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Dr. Allan Collins ... is president of the National Kidney Foundation. In 2004 ... the pharmaceutical company Amgen, which makes the most expensive drugs used in the treatment of kidney disease, underwrote more than $1.9 million worth of research and education programs led by Dr. Collins. In 2005, Amgen paid Dr. Collins at least $25,800, mostly in consulting and speaking fees. The payments to Dr. Collins and the research center ... come from Minnesota, the first of a handful of states to pass a law requiring drug makers to disclose payments to doctors. The Minnesota records are a window on the widespread financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who prescribe and recommend their products. From [1997] through 2005, drug makers paid more than 5,500 doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the state at least $57 million. More than 100 people received more than $100,000. Research shows that doctors who have close relationships with drug makers tend to prescribe more, newer and pricier drugs whether or not they are in the best interests of patients. Drug companies want somebody who can manipulate in a very subtle way, said Dr. Frederick R. Taylor. Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a former sales representative [said] it all comes down to ways to manipulate the doctors. Some of the doctors receiving the most money sit on committees that prepare guidelines instructing doctors nationwide about when to use medicines. It is critical that the experts who write clinical guidelines be prohibited from having any conflicts of interest, said Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Note: This article only scratches the surface of legal and illegal corruption by the powerful pharmaceutical industry. If you care about who really controls our health system, don't miss Dr. Marcia Angell's incredibly revealing essay showing the unbelievable wealth and influence of the drug companies available here.
The U.S. current-account deficit is the broadest measure of America's activity in international trade and global finance. It totaled $857 billion last year, the Commerce Department reported last week. For the fifth year in a row, the nation's current-account deficit set a record. As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified last year before Congress: "The immediate implication [of the nation's soaring current-account deficit] is that the U.S. economy is consuming more than it's producing, and the difference is being made up by imports from abroad, which in turn is being financed by borrowing from abroad." Last year's current-account deficit meant that Americans effectively borrowed $3.3 billion every single working day to fund the gap between their spending and their income. The accumulation of ever larger current-account deficits over the past quarter century has played an indispensable role in transforming the United States from the world's largest creditor nation into the planet's biggest debtor nation. Specifically, in 1982, America's net international investment position was a positive $236 billion. That meant that foreigners owed us nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars more than we owed them. At the end of 2005 (the latest year for which data are available), the net international investment position of the United States was a negative $2.55 trillion. In other words, we owed foreigners more than $2.5 trillion than they owed us. Since 1994 alone, America's net international investment position has deteriorated by more than $2.4 trillion.
Note: The Washington Times was the only media source to report on this highly important story. Why? For a possible answer, click here. For more underreported, yet massive government corruption, click here.
Many myths and misconceptions about the AIDS pandemic are spread by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other mainstream AIDS agencies and activists. UNAIDS continues to perpetuate the fallacy that only aggressive HIV/AIDS prevention programs ... can prevent the eruption of heterosexual HIV epidemics. More than two decades of observation and analysis point to far different conclusions -- there are no "next waves" of HIV epidemics just around the corner. UNAIDS and most AIDS activists reject this analysis. However, all available epidemiologic data show that only the highest risk sexual behavior ... drives HIV epidemics among heterosexuals. Most AIDS activists claim, without any supporting data, that high HIV prevalence in groups of men who have sex with men or injecting drug users will inevitably "bridge" over to the rest of the population and lead to "generalized" HIV epidemics. This entrenched myth persists even though there is little, if any, HIV spread into any "general" population. Global and regional HIV rates have remained stable or have been decreasing during the past decade. HIV has remained concentrated in groups with the riskiest behavior. HIV is incapable of epidemic spread among the vast majority of heterosexuals. Most of the public, policymakers and media have no inkling that the UNAIDS working assumption is inconsistent with established facts. Scarce health resources in countries with low HIV prevalence should be targeted primarily at those who are at the highest HIV risk, instead of being misdirected to the wider public.
The FBI man in charge of collecting evidence from the government building destroyed by the Oklahoma bomb has called for the case to be reopened. Former deputy assistant director Danny Coulson ... said a federal grand jury is now needed to find out what really happened. He argues this is the only way to prove whether other people were involved in the bombing in a wider conspiracy beyond Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Mr Coulson spent 31 years in the FBI. Between 1991 and 1997 he was the deputy assistant director of the Criminal Division of the FBI in Washington, responsible for all violent crime cases in the United States. Mr Coulson said there were some "very strong indicators" that other people were involved with Timothy McVeigh. The FBI interviewed 24 people who claimed to have seen McVeigh in Oklahoma City with someone else on the morning of the attack, yet the only known accomplice of McVeigh, Terry Nichols, was at home in Kansas over 200 miles away on that day. The FBI's investigation concluded that the eyewitnesses were unreliable. However, Danny Coulson says they were "extremely credible" and had no reason to make it up. "If only one person had seen it, or two of three, but 24?" he said. "I know FBI headquarters told [agents] to close down the investigation in Elohim City which has some very significant connections to Mr McVeigh. "Never in my career did I have FBI headquarters tell me not to investigate something." Last December a US Congressional report found no conclusive evidence of a wider conspiracy, but the report concluded that "questions remain unanswered and mysteries remain unsolved."
Note: Don't miss a highly revealing four-minute video-clip showing live media coverage of the Oklahoma City bomb available here. The official story is that one truck with a huge bomb was parked in front of the Oklahoma City federal building and only Timothy McVeigh and his partner were involved. The news footage proves that others must have been involved, as multiple unexploded bombs were recovered from points inside the building. Yet none of this was questioned in later testimony.
Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city. Even so, Tammet could still turn out to be the more significant.
Note: Could the human mind be much more powerful than even science is willing to admit? For an astounding documentary showing how this unusual man managed to become conversant in a difficult language in one week and lots more, click here.
In the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they've been called a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only [the Carlyle Group] has been tagged in the popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government conspiracies. Carlyle, founded 20 years ago in the shadow of Washington's power centers, long went about its business far from the public eye. Its ranks were larded with the politically connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime Minister John Major. It used its partners' collective relationships to build a lucrative business buying, transforming, and selling companies -- particularly defense companies that did business with governments. Carlyle's radical makeover has turned the firm into the biggest fund-raising juggernaut the private equity world has ever seen. By the end of this year it expects to have an unprecedented $85 billion in investor commitments under management, up sixfold from 2001 and more than any other firm. [Founder David] Rubenstein sees the total swelling to as much as $300 billion by 2012. Make no mistake -- Carlyle is already massive. It owns nearly 200 companies that generate a combined $68 billion in revenue and employ 200,000 people. Last year it bought a new company approximately once every three days and sold one almost once a week -- all while dabbling in increasingly esoteric investments. Since its founding in 1987 it has generated annualized after-fee returns of 26%, compared with the industry average in the mid-teens.
Note: With former presidents including George H.W. Bush and many other top world politicians helping to sway huge military contracts, could this be considered a form of insider trading? Those 26% yearly returns are placing our tax monies in the hands of individuals and companies that are already among the wealthiest in the world. For lots more on manipulation of your tax money, click here. And for a Washington Post article showing Osama Bin Laden's brother met with George H.W. Bush at a Carlyle meeting one day before 9/11, click here.
A House committee report on Tuesday questioned whether some of the billions of dollars in cash shipped to Iraq after the American invasion mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills might have ended up with the insurgent groups now battling American troops. Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, about lax management of the nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004. Mr. Bremer defended his performance as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, noting that the United States had to bring tons of American dollars into Iraq because the country had no functioning banking system. Government auditors have repeatedly criticized the American and Iraqi governments for failing to monitor the money once it reached Iraq. We have no way of knowing if the cash that was shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands, [Committee Chairman Henry Waxman] said. We owe it to the American people to do everything we can to find out where the $12 billion went. Mr. Waxman, whose panel is pursuing investigations of fraud and abuse by the federal government and its contractors in Iraq, said he found it remarkable that the Bush administration had decided to send billions of dollars of American currency into Iraq so quickly after the United States occupied the country. The committee calculated that the $12 billion in cash, most of it in the stacks of $100 bills, weighed 363 tons and had to been flown in on wooden pallets aboard giant C-130 military cargo planes. Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone? Mr. Waxman said.
Note: Think about Bremer's assertion that Iraq needed U.S. dollars as the banking system had collapsed. Banking systems have collapsed in numerous countries in the last century, yet that has never stopped the country from functioning, nor has the U.S. ever offered to send huge amounts of cash to help out in the past.
The World Economic Forum here in Davos is the kind of place where if you let yourself get distracted while walking by a European prime minister on your left, you could end up tripping over a famous gazillionaire. But perhaps the most remarkable people to attend ... are the social entrepreneurs. Nic Frances runs a group that aims to cut carbon emissions in 70 percent of Australian households over 10 years. His group, Easy Being Green, gives out low-energy light bulbs and low-flow shower heads after the household signs over the rights to the carbon emissions the equipment will save. The group then sells those carbon credits to industry to finance its activities. In the U.S., Gillian Caldwell and her group, Witness, train people around the world to use video cameras to document human rights abuses. The resulting videos have drawn public attention to issues like child soldiers and the treatment of the mentally ill. Now Ms. Caldwell aims to create sort of YouTube for human rights video clips. Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, demonstrated with Grameen Bank the power of microfinancing. His bank has helped raise incomes, secure property rights for women, lower population growth and raise education standards across Bangladesh and now the success is rippling around the globe. Politics is failing to solve all the big issues, said Jim Wallis, who wrote Gods Politics and runs Sojourners. So when that happens, social movements rise up. A growing number of the best and brightest university graduates in the U.S. and abroad are moving into this area (many clutching the book How to Change the World, a bible in the field).
Secret emails reveal that the UK's biggest drug company distorted trial results of an anti-depressant, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials. And that GSK-employed ghostwriters influenced 'independent' academics. GSK faces action in the US where bereaved families have joined together to sue the company. As a result, GSK has been forced to open its confidential internal archive. Karen Barth Menzies is a partner in one of the firms representing many of the families. She has examined thousands of the documents which are stored, box upon box, in an apartment in Malibu, California. She said: "Even when they have negative studies that show that this drug Seroxat is going to harm some kids they still spin that study as remarkably effective and safe for children." An email from a public relations executive working for GSK ... said: "Originally we had planned to do extensive media relations surrounding this study until we actually viewed the results. Essentially the study did not really show it was effective in treating adolescent depression, which is not something we want to publicise." Seroxat was banned for under 18s in 2003 after the MHRA revealed that GSK's own studies showed the drug actually trebles the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in depressed children.
Note: For more reliable information on how the drug companies put profits ahead of your health, click here.
An audit of US reconstruction spending in Iraq has uncovered spectacular misuse of tens of millions of dollars in cash, including bundles of money stashed in filing cabinets, a US soldier who gambled away thousands, and stacks of newly minted notes distributed without receipts. The audit ... by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction describes a country in the months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein awash with dollars, and a Wild West atmosphere where even multimillion-dollar contracts were paid for in cash. The findings come after a report last year by the inspector general which stated that nearly $9 billion (5 billion) of Iraqs oil revenue disbursed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority ... cannot be accounted for. The huge sums in cash were paid out with little or no supervision, and often without any paperwork. In one case, a US soldier gambled away more than $40,000 while accompanying the Iraqi Olympic boxing team to the Philippines. In others, one contracting officer kept approximately $2 million in cash in a safe in his office bathroom, the report says, while a paying agent kept approximately $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker. More than 160 vehicles worth about $3.3 million could not be traced because there was no proper documentation. Another project, a $473,000 contract to install an internet service in Ramadi, was cancelled because officials could not oversee it. But the contractor had already been paid.
Note: With all of the computers the military and contractors brought into Iraq, shouldn't it be possible to track these monies? Shouldn't we as taxpayers demand accountability?
Fluoride has become a controversial additive to our drinking water. While no one denies it can prevent cavities with topical application, a growing number of people, cities and countries have decided that ingesting unknown quantities of fluoride is a bad idea. One of Tennessee's own top health risk scientists is asking Gov. Phil Bredesen to stop adding fluoride to the water. Dr. Kathy Thiessen makes a living assessing health risks and has worked for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency. The deliberate exposure to uncontrolled and unmonitored intake of fluoride is unwise at best and probably harmful to a substantial number of people, Thiessen said. Thiessen joins Tennessee lawmaker and medical doctor Joey Hensley as the most prominent Tennessee voices against fluoride. Chris White is a musician with the band Loft, but his other passion is removing fluoride from Gallatin's water supply. All parties point to the American Dental Association recommending that mothers stop using fluoridated water for baby formula as an obvious sign that fluoride is obviously not for everyone, he said.
Note: This article fails to mention a key recent study showing "about 28 percent of the children in the low-fluoride area scored as bright, normal or higher intelligence compared to only 8 percent in the 'high' fluoride area. In the high-fluoride city, 15 percent had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city." For a truly awesome, revealing interview with a BBC producer on the major deceptions around and dangers of fluoride in water, click here. For more on this key topic from Dr. Mercola, click here. And for the top website on the risks and dangers of flouride in water, click here.
A new breed of lifestyle drugs could allow us to choose how much we sleep, boost our memories and even allow us to enjoy ourselves more, without any side effects. Will they unleash human capabilities never seen before or create a dystopian 24-hour society where we are dependent on drugs to regulate our lifestyle and behavior? One drug already available is modafinil, marketed as the vaguely Orwellian-sounding Provigil. It enables those who take it to stay awake and alert for 48 hours. It is a eugeroic that delivers a feeling of wakefulness without the physical or mental jitter. There is already a market for it for those without any medical need - it is developing a cult following among workaholics and students studying for exams. The military is also very interested in eugeroic. Their reliance on amphetamines for lengthy operations have had catastrophic consequences in the past. The "friendly-fire" incidents in Afghanistan in 2002 when U.S. pilots killed Canadian troops was blamed on the "go pills" they had taken. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tested a compound called CX717 in its quest to find a drug that can create a "metabolically dominant war-fighter of the future" able to function for seven days without sleep. CX717 is an ampakine, a compound that increases the brains computing powers. It re-writes the rules of what it takes to create a memory and just how strong those memories can be. Will cans of soda containing eugeroics or ampakines be as common as caffeine drinks on the shelves of 24-hour stores? The potential is certainly there for a brave new world of personality medication.
Three county elections workers conspired to avoid a more thorough recount of ballots in the 2004 presidential election, a prosecutor told jurors during opening statements of their trial Thursday. Witnesses testified that, two days before a planned recount, selected ballots were counted so the result would be determined. "The evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless," Prosecutor Kevin Baxter said. "They did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount, he said. Defense attorneys said in their opening statements that the workers in Cuyahoga County didn't do anything out of the ordinary. "They just were doing it the way they were always doing it," said defense attorney Roger Synenberg, representing Kathleen Dreamer, a ballot manager. Charged with various counts each of election misconduct or interference are Jacqueline Maiden, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections' coordinator, who was the board's third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March; Rosie Grier, assistant manager of the board's ballot department; and Dreamer. Baxter said testimony in the case will show that instead of conducting a random count, the workers chose sample precincts for the Dec. 16, 2004, recount that did not have questionable results to ensure that no discrepancies would emerge. "This was a very hush operation," Baxter said. There were allegations in several counties of similar presorting of ballots for the recounts that state law says are to be random.
Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on elections manipulations, click here.
In results that "astounded" scientists, an inexpensive molecule known as DCA was shown to shrink lung, breast and brain tumours in both animal and human tissue experiments. The study was published yesterday in the journal Cancer Cell. "I think DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a fundamental process of cancer that is unique to cancer cells," said Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the Edmonton university's medical school and one of the study's key authors. The molecule appears to repair damaged mitochondria in cancer cells. "When a cell is getting too old or doesn't function properly, the mitochondria are going to induce the cell death," lead study author Sebastien Bonnet said yesterday. Bonnet says DCA or dichloroacetate appears to reverse the mitochondrial changes in a wide range of cancers. "One of the really exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer because all forms of cancer suppress mitochondrial function," Michelakis said. Bonnet says DCA may also provide an effective cancer treatment because its small size allows easy absorption into the body, ensuring it can reach areas that other drugs cannot, such as brain tumours. Because it's been used to combat other ailments ... DCA has been shown to have few toxic effects on the body. Its previous use means it can be immediately tested on humans. Unlike other cancer drugs, DCA did not appear to have any negative effect on normal cells. It could provide an extremely inexpensive cancer therapy because it's not patented. But ... the lack of a patent could lead to an unwillingness on the part of pharmaceutical companies to fund expensive clinical trials.
Note: Even these scientists realize that though this discovery could be a huge benefit to mankind, because the drug companies will lose profits, they almost certainly will not fund studies. Expensive AIDS drugs with promising results, on the other hand, are rushed through the studies to market. For more reliable, verifiable information on how hugely beneficial health advances are shut down to keep profits high, click here and here.
Patients were put in isolation, tied down or drugged, and subjected to hours and hours of taped recordings meant to brainwash them at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency. They were subjected to massive electroshocks, experimental drugs and LSD, most of them unwilling and unknowingly part of the U.S. spy agency's experimentation. Now it's time for the federal government to compensate those victims, lawyer Alan Stein argued. Mr. Stein is seeking court approval for a class-action lawsuit on behalf of his client, Janine Huard, one of the hundreds of patients of Ewen Cameron to be subjected to the Cold War-era experiments. "She never knew ... that she was being used by Dr. Cameron and his staff as a guinea pig," Mr. Stein told the court. The CIA ... recruited Dr. Cameron to experiment with mind-control techniques beginning in 1950. The experiments ... were jointly funded by the CIA and the Canadian government. They were part of a larger CIA program called MK-ULTRA, which also saw LSD administered to U.S. prison inmates and patrons of brothels without their knowledge. Ms. Huard was one of nine Canadian victims who received nearly $67,000 (U.S.) from the CIA in 1988 to compensate her for her suffering. But her claim for compensation from the federal government ... was rejected three times. In 1994, 77 patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government, but more than 250 others were denied compensation because they were not "totally depatterned."
Note: What this article fails to mention is that Dr. Cameron was also the president of both the American Psychicatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. For more reliable information, click here.
A two-year congressional inquiry into the Oklahoma City bombing concludes that the FBI didn't fully investigate whether other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the deadly 1995 attack, allowing questions to linger a decade later. The House International Relations investigative subcommittee [declared that] there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack, but that far too many unanswered questions remain. The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot. "We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press. Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.
Note: Should you choose to explore the deadly Oklahoma City bombing, you will find that there are many strange inconsistencies suggesting a major cover-up. If you are interested in more, you might start here.
For decades, Israel coyly has refused to confirm or deny what, since 1986, the whole world has known for sure: that is that the Jewish state is the one country in the Middle East that has a well-developed, nuclear arsenal. It was 20 years ago that Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert, informed Britain's Sunday Times about the weapons program, leading "defense analysts to rank the country as the [world's] sixth largest nuclear power." Vanunu was jailed for 18 years for revealing state secrets. Israel calls its refusal to deny or confirm the existence of its nuclear arms its "nuclear ambiguity" policy. Why? Explains the Times (U.K.): "For many years, Israel was the only country outside the five declared nuclear powers to have built an atomic weapon ... It wanted its enemies in the region to know that it had nuclear capability if threatened. But it also wanted to keep the existence secret so that it did not fall [a]foul of international action designed to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly strict U.S. laws which could have jeopardized billions of dollars in annual aid." The Jerusalem Post notes that "Nuclear ambiguity was a comfortable arrangement for both Israeli and U.S. administrations, designed to allow Israel to get on with whatever it was doing ... without too much international pressure, and [to allow] the U.S. to not seem too hypocritical by not demanding its Middle East ally sign the [Non-proliferation Treaty]. Ambiguity might have worked for four decades, but ... it is now hopelessly outdated."
Note: The media has been quite reluctant to discuss these issues openly. Could it be they fear people might question the amount of U.S. aid? Israel's population is 6.5 million. Official U.S. yearly foreign aid to Israel has been about $2.5 to 3.0 billion for many years. 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 yearly gift! A Christian Science Monitor article says if all forms of aid are considered, the figures are even higher.
That 55-mile-per-gallon hybrid car you've been eyeing may end up being a 44-mpg hybrid. The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced a new system Monday for evaluating fuel economy that will lower mileage estimates for most vehicles. On average, vehicles rated under the 2008 method will post a 12% drop in city gasoline mileage and an 8% decline in highway mileage. With the new testing requirements, the EPA is attempting to come up with estimates that more closely reflect the real-world mileage motorists can expect when they purchase a vehicle. Under the current system ... actual mileage is often far lower than the posted EPA ratings. Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results. A recent study ... found that the average mileage for passenger cars and light trucks was about 14% less than EPA estimates. The mileage for gas-electric hybrids probably will be 20% to 30% lower than present estimates for city driving and 10% to 20% lower on the highway. These vehicles quickly lose their all-electric advantage when operated in cold weather or quickly accelerated. The new EPA mileage estimates won't harm automakers' ability to meet federal rules requiring an industrywide average fuel economy of 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and 21 mpg for sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans.
Note: The government could easily mandate higher gas mileage, but has not significantly raised the bar in almost 20 years. Why? The current average mileage for all cars is less than the mileage of the 1908 Model T. With all of the incredibly technological advances in other fields, how is this possible? For more on this vital topic, click here and here. Toyota came out with a hybrid that got 100 mpg in 2002. For what happened to it, click here. And to learn how a Toyota Prius can be converted to get 100 miles per gallon, click here.
Tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens. The government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. The Truth Movement's recent growth can be largely attributed to the Internet-distributed documentary "Loose Change." It's been viewed over the Internet millions of times. Complementing "Loose Change" are the more highbrow offerings of a handful of writers and scholars, many of whom are associated with Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Two of these academics, retired theologian David Ray Griffin and retired Brigham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, have written books and articles that serve as the movement's canon. The Truth Movement's relationship to the truth may be tenuous, but that it is a movement is no longer in doubt. For the Administration, "conspiracy" is a tremendously useful term, and can be applied even in the most seemingly bizarre conditions to declare an inquiry or criticism out of bounds. Of course, the ommission report was something of a whitewash Bush would only be interviewed in the presence of Dick Cheney, the commission was denied access to other key witnesses, and ... a meeting convened by George Tenet the summer before the attacks to warn Condoleezza Rice about al Qaeda's plotting ... was nowhere mentioned in the report. It's hard to blame people for thinking we're not getting the whole story. For six years, the government has prevaricated and the press has largely failed to point out this simple truth.
Note: Though this article belittles the 9/11 movement, there is abundant evidence to support the claim that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and the attacks may have been orchestrated. For more, click here.
By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted. New federal guidelines, along with legislation given a strong chance to pass in Congress next year, will probably combine to make the paperless voting machines obsolete. Motivated in part by voting problems during the midterm elections last month, the changes are a result of a growing skepticism among local and state election officials, federal legislators and the scientific community about the reliability and security of the paperless touch-screen machines used by about 30 percent of American voters. Various forms of vote-counting software used around the country ... will for the first time be inspected by federal authorities, and the code could be made public. Last year, New Mexico spent $14 million to replace its touch screens. Other states are spending millions more to retrofit the machines to add paper trails. Because some printers malfunctioned last month, election commissioners in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland, said last week that they were considering scrapping their new $17 million system of touch-screen machines. Under changes approved by the Election Assistance Commission yesterday, voting machine manufacturers would have to make their crucial software code available to federal inspectors. The code is now checked mainly by private testing laboratories paid by the manufacturers.
Note: How is it possible that the government allowed voting machine companies to keep their software secret even from the government? We may never know how many votes were manipulated. For more, click here.
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