5200 Pentagon Employees PURCHASED Child Pornography!

 Yes, why is this not a bigger story?

Depleted Uranium, all hush hush

Posted by morris108 on May 19, 2008 in Crimes and Corruption of the New World Order ..

I wonder if Israel has made any official inquiry into the effects of depleted uranium?

How much of the depleted uranium particles float over and into Israel?

If your govt scientist told you , your offspring were likely to suffer genetic defects from the use of depleted uranium in Iraq etc. Would you protest?

So far, it is all a big hush up, doesn’t suit the profiteers.

Like the Gulf War syndrome, all hushed up.

At least you could ask for an official enquiry or a savvy journalist to look into it.

Germany opens huge Nazi crimes archive to public

Wed Apr 30, 2008 1:30pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany opened the world's largest collection of documents on Nazi crimes and their victims to the public on Wednesday.

The International Tracing Service (ITS) in the western town of Bad Arolsen contains about 50 million records on some 17 million victims of Hitler's Nazi regime.

The paperwork, which includes imprisonment orders, death registers and Gestapo notes, reveals details about people who were murdered in the Holocaust, concentration camp survivors and millions of forced laborers and displaced people.

It contains the names of people on "Schindler's List" -- hundreds of Jews saved by businessman Oskar Schindler -- which was the subject of a Steven Spielberg film.

Until Wednesday, the centre allowed only Nazi victims and their relations access.

ITS director Reto Meister said the opening marked the start of a new chapter for the archives more than 60 years after the end of World War Two.

"The opening will contribute to keep alive the memory of the monstrous crimes of the Nazi era," said Meister at the opening ceremony.

The centre is part of the International Committee of the Red Cross and 11 nations are represented on the ITS board -- Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Britain and the United States.

Israel and the United States had long pushed for the archive to open its doors. Germany had been worried about data protection but has received guarantees that information on those still living will remain restricted.

Germany gives the ITS, which is in the process of digitalizing its archives, about 14 million euros ($22 million) a year.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Robert Woodward)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

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Dr. Phil on the Superbug scandal

Keywords - LYSOL and HYDROGEN PYROXIDE for those who don't KNOW. Iam a Dettol fan.

Some of you may night like Dr. Phil. I really like Dr. Phil. That is the only show I can truthfully say I watch anymore. I catch it once in awhile when I am not posting, reading, watching sad videos and trying to take care of myself in this friggin toxic box I am forced to live while very seriously ill. I don't have any family, so I like to think of Dr. Phil as a brother I have. One I piced by choice not biology.

Dr. Phil is sober, he is wise and sometimes he can be damned effective. My only complaint is that he doesn't tell his viewers to DEMAND IMPEACHMENT NOW and end this friggin US/Canada tragedy that has had global consequences. It might have a real good effective if he did.

Events have SHOWN you cannot trust the government. Anyone who has followed the Katina Holocaust knows that, too. But his effort to take on the CDC and expose their sickening lies is truly commendable.

The hypocritical Oprah has gone back to eating hamburgers and BOASTING ABOUT her buddies search for the perfect burger. GIVE ME A BREAK. Most meat is laden with bad chemicals now, so is meat. But telling the sheeple that must won't/wouldn't "do", not on the plug-in American drug. You can be DAMNED SURE Oprah isn't going to show you the videos on the 9-year old girls who must prostitute themselves to feed their families .. oh, no not THAT. She'll probably omit the segment on the superbug to do a rerun of Tom Cruise. She is NOT into solutions ..

But Dr. Phil is now hitting the edges. He is talking full scale recognition that people in the US are truly underserved by the CDC and the lieing doctors who work in hospitals. He is showing the ugly side of moral corruption that is RAMPANT in America.

And his viewers are NOT crying about puppies being thrown off a cliff when they can't shed tears for a single Iraki dead - as America goes DOWN, Dr. Phil's viewers are being given a CRASH course in how far down the tubes the agencies (well, actually the CDC is a consortium of PRIVATE concerns, not unlike the Federal Reserve) .. that they must rely on are failing them miserably.

So here is some stuff off his website today. (Did I mention the hidden depopulation agenda, no matter WHAT the suffering and sorrow caused? Did I mention that??)

I do not believe that cleanselight and lysol is the solitary answer!! More must be done to PRESSURE the CDC ..

Stay tuned ..

Veeger

The Superbug Scare

Could a grave danger be lurking in your home? If you believe the headlines, you know that catching MRSA, also known as the Superbug, can have deadly consequences, but should you be concerned? How can you spot the danger and what can you do to stay safe? Dr. Phil gets to the bottom of these questions and others.

Fatal Infection

Melissa's son, Mark, was just 13 when he went to the hospital and wound up with MRSA. Learn about Melissa’s tragic loss and why she thinks her son’s death could have been prevented.

"He was cheated out of his chance to survive."

Living with a Potential Killer

Nineteen-year-old Stephanie has been battling the Superbug for almost a year. Get a firsthand account of her experience with the disease. Why has she survived?

Find out what advice her doctor gave her that has Dr. Phil shocked and concerned.

---

Inside the System

Even doctors aren’t immune to the Superbug. Dr. Drew O’Neal had an accident while on vacation, and what happened next changed his life forever. He shares his valuable insights as both doctor and patient.

“So this has evolved by surviving the antibiotics and getting stronger and stronger.”

---

Tainted Turf?

Two years ago, Glenn was your average sophomore playing on his high school football team — until he contracted the Superbug right from the team’s locker room. Find out what important lessons he learned that could help protect you and your children from the germ.

"Parents should definitely not take this lightly."

---

How to Protect Yourself

Renowned pediatrician Dr. Jim Sears weighs in with the latest information and shows off products to keep on hand that could save your life.

Learn what every parent should know.

Melissa tells the story of how her son’s illness unfolded. Mark complained that his knee hurt, and it had swelled visibly. After a doctor found a tumor there, Mark went in for a bone biopsy. Before long, he was admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy to be administered through a port installed in his chest.

“Mark's incision had oozing the first two days at home. He seemed OK,” Melissa explains. “On August 11, his pulse rate started to increase. I called the emergency chemo line. Mark was in the emergency room. A surgeon looked at Mark's leg and said he needed to do surgery immediately and remove the infection. He said Mark might not survive the surgery, but if he didn't have it, he would be dead by the morning. The tissue that they removed from his leg was positive for MRSA.”

Melissa continues, “They did an EEG, and they did another brain scan, and it just showed that he had no brain function left. He couldn't breathe on his own, and his kidney functions would not come back, so we were able to say goodbye because he was not going to be able to hold his own any longer.

“Mark passed away on August 23, at 12:30, and it should never have happened. It could have been prevented, and for every parent out there who wouldn't want that to happen to their child, and they say it kills more people than AIDS, why don't we know more about it? Why hasn't it gotten any attention? I don't understand. Mark was just a unique, special child, who touched so many people, and I really felt as though he was cheated out of his chance to survive.”

Dr. Phil thanks Melissa for joining him, saying, “We don't want to intrude upon your grief, but I understand why you want to talk about this. Have you worked backwards to figure out exactly the point at which he became exposed, he became infected? Do you really know?”

“We don't know the exact point,” says Melissa. “He did have hospital-acquired MRSA, and unfortunately with his immune system down, it gave the MRSA a chance to really attack the body very, very rapidly. Like I said, that morning Mark's pulse rate had gone up, he didn't have a fever, his biopsy site, there didn't appear to be any changes, but once we got to the emergency room, he went downhill quickly. His fever went up to 103.8, his biopsy site started looking — widening, turning black — and it was just hours that he went into septic shock and cardiac arrest, and even though we had him on life support in the ICU for 11 days, it just, it had done too much damage.”

“Had you heard of MRSA before that?” asks Dr. Phil.

“I didn't know about MRSA,” she says. “I think that perhaps at some time all of us have heard of, oh, a hospital infection or something of that nature, and it's something you hear go past on the news and it just goes past.“

“Certainly the hospitals know about it,” says Dr. Phil. “I mean, should they not be, like, swabbing everybody down, finding out if this is in their hospital, doing things to protect it? Did you feel like that was done before this happened?”

“It was not done,” says Melissa. “I do feel as though a swab would have saved Mark, yes. And that's what's unfortunate, because all of it is preventable.” She explains that, while some states require hospitals to report the number of MRSA cases they have in a year, not all states do. “They're not required to swab, and by swabbing — not just the patients coming in but the staff as well — I think that we need to take a look at some of the hospitals that have voluntarily made some changes, and they've cut their MRSA by 85 or 90 percent.”

“By doing their voluntary programs,” Dr. Phil notes.

“By doing their voluntary programs,” Melissa agrees.

Dr. Phil asks Melissa about the moment in which her son’s condition took a downturn, and how soon the hospital was able to recognize what was going on.

“Once we were in the emergency room and then ICU, there was discussion about his wound site, if that was where it had actually started, but the MRSA can — a percent of it turns into the necrotizing fasciitis, which is the flesh-eating disease. And that's where one of the surgeons came in and said, ‘He may not survive the surgery, but I'll guarantee you he'll be dead in the morning if we don't do it.’”

“Well, when you're talking about necrotizing fasciitis, the treatment is you've got to cut until it bleeds, you've got to get past it, you've got to get ahead of it, and that is a very barbaric sort of procedure to just try to get ahead of the curve and cut where it's not, and it can leave huge wounds, and I assume that's what he was saying. 'We've got to do this, or he'll be gone either way.’”

“Correct. Yes,” says Melissa.

Stephanie and her mother, Shelly, join Dr. Phil via satellite.

“Stephanie, what are the doctors telling you about your situation?” he asks.

“They really don't tell me much about MRSA,” she explains. “The last time I went to my surgeon, because I just discovered three more lumps under my arm, and he just basically told me that my body's going to be rejecting the antibiotics because I've been on it for so long, and there's really nothing more he can do, and that's what he left me with.”

“Let's talk about how this happened,” says Dr. Phil. “You are healthy, you're young, you're active, you're strong. What was the first indication that caused you to seek out treatment?”

Stephanie recounts, “Around last December, I woke up, and I had a pea-sized lump underneath my right armpit, and I went to the doctor, and they first thought it was an infection from shaving, and they gave me some medication, but it never got any better. So I kept on going back, and they started draining the area on my armpit every day for almost a month, and then, that's when they finally decided to have surgery, around February.”

Dr. Phil expresses surprise that a month and a half passed before the problem was diagnosed. “And when it was, what was the explanation? What did they explain to you when they actually sat you down and told you what was going on?” he asks.

“They never actually sat me down,” she explains. “That's the thing. My mom actually found out I had it because my first surgery, she was coming up to see me, and I had these, like, red signs all over my door, and people walking in in all these, like, uniforms and everything, and covering their faces, and my mom didn't know what was going on. She asked, and it was like, 'Well, your daughter has MRSA.'”

Dr. Phil addresses Stephanie’s mom. “At some point they told you what was going on, they explained it,” he says. “What did they say about it?”

“Nobody's ever explained MRSA to us with Stephanie except for she's just a carrier, it's something that she has, it's a severe staph infection,” says Shelly. “We've never had to do anything different as far as being around her or when she was being treated there at the hospital. People were coming in with all these suits, but we were standing around in our normal clothes, visiting with her, talking to her.”

“Boy, I've got to tell you, if I'm the only one in a room not in a biohazard suit, I'm going to start asking questions,” says Dr. Phil. Stephanie has had three procedures so far. “Do you have anything scheduled in the future?” asks Dr. Phil.

“Actually, right now my surgeon, he said he can't do anything more for me until I see an infectious disease doctor, but they can't see me until the 28th,” says Stephanie. “So, there's probably a surgery in the future because one of my lumps under my left arm is growing pretty fast. It's getting pretty big, so ... he just told me to wait.”

“He just told you to wait until the 28th with this growing,” Dr. Phil says in disbelief. “Tell me about the pain aspect of this. You said at one point it was so painful that you can't believe you even went back into the hospital.”

“Yeah, at the beginning,” Stephanie says, “because when they were packing my arm, and they would take out the packing every day — I don't even know why I went back. It just hurt so bad, and it was like torture.”
“I hate to be indelicate in asking this, but we know that some people have died with this in a matter of days, and you are surviving,” says Dr. Phil. “How is it that you're fighting this off and surviving?”

“I am actually not too sure,” Stephanie says. “That's what I tell myself every day when I wake up with another one. I always think well, it could be worse. I just listen to what the doctors say. I take the antibiotics, and then we usually just go into a surgery and they drain the area, and then you think it's gone, and then a couple months later there's another one. It's just starting to scare me. “

“Well, I so thank you for telling us about this,” says Dr. Phil. “I am just so uncomfortable with this wait-until-the-28th-to-see-somebody.”

“That's the way I feel!” Shelly interjects.

“That would not be OK with me unless we were talking on the 27th, and we're not,” says Dr. Phil. “So, I wish you the best with that, and maybe we can draw some attention to this.”

“It was only a year ago that I had a sporting accident,” Drew says.

That’s when Drew took a fall while hunting and broke his heel. He went to the emergency room, but did not undergo surgery at the time. Instead, the surgery was scheduled for two weeks later to allow some of the swelling to go down. When he did go back for surgery, his doctors screwed the pieces of his heel back together. The whole process went according to plan — or so they thought.

“Within a few days I was starting to get ill, and it became very apparent that I was in trouble,” says Drew. “I became very sick. High fever. A culture was obtained, showed MRSA, which is methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. The first three months were terrible. I was sick, couldn't do anything more than lie on the couch. There was a period of hopelessness. Will I ever walk again? Will I ever enjoy some of the things that I've enjoyed all my life?”

Drew took oral antibiotics for about eight months to keep the infection contained, but in August his injury took a turn for the worse. “The heel disintegrated into six pieces, and my entire ankle fell about an inch,” Drew explains. “Everyone's attempts, the infectious disease specialist, the orthopedic surgeon — it all failed in the end, and so at this moment, my heel's gone. I may end up with an amputation. I've had six orthopedic operations, headed for my seventh with no guarantee that I'll ever walk again.”

“I think maybe what scares everybody about this is you're inside the system. You're a doc,” says Dr. Phil. “How quickly did they recognize, did you recognize what was going on after you had had the surgery?”

“Well, any time you have a procedure the physician's always thinking about the possibility of infection,” Drew explains. “That's been true for many decades. And unfortunately, a few days after the surgery the incision started to get red, and warm, and started to drain, and the redness started to creep up the leg, and I knew I was in trouble — hoping it was just a regular bug, that it wouldn't be that difficult to eradicate. But that's not how it turned out.”

“So, you've had how many surgeries on your heel at this point?” asks Dr. Phil.

“Six,” says Drew. “The last one, they had to go and actually remove almost all of the calcaneus, the heel bone, and fill up the void with these little cement marbles that are impregnated with antibiotics, to hope to go back in a few months from now and rebuild it, take a cadaver bone and screw it to the bottom of my ankle and hopefully rebuild the foot.”
“What is MRSA?” Dr. Phil asks Drew. “What are we dealing with here? Where did this come from?”

“Well, staph aureus is a very common bug. It's been around forever,” he says. He turns to address the members of Dr. Phil’s audience. “Ladies and Gentlemen, look around at those around you. One out of three of you has staph aureus on your body right now. One out of four of you in this room has staph aureus in your nose. Now, of course that doesn't mean they have MRSA, which is a little bit worse.”

Drew explains that staph aureus has been around forever, though it was first identified in 1880. When Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin in 1943, he used staph aureus to make the discovery. At that time, 100 percent of staph aureus responded to penicillin, so it didn’t pose a danger, but over the years it has slowly developed a resistance to penicillin, a simple antibiotic. By 1950, about 40 percent of staph aureus had already become penicillin resistant, and by 1960, 80 percent had. Then, in 1961 the first case of methicillin-resistant staph aureus appeared, a strain resistant to even the strongest antibiotics in existence.

“That's why they call it a superbug,” says Dr. Phil. “My docs used to tell me, 'Take all of these antibiotics or all you're going to do is kill the weak germs, and the real killers are going to stay strong.’ So you've got to go all the way through.”

“That's good advice,” says Drew. “Absolutely right.”

“So this has evolved by surviving the antibiotics and getting stronger and stronger,” says Dr. Phil.

“I saw this thing on my left elbow, and it just looked like a pimple at first,” says Glenn, who was a sophomore in high school two years ago when he made the discovery.

When the affected area didn’t heal after a couple days, his mother, Melanie, called her pediatrician and asked the doctor to culture Glenn’s arm. The results revealed the presence of MRSA.

“I was a little bit scared at first to see that on my elbow,” says Glenn. “I didn't know what to think. I knew about MRSA from the previous year at football. A few older guys got it. MRSA has become a big epidemic at my school. A lot of guys on the football team have contracted it. Out of the 13 kids at my school who contracted MRSA, about 10 of them were football players.”

Melanie says the school has been diligent in trying to protect its athletes. “They've been educating the athletes and the parents in proper hygiene, to wash their hands, not share any of the equipment, and to look for any signs of MRSA,” she says. “The only thing that I've really changed is enforcing him to bring home his pads and equipment every night to be washed.”

“I definitely take a lot more precautions now. I wash my stuff every night. I shower right after practice,” says Glenn. “I was very relieved that they caught it in time. I'm concerned about getting MRSA again.”

“I believe that this hype about MRSA is necessary,” says Melanie. “Parents should definitely not take this lightly. If there's any concern, they need to be seen by their physician.”

“So, Glenn, you had no idea what you had, right?” asks Dr. Phil.

“No, not at first,” says the young man. “I had the smallest idea because it happened the year before to a few seniors, but that was it. I just knew it was some sort of disease they caught, and that was the end of it.”

Turning to previous guest Drew, a physician, Dr. Phil asks, “Once this gets into an area like a locker room like that, is it difficult to get out? Don't you need to go through and, like, scrub everything down, and get everything right?”

“Definitely,” says Drew. “You need to be very aggressive about cleaning meticulously everything like that.” He explains that MRSA germs can live on a surface like a locker room table for 10 days or longer.

Pediatrician Dr. Jim Sears adds, “And the football team comes in off a practice, everything's sweaty, and the MRSA is on their equipment, and they throw it in the locker, and they just use it the next day without cleaning everything, and they don't take a shower right away, and that's how it can spread.”

r. Arjun Srinivasan with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joins Dr. Phil by phone. Dr. Phil says, “The CDC says not to disinfect the school desk and those common areas. Is that correct?”

“No, actually, Dr. Phil” Arjun begins, “I'm glad you're bringing this up because this is a very important point to emphasize. Disinfection and cleaning surfaces is very important in controlling the transmission of MRSA. What we want people to focus on is the cleaning and disinfection of surfaces that are likely to have come in contact with someone's wound, especially wounds that are not covered or are poorly covered. So, there are certain areas, particularly in locker rooms, where there's a lot more risk on a particular surface because it's likely to have come in contact with someone's wound. So what we want people to do is really focus their cleaning efforts on those areas that are likely to be contaminated."

Dr. Srinivasan continues, "What we're concerned about is that people — you go after the walls and the floors, but you don't pay really particular attention to say, a training table, or a bench that everybody might be using to get taped or to have their dressings changed. We want people to really get in there and focus on those things, like Glen is saying, your equipment, the types of things that are going to have contact with your abrasions.”

“Melanie, you guys scrub it up every night, right?” asks. Dr. Phil. “Does he bring it home and wash it?”

“Now he does,” she says, “but I must say that now our school's locker room is very clean. They fog the equipment every night. They fog the truck that carries the equipment. The kids have to bring home their equipment. We have towel services so — That's a big problem with this age group. They're not as diligent as they should be, so we try to enforce cleanliness.”

“This is little Marly,” says Dr. Sears, hovering over a toddler in his office. “She's 18 months. Her parents called me, and they say, 'I think my child has an infected spider bite,' and that's the red flag to me. I say, 'It's probably not. Come on in and let's take a look at it.'”

Marly's mom tells Dr. Sears, “I was changing her diaper and just out of the blue it just popped up like it was a spider bite. So I kind of just let it go a little bit but it just started to get bigger and the red around it was really hot.”

“That's what most staph infections start as, either a little pimple or a boil or something that looks like an infected spider bite,” says Dr. Sears. “We have to use a combination of antibiotics, because when you have the resistant staph you have to really use some very potent antibiotics.”

Back in his studio, Dr. Phil asks Dr. Sears, “How dangerous is this? How much of a scare should we have at this point?”

“Well, I think we all need to be very concerned, but not scared,” he says. “We need to be educated about this. It is out there. We have to understand that the staph is on most of us, but as long as it doesn't get into our bodies through a cut or unsterile medical equipment then you'll probably be fine.”

Slide: 2 of 4

“This is little Marly,” says Dr. Sears, hovering over a toddler in his office. “She's 18 months. Her parents called me, and they say, 'I think my child has an infected spider bite,' and that's the red flag to me. I say, 'It's probably not. Come on in and let's take a look at it.'”

Marly's mom tells Dr. Sears, “I was changing her diaper and just out of the blue it just popped up like it was a spider bite. So I kind of just let it go a little bit but it just started to get bigger and the red around it was really hot.”

“That's what most staph infections start as, either a little pimple or a boil or something that looks like an infected spider bite,” says Dr. Sears. “We have to use a combination of antibiotics, because when you have the resistant staph you have to really use some very potent antibiotics.”

Back in his studio, Dr. Phil asks Dr. Sears, “How dangerous is this? How much of a scare should we have at this point?”

“Well, I think we all need to be very concerned, but not scared,” he says. “We need to be educated about this. It is out there. We have to understand that the staph is on most of us, but as long as it doesn't get into our bodies through a cut or unsterile medical equipment then you'll probably be fine.”

Dr. Phil says, “If 85 percent of this is coming from hospitals, then shouldn't there be another protocol in hospitals? We were talking earlier about the fact that a Pittsburgh hospital has reduced this 85 percent with a voluntary program. Shouldn't this be something that the CDC is jumping up and down about — or whichever the controlling agency is — to get a different protocol in the hospitals?”

“Sure,” says Dr. Sears. “That seems to make sense, because if we know who has the staph on them or in their nose especially, then those are the patients who are at risk, and to get rid of that staph before you do surgery on them or before you do procedures.”

Dr. Phil is joined on the phone by Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He tells Dr. Phil, “There are things that hospitals can do to prevent the transmission of MRSA and prevent MRSA infections, and there are a number of recommendations that have been put forth by CDC to help people, to suggest to them what things they can do to take those steps.”

“It's my understanding, and I just read this, that the CDC is being criticized for not doing enough, not being aggressive enough at the hospital level to bring this about,” says Dr. Phil. “What do you say about that, Doc?”

“Well, I think we certainly really want people to be aggressive about this problem. This is a serious issue, and we take it very seriously,” says Dr. Srinivasan. “What we start with is to tell people, 'You need to track MRSA, and you need to know what your problem is with MRSA. How much MRSA do you have in your hospital?' But we say, 'You have to monitor your MRSA constantly, and if it's not going down you have to do more, and you keep doing more until you get it to go down.' As you've said, knowledge is power.”

Slide: 2 of 4

“This is little Marly,” says Dr. Sears, hovering over a toddler in his office. “She's 18 months. Her parents called me, and they say, 'I think my child has an infected spider bite,' and that's the red flag to me. I say, 'It's probably not. Come on in and let's take a look at it.'”

Marly's mom tells Dr. Sears, “I was changing her diaper and just out of the blue it just popped up like it was a spider bite. So I kind of just let it go a little bit but it just started to get bigger and the red around it was really hot.”

“That's what most staph infections start as, either a little pimple or a boil or something that looks like an infected spider bite,” says Dr. Sears. “We have to use a combination of antibiotics, because when you have the resistant staph you have to really use some very potent antibiotics.”

Back in his studio, Dr. Phil asks Dr. Sears, “How dangerous is this? How much of a scare should we have at this point?”

“Well, I think we all need to be very concerned, but not scared,” he says. “We need to be educated about this. It is out there. We have to understand that the staph is on most of us, but as long as it doesn't get into our bodies through a cut or unsterile medical equipment then you'll probably be fine.”

Dr. Phil says, “If 85 percent of this is coming from hospitals, then shouldn't there be another protocol in hospitals? We were talking earlier about the fact that a Pittsburgh hospital has reduced this 85 percent with a voluntary program. Shouldn't this be something that the CDC is jumping up and down about — or whichever the controlling agency is — to get a different protocol in the hospitals?”

“Sure,” says Dr. Sears. “That seems to make sense, because if we know who has the staph on them or in their nose especially, then those are the patients who are at risk, and to get rid of that staph before you do surgery on them or before you do procedures.”

Dr. Phil is joined on the phone by Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He tells Dr. Phil, “There are things that hospitals can do to prevent the transmission of MRSA and prevent MRSA infections, and there are a number of recommendations that have been put forth by CDC to help people, to suggest to them what things they can do to take those steps.”

“It's my understanding, and I just read this, that the CDC is being criticized for not doing enough, not being aggressive enough at the hospital level to bring this about,” says Dr. Phil. “What do you say about that, Doc?”

“Well, I think we certainly really want people to be aggressive about this problem. This is a serious issue, and we take it very seriously,” says Dr. Srinivasan. “What we start with is to tell people, 'You need to track MRSA, and you need to know what your problem is with MRSA. How much MRSA do you have in your hospital?' But we say, 'You have to monitor your MRSA constantly, and if it's not going down you have to do more, and you keep doing more until you get it to go down.' As you've said, knowledge is power.”
Dr. Phil asks Dr. Sears what parents and others can do to make their environments safe from MRSA.

“Like Dr. Srinivasan said, you need to disinfect the surfaces that are likely to be contaminated,” says Dr. Sears.

“But how do you do it?” asks Dr. Phil.

“Well, when I checked into the hotel last night, I got my little Lysol, and I sprayed down the remote control, and the doorknobs, and the light switches, just because I don't know if those got cleaned,” says Dr. Sears, brandishing a small spray bottle. “And I know when I walk around a hotel room, you use the bathroom, and oftentimes you may not wash your hands.”

“So, you realize this is going to send every OCD person in the world over the top,” Dr. Phil jests, “and of course, they'll probably survive, and we'll all be gone. So we'll have a very orderly world. But you're saying it is good to do that.”

“Right. Surfaces that are likely to be contaminated,” says Dr. Sears. “When you're sick, when you have a cold, if you have staph in your nose, you're more likely to be spreading it, so wash your hands extra when you have a cold, and those alcohol gels that you squirt in your hands, they kill these staph really well, but they don't get through dirt, so you really have to scrub hard.

As Dr. Phil examines Dr. Sears' Lysol spray bottle, he clarifies that Dr. Sears works as a spokesman for Lysol. "And this is safe for kids to be around?” he asks.

“Well, it's for surfaces,” says Dr. Sears.

“I'm not saying you spray your kid with it,” he says with a chuckle, “but I'm saying if you spray the surface that the kid then puts their hand on, it's not going to freak them out.”

“And most of this stuff works by drying the bacteria out, which is nice because that doesn't lead to resistance like antibiotics do,” adds Dr. Sears.

“All right, there's another new thing that I'm holding here in my hand,” says Dr. Phil, waving a white oblong wand of sorts, called a Cleanse Light. “This is a U.V. wand, and this is something that is — it's a light, actually — that is anti-bacterial.” He explains that waving the object across a surface such as a keyboard, telephone or doorknob supposedly kills 99 percent of bacteria. If you turn it toward you face, it automatically shuts off. The Cleanse Light retails for $59.95 and is available at CleanseLight.com.

Every member of Dr. Phil’s in-studio audience receives a Cleanse Light and some Lysol spray.

Starhawk Deported from Israel

Starhawk has been deported from Israel, where she was scheduled to
teach a permaculture course in Palestine.

Starhawk Deported From Israel

Author, activist, and Reclaiming co-founder Starhawk has been refused
entry and deported from Israel. Starhawk (born Miriam Simos, a
descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants), who was there to teach a
permaculture course in the northern West Bank, has long been critical
of Israel's policies concerning the Palestinian-controlled West Bank
and Gaza. A stance that very likely prompted the deportation order.

"Starhawk, author of many works celebrating the Goddess movement and
Earth-based, feminist spirituality arrived in Tel Aviv Wednesday, 12
March. She was here to help teach a permaculture course in the
northern West Bank as well as working with earth activists to develop
a project in the Bethlehem area. Dr. Joanne Taylor, a British
psychologist commented on the deportation "clearly the Israeli
authorities are paranoid even about letting people grow crops and
conserve rainwater on their own land." Declaring herself as 'a peace,
environmental, and global justice activist and trainer, a permaculture
designer and teacher, a Pagan and Witch', perhaps this earthy
combination was just too threatening for the powers that be."

The deportation order seems surprising since Starhawk is an outspoken
proponent of non-violent solutions, and while critical of the Israeli
government's policies towards Palestinians, has continually reiterated
her Jewish identity and "true love" for Israel. It should be
interesting to see what reasons the Israeli government ultimately
gives for this deportation, and if Starhawk's relationship with news
organizations like The Washington Post will result in mainstream media
coverage of this event.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/373456.shtml

Support the Israeli Peace Block working as part of an
Israeli-Palestinian grassroots solidarity movement: Gush Shalom:

http://gush-shalom.org/english/intro.html

= = = =
STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA
IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT'S GOING ON?

GULF WAR SYNDROME FIRMLY LINKED TO CHEMICAL EXPOSURE

Can you say more du coverup? More lieing??? MORE blame the victim??

V


CHICAGO (AFP) - Nearly two decades after veterans of the 1991 Gulf War
came home complaining of odd illnesses, enough evidence has been
gathered to determine that many of them were sickened by chemical
exposure, a study has concluded.

And some of the damage was likely caused by pills prescribed to
protect against the use of nerve gas and pesticides used to control
sand flies, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.

While the military has subsequently stopped using the pills, the
pesticides continue to be used in agriculture and for pest control in
homes and offices in the United States and around the globe.

"Enough studies have been conducted, and results shared, to be able to say
with considerable confidence that there is a link between chemical
exposure and chronic, multi-symptom health problems," said study
author Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego's
school of medicine.

"Furthermore, the same chemicals affecting Gulf War veterans may be
involved in similar cases of unexplained, multi-symptom health
problems in the general population."

Golomb examined the results of scores of studies looking at the health
impact of the class of chemicals to which the veterans were exposed
either through pesticides, the anti-nerve gas pills or the demolition of
a weapons depot containing the nerve gas sarin.

Her study linked exposure to the chemicals to Gulf War syndrome, a
chronic health problem which affected between 26 and 32 percent of
deployed troops.

Symptoms routinely reported by these veterans include memory problems,
trouble sleeping, muscle or joint pain, fatigue, rashes and breathing
problems.

While the findings "do not imply that all illness in Gulf War
veterans" is the result of this exposure it "may account for some or
perhaps much of the excess illness seen in Gulf War veterans" she
concluded.

Golomb also discovered why some veterans were sickened while others
with equal or greater chemical exposure were not affected.

"There is evidence that genetics have something to do with how a body
handles exposure to these chemicals," Golomb said.

"Some people are genetically less able to withstand these toxins and
evidence shows that these individuals have higher chance of suffering the
effects of exposure."

Some 250,000 service members were given the bromide pills as a
preventative measure. Those with the mutations that reduced their
ability to detoxify the pills were at significantly higher risk of
illness, Golomb found.

Previous studies have shown that this mutation is also linked to
increased rates of some neurological diseases, such as amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease.

U.S. Senate Verdict Is Mixed On Bush's Pre-Iraq War Claims

LA TIMES, Greg Miller

Comment for Veeger: Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit.

"Nobody is going to be happy" with the long-delayed report's mixed verdict on whether the Bush administration misused intelligence to argue for war with Iraq, an official says.

After an acrimonious investigation that spanned four years, the Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration's claims in the buildup to war with Iraq, said congressional officials.

The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

Officials say the report reaches a mixed verdict on the key question of whether the White House misused intelligence to make the case for war.

The document criticizes White House officials for making assertions that failed to reflect disagreements or uncertainties in the underlying intelligence on Iraq, said officials, but the report acknowledges that many claims were consistent with intelligence assessments in circulation at the time.

Because of the nuanced nature of the conclusions, one congressional official familiar with the document said:

"The left is not going to be happy. The right is not going to be happy. Nobody is going to be happy."

The report helps culminate a series of investigations that the committee has carried out in connection with the war in Iraq. The "statements report" was stalled repeatedly, in part because of the complexity of the task but also because of partisan disagreements among senators.

The findings are likely to be a source of political discomfort for the White House by reviving the controversy over the Bush administration's case for war. That issue has largely faded from view on Capitol Hill at a time when the White House is sparring with Congress over other intelligence-related issues: CIA interrogation tactics and the scope of the government's wiretapping authority.

The report could also become political fodder for the presidential race, which has focused on the differing positions of the remaining candidates on the decision to invade Iraq.

Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee had initially pushed for the report to focus not only on the prewar claims of the Bush administration but also on statements made by members of Congress, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York), who is vying for her party's presidential nomination.

"The statements report is clearly the most political of all the reports the committee has done," said a senior committee aide. "It's inherently problematic to try to climb inside the heads [of policymakers] and know what they knew at the time."

Officials said the report is divided into categories that focus on prewar claims about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, as well as its supposed ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Each section includes a catalog of as many as 20 prewar claims, as well as a summary conclusion on whether the assertions were generally warranted.

"The whole purpose of this exercise is to answer questions about whether the administration was honest in its use of intelligence when it made the case for war," said a senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-West Virginia), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In many cases, statements that were later proven wrong - such as President Bush's assertion in September 2002 that Iraq "possesses biological and chemical weapons" - were largely in line with U.S. intelligence assessments at the time.

Prewar assertions about Iraq's nuclear program were more problematic because they were supported by some intelligence assessments but not others.

"They were substantiated," a congressional official said, "but didn't convey the disagreements within the intelligence community."

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that "Saddam [Hussein] has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." But by that time, the State Department's intelligence bureau was challenging the assumption that Iraq's nuclear program had been reactivated.

White House suggestions that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda were at odds with intelligence assessments that voiced skepticism about such a relationship.

The report marks the culmination of a multipart investigation that the committee launched in February 2004. The only remaining task is an investigation into the activities of a Pentagon office led by Douglas J. Feith, then undersecretary of Defense for policy and one of the architects of the Iraq war.

Congressional officials said the panel is nearing completion of a report on that subject that will focus largely on a secret post-Sept. 11 meeting between two Defense Department officials who worked for Feith and an Iranian exile, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who had been a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and regarded by the CIA as unreliable.

The report focusing on the Bush administration's prewar statements is set to be delivered to members of the committee this week, officials said, but it could be weeks away from public release because members may push for changes, and much of the material cited in the report has yet to be approved for declassification by U.S. intelligence officials.

Dissatisfied with the scope of the report, Republicans on the panel are expected to attach a section outlining their objections and calling attention to prewar claims by prominent Democrats, including Clinton.

In an October 2002 speech on the Senate floor, Clinton said that if left unchecked, Hussein "will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

Bent Wilkes, the Most Innocent Man on Earth: Matt Janovic

Brent Wilkes, the Most Innocent Man on Earth, by Matt Janovic

San Diego, California/Washington D.C.--Brent Wilkes didn't do anything wrong. Ignore the October conviction for money laundering and bribery of a public official. According to him, his former ADCS never attempted to bribe congressmen with gifts, money, more gifts, a boat, a couple mortgage payments, throwing poker games for Randy Cunningham at poker (while letting him win, a bribe)...and women. Well, at least that's what the convicted briber, government contractor, de facto lobbyist, and pimp has to say these days. Pimp? Yes, pimp. A pimp would wear a camo-tux, wouldn't they?

For reasons known only to government prosecutors (and perhaps the White House), they decided to isolate all evidence and testimony of Brent Wilkes's soliciting prostitutes-for-government contracts to the Hawaii jaunt of the former GOP Representative Randy Cunningham. Was this part of the reason for the firing of those bothersome U.S. Attorneys, namely like Carol Lam and David Iglesias?

Yet, we still see periodic stories on Shirlington Limousine and Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter's efforts to get an investigation going into Shirlington's contracts with the scandal-ridden Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. All of her efforts have stalled. Why is that? Why does a convicted felon with a 60-plus page rap sheet get first-dibs on contracts with DHS, and why then does Congress rate it as unimportant with no real action to discover what really happened? Because many of them already know what happened. The not to investigate would be because it's of great importance, so why not schedule hearings on steroids in the major leagues?

Surely, Brent R. Wilkes and his wordy attorney Mark Geragos can convince the court and federal probation officials that he's innocent after receiving a fair trial? No, I didn't think so either. But what do you do when your client is caught, cold, hard busted and politicians (yes, plural) are also part of the game? You rely on semantics, word-games, and the predictable technicality that won't go anywhere to buy a little time. San Diego Union-Tribune journalist Greg Moran noted:

Geragos took issue with those claims in a broad legal attack. In recent years the U.S. Supreme Court has said judges can't impose a sentence based on any factors that were not found to be true, beyond a reasonable doubt, by a jury. The court has ruled that would be a violation of the fair trial rights of defendants. In Wilkes' case, Geragos argued that the factors cited by probation officials as reason to increase the sentence were not found to be true by a jury. For example, he said there was no jury finding that Cunningham was an elected official. (Signs on San Diego.com, 02.09.2008)

Eventually comes the mandatory quibbling over the meaning of words--we understand where Geragos is trying to take this. Into overtime. Wilkes and his attorney have contended since the beginning that the Poway contractor never did anything differently from all the other lobbyists and contractors. On this, we can take Wilkes at his word.

And what of the "cigar parties" at the Watergate (the GOP appears to have a fetish for this building, trying to get things right the second time) and the Westin hotels? We know that there were "women present," that some congressmen went off to rooms with them, but most-of-all, we know who brought these women there: Christopher D. Baker, CEO of Shirlington Limousine. From the early-1990s until Cunningham, Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, Thomas Kontogiannis, and the other "co-conspirators" were nabbed by federal investigators, Baker's Shirlington Limousine was ferrying them there. It's like that they were ferried to other locations, as Wade has discussed that Cunningham was frequently calling Wilkes for companionship. Shirlington was also involved in some of these acts of soliciting.

What's so fantastical about these recent legal moves is the fact that Wilkes had been caught red-handed lying about his alleged "poverty" during his trial. For these claims, he was given federal defense funds for his legal costs, costs that federal prosecutors now want him to pay back in-full. Will Brent Wilkes start talking? For real? This 36-page filing by Geragos is worthless, just a response to the sentencing and the fact that Wilkes was caught lying about yet another thing.

Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes came under scrutiny after federal prosecutors cried foul last week, filing court documents claiming Wilkes has more money than he has let on in court. They asked U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns to force Wilkes to retain private counsel and pay back the costs of the public defense attorneys representing him."The use of public funds while the defendant continues to spend his ill-gotten gains must stop," prosecutors wrote in a motion filed in federal court last week. Prosecutors argue that Wilkes had access to more than $1 million in assets, which he used to pay bills, including mortgages and divorce attorneys. (North County Times, 02.05.2005)

As of this writing, Wilkes is still receiving federal defense funds. Somehow, we're supposed to ignore all that and trust him now. Never mind that he's had his time in the courts. If he really wanted to contest that his trial was unfair, why not point-out that he subpoenaed 13 members of Congress, which the prosecution successfully quashed? To open that door is to take a bigger gamble than the poker games at the Watergate and the Westin. Interestingly, one of the money-laundering "co-conspirators" by the name of John Thomas Michael (nephew to co-defendant and possible CIA financial/banking-asset Thomas Kontogiannis) has changed his plea to "guilty" the very same day that the prosecutors attacked Wilkes over lying about hiding money from them.

The stakes couldn't be higher. And there's more-to-come: Wilkes has upcoming charges in the trial of the former #3 man at the CIA, Kyle Dustin Foggo, his old childhood friend. The charge is bribery, but why isn't it for soliciting prostitution? Foggo is denying all connections to Shirlington Limo and the escorts. One can imagine why.

TPMuckraker on lying, thieving Brent R. Wilkes, February 5th, 2008:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/prosecutors_wilkes_faked_pover.php

John Michael Thomas's guilty plea, 02.05.2008:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080205-9999-1m5michael.html

That wascally Bwent Wilkes and his vow of poverty (Mitchell Wade looks like Azar's Big Boy):

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/06/news/sandiego/20_32_052_5_08.txt

Signs on San Diego today: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080209-9999-1m9wilkes.html

Bush and BCCI to FBI whistleblower bombshell

Bush and BCCI to FBI whistleblower bombshell

The Bomb in the Shadows: Proliferation, Corruption and the Way of the World

Tuesday, 08 January 2008


This week, the Sunday Times lifted the lid on one of the most important stories of the last quarter-century: how American officials sold nuclear arms technology to illegal proliferators -- including ideological allies of al Qaeda -- in return for bribes and other inducements. This widespread corruption has been protected from exposure by the highest levels of the U.S. government, which has gone to enormous lengths to protect the truth from coming out. The entire planet has been put at grave risk by the greed -- and geopolitical gamesmanship -- that lies behind this criminal enterprise, which actually is even more extensive, and goes back further in time, than the newspaper's remarkable revelations.

The Sunday Times story is based on the evidence provided by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of state-enforced muzzling by the Bush Administration since she first tried to speak out about the corrupt connections between American officials and foreign agents she discovered when reviewing transcripts associated with the 9/11 investigation. As even the leaders of the whitewashing 9/11 Commission themselves now admit, that investigation was deliberately sabotaged by the Bush Administration – in part to cover up the nuclear proliferation network that has directly or indirectly enriched so many in the American elite over the past decades – including the sitting president of the United States, George W. Bush.

I.
Edmonds' revelations should be seen in their larger historical context, as an outgrowth of the activities of BCCI, the "Bank of Credit and Commercial International," a supposed financial group that a U.S. Senate investigation called "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history." BCCI was a prime vehicle for clandestine nuclear proliferation, among many other illegal activities, and was also used by the CIA and the White House for various covert operations, including secret military and financial support for Saddam Hussein. It also paid numerous grandees of the Democratic and Republican parties to front its operations – and gave George W. Bush $25 million to rescue one of his many business failures.

(Continued after the jump.)

Although BCCI as a "bank" eventually failed, spectacularly, costing its unsuspecting customers more than $10 billion, almost no one was punished for its myriad crimes, and the full extent of the organization's activities continue to be shielded by the many national governments that became entangled in its operations, including the United States and Great Britain, where the Labour government has made extraordinary interventions in court cases to protect BCCI's secrets, invoking the most draconian state secret laws to quash a lawsuit against the Bank of England for the blind but knowing eye that the regulator turned toward BCCI's deadly fraud.

Before exploring these deeper connections further, let's review the tip of the iceberg that Edmonds has courageously exposed, despite the very real threat of retaliation from the U.S. government. From the Times:

"Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions. Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

"The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. However, Edmonds said: 'He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.'

"She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents. 'If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,' she said."

Edmonds goes on to provide details of the operation, which "appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States," under the protection of Pentagon and State Department officials. Turkish and Israeli cut-outs were used to get nuclear info to the ultimate recipient, Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Abdul Qadeer Khan, "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. As the Times notes:

"The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief…Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

"The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist. Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan's nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme. Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden."

While the Times declined to name the top State Department official cited by Edmonds, elsewhere she has said it was Mark Grossman, "former #3 at the State Department, former ambassador to Turkey, and current Vice President at The Cohen Group, the lobbying company run by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen," notes the blogger Lukery, who has long done sterling service in publicizing Edmonds' plight and her revelations – which, as Lukery notes, are not confined to the nuclear proliferation angle featured in the Sunday Times.

Lukery goes on to note that the other "household names" mentioned by Edmonds include "Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and possibly Paul Wolfowitz. Less familiar names include Eric Edelman, Feith's replacement at the Pentagon, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz."

Lukery also zeroes in on this telling revelation:

"The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks -- including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the US because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.

"Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 9/11 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation."

(Grossman has denied all of Edmonds' allegations, telling the Sunday Times: "If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.")

The nuclear proliferation-for-profit ring is just one of the criminal operations that a genuine investigation of the 9/11 attacks would bring to light. Because once you start exploring any part of the dark nexus where so much of the world's business is really conducted – the shadowlands where covert operations, criminal networks, terrorism, high finance and state policy mingle, and battle, in profitable murk – all manner of chicanery is bound to emerge. And so, much as the probe into the assassination of John Kennedy was short-circuited in part to prevent exposure of a wide range of "black ops" involving the U.S. government, the Mob and other unsavoury players, so too the 9/11 attacks will never receive a full, unfettered investigation, but will remain forever – and deliberately – a matter of dispute, breeding arrant crankery and disturbing truth in equal measure, with the latter always tarred and obscured by the former.

II.
This is also true, in some respects, of the 1992 U.S. Senate investigation into what was known as "the BCCI Affair," which left several stones unturned and many questions unanswered. There are two main differences, however. First, the Senate investigation – although it operated within fairly circumscribed limits, pulled many punches, and shied away from some evidence that clearly led to the highest echelons of government -- was actually much more thorough than the official probes of the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. And second, unlike those two investigations, which continue to generate heated interest year after year, the BCCI Affair has been almost completely erased from public memory. Yet a grasp of BCCI's operations – many of which simply continued in other guises when the "bank" itself disappeared – is essential to understanding much of what is happening in the political world today, including Edmonds' revelations.

(The amnesia surrounding BCCI is even more remarkable when you consider that the man who led the 1992 probe – which turned up so much dirt involving the first Bush administration – was none other than Senator John Kerry. Yet Kerry – who knew where so many Bush bones were buried, and who had once displayed genuine moral courage in denouncing the Vietnam War after his service there – used none of this knowledge, and showed none of this courage, when seeking to oust the second Bush Administration, which retained many tainted figures from the first reign, and was headed by a man who had taken millions of dollars from BCCI. Instead Kerry spent the campaign – as he had spent much of his Senate career – trying to prove to the corporate and militarist elite that he was a "safe pair of hands," someone who wouldn't really rock the boat or kill the elite's flock of golden geese. Having thus disarmed himself, he failed to generate the landslide he would have needed to overcome the Bush Faction's election-skewing machinery – although it is very likely that Kerry would have won the election anyway had Ohio's votes been counted fairly. But here too he folded and refused to fight, choosing, like Al Gore before him, not to risk his insider status with a serious, genuine challenge to the system.)

The full details of BCCI's origins and activities – and its bipartisan corruption of American politics – can be found in the Senate report of its investigation, which is available in full at the website of the Federation of American Scientists. It is a long report, but repays reading. The extent of the criminality and moral corruption it documents is truly mind-boggling. Below is a very brief précis of the Senate's findings.

BCCI was founded by Pakistan tycoon Agha Hasan Abedi, who used what Senate investigators called his "extraordinary personal charisma" to charm his way into friendships with the world's global elite, including U.S. President Jimmy Carter and, more crucially for the operation's development, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, the illiterate ruler of Abu Dhabi, who had been installed as leader of the oil-rich state in 1966, after the British engineered a coup against his brother. Abedi became in effect the personal manager of Sheik Zayed's money – and the vast wealth of Abu Dhabi – which he used to fund the creation of BCCI.

As described by the Senate, BCCI's organization set-up sounds remarkably like the one set up later by Bush Family paymaster Ken Lay with his Enron Corporation:

"BCCI was from its earliest days made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relationships. By fracturing corporate structure, record keeping, regulatory review, and audits, the complex BCCI family of entities created by Abedi was able to evade ordinary legal restrictions on the movement of capital and goods as a matter of daily practice and routine. In creating BCCI as a vehicle fundamentally free of government control, Abedi developed in BCCI an ideal mechanism for facilitating illicit activity by others, including such activity by officials of many of the governments whose laws BCCI was breaking."

And what were the illicit activities that BCCI facilitated for its entangled crime gangs and government agents? The Senate report:

"BCCI's criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI's bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers."

The Senate investigators found that the CIA lied about is extensive, long-term contacts with BCCI, although the Kerry panel often couched this flagrant falsehood in more decorous tones, e.g., "the CIA inadvertently failed" to tell the proper federal officials about BCCI's criminal activities (emphasis added). Still, much of the findings are straightforward on this point: "After the CIA knew that BCCI was as an institution a fundamentally corrupt criminal enterprise, it continued to use both BCCI and First American, BCCI's secretly held U.S. subsidiary, for CIA operations."

The criminals of BCCI were intimately involved in the execution of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan-Bush administrations, including the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan officials shipped weapons to American hostage-takers in Iran in exchange for clandestine cash for the terrorist army it was using to wage proxy war against Nicaragua. When George Bush Sr. became president, BCCI became a primary conduit for funneling secret aid to Saddam Hussein. The organization also received extraordinary protection from the White House when lower-level federal prosecutors began indicting BCCI associates for laundering drug cartel money and running guns and money to Iraq.

As I have noted elsewhere, the Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary conduit used to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.

When three BNL officials were indicted in 1991 for a fraud scam used to mask payments to Saddam, Bush I moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department posts – where they supervised the officials investigating their old companies. The overall probe was directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, White House aides applied heavy pressure on other prosecutors to restrict the range of the probe – especially the fact that Bush cabinet officials Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had served as consultants for BNL during their pre-White House days as partners in Henry Kissinger's lobbying outfit, Kissinger Associates.

[In addition to these connections with the criminal network, another of Kissinger's partners, retired Brazilian diplomat Sergio da Costa "served as the front-man" for the BCCI takeover of a Brazilian bank, Senate investigators found. Tellingly, the Senate report's chapter on Kissinger Associates' contacts with BCCI was deleted from the final, published version – reportedly after pressure from Kissinger himself – although it can still be found in the FAS version noted above. Kissinger, of course, would later turn down an appointment from Bush II to direct the official investigation into the 9/11 attacks – in order to avoid public scrutiny of his business affairs.]

The Kerry report found that the 1991 BNL probe had been unaccountably "botched" – witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost," all sorts of bad luck. Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions.

One of the White House aides who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. In 1994, ByBee was appointed by George W. Bush to a place on the federal appeals court – a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. Mueller, meanwhile wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in by George W. in July 2001, where directed the FBI's response – or lack of response – to the torrent of terrorism alerts during that fateful summer.

III.
Bush II had good reason to reward those who helped his father provide cover for BCCI. In addition to the continuing "shadowland" relationships between U.S. intelligence and key players in BCCI operations (especially the ISI connections which had used BCCI to fund Pakistan's secret nuclear arms program), George Walker Bush had benefited materially from his own connection to BCCI. As Kevin Phillips points out in his devastating – and woefully ignored – book on the Bushes, American Dynasty, Bush II's first large-scale business enterprise, the Arbusto oil company, was almost certainly financed in part with investments from American frontmen for BCCI-connected Saudi grandees Salem bin Laden, older brother of Osama bin Laden and then the head of the family, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, a major stockholder in BCCI.

The failing Arbusto was later bought out by Harken Energy in a sweetheart deal that landed business failure Bush a plum spot on the Harken board and plenty of stock to play with. Bush soon worked his magic touch on Harken: the company began to tank. It was saved by an unusual infusion of $25 million from the Union Bank of Switzerland, one of BCCI's associates. The deal was brokered by long-time Bush family contributor Jackson Stephens – who, curiously enough, was also a major paymaster for Bill Clinton's political rise. In fact, in 1992, Stephens was the largest individual contributor to both Bush I and Clinton in their presidential contest.

Phillips quotes a 1991 Wall Street Journal story on young Bush's myriad ties to the criminal organization: "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were," the paper wrote. "But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken – all since George W. Bush came on board – likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

Given the copious documentation by the Senate and media investigations of Bush I's extensive use of BCCI to fund his and Reagan's illegal dealings with Saddam, Iran, drug cartels and the Contras, and Bush's strenuous efforts to block investigations of BCCI, the latter's huge payoffs to Bush II look more like payments for services rendered by the Bush Family, rather than just attempts to curry presidential favor.

IV.
Many of the same interests that employed BCCI for various black ops turn up again in Sibel Edmond's revelations: the ISI and Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Turkish and Israeli criminals/covert operators. Indeed, the latter played a key role in one of the Senate report's more chilling segments: "Training of Cartel Death Squads." From the report:

"In April 1989, a network of Israeli arms traffickers, operating out of Miami, made a shipment of 500 Israeli manufactured machine guns through the Caribbean island of Antigua for the use of members of the Medellin cartel. Later, one of these weapons was used in the assassination of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, and several other of the weapons were found in the possession of cartel kingpin Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha after his death in a gunfight with Colombian drug agents.

"The principals in the arms trafficking included Yair Klein, who had previously been identified in Colombian drug enforcement documents as involved in training paramilitary squads for the cocaine cartel in Medellin; Pinchas Shahar, an Israeli intelligence operative, and Maurice Sarfati, an Israeli "businessman" operating out of Miami and Paris.

"The scandal broke after a broadcast by NBC News on August 21, 1989 about Klein's activities, and a Colombian judge charged Klein with having engaged in criminal conspiracy in training the private armies for the cartel. In the months that followed, the scandal extended to Antigua as well, an island with no substantial military force and no need for the 500 machine guns its foreign minister ordered from Israeli military industries."

Oddly enough, the arming and training of death squads in Antiqua grew out of yet another corruption of Reagan-Bush policy by BCCI: a U.S. government loan of $2 million to Sarfati, supposedly for a melon farm he was to establish in Antiqua. The money was funneled through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a prime channel of crony pork – and cover for covert operations – for decades. The loan was obtained after BCCI officials vouched for Sarfati's worthiness to OPIC. The Senate report says:

"Ultimately, OPIC lost its entire investment in the melon farm and concluded that it had been defrauded by Sarfati. After filing suit against Sarfati, OPIC sold its remaining interest in the melon farm, at a loss of 50 cent on the dollar, to an Israeli businessman, Bruce Rappaport, and an entity owned by him called the Swiss American Bank. Rappaport, a confidante of former CIA director William Casey, was in this period also in frequent contact with BCCI's original U.S. contact, Bert Lance [who had been forced to resign as Jimmy Carter's budget chief during a corruption scandal. Lance was also a major partner with Jackson Stephens and others in BCCI-related deals.] Coincidentally, one of BCCI's principal board members, Alfred Hartmann, who was also chairman of BCCI's secretly-owned Swiss affiliate BCP, also sat on the board of another of Rappaport's banks."

This is the way the world works. Behind the glitz and gossip of presidential campaigns, behind all the earnest "policy debates" on Capitol Hill, behind all the "position papers" and "vision statements" of think tanks and political parties, behind all the great panoply of state and our august Establishment institutions, thieves and murderers have their way, in league with the great and good.

Anyone who ascends to national power has to make a deal with the devil: either directly to plunge their hands into filth and blood, or else swaddle themselves in "plausible deniability," looking away from the grubby details but knowing full well that their minions, agents and backers are doing "whatever it takes" to keep the machine of power and money rolling on.

This doesn't mean that leaders can't also try to do good things as well, and occasionally accomplish them. After all, Al Capone was famous for his acts of benevolence. Indeed, some leaders pursue idealistic or ameliorative policies in order to "justify" the crimes and lies that sustain the system which has raised them on high. But the devil will have his due, and the price of power must always be paid – and it is ordinary people, especially the most innocent and vulnerable among us, who always end up paying it.

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON