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US Justice System Is 'Broken,' Lawyers Say
2004-06-24, The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-punish24jun24,1,72496...

The American criminal justice system relies too heavily on imprisoning people and needs to consider more effective alternatives, according to a study released Wednesday by the American Bar Assn., the nation's largest lawyers' organization. "For more than 20 years, we've gotten tougher on crime," said Dennis W. Archer, a former Detroit mayor and the group's current president. "We can no longer sit by as more and more people — particularly in minority communities — are sent away for longer and longer periods of time while we make it more and more difficult for them to return to society after they serve their time. The system is broken. We need to fix it." Both the number of incarcerated Americans and the cost of locking them up are massive, the report said, and have been escalating significantly in recent years. Between 1974 and 2002, the number of inmates in federal and state prisons rose six-fold. By 2002, 476 out of every 100,000 Americans were imprisoned. In 1982, the states and federal government spent $9 billion on jails and prisons. By 1999, the figure had risen to $49 billion. Based on trends, a black male born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of being imprisoned during his lifetime, while the chances for a Latino male are 1 in 6, and for a white male, 1 in 17. The report contains numerous reform proposals. Among them: the repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing laws; more funding for substance abuse and mental health programs; assistance for prisoners reentering society; [and] task forces to study racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system.

Note: If above link fails, click here. The prison-industrial complex attracts huge profits and strongly supports laws like "three strikes" where third time offenders are automatically imprisoned for life, even for petty crime.

State take from corporate income falls
2004-04-15, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/15/...

Individual Californians are shouldering an increasing percentage of the state's general fund, while the share of revenue from corporate income taxes has declined, according to a new analysis by a think tank in Sacramento. "Over time, the burden of paying for public services has, in a fairly dramatic way, shifted from businesses to individuals,'' said Jean Ross, director of the nonprofit California Budget Project in Sacramento. Ross went back more than 40 years to track how much the state derived from its three main revenue sources: personal income tax, sales tax and corporate income tax. Over time, income taxes paid by individuals have risen to fill half of the state's coffers, while corporate income taxes have fallen to about 10 percent of the take. Dan Bucks, executive director of the Multistate Tax Commission, said the decline in corporate taxes as a share of state coffers is occurring in all 47 states that levy some form of business or corporate tax. "Our data indicate that ... corporate income taxes were 9.7 percent of state revenues in 1980 and 4.9 percent in 2002,'' he said. Personal income taxes -- levied in more than 40 states -- have also risen nationwide "in a virtually straight line,'' he said. Corporations have gotten better at sheltering income from both federal and state taxes. For instance, the General Accounting Office, watchdog agency of Congress, recently reported that more than 60 percent of U.S. corporations paid no federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.

The mysterious lab off New York's shore
2004-04-02, CNN News
http://articles.cnn.com/2004-04-02/entertainment/lab.257_1_plum-island-lab-ge...

Oops. That's the word that comes to mind when reading Michael Carroll's thoroughly nerve-wracking book, "Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory" ... about the federal germ facility on Plum Island. The island [is] home to some of the deadliest microbes festering on the planet. According to Carroll's book, the island -- and laboratory -- are also home to slipshod construction, poor safeguards, and lax security. "Lab 257" claims errors at the facility caused Lyme disease outbreaks and health problems for the local population -- claims disputed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which ran the facility until recently. Carroll [said] that the point of the book was to expose the potential hazards of a poorly run institution; he has nothing against better-run, more secure institutions. "You have to know how things interact, germs, bacteria, etc. You [just] don't need to create millions of them to know how to create them and make them more virulent. Like other government scientific facilities, it's had an aura of mystery: Plum Island earns a mention in "The Silence of the Lambs," and thriller writer Nelson DeMille set a novel there. Much of Carroll's research was done through interviews with nearby residents, as well as documents and reports. While the government was "cooperative at the outset," Carroll said ... he was later denied access to the facility. Carroll isn't the first to offer criticism. In 2002, after a power outage on the island, New York's WABC-TV did a story on whether containment procedures worked; several employees questioned the lab's safety. In 2003, the General Accounting Office listed security problems on the island, partially prompted by a whistleblower, Jim McCoy, who protested the management of a private concern.

Note: At the northernmost tip of Long Island, Plum island sits directly across from the town of Lyme, Conn., famous as the epicenter of the Lyme disease outbreak. For a powerful, multiple award-winning film showing shocking ignorance and even political corruption on the part of the medical community about the Lyme disease epidemic spreading across the US and even around the world, click here. It shows evidence that Lyme may be even the cause of many cases of ALS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease.

9/11 panel to get access to withheld data
2003-11-13, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://articles.boston.com/2003-11-13/news/29196061_1_commission-ashley-snee-...

The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reached an agreement with the White House yesterday to gain restricted access to years of classified presidential briefings. A four-person subcommittee that will have varying degrees of access to the documents known as Presidential Daily Briefs from the Bush and Clinton administrations. But the accord includes numerous restrictions limiting what parts of briefings can be seen and what parts can later be shared with the rest of the bipartisan panel. The limitations prompted angry condemnations yesterday from two Democratic commissioners -- former Georgia senator Max Cleland and former Indiana representative Timothy Roemer -- who have argued that the commission should be more aggressive in seeking sensitive materials from the Bush administration. Cleland called the agreement "unconscionable" and said it "was deliberately compromised by the president of the United States" in order to limit the panel's work. "If this decision stands, I as a member of the commission cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access," he said. "This investigation is now compromised. This is `The Gong Show'; this isn't protection of national security."

Note: Cleland later resigned from the commission. For the questions of other highly-respected former government officials who are disatisfied with the truthfulness of the 9/11 Commission Report, click here.

Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster
2003-02-07, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/07/CAMERA.TMP

Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California. Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle. Los Alamos National Laboratories physicist Mark Stanley said that "we've seen very strong ionization in sprites" indicating that there were enough air molecules ionized to cause heating and an accompanying pulse -- a celestial thunderclap, as it were. NASA administrators confirmed Thursday that the photograph ... is being evaluated by Columbia crash investigators. The astronomer, who has asked that his name not be used, has declined to release the digital image to the media. [A] family of "transient" electrical effects occup[ies] this part of the sky, including sprites, which leap from the ionosphere to the tops of thunderheads. Ironically, an experiment of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, aboard the doomed Columbia, was among the last fully funded work conducted on sprites. Scientists have observed interaction between a blue jet and a meteor. And in December 1999, Los Alamos National Laboratories researcher David Suszcynsky and colleagues, including Lyons, published an account of a meteor that apparently triggered a sprite.

Note: For a second article with the subtitle "Mysterious purple streak is shown hitting Columbia 7 minutes before it disintegrated," click here. Though this most bizarre news suggested another possible reason for the crash of the shuttle Columbia, it was virtually ignored throughout the official investigation. Why?

Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US
2002-12-09, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html

Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person. This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. The bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years. Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel. Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known. Other US help includes: • Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years. • Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel. US help ... has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers. Stauffer [has] been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.

Note: Israel has a population of 6.5 million. Yearly foreign aid to Israel has generally varied between $2.5 to 3.0 billion for many years (it's difficult to locate these figures on U.S. government websites). If you do the math, U.S. taxpayers are giving every man, woman, and child, in Israel about $400/year -- over ten times the per capita rate paid to any other country. That's quite a tax break, especially considering they are not Americans.

FBI Chief Acknowledges 9/11 Errors
2002-05-30, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/30/national/main510607.shtml

FBI Director Robert Mueller, acknowledging serious lapses in how the FBI mishandled some information prior to Sept. 11, suggested for the first time that investigators might have detected the terrorist plot if they had pursued leads more diligently. Mueller's acknowledgment came amid two new disclosures of what could be missed hints about Sept. 11. The first was a warning from another agency to the FBI that a Middle Eastern country was seeking to buy commercial flight simulators. The second was a memo from an Oklahoma City FBI agent who reported observing large numbers of Middle Eastern pilots and flight students in his area. Neither memo apparently drew much attention at the time. Mueller's remarks came after his announcement of a broad reorganization of the FBI, partly because of its failure to predict the attacks. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced loosened restrictions on domestic spying, handing the FBI authority to monitor Internet sites and libraries. The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized the loosening of restrictions on domestic spying, saying they could renew abuses of the past. Mueller, who took over as FBI director just days before Sept. 11, is the first senior official in the Bush administration to say that counterterrorism investigators might have detected and averted the attacks if they had recognized what they were collecting.

Note: Yet no one in the US government was held accountable for these failures.

Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel
2002-05-15, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/15/attack/main509096.shtml

President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe ... to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11. Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees. Mr. Bush said the investigation should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. Mr. Bush's comments come after a two-day hearing on Capitol Hill with FBI director Robert Mueller and the agent who wrote the so-called "Phoenix memo" last summer warning about ... Arab students training at U.S. aviation schools. Current and former government officials, who are familiar with Williams' memo and debriefings, told the AP the counterterrorism agent from Phoenix had ascertained that several Arab students training at Arizona flight school held anti-American views. Williams identified several Arab students at Arizona aviation schools, including one school in Prescott, who were seeking training in aviation engineering, flight lessons and airport operations. He had ascertained that at least one of the students had also made inquiries about airport security operations, the officials said.

Note: For many questions raised by highly-respected former government officials about the investigation that was, after four years, finally authorized, click here.

Live rats driven by remote control
2002-05-05, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,708454,00.html

Scientists have turned living rats into remote-controlled, pleasure-driven robots which can be guided up ladders, through ruins and into minefields at the click of a laptop key. The project ... is funded by the US military's research arm. Animals have often been used by humans in combat and in search and rescue, but not under direct computer-to-brain electronic control. The advent of surgically altered roborats marks the crossing of a new boundary in the mechanisation, and potential militarisation, of nature. In 10 sessions the rats learned that if they ran forward and turned left or right on cue, they would be "rewarded" with a buzz of electrically delivered pleasure. Once trained they would move instantaneously and accurately as directed, for up to an hour at a time. The rats could be steered up ladders, along narrow ledges and down ramps, up trees, and into collapsed piles of concrete rubble. Roborats fitted with cameras or other sensors could be used as search and rescue aids. In theory, be put to some unpleasant uses, such as assassination. [For] surveillance ... you could apply this to birds ... if you could fit birds with sensors and cameras. Michael Reiss, professor of science education at London's Institute of Education and a leading bioethics thinker ... said he was uneasy about humankind "subverting the autonomy" of animals. "There is a part of me that is not entirely happy with the idea of our subverting a sentient animal's own aspirations and wish to lead a life of its own."

Note: Remember that secret military projects are almost always at least a decade in advance of anything you read in the media. For lots more on this little-known subject, click here.

U.S. Forces Out Head of Chemical Arms Agency
2002-04-23, New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E0D91E3FF930A15757C0A9649C...

The United States succeeded today in ousting the director of the global agency charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons after an intense diplomatic campaign that made a number of countries uncomfortable. José M. Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who was unanimously re-elected last year as the director general of the 145-nation Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was voted out of office today after refusing repeated demands by the United States that he step down. ''I clearly made some people in Washington very uncomfortable because I was too independent,'' Mr. Bustani said afterward. ''They want somebody more obedient.'' Diplomats said ... it had opened the door further for other international bodies to come under attack. The United States, which is responsible for 22 percent of the agency's budget, had threatened to cut off funding until Mr. Bustani left. ''I think a lot of people swallowed this because they thought it was better for Bustani to be removed than have the U.S. pull out and see the organization collapse,'' said one European diplomat at the meeting. The firing of Mr. Bustani follows the removal last week of Robert Watson, a British-born climatologist who had been outspoken on the threat of global warming, as the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was removed after pressure from Washington and at least one American oil company.

Note: If Bustani had not been removed, it is very likely that the accusations of WMD in Iraq would never have stood, and the war would not have happened. For a powerful two-page essay by a highly decorated U.S. general alleging that war is a racket orchestrated to line the pockets of the corporations, click here.

Chemical Coup d'etat
2002-04-16, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4394862,00.html

The US wants to depose the diplomat who could take away its pretext for war with Iraq. On Sunday, the US government will launch an international coup. It has been planned for a month. It will be executed quietly, and most of us won't know what is happening until it's too late. It is seeking to overthrow 60 years of multilateralism in favour of a global regime built on force. The coup begins with its attempt ... to unseat the man in charge of ridding the world of chemical weapons. If it succeeds, this will be the first time that the head of a multilateral agency will have been deposed in this manner. The coup will also shut down the peaceful options for dealing with the chemical weapons Iraq may possess, helping to ensure that war then becomes the only means of destroying them. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) enforces the chemical weapons convention. Its director-general is a workaholic Brazilian diplomat called Jose Bustani. He has, arguably, done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone else on earth. His inspectors have overseen the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world's chemical weapon facilities. In May 2000, as a tribute to his extraordinary record, Bustani was re-elected unanimously by the member states for a second five-year term. Last year Colin Powell wrote to him to thank him for his "very impressive" work. But now everything has changed. [But now] the man celebrated for his achievements has been denounced as an enemy of the people. In January, with no prior warning or explanation, the US state department asked the Brazilian government to recall him.

Note: The "coup" was successful. The New York Times, though reporting few of the details above, stated six days after the above article, "José M. Bustani ... was voted out of office today after refusing repeated demands by the United States that he step down because of his 'management style.'" For why this highly revealing story received no media coverage in the U.S., click here. For a top U.S. general's comments, click here.

US grants N Korea nuclear funds
2002-04-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm

The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused. In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors. President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States". The head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof. "These reactors are like all reactors, They have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Note: Though this article is from 2002, one must ask why on earth President Bush would waive the requirement for inspectors who would ensure no nuclear weapons development? Wasn't this one of three countries he had already labeled as the axis of evil? For answers to these questions, click here.

From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad
2002-03-23, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets. The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

Note: The author doesn't mention that these US-produced books are also openly promoting violence and war. Of course, that is not against the law, while using US tax money to promote religion is.

Planning for Terror but Failing to Act
2001-12-30, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/national/30TERR.html

An extensive review of the nation's antiterrorism efforts shows that for years before Sept. 11, ... top leaders never reacted as if they believed the country was as vulnerable as it proved to be that morning. Dozens of interviews with current and former officials demonstrate that even as the threat of terrorism mounted through eight years of the Clinton administration and eight months of President Bush, the government did not marshal its full forces against it. The rising threat of the Islamic jihad movement was first detected by United States investigators after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The inquiry into that attack revealed a weakness in the immigration system used by one of the terrorists, but that hole was never plugged, and it was exploited by one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. On at least three occasions between 1998 and 2000, the C.I.A. told the White House it had learned where Mr. bin Laden was and where he might soon be. Each time, Mr. Clinton approved the strike. Each time, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, called the president to say that the information was not reliable enough to be used in an attack, a former senior Clinton administration official said."

Note: For many unanswered questions about the official explanation of what happened before and on 9/11 raised by highly credible officials and professionals, click here and here.

Warnings: Earlier Hijackings Offered Signals That Were Missed
2001-10-03, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/us/a-nation-challenged-warnings-earlier-hij...

Over and over since Sept. 11, aviation and security officials have said they were shocked that terrorists had hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. ''This is a whole new world for us,'' Jane F. Garvey, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in testimony before a House subcommittee on Sept. 20. But the record shows that for her and others, there were numerous warnings. In 1994, two jetliners were hijacked by people who wanted to crash them into buildings, one of them by an Islamic militant group. And the 2000 edition of the F.A.A.'s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation, published this year, said that although Osama bin Laden ''is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so." The previous year's edition of that report said that an exiled Islamic leader in Britain proclaimed in August 1998 that Mr. bin Laden would ''bring down an airliner, or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States.'' The authorities appeared to draw no lessons from the two attacks in 1994.

Note: For many unanswered questions about the official explanation of what happened before and on 9/11 raised by highly credible officials and professionals, click here and here.

New documents show the monkey virus is present in more recent polio vaccine
2001-07-22, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/07/22/MN173141.DTL

A monkey virus linked to human cancers may have contaminated the oral polio vaccine for years after the U.S. government ordered manufacturers to remove it. The Chronicle reported last week that the simian virus SV40 had contaminated early polio vaccine given to millions of Americans. When health officials discovered in 1961 that SV40 caused malignant tumors in lab animals, they ordered the virus eliminated from all future vaccine. But internal memos from Lederle Laboratories, the chief producer of polio vaccine in the United States, indicate SV40 may not have been completely removed. According to one memo, SV40 was found in three of 15 lots of the oral vaccine seven months after the federal directive was issued in March 1961. Lederle released the contaminated vaccine to the public anyway, the memo shows. Scientists discovered SV40 in the Salk polio vaccine in 1960. By then as many as 30 million Americans had been given injections of the SV40-tainted polio vaccine, which was first licensed in 1955. In recent years more than 60 scientific studies have found SV40 in rare human brain, bone and lung-related cancers, the same kinds of tumors the virus caused in laboratory animals. Some scientists believe SV40 may play a role in causing those cancers. The Lederle documents, which were obtained by Philadelphia attorney Stanley Kops in litigation not related to SV40, raise the possibility the virus might have been transmitted by contaminated oral vaccine, licensed for production in 1962.

Note: There are numerous major problems with how vaccines are monitored and developed, yet the media largely fails to address this major issue. For many powerful reports from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here. For lots more, click here and here.

Coruscating criticism of the free market ideology of the IMF
2001-04-27, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1312942.stm

GREG PALAST: Protesters say that what we have here is a conspiracy - the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation don't help the poor of the world, they crush them. Well, the bosses are here today, let's ask them. Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist of the World Bank - he should know. He was in the meetings when the World Bank and IMF met to decide the fate of nations. JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They were making the countries worse off. They'll take a strong position on petty larceny and petty theft, but on grand larceny, they'll look the other way. PALAST: The insider says there's a "one-size-fits-all" plan. Every nation gets the same exact four-step programme to the free market paradise. Step one - freedom for hot money. Step two - freedom to increase prices. Step three - free trade for all. Step four, where it all begins, freedom to privatise everything. Insiders saw how it worked in Russia. JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That was the extreme case. You turned over these assets to these oligarchs at a time when the government didn't have enough money to pay pensions to old people. It turned over billions of dollars to a few oligarchs for a fraction of the value of those assets. When it comes to corruption in Russia, they were willing to turn the other way. The IMF and the US Treasury actually almost encouraged it.

Note: To watch the eight-minute video of this BBC clip, click here. For a powerful summary of John Perkins book describing this process in detail, click here. Perkins say he was hired to use the big international banks' money to corrupt dictators and enrich the coffers of the biggest multinational corporations.

Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report
2001-03-29, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/program/overview.html

Twenty-three years to the day after he went to work with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals at a plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dan Ross died of a rare brain cancer. He was 46 years old, convinced that his job had killed him. His wife, Elaine, sued her husband's former employer and, over the next decade, the process of legal discovery led deeper and deeper into the inner chambers of the chemical industry and its Washington trade association. Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were unearthed. In TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT, journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones investigated the Ross archive – secrets the chemical industry never intended the public to see – and discovered a shocking story. The confidential papers reveal the industry's early knowledge of vinyl chloride's dangerous effects, as well as the industry's long silence on the subject. The program also reports a much larger story. Buried in the thousands of pages of documents – minutes from board meetings, reports from industry scientists, internal memoranda – is a never-before-told account of a campaign to limit the regulation of toxic chemicals and any liability for their effects, at the same that the companies work to withhold vital information about risks from workers, the government – and the public. Over the last five decades, more than 75,000 chemicals have been produced, turned into consumer products or released into the environment. Today, every man, woman and child has synthetic chemicals in their bodies. No child is born free of them. Are they safe? Does anyone know?

Note: This article also mentions that even though Moyers never lived near a chemical plant, tests showed that his body contained a chemical soup of 84 industrial chemicals, including 31 different types of PCBs, 13 different dioxins, and pesticides such as DDT. Why are these chemicals so poorly studied and the dangerous effects hidden from us? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Colorful Outsider Is Named No. 3 at the CIA
2001-03-17, Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16570-2001Mar16.html

A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, a ... former investment banker ... was named yesterday executive director of the CIA, bringing a fast-paced management style to the agency's No. 3 job. Central Intelligence Agency Director George J. Tenet announced the appointment, saying he treasures Krongard's "wise counsel and 'no-nonsense' business-like views." Krongard, 64, former head of Alex. Brown & Co., an investment bank based in Baltimore, joined the agency three years ago as a counselor to Tenet. He switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex. Brown and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock. Few of his former colleagues were surprised by his decision to trade a $4 million salary and stock options for the far less remunerative job of Tenet's consigliere. A graduate of Princeton and the University of Maryland Law School, Krongard has a fondness for extreme military-style activities. Even as a banking executive, he trained with police SWAT teams for recreation and worked out with a kung fu master. He maintained a shooting range on the park-like grounds of his home on the northern edge of Baltimore. In an interview yesterday, Krongard described his past duties as those of a "minister without portfolio" whom senior managers felt comfortable talking to about "sticky subjects." But Krongard exhibited the requisite secretiveness when asked to explain his interest in intelligence and how he came to land a job in Tenet's inner circle. If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he explained, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."

Note: Buzzy Krongard was the executive director of the CIA on 9/11. His past ties to the investment firm which placed most of the extraordinarily high volume of "put options" on United and American Airlines stocks the week before the attacks is one of many strange "coincidences" unexplained by the official story of what happened on that horrific day. For more on this, click here. To read the entire article free of charge, click here.

Who pulls the strings?
2001-03-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/10/extract1

So this is how it works. A tiny, shoe-string central office in Holland decides each year which country will host the next meeting. Each country has two steering committee members. They call up Bilderberg-friendly global corporations, such as Xerox or Heinz or Fiat or Barclays or Nokia, which donate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed. They do not accept unsolicited donations from non-Bilderberg corporations. Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting, although many corporations have tried. Then they decide who to invite - who seems to be a "Bilderberg person". The notion of a Bilderberg person hasn't changed since the earliest days, back in 1954. The guests are expressly asked not to give interviews to journalists. There are two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions. While furiously denying that they secretly ruled the world, my Bilderberg interviewees did admit to me that international affairs had, from time to time, been influenced by these sessions. This is how Denis Healey described a Bilderberg person to me: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians."

Note: For lots more on the highly secretive Bilderberg meeting from two later BBC News article, click here. For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.

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