick-up, thyristor testing circuit and alternator design details from Prof. Kevin Sullivan. size 1.1 Mb, 30 Jul 2009 HTML

Chapter 3 Motionless Pulsed Systems: Graham Gunderson's Solid-state Electric Generator, Charles Flynn's magnetic power enhancement system, Floyd Sweet's VTA, Dan Davidson's acoustic generator, the Pavel Imris optical amplifier, Michael Ognyanov's self-powered power pack, the Meyer-Mace Isotopic Generator, the Colman/Seddon-Gilliespie generator, Hans Coler's passive device and Don Smith's "Resonance Energy Methods". size 440 Kb, 21 Jul 2009 HTML

Chapter 4 Gravitational Pulsed Systems: Chas Campbell's pulsed flywheel, John Bedini's pulsed flywheel, the water-jet generator, Johann Bessler's gravity wheel, the Dale Simpson gravity wheel, the Veljko Milkovic pendulum/lever system, the Dale Simpson hinged-plate system, the Murilo Luciano gravity chain and Ivan Monk's Rotary Power Unit. size 728 Kb, 17 Jan 2009 HTML

Chapter 5 Energy-Tapping Pulsed Systems: Frank Prentice's electrical power accumulator, Dave Lawton's cold electricity water-splitter cell, John Bedini's pulsed battery charger, the Tesla Switch, Dave Lawton's cold electricity lightbulb, Bob Boyce's TPU energy tapping circuit, Steven Mark's TPU, comments from Jack Durban on Steven's TPU, a Nikola Tesla patent, the Ed Gray power tube, Radiant Energy waves, Nikola Tesla's experiments, Don Smith information, the Alberto Molina-Martinez generator, Alfred Hubbard's device, Joseph Cater's device, Floyd Sweet's VTA and Collapsing Field Technology generators. size 585 Kb, 3 Jul 2009 HTML

Chapter 6 Battery-Charging Pulsed Systems: John Bedini's pulsed systems, battery information from Ronald Knight, Ron Pugh's battery charger build, a self-charging battery pulser, the fan pulse charger, the automotive pulse charger, the self-charging motor, the one-battery pulse charger and the Tesla Switch. size 535 Kb, 5 Nov 2008 HTML

Chapter 7 Aerial Systems: Nikola Tesla's system, Thomas Henry Moray's system, Moray King's circuit suggestions, Hermann Plauston's systems, Roy Meyer's device and Raymond Phillips' RF to DC aerial system. size 342 Kb, 18 Jun 2009 HTML

Chapter 8 Fuel-less Engines: The energy in air, Bob Teal's compressed air engine, Scott Robertson's thoughts on putting low-pressure air into a tank of high-pressure air, the Leroy Rogers compressed-air vehicle engine adaption, the Vortex Tube, the Eber Van Valkinberg compressed fluids engine, the Clem engine, Vortex analysis by Prof. Evert, the Josef Papp engine, the Robert Britt engine, the Michael Eskeli turbines and the water-jet generator. size 1.5 Mb, 4 Nov 2008 HTML

Chapter 9 Passive Systems: Hans Coler's device, Thomas Trawoeger's pyramid, Karel Drbal's pyramid, James Brock's pyramids, Verne Cameron's pyramid transmission technique, the Pancake coil, Peter Grandic's patent, the Joe Cell, Bill Williams' design and recent analytical advances and co-ax cable electrets. size 584 Kb, 22 May 2009 HTML

Chapter 10 Vehicle Systems: The HydroStar and HydroGen designs, running an engine on water alone, Hydroxy Boosters, the Smack's Booster design plans, electrolyser design, the Hotsabi Booster construction plans, the 7-cell Isolated Cell booster design, the Series Cell design, Pulse Width Modulation current control, controlling heating, The DuPlex booster, dealing with the oxygen sensor, the Zach West electrolyser design, electrolyser principles, Bob Boyce's high-efficiency electrolyser system, how to wind Bob's toroid, running with high voltage, water-level sensors, water supply systems, connecting to the engine, safety devices, timing details, diesel engines, dealing with 'waste' sparks, measuring gas output rates, operating from the mains, Bob Boyce's experiences, Dave Lawton's replication of Stan Meyer's Water Fuel Cell water-splitter, Dave Lawton's circuits and construction details, pipe-tuning details, Dr Cramton's low-power water-splitting, Tad Johnson's ultra low-power water splitting, Stan Meyer's water injection system, mpg improvement through cam timing, the Firestorm spark plug, Ted Ewert's Vortex Turbine, Water Vapour Injection systems, the Ram Implosion Wing, Fuelsavers, high mpg carburettors, Vortex fuel reformers, water as a fuel and the weird nature of water. size 2.6 Mb, 8 May 2009 HTML

Chapter 11 Other Devices: Nikola Tesla's power from air system, Dr. Harold Apsden's Electrical Power Generating Apparatus patent, Our Energy Future, Paulo and Alexandra Correa's conversion of Longitudinal Electromagnetic Waves to ordinary electricity, Prof. Constantin Meyl's scalar wave information, Nikola Tesla's MHD device, the effects of the Zero-Point Energy field, John R. R, Searle's self-powered garvitational device, construction details for Dave Lawton's gravity wave detector, the Butch Lafonte motor/generator, the Joseph Newman motor, the differences between Maxwell and Heaviside, Daniel Cook's electrical generator, Michael Eskeli's work-free heater design, Karl Schapeller's Device, Condensation-induced water hammer and William Hyde's COP=10 electrostatic power generator. size 1.2 Mb, 12 Jun 2009 HTML

Chapter 12 Electronics Tutorial: Simple descriptions of Voltage, resistors, capacitors, current flow, multimeters, transistor circuits, sensor systems, relays, diodes, transistor testing circuits, Power Supply Units, AC, DC, rectification, the SCR, the triac, the opto-isolator, LEDs, chokes, transformers, the Schmitt Trigger, solenoids, RF detection, coil impedance, the diode bridge, multivibrators, inverters, truth tables, the 7414 chip, NAND gates, latches, bistables, gating, the 4093 chip, prototype construction, the 4011, the Darlington pair, using a gate as an amplifier, the 555 chip, the 741 chip, op-amps and comparators, the 4022 chip, laying out a circuit, test equipment and how to build it, and 'the weird stuff'. size 483 Kb, 7 Jun 2009 HTML

Chapter 13 Doubtful Devices: Paul Baumann's Thestatika, Michael Faraday's Homopolar Generator (or the N-Machine), the Romag and Mini-Romag, Cold Fusion, Moller's Atomic Hydrogen Generator, Muammer Yildiz's 'Ocean Star' electrical generator, Jesse McQueen's 'Internal Energy-generating Power Source', the 'D18' Nitro Cell, the HydroStar and HydroGen systems, Hydrogen from Aluminium, Francois Cornish's system, Ultrasonic Water-splitting, Tom Bearden's Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, Dave Lawton's assymetric MEG and Valeri Ivanov's Motionless Generator. size 689 Kb, 21 Jun 2009 HTML

Chapter 14 Renewable-Energy Devices: Efficient solid-fuel burners, Stan Meyer's hydroxy gas burner system, the Eugene Frenette heater, the Eugene Perkins heater, the multi-disc heater, the Peter Davey heater, the simple home-build windmill design from Dan Bartmann and Dan Fink, Frank Herbert's high-efficiency windmill, the 'Power Plant for Caravans' from Claude Mead and William Holmes, the easy-build Solar Funnel cooker, water and milk pasteurisation, the Solar Funnel as a Cooler, the Solar Puddle, the 'Easy-Lid Cooker', drinking water systems, solar sills, Elmer Grimes' high-volume drinking water from air, the Chalice Courneya water from air system, Toribio Bellocq's well-pumping system, Richard Dickinson's well-pumping system, Arthur Bentley's well-pumping system, the self-powered Ram Pump, wave power systems, solar icemaking and Einstein's refrigeration through heating. size 1.3 Mb, 29 Oct 2008 HTML

Chapter 15 The Time Available: The time limits set by coming world events, the Astronomical situation, the New World Order people's economic attack, the New World Order people's biological attack, a Home-Made Remedy for the biological attack and the present status of the flu "epidemic", the Japanese company Panasonic has instructed all it's foreign company executives to sell up and move back to Japan no later than September 2009 - find out why. size 688 Kb, 7 Aug 2009 HTML

Mexico: The Genome and the Genocide

The Mexican Genome
by JOHN ROSS

When last May 11th, at the nadir of this spring's swine flu panic, President Felipe Calderon strode to the flag-bedecked podium in southern Mexico City and, under the strictest health protocols, lowered his "tapaboca" (surgical mask) to punch the button that would load "The Mexican Genome" onto the world's computers, the only thing that seemed to be missing was a military band to strike up the National Anthem.

The human genome is the ordering of genes in a determined set of chromosomes that contain all the genetic and hereditary memory of the human organism, i.e. the history of our DNA. Although distinct genomes have been decoded for racial groupings - European Caucasians, Asians, and Africans -, science has never before been assigned to decipher the genome of a national state or nation which is, by definition, a political entity, and many here questioned the existence of a "Mexican Genome."

Despite the nay sayers, Dr. Gerardo Jimenez, director of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) whose scientists did the gene mapping insists that the 89 deviations from genetic patterns found in other races, justifies the national character of the "Mexican Genome."

Other scientists scoffed at the INMEGEN project. Science writer Julio Munoz Rubio wondered if Calderon's genome would prompt a genetic explanation for such peculiarly Mexican propensities as "mariachis, tequila, wife-beating, gay-bashing, and racist attitudes towards indigenous peoples." Would a gene be discovered for electoral fraud and the corruption of public officials asked one letter-writer to La Jornada, the left daily, pointing out that, according to a government audit, half a million Yanqui dollars appears to have gone missing during the construction of the INMEGEN headquarters in the south of the city?

Calderon's political opponents also questioned the timing of the announcement of the discovery of the Mexican Genome during a health crisis that had been tainted by his administration's overreaction to the swine flu pandemic after a six-week delay in alerting the public to the contagion.

The president countered his critics by lauding the cost benefits that the decoding of the Mexican Genome would mean for public health care. Cost effective preventative medicines and treatments could now be delivered to confront the nation's Number One killers, Diabetes, and Obesity. So-called "personalized" drugs would now be designed to deal with the health problems of the Mexican people. "Super Positive News!" read the crawl on the Univision report about the "Mexican Genome."

But which Mexicans will be the beneficiaries of this cutting edge science? Mexico is, indeed, many nations. The vast bulk of the population - 80 million out of 103 million - are of mixed European and indigenous stock (65% of the genetic material identified in the Mexican Genome is listed as "Amerindian".) On the other hand, Mexico is home to 57 distinct ethnic groups or "peoples" (15 to 20 million, a fifth of all Mexicans) whose genetic make-up is distinct from the Mestizo population.

The INMEGEN's Jimenez insists that indigenous peoples were not slighted in the compilation of the Mexican Genome - although he is not sure if samples of DNA were collected from all 57 indigenous peoples.
During a forum held this July at the National College to celebrate the publication of the Mexican Genome, Dr. Jimenez explained that INMEGEN scientists had rounded up samples from anonymous Indian donors - it is unclear if the donors knew what they were being swabbed for. Skeptical academics in the audience also wondered if drugs or treatments designed for the mestizo population would be accessible to Indian communities? Dr. Jimenez did not respond to questions about the sale or leasing of the Mexican Genome to transnational pharmaceutical giants.

"The Indians will contribute the prime material - their DNA - to enrich the pharmaceutical industry," observes Silvia Ribiero, a biotech writer for La Jornada. "As usual, we will be excluded from the benefits," adds Genaro Dominguez, founder of the National Coordinating Council of the Indian Peoples (CNPI), arguing that the Mexican Genome is a form of ethnocide.

The posting of the Mexican Genome raises critical ethical questions, Diego Valades, former Mexican attorney general and now dean at the National Autonomous University (UNAM)'s law faculty, posited at the July 2nd forum. Will indigenous peoples, the first Mexicans, be regarded as "unMexican" because their genetic sequencing differs from the mestizo norm? Could the compilation of a separate indigenous genome be used to imply the inferiority of Indian Mexicans? The commercial implications of the Mexican Genome are troubling to Valades - the genome is commercial property and can be bought and sold by service providers. Could insurance companies, for example, up premiums for policyholders with bad genes?

The manipulation of the genetic mapping of the indigenous peoples of Mexico is only one front on which Big Science aids and abets ethnic cleansing. The contamination of native maize by transgenic corn and the forced privatization of Indian lands also place scientists in the service of ethnocide.

For eight millenniums, indigenous Mexicans developed and cultivated 300 families of native corn, each with properties designed for the soils and climates in which they were grown. Indian culture and civilization are indelibly entwined with corn cultivation - indeed the Mayans are "people of the corn", literally made from maiz. "No hay pais sin maiz!" ("We have no country without corn!) is the battle cry of Indian campesino movements.

The penetration of transgenic corn into Mexico is the result of massive importation of biotech grains under provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) Some like Zapotec Indian leader Aldo Gonzalez consider the contamination of native corns by transgenic strains developed by U.S. biotech titans like Monsanto tantamount to genocide.

The discovery that genetically modified corn had been introduced into the rural Oaxaca outback in 2001 alarmed Zapotec farmers in the Sierra Norte, sometimes known as the Sierra of Benito Juarez because it is the birthplace of Mexico's only Indian president. Three years ago, at a forum in the state capital that brought together scientists from the three NAFTA nations to evaluate the impacts of the penetration of transgenic corn on the native crop, Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Union of Social Organizations of the Juarez Sierra (UOSJS), shook a drying cornstalk at the distinguished panel and accused its member of nothing less than genocide: "the seed of the Zapotec people is our corn and when you kill our corn, you kill us."

Recent non-government studies indicate that the incidence of transgenic corn has spread to maiz-growing regions in at least five non-contiguous states. The surge of transgenic corn threatens to overwhelm and homogenize native species and obliterate millions of years of genetic history.

Now the Sierra of Juarez is under siege from an unlikely coalition of U.S. scientists and the U.S. military. It seems hardly to be a coincidence that University of Kansas geographers working on a grant supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense have spent the past three years mapping the "human terrain" of Zapotec corn growers in the Oaxacan sierra. The "Mexico Indigena" (sic) Project was launched in 2006 by geographers Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson and is underwritten by the Foreign Military Study Office (FMSO) based at Fort Leavenworth Kansas, the home of the United States War College. The FMSO is administrated by Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Demarest, a graduate of the School of the Americas and author of such pertinent texts as "Mapping Counterinsurgency."

Technology and data processing for the Mexico Indigena Project is provided by Radiance Technologies, a Pentagon contractor that specializes in information gathering technology. Information gathered by Mexico Indigena will be made available to U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs & Border Protection branch.

Ever since the rising of the Mayan Indian Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas on the very night that NAFTA kicked in in January 1994 and the election of Aymara Indian leader Evo Morales as the first indigenous president of majority Indian Bolivia a decade later, the continent's 60,000,000 Indian peoples have become a source of alarm for Washington strategists. The National Intelligence Council document "Global Trends 2000-2015" warned that Indian uprising would be a cause of instability south of the border in the coming years. The NIC's successor document "Global Trends 2020: Mapping the Global Future" is even more explicit: "indigenous movements are redrawing the regional map."

In Oaxaca, the Mexico Indigena Project is mapping the NIC's global future.

Curiously, Mexico Indigena was launched in 2006 in two Sierra Norte villages, the same year as Oaxaca was torn asunder by the uprising of a broad coalition of grassroots organizations determined to remove the state's despotic governor - the Union of Social Organizations of the Juarez Sierra was a prominent member of the Assembly of the Oaxacan Popular Peoples Organization or APPO. In the Mexico Indigena prospectus posted on line, Project director Herlihy boasts that his work "will illuminate important but neglected facets of these movements."

The Oaxaca isthmus, which the Juarez Sierra borders, is the narrowest neck of Mexico separating the Pacific and Atlantic oceans by a scant 225 kilometers of mountainous terrain and has been considered a strategic passage for global trade between the east and the west for centuries - the isthmus has been an object of U.S. interest ever since Benito Juarez was Mexico's president in the mid-19th century.

According to Aldo Gonzalez, Mexico Indigena geographers have violated their project's stated ethical guidelines by gathering information on the human terrain of the Juarez Sierra by deception. Villagers testify that Herlihy and Dobson never informed the elders' councils of the two villages being mapped that Mexico Indigena was funded by the U.S. military.

Nor did the two University of Kansas scientists divulge to their Zapotec informants that in 2006 they met with none other than General David Petraeus, now in charge of the Central Command and charged with running the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Petraeus, the author of the U.S. Marine corps counter-insurgency manual, complimented the Mexico Indigena Project's goals: "understanding the cultural terrain is a force multiplier (for the U.S. military.")

But what the Mexico Indigena scientists did tell the Zapotec elders was that the mapping information elicited from their communities would be shared with the PROCEDE program, the Mexican Secretary of Agriculture's agency that certifies the holdings of the nation's 27,000 "ejidos" (villages organized as rural production units) and encourages farmers to privatize their plots. Under neo-liberal revisions of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, ejido farmers can now sell or rent their land or enter into "association" with transnational capital. Although Indian lands are held collectively, Gonzalez reports that PROCEDE agents try to convince Indian farmers to apply for ejido status so their land can be privatized. PROCEDE, in effect, converts Indian land into real estate.

By compiling a plot-by-plot map of the human terrain of the Juarez Sierra, the Mexico Indigena Project is committing "geo-piracy", the Zapotec leader warns. The U.S. scientists locate and map natural resources and facilitate biological theft - bio-piracy, if you will. "The Mexico Indigena scientists are looting Zapotec knowledge of land and territories," Gonzalez insists.

Privatizing Indian land is as much a facet of ethnocide as destroying native corn or submerging indigenous genes in a mestizo genome. Although science has learned to mask its homicidal intentions since the days when Lord Jeffrey Amherst distributed typhoid-impregnated blankets to Ottawa Indian rebels under Chief Pontiac and General George Custer decimated the Sioux, corporate scientists continue to serve the interests of Indian genocide.

John Ross' "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption In Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books this December. "Iraqigirl", the diary of an Iraqi teenager growing up under U.S. occupation, developed and edited by Ross, is now available from Haymarket Books. John Ross has just been declared cancer-free and will soon be returning to Mexico. He can be reached at: johnross@igc.org

The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis
by SAUL LANDAU

I thought of Cousin Harry when I read about the July 21 bust of five New York and New Jersey orthodox rabbis along with scores of New Jersey officials. Like the clean shaven, dapper and secular Harry, these long bearded and black garbed religious leaders and a ring of politicians, had become professional scammers. They engaged in massive money-laundering and illegal organ trading operations in addition to selling fake Gucci and Prada handbags and anything else. The Sopranos-style network operated with Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis washing tens of millions of dollars through charities which they controlled.

The arrested included mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, two state legislators, the Jersey City Council president and its deputy mayor. The rabbis forwarded some of their ill gotten gains to Israeli yeshivas linked to the super-duper Orthodox Shas Party and its uber Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Federal officials also discovered that some of the money laundered by these supposed pillars of Jewish law and ethics came from the sale of human kidneys by a Brooklyn orthodox Jew named Levi Izhak Rosenbaum.

This kick back to politicians, illegal organ sale rackets and rabbis laundering illicit dough -- supposedly to support their ultra orthodox kin in Israel – offered new twists in Talmudic logic. In this tangled narrative the leading money laundering suspect, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Haim’s good buddy in Israel, Rabbi David Yosef, is also Shas jefe Ovadia Yosef’s son. They belonged to an advanced Talmudic studies center in Jerusalem headed by Ovadia Yosef’s family. Ben-Haim got rich Jews in New York to bankroll the institute. Because of the scandal, Haaretz reporter Zvi Zrahiya concludes, “these donations are expected to cease.” He also reports that un-named banks were also apparently involved in the scandal. (Haaretz, 26/07/2009) Shocking!

As a young boy, I accompanied my grandfather to interminable Saturday services at his East Bronx Orthodox synagogue. After hours of muttering in Hebrew, the men in prayer shawls and skull caps retreated to a table laden with sponge and honey cakes alongside shot glasses of whiskey. As they partook, one of my grandfather’s prayer colleagues would inevitably offer me a shot glass and watch, with the others, as a seven year old imitated the pious elders. I was dizzy for hours as the elders giggled “The little pisher is drunk.”

Grandpa also introduced me to some long-bearded, extremely pious looking rabbis, clad in traditional black with skull caps or black hats. Just a few years later, in the early 1950s, some of these authorities on Jewish law and ethics found their names in the New York newspapers as accused Harlem slum lords who refused to supply heat in the winter, make basic repairs or call the exterminator in the rat and roach-laden tenements they owned.

Indeed, periodically such scandals erupt around the hypocrisy of the fundamentalist preachers of the Hebrew faith, as my wife’s Methodist grandmother from Texas referred to them. But the family “oyed” and “veyed” when Cousin Harry got nabbed in a sleazy money fraud in Florida and went to prison. “How could a good Jewish boy [as if!] do such a terrible thing?”

After my grandfather died and I recognized one of the slum owners as a rabbi friend of my grandfather, I asked my grandmother about how such a religious man could have refused to supply heat to poor black families and not called exterminators to oust the rats and roaches. She shrugged indifferently.

“They’re not our people,” my grandmother said in Yiddish.

In October 1964, a story again erupted. Jewish demonstrators picketed the Manhattan offices of the New York Board of Rabbis to protest against Jewish slumlords. The mostly young – teens and twenties – protestors claimed that a published list of New York slumlords contained a large proportion of Jewish names and they were petitioning “the rabbis of New York to seek out the slum owners in their congregations and to threaten them with denunciation from the pulpit and even excommunication if they fail to repair and maintain their properties.” More than 250 Jewish landlords owned more than 500 slum buildings in Manhattan alone.

The demonstrators tried to meet with Head Rabbi Harold Gordon, but he refused. The picketers handed out leaflets charging that “most of 600 buildings whose tenants have complained to housing ‘clinics’ and ‘tenants’ councils on the lower East Side have Jewish landlords” and that “74 of the 80 Lower East Side buildings hit by rent strikes have Jewish landlords.”

A Conservative rabbi told the Village Voice reporter – refusing to give his name or congregation – the picket line was “more exotic than effective.” Asked what the rabbis have done, he said: “They did what they could.” When pressed on what, specifically, the rabbis have done, he replied: “Specifically, I don’t know.” (Stephanie Gervis Harrington, Village Voice, May 7, 1964)

Forty five years later, another scandal involving rabbis and dubious business practices brought this comment from one of my cousins. “At least they don’t test little boys for hemorrhoids and hernias like the Catholic priests do.”

Over the centuries, rabbis, like priests and Protestant ministers galore, have engaged in sexual hanky panky as well as old fashioned theft. Often, they try to cover their wrongdoings with pretenses of religious zealotry – keeping those cash-starved yeshivas open in Jerusalem or bankrolling other charities. But the invisible shield of ethics did not protect these supposed holy men from engaging in flagrant crime.

A New Jersey State Attorney said “it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the action. Corruption was widespread and pervasive.” The politicians sold their services to the rabbis who “cloaked their extensive criminal activity behind a facade of rectitude.”

The laundered money came from Israel, via Swiss banks and then to New Jersey. Israeli gonifs would buy kidneys from “vulnerable people” in Israel for $10,000, and then get them shipped to their rabbinical associates who would sell them in the United States for $160,000, he said. (AP, July 25, 2009)

Like Cousin Harry, Brooklyn’s Levy Izhak Rosenbaum considered himself a “matchmaker.” In a secretly recorded conversation, Rosenbaum boasted about matching kidney donors with recipients. “I bring a guy what I believe, he’s suitable for your uncle.” Rosenbaum, 58, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, resembles Tony Soprano who worked in “waste management.” Rosenbaum claimed he was in “construction.” Criminals who lead traditional lives!

Unlike the traditional shotchen (Yiddish for marriage broker), Rosenbaum promoted illegal kidney transplants, not marriages, as he explained to a government informant and an FBI agent posing as the informant’s secretary. The Agent claimed he had an uncle on dialysis, on a transplant list at a Philadelphia hospital. But shortage of kidneys might cost him his life. 4,540 people died in the U.S. last year while waiting for a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Thus, the kidney black market!

In 2002, UC Berkeley’s Nancy Scheper-Hughes alerted the FBI that Rosenbaum was a broker for an international kidney trafficking gang. He used Moldovan villagers as donors. He promised them jobs in the United States, then coerced them into “donating” their kidneys to recipients who posed as relatives and threatened them with a gun if they resisted. Rosenbaum would show his real gun and then make his fingers into a gun and point one at the reluctant donor’s head. (Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology. July 27, 2009, http://www.somatosphere.net/)

Some kidney transplants using Rosenbaum’s donors were performed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Secret FBI recordings of Rosenbaum had him saying he had to spread money around liberally to Israeli doctors, visa preparers and those who cared for the organ donors in this country. “One of the reasons it’s so expensive is because you have to shmear (pay others) all the time,” he was quoted as saying. (AP, July 25, 2009)

Like Cousin Harry, Rosenbaum bragged: “So far, I’ve never had a failure.”

Harry went to synagogue on high holidays and prayed. Rosenbaum went more often. The rabbis prayed daily. Nowhere in the sacred texts did any of them find the quote: “Religion is about getting rich, no matter how, and you can use God to cover your path.” Or, “it’s OK to commit crimes to help Israeli yeshivas."




Saul Landau is vice chair of the Institute for Policy Studies board of trustees. His most recent book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD (CounterPunch / AK Press).

As a Matter of Interest to Canadians

In Our Interest
by C. L. Cook

It occurred to me last year around this time, at the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the proclamation making official the theft of the territory now known as the Province of British Columbia; Canadians don't give a whit for the fate of the children, women, and men blown to pieces by their military forces, the Canadian Forces, serving them in Afghanistan.

In attendance that day past along with the thousands of Victorians out to celebrate a perfect August 1st event was Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper.

As Harper ascended the podium then boos and objections to the country's involvement in Afghanistan rang from various quarters of the crowd, but the greater rabble would not be roused. Overwhelmingly they cheering the p.m.'s mouthpiece, who opined as the military flyover approached;

"It's great to live in a country where this [vociferous public dissent] is allowed,
but I think most of us here just want to have fun!"


The Crowd Goes Crazy

In fact; the murderous exploits of the military abroad are in this country worthy of praise from all quarters of the political and social spectrum (save the "radical" 60-70 percentile of citizens polled who wish Canada's military quit its fighting role in that benighted country). Both the State and concentrated corporate media eliminate almost completely counter-militarism views from newspapers, radio, television, and internet coverage, leaving the field almost entirely to the voices of Empire's promoters, and the profiteers in the near-endless war train.

That there has been no withdrawal, (actually the opposite is the case) though the percentages of opposition to the war-fighting activities of Canadians in Afghanistan has hovered in the same range from the very earliest days of the nation's engagement way back in 2001 attests to the effectiveness of message manipulation; but, it also suggests to me:


Canadians will say the right things to telephone-pollsters, but when actions are needed to end a continued injustice their famed decency goes AWOL, the masses preferring entertaining distraction to moral attentiveness.



Maintaining the Interests of the Canadian People

Protecting the usually "threatened interests" of the United States is a mainstay in American rhetoric. Transcending party affiliation or anyone's position along the political continuum, the preservation of those never defined "national interests" is sacrosanct; a duty and a given for any aspiring to gain and keep power there. It is until recently an alien concept in most of the rest of the world; the belief that ones interests supercede and render "quaint" and obsolete any and all previous treaties, agreements, or precepts of civilized cooperation among nations being an "exception" to the rule of international law saved solely for the most powerful.

Thus the United States of America, and its duly deputized vassal nations can wage aggressive war with the flimsiest of "justifying" patinas in places like South East Asia, Central America, and the Middle East, because it serves its interests to do so. Israel too can bomb neighbouring countries and territories with impunity for the same reason Russia can obliterate the independence aspirations of Chechnya, and China can annex Tibet for their respective interests.

These exceptions are necessarily reserved to the 'Exceptionalistas' of the world, of which Canada for all its pretense to import has never been a member, (for exception see "vassals" above) but the current leader of the "New Government of Canada" recently declared his new entity entitled to the same exceptional behaviour as its Ancien Regime neighbour.


Our Interests and Our Values

Canada, if such an entity ever existed in reality, has served ever as carrier of water and hewer of enemies for empire; first England, now America. Perhaps the Afghanis, and other denizens of small nations living next to great ones will understand Canada's past and present plight?

Our historic obeisance is mostly manifest as official silence to our benefactor's wanton malefaction. Though Ottawa always answered when Empire's bugle called, never until Stephen Harper has a leader here compounded Canada's generational, side-liner cowardice in the face of obvious injustice to make of the country a free-booting, war-making avatar to Empire; in effect, a Mini Me maiming and destroying the weak and destitute in vain hope of profiting from the emperor's fleeting favour.

In comments made last week for the sending off of two more Canadian soldiers uselessly cut down in the most green days of youth, Stephen Harper made the following political statement of the nation's future intent:


"Our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of these soldiers during this difficult period [...]
The men and women of our Canadian Forces tirelessly strive to make a positive difference in this world.
Their selfless actions protect Canadians, our interests and our values."


After years of Canadian introspection, and ceaseless searching for a defining characteristic to embody the nation's soul, Harper would have us believe he has hit on our elusive commonality and the moral adhesive holding this vast and disparate land together.

Without subjecting the sobriquet of "values and interests" to definition, (the very idea calling into question his pious certitude) Stephen assures he's looking after all of our same interests and our values, while striving to stem the tide that would erode those fine, noble, and ineffable characteristics.


Counting the Dead

Whatever they may be, so far the price of "selfless action" has been: 127 Canadian soldiers, two international aide workers, and one diplomat killed. There have too been many more hundreds wounded physically and psychically.

The fate of the many thousands of natives collaterally killed, maimed, rendered orphans, and made homeless by the Canadian Forces as they "tirelessly strive to make a positive difference in this world" is neither of value nor interest to the people in whose names those misfortunes were cast.

The late and great British playwright and nag to the social conscience of that past empire, Harold Pinter put it to his countrymen and women just why actions of the successor empire and those of their own government they would never openly sanction continued with tedious regularity. He explained, in part of his brilliant acceptance speech to the Nobel committee in 2005;


"It never happened. Nothing ever happened.
Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening.
It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless . . .
while masquerading as a force for universal good.

It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."


Now the New Government of Canada and its Hypnotist-in-Chief would have a nation believe not that which was clearly happening wasn't, or that it was of no interest; he would have you accept what is happening is happening, and it's all happening for you.


http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4464-in-our-interest.html

Connections: Mercenary Firm Dyncorp and Swine Flu

Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

NaturalNews - To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. "They're good for you!" say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what's in those vaccines. There's a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them.

Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line. (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5...)

As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."

Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this ("incubating" the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there's another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.

This, of course, brings up the obvious question: Who is Dyncorp? And why do they hold a patent on live attenuated vaccine production using African Green Monkeys?

What you probably didn't want to know about Dyncorp
DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...) and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...), Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.

DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:

(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6...)

(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines

Government collusion?

One of the key inventors in these patents now held by DynCorp was Dr. Robert H. Purcell. Who is Dr. Robert Purcell? He's one of the co-chiefs of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operating under the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government. (http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/labs/abou...)


source

A Day at the Beach in Gaza

The Agony of Abandoned Gaza
by Antony Loewenstein

Israel's recent war against Gaza has been condemned by virtually every human rights group in the world. An Israeli NGO of combat soldiers called Breaking the Silence released a report in July, based on the testimony of veterans of the Gaza campaign, that found excessive violence and the use of human shields during the battle. Noam Chayut, co-founder of the group, told me recently in Tel Aviv that many veterans were shocked by the Israeli army's behavior but still believed in the morality of the war itself.

Gaza creates contradictions in us all. I went there in July to investigate everything from war damage and the Western-led siege to the rule of Hamas and freedom of speech. Hamas control of Gaza is often seen as an impediment to peace. Militancy, extremism, terrorism and deadly rockets create an image of fundamentalism and irrationality.

Islamization is undoubtedly growing in the Strip. Government ministers are urging women to wear loose-fitting, modest clothing and asking shopkeepers to remove female mannequins from their windows.

During my visit, I saw a warning given to adults and children not to wear T-shirts or sweaters with certain "inflammatory" English words and phrases, such as "Madonna," "pork," "kiss me," "I am ready for sexual affairs" and "vixen."

Journalist Fares Akram, whose father was murdered by the Israelis during the January war, told me that he feared the people of Gaza were too exhausted and preoccupied with daily life to worry about the creeping implementation of Sharia law. Akram showed me posters being distributed by Hamas that depicted the dangers of smoking, the Internet, drugs and television. None of these suggestions are legally enforceable, but they may soon be. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told the assembled at Friday prayers in Khan Yunis in July that Islamic "virtue" was important in any society.

But this is only one picture of Gaza, a territory under siege for years by Israel and the Western powers. I was expecting a threatening place, not least because I'm Jewish; instead, I found humility, generosity and desperation.

The effects of the December/January campaign were pervasive. Some parts of Jabaliya, in the north of Gaza, looked like an elephant had trampled the ground beneath its feet. In other areas, some buildings had been pulverized by Israeli missiles while others were left standing. "The Israelis work randomly, like us," my fixer, Ahmed,
joked. In one area I visited, the Israelis had ordered Palestinians to evacuate, so very few lives were lost. Some locals told me they thought the onslaught was in retaliation for a previous invasion, when militants killed some Israeli army troops.

Abdullah Alathamma, 27, lost his home in the bombardment. Eleven days into it, with the Israeli military shelling and shooting at houses in the area, his family decided to flee. He said he saw the Israelis open fire on a woman walking to get water. His brother was arrested after the war and hasn't been seen since; Abdullah doesn't know where he is being held, or for what alleged crime. "Israel are merciless killers," he said, spitting.

Abdullah's father, Majed, is balding, with wisps of gray hair and a deeply lined face. He was angry as he showed me photos of his six crushed yellow Mercedes taxis, the lifeblood of his business before the war. He dismissively called the Israelis "Jews" and couldn't understand why they were "obsessed" with the Qassam rockets "that don't kill anybody anyway." We sat under a shady roof, mosquitoes buzzing around us, as Hamas jeeps slowly snaked their way through the rubble. Young children collected the remains of destroyed homes and placed them on donkey carts to be reused or sold.

Majed took me to his home, a twisted mangle of steel, metal and discarded toys. He stood on what was once the roof and held aloft two pieces of beautiful tile that had been part of the bathroom floor. He showed me where his family now had to cook, a grubby kitchen on sandy ground. Three sleeping children, one a baby, lay peacefully under a makeshift tent, their temporary lodgings. I was told Majed used to be a relatively wealthy man, with property worth $300,000. Today, he constantly reminded me, he has nothing. He asked for help and to tell his story.

Such stories were ubiquitous in Gaza. A territory under blockade since Hamas assumed control in a violent pre-emptive takeover in 2007, many people said they wanted to leave to visit family or friends in Egypt or beyond but were rejected with no reason given.

Some said they would refuse to leave, even if the Israelis or Egyptians granted permission. They were a proud people and seemingly took a level of perverse satisfaction in surviving in Gaza, despite the onerous conditions. The blockade would not crush their spirit.

Dr. Nafez Abu Shaban, head of the burns unit at Al-Shifa Hospital, told me that he and his colleagues struggled with the extreme nature of the burns suffered during the recent war. Nafez is a stoic man, but he could not help but be personally affected by the conflict.

"Every night I slept under the stairs of my house with my family to keep them safe; there was nowhere safe to go," he said. "This was not a war; it was a holocaust."

He had to rely on foreign doctors, friends and the web, when electricity was available, to learn how to treat injuries sustained by white phosphorus. One day when Israel threatened to (again) bomb the hospital, he gathered the nurses, doctors and other staff to tell them he was staying but they were free to go home. Very few walked out the door.

The Fatah/Hamas split -- a brutal little war exacerbated by US-trained Fatah troops committing human rights abuses against the democratically elected Hamas government -- is regularly discussed.

The vast majority of people I talked to wanted the moderates in both parties to reconcile. Division is death in Palestine and simply makes it easier for Israel and Washington to claim there is no partner for peace.

Dr. Haider Eid, an academic and activist for the one-state solution in Israel-Palestine, despaired that Hamas was already talking about accepting the parameters of a two-state equation, like the previously failed Fatah endeavors. "Hamas has to choose between resistance and leadership," he said, "so this is now a moment of truth for the movement." Dr. Ahmed Yousef, Hamas deputy foreign minister and former
adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, was the epitome of moderation when we met. He talked about accepting a state within the 1967 borders, though he warned Israel that "resistance" would continue if colonization in the occupied territories continued, which he acknowledged was likely.

The sight of Hamas security forces on the streets was surprisingly unthreatening. Virtually every street or major intersection saw armed men in uniforms (seized, along with their cars, when Hamas overthrew Fatah in 2007). My fixer, a Fatah man, cursed the Hamas men whenever we drove past, and we heard almost daily of deadly gun battles between the two sides. It was a division that militants I interviewed said was unlikely to be fully resolved any time soon.

Haniyeh doesn't give media interviews anymore and has rarely been seen in public since the war, though I was able to attend the Friday prayers in Khan Yunis that he was leading. The security around him was immense--large, well-armed men with beards and steely eyes. The audience lapped up Haniyeh's presence. Like Barack Obama, Haniyeh is an orator of striking proportions. His words rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm. (I was later told he spoke of accepting a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders if it included East Jerusalem as the capital and the right of the refugees to return.)

The mosque's fans blew on the masses below as they listened intently. Men of all ages rocked from side to side as Haniyeh delivered his speech.

As Haniyeh left, there was a surge behind me, and I was almost swept under a sea of people. The security forces were clearing the area for the leader, pushing and slapping anybody in their way. One man cried out Arabic words of support, and the crowd shouted its response in unison. We were pushed and pulled as Haniyeh, after briefly stopping and raising his hands to acknowledge the salute, exited the building.

A few hours later Haniyeh attended one of Hamas' first public rallies since January. An outdoor sports ground in Khan Yunis was the setting. Hundreds of armed Hamas security forces surrounded the venue, positioning themselves on adjacent rooftops and surveying the crowd, mostly men in traditional thobes. Hamas flags waved from every flagpole, and posters of assassinated Hamas leaders Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi hung behind the raised stage. The large speakers blared music, warming up the crowd. When Haniyeh appeared, he mounted the platform, waved to his followers, sat down and began to speak. I thought how easy it would have been for Israel to bomb the event and take out many levels of the Hamas leadership at once. My fixer told me that Fatah was far more eager to do that than the Israelis.

Gaza is unlike anywhere on earth. I regularly sat near the beach overlooking the ocean, sipping a cool fruit drink. The stylishly appointed bar at the hotel where I was staying could easily have been at some fancy resort elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It was designed for a tourist industry that no longer comes and an elite that now thrives on property ownership and the tunnel-smuggling industry. Just outside the hotel, however, stand an ever-increasing number of beggars amid rubbish-strewn streets, not far from the destroyed parliament building.

Many Gazans think the world, including the Arab states, has forgotten them. Egypt's role in maintaining the siege was constantly damned by the people I talked to. Israeli behavior, while terrible and universally condemned, was better understood than that of their Arab neighbor. People expressed fear of Iran despite its public support for Hamas. The Islamic Republic's strict clerical rule simply does not appeal to Gazans, who need more than rhetorical support. The world community has yet to deliver.


Antony Loewenstein, a Sydney-based journalist, is the author of My Israel Question (Melbourne University Publishing) and The Blogging Revolution, (Melbourne University Publishing).

Copyright © 2009 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global

Happy Jobbing

Working for Happiness
Alex Frankel
Some workplaces are happier than others. Journalist Alex Frankel tried to discover why.
Image of the author working
The author during his stint at UPS

I started at UPS on Monday. I drove to the San Francisco UPS headquarters, a block-wide fortress of freight. A staffer from human resources took me to get a uniform and pointed me toward the locker room. I changed out of my street clothes and into the brown outfit. I had the locker room to myself; after buttoning up my shirt I took a second to stare into the mirror. As I changed into this new brown uniform, I was changing my attitude. I was becoming one of them.

For a decade I had worked as a journalist, covering business and the rise of branding. But by that fateful morning, I'd decided to leave my desk behind and dive deeper into a subject that had long intrigued me: the role of corporate cultures in large companies. In what became a two-year adventure through the world of commerce, I served as a driver's assistant at UPS, poured coffee at a busy Starbucks cafe, folded garments at Gap, rented cars for Enterprise, and sold iPods at an Apple Store.

Though my mission was primarily to study modern workplace cultures—reporting that turned into my 2007 book, Punching In—I came away with an appreciation for the roots and benefits of on-the-job happiness. Companies like the ones where I worked are not necessarily aiming to create staffs of happy people. They seek hard workers that believe in what they do, and if this makes people happy, that's a secondary benefit. Happy people, in other words, don't necessarily get the job done.

And yet some workplaces are definitely happier than others. Employees at Gap, I discovered, couldn't wait to leave; UPS drivers, on the other hand, often enjoyed their work and were even able to discover a larger meaning in what they did. Just how companies create positive work environments was something that revealed itself to me slowly. I learned that it had a lot to do with how employers choose employees, and how applicants decide just where to apply.

Here are my three secrets to a happy workplace.

One: Go for flow

"Dude," said one of my colleagues at Gap. "This place messes with time. It slows down, it crawls, it moves backward." He was right: At Gap (we were told to never call it "the" Gap) my chief duty was to fold clothing that had been unfolded by customers, a Sisyphean task. Sisyphus, you might recall, was condemned by the gods to keep rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity. And that's just what working at Gap felt like: an eternity. This was also true of working at Enterprise rental car and Starbucks, where all of our movements were measured and monetized. Perceptions of time, I found, are closely linked to the employees' feeling of freedom: The more constrained the environment, the slower things moved, and the less happy employees were.

In contrast, work at the Apple Store was set up so you were focused on accomplishing goals, not filling up time. At Apple, most product layout was left to one "visual merchandiser" who was passionate about keeping the store neat, leaving others like me to interact with customers, share information, and be ourselves instead of following a script. I was judged about what I did instead of how I did it. By having long leashes, Apple employees could forget about the hours and get into the "flow" state, so well articulated by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in which one is "completely involved in an activity for its own sake."

Anthropologist Edward Hall originally described the way in which time is viewed in the workplace. Most hourly jobs treat time as monochronic—"an infinitely divisible linear ribbon that can be divided into appointments and other compartments, but within which only one thing can be done at a time." But at Apple, the polychronic view of time prevailed, so that we could do several things simultaneously, manage our own tasks, and feel pride in accomplishing things, as opposed to just waiting out the hours. This certainly made me happier, and it seemed to work for the other employees as well.

Two: Foster authenticity

Apple helped work hours fly by in part by encouraging employees to be themselves. At Apple I got to hang out, share my knowledge, learn, and stay current with cutting-edge technology. In each discussion with a customer, I continued to feel more at ease, and interactions with my colleagues even came to feel natural. Employees at Starbucks were told to "be authentic," but Apple gave us a more honest variation on this theme. "Be who you are," a recorded voice told me in training. "You know the feeling you get from people who just say what they have to say."

This notion of authenticity is key. If workers feel like they are a part of a plastic, inauthentic culture, they may feel less "real" themselves. UPS has a workplace culture with 100-year-old history and traditions. Through the camaraderie among drivers, the day-to-day company rituals, and the leeway I was given on the road, UPS came to feel like a place where I belonged. And at UPS I gained a strong sense that I was a part of the thumping, beating heart of capitalism, connecting sellers to buyers and family members to each other. It felt much more critical than any other job I held. Its culture felt authentic to me, in a way that even Apple did not.

To function, a culture has to be organic and move of its own accord. People have to believe without being persuaded to do so. Through all my jobs, once the corporate minders pulled something out and identified it as a part of the culture, it immediately lost its authenticity for me. Evolution of the culture is crucial, and to evolve means to change. As a new worker, I had to feel that I could not only join the culture but also add to it.

Authenticity occurs, to some degree, in the mind of the employee. UPS and its culture worked for me. Starbucks did not; I viewed the training I received as simply teaching me how to act. But I remember talking to a fellow barista named Steve after a busy shift: He loved the hard work and the flow state it engendered. Unlike me, he viewed himself as having gained the skills of a craftsman. All of these workplace cultures are fabricated, so what feels authentic to one employee might feel inauthentic to another. Selection, by applicants and employers, is the best way to create happy workers.

Three: Find the right match

It may seem obvious, but it took me almost two years as a front-line employee to understand that not every prospective employee (even if they are all "good" and "hard-working" people) will excel equally in each workplace. We all have different needs and wants in a job, and we will succeed by being matched well to the place where we work. The smarter companies knew this and worked hard to identify the right talent before hiring.

The Container Store, a chain of some 30 retail outlets, didn't hire me. The company, which hires just six percent of applicants, made the right call—I would have been a poor match for the job. Unlike me, many of the other applicants in our group interview had the requisite passion for organizing and selling storage systems.

Thus, asking employees about their passions, and gauging the quality and truthfulness of their responses, is critical. The first thing that companies can do to maximize the happiness of their employees is to pick those employees wisely, by choosing people who will flourish in their particular corporate culture.

Similarly, prospective employees should try to identify those places in which they will flourish most. Applicants for the Container Store are fanatical about organization and about sharing their organizational skills with others. Apple isolates true enthusiasts and true believers in Apple products, of which there are many. People who self-select for UPS are extroverted, athletic, and restless, which are perfect traits for UPS employees—but perhaps not so good for Starbucks baristas, who spend much of the day standing in one tight place.

To attract employees, you need to offer them something that goes beyond money: a brand, a calling, a community. This force is larger than a person; it is a force that feels worth allying with and merging into. Some companies mold their corporate cultures to appeal to the population they hope to recruit and employ.

In the best situations, the applicant hears a calling to the company long before applying; there is something out there that makes the place seem like the right fit. In the best case scenario, there is a moment when you are working at that place when you feel alive, when you are no longer questioning and thinking about life on the outside, life before the job, life after the job. In that moment, you are the job. It's a rare, elusive feeling, I discovered. But it's the secret to happiness at work.
Alex Frankel is the author of Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, and Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business. His articles have appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times Magazine, and Outside.

The Genetically Modified Milk Man Rings Twice

"Government scientists from Canada evaluated the FDA’s approval of rbGH and concluded that it was a dangerous facade. The drug was banned in Canada, as well as Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But it was approved in the US while Michael Taylor was in charge. His drugged milk might have caused a significant rise in US cancer rates"

YOU'RE APPOINTING WHO? PLEASE OBAMA, SAY IT'S NOT SO!


By Jeffrey Smith
July 29, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here’s the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply—the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods—secret documents now reveal that the experts were VERY concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “Serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.

Dangerous Food Safety Lies

When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to “different risks” than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent.

This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them—companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.

GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses in the US nearly doubled—from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visitsdoubled between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.

In January of this year, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, one of the world’s top biologists, told me that after reviewing 600 scientific journals, he concluded that the GM foods in the US are largely responsible for the increase in many serious diseases.

In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicineconcluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation

In July, a report by eight international experts determined that the flimsy and superficial evaluations of GMOs by both regulators and GM companies “systematically overlook the side effects” and significantly underestimate “the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others.”

The Fox Guarding the Chickens

If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor. He had been Monsanto’s attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto’s Vice President and chief lobbyist.

This month Michael Taylor became the senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. He is now America’s food safety czar. What have we done?

The Milk Man Cometh

While Taylor was at the FDA in the early 90’s, he also oversaw the policy regarding Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH/rbST)—injected into cows to increase milk supply.

The milk from injected cows has more pus, more antibiotics, more bovine growth hormone, and most importantly, more insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). IGF-1 is a huge risk factor for common cancers and its high levels in this drugged milk is why so many medical organizations and hospitals have taken stands against rbGH. A former Monsanto scientist told me that when three of his Monsanto colleagues evaluated rbGH safety and discovered the elevated IGF-1 levels, even they refused to drink any more milk—unless it was organic and therefore untreated.

Government scientists from Canada evaluated the FDA’s approval of rbGH and concluded that it was a dangerous facade. The drug was banned in Canada, as well as Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But it was approved in the US while Michael Taylor was in charge. His drugged milk might have caused a significant rise in US cancer rates. Additionalpublished evidence also implicates rbGH in the high rate of fraternal twins in the US.

Taylor also determined that milk from injected cows did not require any special labeling. And as a gift to his future employer Monsanto, he wrote a white paper suggesting that if companies ever had the audacity to label their products as not using rbGH, they should also include a disclaimer stating that according to the FDA, there is no difference between milk from treated and untreated cows.

Taylor’s disclaimer was also a lie. Monsanto’s own studies and FDA scientists officially acknowledged differences in the drugged milk. No matter. Monsanto used Taylor’s white paper as the basis to successfully sue dairies that labeled their products as rbGH-free.

Will Monsanto’s Wolff Also Guard the Chickens?

As consumers learned that rbGH was dangerous, they refused to buy the milk. To keep their customers, a tidal wave of companies has publicly committed to not use the drug and to label their products as such. Monsanto tried unsuccessfully to convince the FDA and FTC to make it illegal for dairies to make rbGH-free claims, so they went to their special friend in Pennsylvania—Dennis Wolff. As state Secretary of Agriculture, Wolff unilaterally declared that labeling products rbGH-free was illegal, and that all such labels must be removed from shelves statewide. This would, of course, eliminate the label from all national brands, as they couldn’t afford to create separate packaging for just one state.

Fortunately, consumer demand forced Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell to step in and stop Wolff’s madness. But Rendell allowed Wolff to take a compromised position that now requires rbGH-free claims to also be accompanied by Taylor’s FDA disclaimer on the package.

President Obama is considering Dennis Wolff for the top food safety post at the USDA. Yikes!

Rumor has it that the reason why Pennsylvania’s governor is supporting Wolff’s appointment is to get him out of the state—after he “screwed up so badly” with the rbGH decision. Oh great, governor. Thanks.

Ohio Governor Gets Taylor-itus

Ohio not only followed Pennsylvania’s lead by requiring Taylor’s FDA disclaimer on packaging, they went a step further. They declared that dairies must place that disclaimer on the same panel where rbGH-free claims are made, and even dictated the font size. This would force national brands to re-design their labels and may ultimately dissuade them from making rbGH-free claims at all. The Organic Trade Association and the International Dairy Foods Association filed a lawsuit against Ohio. Although they lost the first court battle, upon appeal, the judge ordered a mediation session that takes place today (July 23, 2009). Thousands of Ohio citizens have flooded Governor Strickland’s office with urgent requests to withdraw the states anti-consumer labeling requirements.

Perhaps the governor has an ulterior motive for pushing his new rules. If he goes ahead with his labeling plans, he might end up with a top appointment in the Obama administration.

To hear what America is saying about GMOs and to add your voice, go to our new Facebook group.

© 2009 Jeffrey Smith - All Rights Reserved
http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey126.htm

My Forgotten Man 1933

Not Green, Not Smart, Not Needed

UTILITIES WATCHDOG BITES PRIVATE POWER

Not Green, Not Smart, Not Needed

BURNABY — Yesterday the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) released an order which unequivocally curtails the gold rush towards private power in BC.


The BCUC concluded that the Long Term Acquisition Plan (LTAP) submitted by BC Hydro was “not in the public interest”, disrupting the provincial governments’ ongoing political interference of our public utility.


The BCUC order is a vindication of the comprehensive analysis submitted by COPE 378 on the LTAP and Clean Power Call. The BCUC agrees with COPE 378’s research and submissions: the government cannot exaggerate the need for power by downgrading the Burrard Thermal plant, shortchanging conservation efforts and forcing the
purchase of private power, with British Columbians and ratepayers taking the risk.


Flowing from their decision that the LTAP was fundamentally flawed, the BCUC again agreed with COPE 378 that BC Hydro does not need the power asked for in the Clean Call. The Clean Call would have burdened BC Hydro with 3000 Gigawatts of surplus power - an enormous amount of unneeded electricity. The Commission’s decision means BC Hydro cannot use an LTAP decision to justify expenditures and expensive contracts with private power and then try and recover the costs through taxpayers.


The BCUC decision ensures each energy purchase contract and expenditure will come under more scrutiny to demonstrate if the project is in the best interest of British Columbians.


The BCUC also found the conservation efforts in the LTAP lacking. The Commission called the Demand Side Management provisions “deficient” and said that programs will decay.

“We are thrilled that the BCUC has recognized what we’ve been saying all along,” said COPE 378 President Andy Ross, “this is power we don’t need at a price we can’t afford.”

Over night markets quickly reacted to the BCUC's decision to reject the government's rush into private power and stocks plummeted. Hardest hit is Plutonic Power, the corporation developing a massive system of hydro projects in the Bute and Toba Inlets.

Yet unknown is if the powerful private power lobby will convince the provincial government to overturn the BCUC’s decision, or more ominously, its mandate and autonomy. “We saw it with Alcan. The BC Liberal government could use their cabinet powers to do an end-run around the BCUC,” warned Ross. “Alternatively the government could backstop the purchase of private power under the guise of economic stimulus.”

- 30 -

Media Contact: Lori Winstanley, (778) 828-4039

Gorilla Radio for July 27, 2009

This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook
Summer is perfect for more than languid reflections, lazily spun and warmly wound; it is also the time of hope and revisiting relationships. Today, two seasoned guests of Gorilla past agree to repeat. Regurgitating too is the annual celebration of colonial dominion, known colloquially as, "B.C. Day." Looking back, it was just after that I talked with author, and activist, professor Robert Jensen.

Robert Jensen is an author, media critic, and professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. His book titles include: 'Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,' 'The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege,' and 'Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity,' and his latest book, 'All My Bones Shake: Seeking a progressive path to the Prophetic Voice.' Robert Jensen in the first segment.

And; Last week, last month, last year, last ten years (nearly) Gorilla Radio has aired, Jon Elmer has brought to the show's listeners an insider's look at daily life within the siege. Stymied at Egypt's border cross with Gaza: (see here) I spoke to Jon about the situation of Gazan's caught outside the walls, with nowhere else to go. This week, unable to pass, after a three week game of plea and denial, Jon crossed into the West Bank last week. Jon Elmer raw from Palestine in the second segment.

And; as last year at this time, Victoria Street Newz publisher, CFUV Radio broadcaster, and Gorilla Radio stalwart, Janine Bandcroft is again, at this moment, in Cuba with the 20th Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba, a test to the decades-long blockade of that Caribbean island by the United States and its allies. That said: there is a real communication gap between we here and they there, witnessed where J9 and I can't communicate due to primitive or privations! (Sidney excluded). All things being equal, though; Janine should be here next week, to bring us up to speed with all the good things to do she got up to doing on her recent epic trip to Cuba and Back!

Microwave This! Pain from Above

Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky
by David Hambling

THE Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.

The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, has now called for it to be upgraded. The US air force, whose radar technology the ADS is based on, is increasing its annual funding of the system from $2 million to $10 million.

The transmitting antenna on the current system is 2 metres across, produces a single beam of similar width and is steered mechanically, making it cumbersome. At the heart of the new weapon will be a compact airborne antenna, which will be steered electronically and be capable of generating multiple beams, each of which can be aimed while on the move.

The ADS has been dogged by controversy. Jürgen Altmann, a physicist at Dortmund University in Germany, showed that the microwave beams can cause serious burns at levels not far above those required to repel people. This was verified when a US airman was hospitalised with second-degree burns during testing in April 2007.

The airborne version will not make it any less contentious. "Independent of the mode of production, with this size of antenna the beam will show variations of intensity with distance - not just a simple decrease - up to about 500 metres," says Altmann. Shooting it on the move with any accuracy will be difficult, he adds.

Dave Law, head of the technology division of the JNLWD, says the new antenna will operate at the lowest possible effective power level and will have a sophisticated automated target-tracking system.

In a recent cost-benefit analysis, the US Government Accountability Office rated the ADS worst out of eight non-lethal weapons currently in development.

The New Scientist July 23, 2009

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327185.600-microwave-weapon-will-rai
n-pain-from-the-sky.html

'threat groups' identified for B.C., Alberta oil industry

Five 'threat groups' identified for B.C., Alberta oil industry
Report sees no organized energy threat
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
July 14, 2009

CALGARY - Violent acts or blockades against northern Alberta's oil and gas industry will likely continue in the years ahead, but the disruptions are unlikely to be organized or widespread unless disparate groups come together, says a new report.

The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute report -- sponsored
by Nexen Inc. --was completed before the two most recent explosions at EnCana
facilities in northeastern B. C.

However, author and political scientist Tom Flanagan says his conclusions still
hold true. "I don't see any evidence of an organized group doing it," Flanagan said of the Dawson Creek blasts.

The report, part of a series of institute studies directed by the global energy
company, identifies five "threat groups" --individual saboteurs, ecoterrorists,
mainstream environmentalists, First Nations and the Metis people.

"All except the Metis have at various times used some combination of litigation,
blockades, occupations, boycotts, sabotage, and violence against economic development projects which they saw as a threat to environmental values or aboriginal rights," Flanagan's report said.

"However, extra-legal obstruction is unlikely to become large-scale and widespread unless these various groups make common cause and cooperate with each other. Such co-operation has not happened in the past and seems unlikely in the future because the groups have different social characteristics and conflicting political interests."

When speaking of First Nations in northern Alberta, Flanagan wrote that there
exists the potential for "warrior societies"--where aboriginal groups brandish
firearms or set up blockades.

"There is no history of warrior societies operating in northern Alberta, but that does not mean it could not happen," the report said.

"A nightmare scenario," he wrote, "would be a linkage between warrior societies
and eco-terrorists."

He said his report was written from the point of view of threats specific to the
oil and gas industry.

"It's what keeps the ship floating in Alberta. Without it, we'd have a province
of one million people rather than three million, and I wouldn't have a job," Flanagan said in an interview.

"I'm sympathetic to the continued prosperity of the industry, so I point out the
difficulties they face."

However, environmental writer Andrew Nikiforuk said Flanagan's report focuses on
the wrong security issues.

"Energy developments are generally secure when you make sure that surface owners--whether they are farmers or aboriginals--are treated with respect . . . and where regulators don't allow development to undermine groundwater, air quality and health of the local community," Nikiforuk said.

"Most terrorism experts would say Alberta has made itself terribly insecure again by rapidly expanding oil and gas pipelines, and by becoming the number 1 supplier of oil to the United States. We've become a target for global terrorists, who might have an interest in disrupting U. S. oil supplies," he said.

At the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, spokesman Travis Davies said
in a statement that the oil and gas industry has worked with all levels of government to ensure energy security.

"The safety of our neighbours and employees is a top priority. In terms of nonviolent campaigns against Canadian energy sources, industry consults with stakeholders in order to understand their issues, and focuses on communicating
our demonstrated safety and environmental performance, as well as the stringent
regulatory requirements in place for all oil and gas projects," Davies wrote.

The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute describes itself as an independent research body that focuses on Canadian foreign policy, defence policy and international aid.

Noctlucent Clouds Descend the Latitudes

Wired Science reports :

Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.

Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.

The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.

“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”

Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885 by an amateur astronomer. No observations of anything resembling noctilucent clouds before that time has ever been found. There is no lack of observations of other phenomena in the sky, so atmospheric scientists are fairly sure that the phenomenon is recent, although they are not sure why.

Over the last 125 years, scientists have learned how the clouds form. At temperatures around minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, dust blowing up from below or falling into the atmosphere from space provides a resting spot for water vapor to condense and freeze. Right now, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, the atmosphere is heating up and expanding. At the outside edge of the atmosphere, that
actually means that it’s getting colder because it’s pushed farther out into space.

The recent observations of noctilucent clouds at all kinds of latitudes provide an extra impetus to understand what is going on up there. Changes are occurring faster than scientists can understand their causes. “I suspect, as many of us feel, that it is global change, but I fear we don’t understand it,” Wickwar said.

“It’s not as simple as a temperature change.”

I had never witnessed NLCs before, and to be honest, I wondered if I would actually notice them if I did get the chance to see them. Wow, was I wrong ... these literally startled me! Thankfully, I was called to go meet a friend this evening, otherwise I wouldn't have been outside to see them. I walked out of my garage, and glanced up expecting to see a mostly dark sky, and this BRIGHT, electric blue bank of NLCs was filling most of the north sky ... gorgeous!

- Mark Poe

Vancouver: Police Reducing Justice to "Charade"

Lying police are reducing our justice system to a laughable charade.

By Ethan Baron

We expect police, upon whom the whole system rests, to tell the truth.

Over and over again, we have seen that they don't.

Any police officer's testimony must now be treated with suspicion.

On Tuesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask ruled that senior RCMP officers Cpl. Martin Stoner and Staff.-Sgt. Peter Lea lied while testifying in the drug-trafficking case of former boxer Robert Della Penna.

Stoner had already misled another judge while seeking the wiretapping authorization, Leask said in the Vancouver court. Both Stoner and Lea then lied during Della Penna's trial.

After Leask threw out the wiretap evidence, the Crown threw in the towel, saying it had no further evidence. Della Penna and three others accused of operating a ring shipping marijuana and ecstasy to the U.S. and smuggling cocaine into Canada were acquitted.

This incident is part of a disturbing collection of cases that have revealed lies, deception and callous manipulation of the justice system by police.

Two months ago, also in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, RCMP Staff-Sgt. Ross Spenard admitted he was untruthful to a judge when he concealed information about flaws in a forensic report in the case of Charlie Rae Lincoln, a woman who ended up convicted of stabbing her two-year-old child to death. Spenard also said he'd lied under oath about a former colleague's work status, to protect the man's privacy.

The judge told the jury that Spenard's lies had tainted his evidence so badly it had no value.

Last year, RCMP Const. Ryan Sheremetta was temporarily suspended after giving false testimony in a coroner's inquest into the shooting by Sheremetta of Kevin St. Arnaud on a Vanderhoof playing field in 2004. Sheremetta had claimed he was on his back when he shot St. Arnaud, while evidence showed he was standing.

And of course there's the Robert Dziekanski case, in which Mounties committed outrageous fabrications in their statements after the fatal Vancouver airport incident, only to be shown as liars when a bystander's video came to light. RCMP brass also withheld from the Braidwood inquiry crucial evidence that the officers involved had discussed Tasering Dziekanski while on their way to the airport.

One of the three defence lawyers in the Della Penna case told me yesterday that the Mounties' lying was not an isolated incident.

"I'm always very disturbed when I catch police officers lying, but it certainly happens," says Elizabeth Lewis.

And often enough, Lewis says, officers will fill in evidentiary blanks with "spin" in order to secure a conviction.

Trial Lawyers Association of B.C. president Robert Holmes told me that the officers' deception in the Della Penna case seriously threatens public confidence in the police.

"Is there more of an incidence of police not living up to their obligation to tell the truth than actually gets detected?" Holmes asks. "That may be the case -- we'll never know." Both Holmes and Lewis noted that a great many officers fulfil their duties on the street and in court with honesty and competence. The problem is, some of them don't.

"The leadership in the police forces and the training [officers] go through has to be rigorous in maintaining the truth-telling standard," Holmes says.

That's no lie.



The Vancouver Province July 17, 2009

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Lies+deception+manipulation+justice+system/1799094/story.html