Aloha Analytics

Romney: The Bain Man

2012-02-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

Fire Water: Fluoride Poison

2012-01-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

Fluoride: What it is & Why it's in Tap Water

2012-01-26T02:44:00.000-08:00

Article Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/top-20-fluoride-news-stories-of-2011-138488989.html

Top 20 Fluoride News Stories of 2011

Source: Paul Beeber, Esq.

NEW YORK, Feb. 1, 2012 -- Misinformed fluoridation promoters falsely assure unquestioning and confused legislators that fluoride-laced water is safe for everyone and no credible evidence proves otherwise. However, hundreds of studies and an abundance of evidence prove them wrong, reports the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc. (NYSCOF).

Here's what happened in 2011

1) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends lowering water fluoride levels due to fluoride's harmful dental effects

For over 6 decades, HHS assured Americans that artificially fluoridated water was safe for everyone to drink. But they were wrong. About 50% of U.S. adolescents have fluoride-ruined teeth or dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth. So HHS' recommends lowering "optimal" water fluoride levels.

2) HHS recommends avoiding fluoridated water when making infant formula to prevent dental fluorosis (discolored teeth)

Many government, health and dental agencies report that babies who consume fluoridated water are more apt to have fluoride-discolored/damaged teeth without benefit of less tooth decay. (References: http://www.FormulaFluoride.Webs.com)

3) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will lower safe water fluoride levels to protect bones and teeth

The prestigious National Research Council found EPA's current safe water fluoride levels can adversely affect bones and teeth. EPA's Office of Water will lower safe water fluoride levels

4) U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports growing numbers of U.S. children have fluoride-damaged teeth, arguably at epidemic proportions.

Due to fluoride over-exposure, the CDC reports that over 41% of 12-15 years olds are afflicted with dental fluorosis. However, no research was conducted to discover what fluoride over-exposure has done to children's bones.

5) Fumigant sulfuryl fluoride found to leave health-damaging levels of fluoride residues on food

EPA's Office of Pesticides proposes to ban fumigant sulfuryl fluoride because harmful fluoride levels remain on many foods e.g. cocoa beans and dried eggs.

6) Even fluoride-seller, Colgate, reports that studies confirm "the association between infant formula consumption and permanent dentition fluorosis."

Colgate joins many government, health and dental organizations in advising that infant formula should not be mixed with fluoridated water to lower babies' risk of developing dental fluorosis (http://www.FormulaFluoride.Webs.com), but this is little publicized.

7) Infant juices contain non-labeled tooth-damaging fluoride levels

Commonly-consumed infant fruit juices contain fluoride, some at levels higher than recommended for pubic water supplies, according to research presented at the International Association for Dental Research annual meeting.

8) More studies published linking fluoride to human brain damage and lower IQ

A review of studies published in Neurologia reports, "The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system." The research team reports, "It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride."

9) New Study Fails to Refute Fluoride-Osteosarcoma Link

A paper in the Journal of Dental Research by dentist Chester Douglass and colleagues, "An Assessment of Bone Fluoride and Osteosarcoma," claims to show no association between fluoride bone levels and osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer. However, Douglass' study has serious scientific flaws and is incapable of disproving a previous study (Bassin et al., 2006) which linked water fluoridation to osteosarcoma.

10) Prominent Hispanic Civil Rights Group Opposes Fluoridation

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) votes to oppose fluoridation as a civil rights violation and because "theNational Research Council in 2006 established that there are large gaps in the research on fluoride's effects on the whole body; a fact that contradicts previous assurances made by public health officials and by elected officials, that fluorides and fluoridation have been exhaustively researched."

11) Prominent Civil Rights Leaders Oppose Fluoridation

Because fluoride can disproportionately harm poor citizens and black families, Atlanta civil rights leaders, former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and Reverend Gerald Durley, Ph.D. have asked Georgia legislators to repeal the state's mandatory water fluoridation law. They have recently been joined by Martin Luther Kings' daughters, Bernice and Alveda.

12) Tennessee House Speaker, Other Legislators Call for Halt to State Promotion of Fluoridation

Bipartisan group cites risks for citizens and water utilities. Tennessee, once 99% fluoridated, is now down in the low 90's according to the American Dental Association News.

13) Water Fluoridation Injury Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court

A 13-year-old's fluoride-discolored teeth were allegedly caused by drinking fluoridated bottled water since infancy. Her mom is suing the bottlers for the cost to cover up the unsightly teeth.

14) Review of Fluoride Supplement Studies Show No Evidence of Safety - No Benefit Either

According to the Cochrane Oral Health Group, fluoride supplements fail to reduce tooth decay in primary teeth, permanent teeth cavity-reduction is dubious and health risks are little studied -- The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO fluoride supplementation because "Too much fluoride causes streaks in the teeth" and it's impossible to determine a child's individual daily fluoride intake from all sources. Sodium fluoride supplements "have not been found by FDA to be safe or effective," according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

15) Dental hygienist's Master's thesis and experience shows no Benefit from fluoridation

In a Master's thesis, a dental hygienist with 20 years experience in a clinic for low-income children, noted that these children had a significantly high rate of dental decay in spite of fluoridation. She found that when people were educated about fluoride's risks and benefits, they stopped drinking fluoridated water.

16) CDC Reveals Fluoridation Fails Alaskans

The CDC reports that 91% of rural Alaskan Native adolescents have cavities whether their water is fluoridated or not. The CDC acknowledges that poor diets and lack of dental care are the probable culprits.

17) Pew Charitable Trust uses propaganda, PR and political clout to force more fluoride into people who don't want it.

The Pew Charitable Trust paid for lobbyists to misinform Arkansas state legislators into mandating fluoridation statewide which nullified local referendums where residents said NO to fluoridation. Pew continues to contaminate local fluoridation politics inNew Hampshire, Iowa, Austin and elsewhere.

18) The Council of Canadians, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and Great Lakes United demand an end to fluoridation

Council of Canadians' Unfluoridate It! campaign. Great Lakes United statement against the 'practice of artificial drinking water fluoridation.'

19) Dr. Joe Mercola, owner of the world's most visited natural health website conducted Fluoride Awareness Week

Dr. Mercola reveals the science behind fluoride's adverse health effects to the brain, bones, the thyroid and pineal glands.

20) New York City Council Members introduce legislation (Int 0463-2011) to stop fluoridation

City Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. says, "There is a growing body of evidence that fluoride does more harm than good."

"Those who claim fluoridation is harmless for everyone and that fluoride's health effects have been exhaustively studied cannot be trusted because that's simply not true," says Beeber.

Debka File Reports: India/China to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil

2012-01-26T01:22:00.000-08:00

Source: http://debka.com/article/21673/

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil

Oil and gold markets stunned.
DEBKAfile January 23, 2012

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively. Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

Iran's second largest customer after China, India purchases around $12 billion a year's worth of Iranian crude, or about 12 percent of its consumption. Delhi is to execute its transactions, according to our sources, through two state-owned banks: the Calcutta-based UCO Bank, whose board of directors is made up of Indian government and Reserve Bank of India representatives; and Halk Bankasi (Peoples Bank), Turkey's seventh largest bank which is owned by the government.

An Indian delegation visited Tehran last week to discuss payment options in view of the new sanctions. The two sides were reported to have agreed that payment for the oil purchased would be partly in yen and partly in rupees. The switch to gold was kept dark.

India thus joins China in opting out of the US-led European sanctions against Iran's international oil and financial business. Turkey announced publicly last week that it would not adhere to any sanctions against Iran's nuclear program unless they were imposed by the United Nations Security Council. ... [Full article here.]

U.S. Senate Failure: 1,000 Days Without a Budget

2012-01-25T00:29:00.000-08:00

Gingrich Ethics Violations: What Exactly Were They?

2012-01-23T23:08:00.000-08:00

Video Source: Romney Campaign Jan. 23, 2012

Article Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/07/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-blasts-1990s-ethics-investigation-hi/

"Newt Gingrich blasts 1990's ethics investigation of him"

by PolitiFact.com on Dec. 7, 2011

During a Dec. 6, 2011, interview on Fox News, Greta Van Susteren asked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for his view about a comment House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had made a few days earlier.

On Dec. 5, the liberal website Talking Points Memo published an exchange with Pelosi, who, like Gingrich, has previously served as House speaker. In an article headlined, "Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich," Talking Points Memo quoted Pelosi saying of the fast-rising Republican presidential hopeful, "One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."

Pelosi added -- jokingly, according to the website -- that she would elaborate "when the time’s right."

Later, Gingrich responded by calling the taunt from Pelosi -- who’s as much a bogeyman for Republicans as Gingrich is for Democrats -- "an early Christmas gift. It tells you how capriciously political (the House ethics) committee was that she was on it. It tells you how tainted the outcome was that she was on it."

Gingrich elaborated during his Fox News interview.

Van Susteren brought it up by asking him whether, "in sort of seriousness, this could be rather punishing in a race when someone comes up and says something like, I have secret information about the person."

Gingrich responded that he doubted Pelosi had any secret information to release, since the case had been thoroughly aired in public and because it would likely be illegal to disclose anything that had been purposely kept secret at the time. But Gingrich took the opportunity to link Pelosi to the investigation and cite it as evidence of how the process had been biased in a partisan way.

The back-and-forth with Pelosi "reminds people who probably didn't know that she was on the ethics committee, that it was a very partisan political committee and that the way I was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics. And I think in that sense, it actually helps me in getting people to understand, this was a Nancy Pelosi-driven effort. They filed 85 charges and 84 were dismissed. The only one was a conflicting lawyer's letter. And then the Democrats just held out for partisan reasons."

For this item, we’re focusing on the claim that the ethics investigation against Gingrich was conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."

Gingrich has a long history with the congressional ethics process, both as an accuser (most famously against Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned amid ethics charges Gingrich promoted in 1989) and as the accused.

The case primarily involved a course at Kennesaw State College that Gingrich taught while in Congress. The organizers of the course solicited financial support from "individuals, corporations and foundations," promising that the project qualified for tax-exempt status. But the ethics committee concluded that the course was "actually a coordinated effort" to "help in achieving a partisan, political goal" -- something that would run afoul of its tax exempt status. A further problem for Gingrich was that during the investigation, he submitted letters from his lawyers for which "the subcommittee was unable to find any factual basis." Gingrich "should have known" that the information in the letters "was inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable."

The allegations were largely ajudicated by January 1997, with Gingrich agreeing to pay a sum of $300,000 and admitting that he had "engaged in conduct that did not reflect creditably on the House of Representatives." He became the first speaker to be sanctioned in this fashion by the House. (Here’s a time line of the case.)

As we’ve noted before, Gingrich’s intensely partisan style and his heavy use of the congressional ethics process ramped up the level of partisan warfare during his investigation. Few observers would disagree that Democrats were gleeful at the prospect of seeing the first Republican House speaker in four decades brought down by ethics charges analagous to those Gingrich himself had used to topple Wright.

But in the interview with Van Susteren, Gingrich did more than just say that partisan warriors leveraged his investigation for their own ends. He said that the investigation against him was itself conducted by "a very partisan political committee" in a way that "related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics."

In essence, Gingrich is alleging that the investigation of his actions was biased by partisanship and, by extension, that the penalty he agreed to was tainted.

To understand whether Gingrich’s assertion is correct requires a look at the venue for the investigation -- the House ethics committee, which was then known officially as the Standards of Official Conduct Committee.

The ethics panel is the only House committee with an even number of Republicans and Democrats. By longstanding tradition, the committee does not proceed with a formal investigation unless it has majority support. This means that every ethics case that moves forward -- including Gingrich’s -- required the vote of at least least one member from the same party as the lawmaker facing allegations.

In Gingrich’s case, an investigative subcommittee was convened and looked into the case for several months. Like the full committee, it included an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and it hired a special counsel, James M. Cole, to lead the investigation. (Cole was later appointed deputy attorney general by President Barack Obama, but at the time of his appointment in the Gingrich case, Cole had worked as a Justice Department attorney in administrations of both parties.) Gingrich had legal representation during the ethics process.

On Dec. 21, 1996, the subcommittee forwarded its findings to the full committee for consideration, recommending "a reprimand and the payment of $300,000 toward the cost of the preliminary inquiry."

On Jan. 17, 1997, the full committee held nearly six hours of televised hearings before voting 7 to 1 to accept the subcommittee’s recommendation. Voting to accept it were three Republicans -- Chairwoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Steve Schiff of New Mexico and Porter Goss of Florida.

"We are bringing to the floor a very tough penalty, an appropriate one," Johnson said in an interview on NBC’s Today show on Jan. 21, 1997, the day the ethics recommendation went to the House floor. "And we're bringing it to the floor as a bipartisan committee."

The full House went on to pass the ethics report 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting for it and just 26 voting against it.

"This is a tough penalty," Johnson said after the vote, according to the Washington Post. "I believe it is an appropriate penalty. It demonstrates that nobody is above the rules."

Schiff added in a press conference the same day that "being bipartisan doesn't mean you always agree on everything. It means you reach a consensus."

This hardly seems like a Democratic kangaroo court to us. And experts we checked with felt the same.

"The process had plenty of partisan tension, because he was the speaker," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. But Cole, the special counsel, "was terrific and thoroughly objective," Ornstein said. To Ornstein, Gingrich "is sanitizing the process and outcome. To be sure, the charges were not so explosive that he merited a ‘death penalty’ (of resignation), but the charges were not wildly different or less significant than those he had brought against Jim Wright, who did resign."

Kenneth A. Gross, the head of the political law practice at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was one of several experts we spoke to who agreed.

"I saw that committee at work behind closed doors during that era, and it was certainly divided and partisan, but it is the only committee of Congress that has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and for anything to move forward, it would require a bipartisan vote."

We should add that Gingrich accepted what amounted to a negotiated plea bargain. He agreed to admit one count of wrongdoing and pay $300,000, which was the estimated cost of the investigation. If he didn’t believe in the fairness of the process, he could have refused to admit wrongdoing and taken his chances on the House floor, where he led a sizable majority.

According to the Post coverage at the time," J. Randolph Evans, Gingrich’s attorney, said his client "has apologized to the subcommittee, to the House and to the American people." Evans did not respond to an inquiry for this story. ... [Full article here.]

So, we don't know if the Nancy has something more on the Newt or not, but you can bet if she does, she'll save it for the General Election even if it means censure...

Video Source: Romney Campaign Jan. 22, 2012

Mitt Romney: Corporate Raider & Tax Avoider Extraordinaire

2012-01-21T00:59:00.000-08:00

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney-parks-millions-offshore-tax-haven/story?id=15378566#.Txp_BJiaBzi

video platform video management video solutions video player

"Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands"
By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS and MEGAN CHUCHMACH
for ABC News, Jan. 18, 2012

Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.

A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.

As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.

"His personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system," said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.

On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney's Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns -- a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.

"I can tell you we follow the tax laws," he said recently while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. "And if there's an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity."

But tax experts tell ABC News there are other reasons Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.

Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans.

Romney campaign officials and those at Bain Capital tell ABC News that the purpose of setting up those accounts in the Cayman Islands is to help attract money from foreign investors, and that the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney. Romney, the campaign said, has paid all U.S. taxes on income derived from those investments.

"The tax consequences to the Romneys are the very same whether the fund is domiciled here or another country," a campaign official said in response to questions. "Gov. and Mrs. Romney have money invested in funds that the trustee has determined to be attractive investment opportunities, and those funds are domiciled wherever the fund sponsors happen to organize the funds."

Bain officials called the decision to locate some funds offshore routine, and a benefit only to foreign investors who do not want to be subjected to U.S. taxes.

Tax experts agree that Romney remains subject to American taxes. But they say the offshore accounts have provided him -- and Bain -- with other potential financial benefits, such as higher management fees and greater foreign interest, all at the expense of the U.S. Treasury. Rebecca J. Wilkins, a tax policy expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, said the federal government loses an estimated $100 billion a year because of tax havens.

Blum, the D.C. tax lawyer, said working through an offshore investment vehicle allows the investor to "avoid a whole series of small traps in the tax code that ordinary people would face if they paid tax on an onshore basis."

Wilkins agreed, saying the "primary advantage to setting those funds up in an offshore jurisdiction like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda is it helps the investors avoid tax."... [Article continued here.]

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Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/153808/mitt_romney_wouldn't_know_a_free_market_if_it_bit_him_on_the_ass

"Mitt Romney Wouldn't Know a Free Market If It Bit Him on the Ass"
At Bain Capital, Romney used the tax code to redistribute wealth from taxpayers to his investors and partners.
AlterNet / By Joshua Holland, January 18, 2012

The lion's share of the wealth Mitt Romney accumulated during his years at Bain Capital was extracted not only by laying off workers and raiding their pensions, but by using what conservatives call “big government” to redistribute wealth from taxpayers to Bain's investors and partners.

Bain Capital was not in the business of creating jobs, or even saving companies over the long-term. Its model had a relatively low rate of success; a study by Deutche Bank found that 33 out of 68 major deals cut on Romney's watch lost money for the firm's investors. Its richest deals made up for the flops, however, and Bain's partners were guaranteed hefty fees regardless of how the businesses they “restructured” ultimately performed.

Romney and his partners then exploited a loophole in the tax code that allowed them to pay just 15 percent of their growing fortunes in taxes – a rate less than what many of their companies' employees forked over to Uncle Sam.

“By and large, [government] gets in the way of creating jobs," Romney said during a GOP debate last year. But, as the Los Angeles Times noted, “during his business career Romney made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider to be 'corporate welfare.'"

On the campaign trail, Romney often touts a successful investment in an Indiana steel company called Steel Dynamics, but he doesn't mention that the firm had taken advantage of “generous tax breaks and other subsidies provided by the state of Indiana and the residents of DeKalb County, where the company's first mill was built.”

But that's a small part of the public largesse Bain enjoyed. Most of the big money the firm brought in during those years was extracted through “leveraged buy-outs,” a reality that Romney doesn't like to talk about on the campaign trail. Instead, he wants to talk about Staples, which was one of a small handful of Bain's venture capital deals. The 89,000 people employed at the office supply chain go a long way toward the campaign's dubious and unsourced claim that Bain “created 100,000 jobs” under Romney's tutelage. But venture capital represented a small share of Romney's deals, and it's important to understand the distinction between venture capital and leveraged buy-outs.

You won't hear much criticism of venture capital deals like Bain's investment in Staples. It's a very basic free-market transaction – investors put money into a company at its early stages in exchange for a share of the company. If the start-up doesn't pan out, the investors lose their stake; if it grows and matures, they make healthy profit, usually when the company goes public or is sold off. In venture capital deals, investors only make a profit when the company that receives their cash does well.

Leveraged buy-outs are a different creature entirely. Leveraged buy-out firms became so closely associated with the most rapacious and unsustainable form of capitalism in the 1980s, that the entire industry rebranded itself as “private equity” to escape the stigma.

Leveraged buy-out artists also deal with risky companies – usually those struggling to stay afloat – but they don't actually take on much risk themselves as they structure the deals so they profit whether the target company becomes healthy and grows or collapses, often under the weight of debt piled onto it by the private equity firm itself.

Here's how the deal works. The leveraged buy-out firm will put down a fraction of the cost of buying an ailing company. The balance of the transaction is borrowed, but the debt goes onto the books of the target company, not the private equity firm – the struggling company basically finances the lion's share of its own sale. ... [Article continued here.]

Gingrich was under FBI Investigation for Bribery

2012-01-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.dcbureau.org/201112136815/national-security-news-service/newt-gingrich-marianne-and-the-arms-dealera-buried-fbi-investigation.html

"Newt Gingrich, Marianne and the Arms Dealer:
A Buried FBI Investigation"
By Joseph Trento, on December 13th, 2011

National Security News Service

On October 5, Sarkis Soghanalian, once the world’s largest private arms dealer, died at 82. He had sold weapons to scores of dictators including Saddam Hussein, and he took many secrets with him to his grave. But one secret he did not take involves Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. DCBureau has learned that Gingrich was at the center of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War.

Soghanalian was an FBI informant and was responsible for launching one of the most sensitive and secret investigations in FBI history involving the former Speaker and his second wife. According to Marianne Gingrich, it took the direct intervention of then FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to “get the investigation called off.” Freeh did not return emails and telephone calls for comment.

A convicted felon with a long history of working with United States intelligence, Soghanalian cooperated with the FBI in the two-year investigation which included secretly taping emissaries with connections to Newt and Marianne Gingrich. The cast of characters include personalities no Hollywood screenwriter could invent. One participant was involved in the Florida SunCruz scandal that resulted in the gangland-style killing of one of the cruise lines owners. Another was a used Rolls Royce salesman who pretended to be part of the international arms trade. A third was a penny stock promoter.

For several years, FBI agents instructed Soghanalian to get beyond the men who claimed to have ties to Gingrich and insist upon meeting with Gingrich and his former wife directly to prove that they could deliver the Speaker. But just before Soghanalian was to meet Gingrich and his former wife at a private Miami Beach fundraiser on June 8, 1997, arranged by one of these men, FBI headquarters called off the investigation. Washington ordered the FBI in Miami not to secretly tape record the fundraiser and to stop Soghanalian from attending. Marianne Gingrich, in a series of telephone interviews from her homes in Georgia and Florida, acknowledges meeting the arms dealer in Paris but insists her participation was to solicit an investment from Soghanalian for her former employer, the Israel Export Development Corporation (IEDC). She says the company was running short on cash and her meetings with the arms dealer had nothing to do with Iraq and arms dealing. Newt Gingrich did not return repeated telephone calls for comment.

Soghanalian said in a series of interviews before his death that men associated with Marianne Gingrich convinced him that Speaker Gingrich would use his influence to lift the embargo and allow Soghanalian to collect the millions of dollars owed to him by Iraq “in exchange for a $10 million payment to Gingrich through his associates.” Soghanalian was to pay the money – not to the Gingriches directly – but through a think tank, The Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS), which has offices in the United States and Israel.

Saddam Hussein’s government owed Soghanalian for arms he had delivered...[Article continued here]

FBI Gingrich Investigation Doc:
FBI Gingrich Investigation

Why Oil Prices Are About to Collapse?

2012-01-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Why-Oil-Prices-Are-About-To-Collapse.html

"Why Oil Prices Are About to Collapse"
By Chris Cook in The Oil Drum | Thu, 12 January 2012

All is not as it appears in the global oil markets, which have become entirely dysfunctional and no longer fit for its purpose, in my view. I believe that the market price is about to collapse as it did in 2008, and that this will mark the end of an era in which the market has been run by and on behalf of trading and financial intermediaries.

In this post I forecast the imminent death of the crude oil market and I identify the killers; the re-birth of the global market in crude oil in new form will be the subject of another post.

Global Oil Pricing

The “Brent Complex” is aptly named, being an increasingly baroque collection of contracts relating to North Sea crude oil, originally based upon the Shell “Brent” quality crude oil contract that originated in the 1980s.

It now consists of physical and forward BFOE (the Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk fields) contracts in North Sea crude oil; and the key ICE Europe BFOE futures contract, which is not a deliverable contract and is purely a financial bet based upon the price in the BFOE forward market.

There is also a whole plethora of other ‘over the counter’ (OTC) contracts involving not only BFOE, but also a huge transatlantic “arbitrage” market between the BFOE contract and the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) contract originated by NYMEX, but cloned by ICE Europe.

North Sea crude oil production has been in secular decline for many years, and even though the North Sea crude oil benchmark contract was extended from the Brent quality to become BFOE, there are now only about 60 cargoes each of 600,000 barrels of BFOE quality crude oil (and as low as 50 when maintenance is under way) delivered out of the North Sea each month, worth at current prices about $4 billion.

It is the ‘Dated’ or spot price of these cargoes – as reported by the oil price reporting service Platts in the ‘Platts Window’– that is the benchmark for global oil prices either directly (about 60%) or indirectly, through BFOE/WTI arbitrage for most of the rest.

It will be seen that traders of the scale of the oil majors and sovereign oil companies do not really have to put much money at risk by their standards in order to acquire enough cargoes to move or support the global market price via the BFOE market.

Indeed, the evolution of the BFOE market has been a response to declining production and the fact that traders could not resist manipulating the market by buying up contracts and “squeezing” those who had sold forward oil they did not have, causing them very substantial losses. The fewer cargoes produced, the easier the underlying market is to manipulate.

As a very knowledgeable insider puts it….

The Platts window is the most abused market mechanism in the world.

But since all of this short term ‘micro’ manipulation or trading (choose your language) has been going on among consenting adults in a wholesale market inaccessible to the man in the street, it is pretty much a zero sum game, and for many years the UK regulators responsible for it – ie the Financial Services Authority and its predecessor - have essentially ignored it, with a “light touch” wholesale market regime.

If the history of commodity markets shows us anything, it is that if producers can manipulate or support prices then they will, and there are many examples of which the classic cases are the 1985 tin crisis, and Yasuo Hamanaka’s 10-year manipulation of the copper market on behalf of Sumitomo Corporation.

When I gave evidence to the UK Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee three years ago at the time of the last crude oil bubble, I recommended a major transatlantic regulatory investigation into the operation of the Brent Complex and in particular in respect of the relationship between financial investors and producers, and the role of intermediaries in that relationship.

I also proposed root and branch reform of global energy market architecture, which in my view can only come from producer nations and consumer nations collectively, because intermediary turkeys will not vote for Christmas.

A Meme is Born

In the early 1990s, Goldman Sachs created a new way of investing in commodities. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) enabled investment in a basket of commodities – of which oil and oil products was the greatest component – and the new GSCI fund invested by buying futures contracts in the relevant commodity markets which were 'rolled over' from month to month.

The genius dash of marketing fairy dust that was sprinkled on this concept was to call investment in the fund a ‘hedge against inflation’. Investors in the fund were able to offload the perceived risk of holding dollars and instead take on the risk of holding commodities.

The smartest kids on the block were not slow to realise that the GSCI – which was structurally ‘long’ of commodity markets – was taking a long term position which was precisely the opposite of a commodity producer who is structurally ‘short’ of commodities because they routinely sell futures contracts in order to insure themselves against a fall in the dollar price; ie commodity producers are offloading the risk of owning commodities, and taking on the risk of holding dollars.

So, in 1995 a marriage was arranged.

BP and Goldman Sachs get Married

From 1995 to 2007 BP and Goldman Sachs were joined at the head, having the same chairman – the Irish former head of the World Trade Organisation, Peter Sutherland. From 1999 until he fell from grace in 2007 through revelations about his private life, BP’s CEO Lord Browne was also on the Goldman Sachs board.

The outcome of the relationship was that BP were in a position, if they were so minded, to obtain interest-free funding via Goldman Sachs, from GSCI investors through the simple expedient of a sale and repurchase agreement - ie BP could sell title to oil with an agreement to buy back the oil later at an agreed price.

The outcome would be a financial ‘lease’ of oil by BP to GSCI investors and the monetisation of part of BP’s oil inventory. Such agreements in relation to bilateral physical oil transactions are typically concluded privately, and are invisible to the organised markets. However, any risk management contracts which an intermediary such as Goldman Sachs may enter into as a counter-party to both a fund and a producer are visible on the futures exchanges.

Due to the invisibility of the change of ownership of inventory ‘information asymmetry’ is created where some market participants are in possession of key market information which others do not have. This ownership by investors of inventory in the custody of a producer has been termed ‘Dark Inventory’

I must make quite clear at this point that only BP and Goldman Sachs know whether they actually did create Dark Inventory by leasing oil in this way, and readers must make up their own minds on that. But I do know that in their shoes, what I would have done, particularly bearing in mind that such commodity leasing is a perfectly legitimate financing stratagem that has been in routine use in the precious metals and base metal markets for a very long time indeed.

Planet Hype

The ‘inflation hedging’ meme gradually gained traction and a new breed of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and structured investment products were created to invest in commodities. In 2005, Shell entered quite transparently into a relationship with ETF Securities which enabled them to cut out as middlemen both investment banks and the futures market casinos, and with them the substantial rent both collect.

Other investment banks also started to offer similar products and a bandwagon began to roll. From 2005 to 2008, we therefore saw an increasing flood of dollars into the oil market, and this was accompanied by the most shameless and often completely misleading hype, and led to a bubble in the price.

There was (and still is) no piece of news which cannot be interpreted as a reason to buy crude oil. The classic case was US environmental restrictions on oil products, which led to restricted supply, and to price increases in oil products. Now, anyone would think that reduced refinery throughput will reduce the demand for crude oil and should logically lead to a fall in crude oil prices.

But on Planet Hype faulty economic logic – the view that higher product prices are necessarily associated with higher crude oil prices – was instead used as justification for the higher crude oil prices which resulted from the financial buying of crude oil attracted by the hype.

You couldn’t make it up: but unfortunately, they could, and they did.

More worrying than mere hype was that a very significant amount of oil inventory had actually changed hands from producers to investors. Only those directly involved were aware that below the visible part of the oil market iceberg lurked massive unseen ‘Dark Inventory’.

Greedy Speculators and Hoarding

The pervasive narrative among people and politicians, and which is spread by a campaigning press, is of ‘greedy speculators’ who are ‘hoarding’ commodities and ‘gouging’ consumers in search of a transaction profit.

There is no better example of this meme than the UK’s Daily Mail scoop on 20th November 2009. Here we saw pictures of shoals of some 54 shark-like tankers loaded with oil and lurking off the UK coast with millions of barrels of ‘hoarded’ crude oil, some of them having been there since April 2009. The Mail’s story was that these tankers were full of hoarded oil whose greedy owners were waiting for prices to rise before gouging the public.

The reality was rather different.

The motivation of the investors involved was not greed but fear. The Fed had been busily printing another trillion in QE dollars to buy securities and the sellers, and other investors aimed not to make a dollar profit but rather to avoid a dollar loss.

So they poured $ billions into oil index funds and similar products and the oil leases/loans which accommodated these funds’ financial purchases of oil had the effect of raising forward prices and of depressing the spot price, thereby creating what is known as a market ‘in contango’.

When the forward price is high enough in a contango market, what happens is that traders will borrow money to buy crude oil now, and sell the oil at the higher price in the future. Provided the contango is high enough, they will cover interest costs and the cost of chartering and insuring the vessel and its cargo, and lock in a profit for the trader at the end.

This is exactly what traders did through the summer of 2009, until the winter demand by refineries for crude oil and a reduction in the flow of QE dollars into the market combined to see the stored oil gradually delivered to refineries and the sharks depart the UK shores.

The point is that the widely held perception of high oil prices being the fault of hoarders and greedy speculators is – apart from very short term ‘spikes’ in the price - entirely misconceived. And even when speculators do dabble in oil markets, they are almost always pillaged by traders and investment banks with much better market information, which is probably what is happening right now.

The Bubble Bursts

In 2008 there was an influx of genuine speculators in search of short term transaction profit. The motivation of inflation hedgers, on the other hand, is the avoidance of loss, which leads to different market behaviour and the perverse outcome that they have been responsible for causing the very inflation they sought to avoid.

The price eventually reached levels at which demand for products began to be affected and shrewd market observers began to position themselves for the inevitable bursting of the obvious bubble. But those market traders and speculators who correctly diagnosed that the price would collapse were unaware of the existence of the Dark Inventory of pre-sold oil sitting invisibly like an iceberg under the water.

Traders who had sold off-exchange Brent/BFOE contracts or deliverable WTI contracts found themselves ‘squeezed’ because title to the crude oil which they thought would be available at a cheaper price to fulfil their contractual commitment had been ‘pre-sold’ to financial investors. This meant that they had to scramble to buy oil at a higher price than they had expected.

The price spiked to $147 per barrel, and then declined over several months all the way to $35 per barrel or so, as many of the index fund investors pulled their money out of the market in late 2008 and joined a stampede to the safety of US Treasury Bills. What was happening here was that the Dark Inventory which had been created flooded back into the market, and overwhelmed the market’s capacity to absorb it.

Convergence and Futures Pricing

The oil market price is – by definition – the price at which title to dollars is exchanged for title to crude oil.

But there is very considerable debate among economists about the effect of derivative contracts on this spot market price, and whether it is the case that the futures market converges on the physical market price or vice versa.

Now, in the case of a deliverable exchange futures contract, a price is set for delivery of a standardised quantity of a particular specification of a commodity at a particular location within a specified period of time. If that contract is held open until the expiry date and time then there will indeed be a spot delivery and payment against documents at the original price. In accordance with the exchange’s contractual terms.

But the key point is that this futures contract will not be held open to the expiry date at the original price unless the physical market price – which is set by physical supply and demand – is actually at that price at that specific point in time. If the physical price is lower or higher, then the futures contract will be closed out through a matching purchase or sale and a profit or loss will be taken.

I managed the International Petroleum Exchange’s Gas Oil contract for six years, which was deliverable in North West Europe, and the final minutes of trading before contract expiry were Europe’s greatest game of ‘chicken’.

Moreover, no IPE broker in his right mind would dream (because the broker was responsible to the London Clearing House for defaults) of letting a financial investor with no capability of making or taking delivery hold a position into the last month before delivery. And if a broker was not in his right mind, it was my job to act under the exchange rules to ensure such positions were liquidated.

In other markets, the ability to own physical commodities – eg. through ownership of warehouse warrants – is much more straightforward for investors. But the logistics of oil and oil products are such that financial investors are simply incapable of participating in the physical market. In my view, the use of position limits for financial investors in crude oil and oil products is of little or no use if the clearing house, exchange, and brokers are doing their job.

Finally, now that the US WTI contract is just the tail on the Brent/BFOE physical market dog, this discussion has moved on, since the ICE Brent/BFOE futures contract is in fact settled in cash against an index based on trading in the BFOE forward market, with no physical delivery. It is simply a straightforward financial bet in relation to the routinely manipulated underlying BFOE physical market price – ie., the question of convergence does not arise.

Anything but Dollars

With interest rates at zero per cent, and with the Federal Reserve Bank printing dollars through QE, a tidal wave of money flowed into equity and commodity markets purely as an alternative to the dollar, and they did so through a proliferation of funds set up by banks.

Note here that the beauty of such funds for the banks is that it is the investors who take the market risk, not the banks, and the marketing and operation of funds has become a very profitable use of scarce bank capital.

So a flood of financial purchasers of oil were looking for producers willing and able to sell or lease oil to them.

Producers in Pain

Producing nations who had massively expanded their spending in line with a perceived ‘sellers’ market’ paradigm where they had the whip hand, were badly hurt by the 2008 price collapse and OPEC took action to restrict production.

But might some OPEC members or other producing nations have gone further than this?
What is clear is that the price rose swiftly in 2009 and then remained roughly in a range between $70 and $90 per barrel until early 2011 when twin shocks hit the oil market. Firstly, there was the supply shock in Libya which saw 1.5m bbl per day of top quality crude oil leave the market, and secondly, the demand shock of Fukushima, which saw a dramatic switch from nuclear to carbon-fuelled energy.

My thesis is that Shell directly, and others indirectly, were not the only ones leasing oil to funds. I believe that it is probable that the US and Saudis/GCC reached – with the help of the best financial brains money can rent – a geo-political understanding with the aim that the oil price is firstly capped at an upper level which does not lead to politically embarrassing high US gasoline prices; and secondly, collared at a level which provides a satisfactory level of Saudi/GCC oil revenues.

The QE Pump Stops

In June 2011, the QE pump which had been keeping commodity and equity markets inflated and correlated stopped, and price levels began to decline. Consumer demand – as opposed to financial demand – for commodities had also been affected not only by high prices, but by reduced demand from developed nations for finished goods. In September 2011, more than $9bn of index fund money pulled out of the markets for the safe haven of T-bills.

What happened as a result was that the regular rolling over of oil leases, and the free dollar funding for producers of their oil inventory ceased. So the leased oil returned to the ownership of the producers, while the dollars returned to the ownership of the funds.

Since the ‘repurchases’ were no longer occurring, the forward oil price fell below the current price, and this ‘backwardation’ was misinterpreted by market traders and speculators. They believed that the backwardation was – as it usually is - a sign that current demand was high and increasing relative to forward demand, whereas in this false market the current demand is unchanged but the forward demand is decreasing.

As in 2008, speculators and traders were again suckered too soon into the market, and this led to profits at their expense to those with asymmetric information, and a ‘pop’ upwards in the price as they were forced to close speculative short positions. My information is that a major oil market trader was successfully able to ‘squeeze’ the Brent/BFOE market on at least two occasions in late 2011 precisely because they were aware of the true situation of inventory ownership, and the rest of the market was not.

As an insider puts it……

You can’t have proper price discovery when half of the inventory is being sold elsewhere at a different price. On exchange physical doesn’t even exist. Futures are converging to physical, but only the physical which is visible for Platts assessment.

….pointing out that transactions in respect of physical ownership of oil do not take place on an exchange, and that there is effectively a ‘two tier’ market. Only a proportion of spot or physical Brent/BFOE transactions therefore actually form the basis of the Platts assessment of the global benchmark oil price.

Enter Iran

In my view, there is little or no chance of military action against Iran, and having been to Iran five times in recent years, and as recently as two months ago, there is much I could write on this subject.

While financial sanctions have been pretty smart, and increasingly effective so far, the medium and long term effect of the proposed EU oil embargo – which will in fact affect only a pretty minimal and easily accommodated amount of demand which is evaporating anyway – is more apparent than real.

While there would undoubtedly be a short term price rise – cheered on by the usual suspects – in the medium and long term the embargo will act to reduce oil prices. This is because Iran will necessarily have to sell oil at below market price to China and others, and since the market is over-supplied, particularly in Europe, this will undercut market prices generally.

Mexico has routinely hedged oil production for years, and Qatar – who are very shrewd operators – began to do the same in November 2011 since they expect the price to fall this year. In the short term the Iran ‘crisis’ is in my view being hyped for all it is worth to entice yet more unwary speculators into the oil market so that other producers may sell their production forward at high prices while they last before the inevitable and imminent collapse.

Current Position

If you believe the investment banks – who all have oil funds to sell to the credulous – Far Eastern demand is holding up, supplies are tight, and stocks are low, so prices are set to rise to maybe $120 or above in 2012, even in the absence of fisticuffs involving Iran.

I take a different view. I see real demand – as opposed to financial demand and stock-piling, such as in the copper market – declining in 2012 as the financial crisis continues at best, and deepens at worst, particularly in the EU. Stocks are low because bank financing of stock is disappearing as banks retrench, and it makes no sense for traders to hold stocks if forward prices are lower than today’s price.

As for supplies, US crude oil production is probably higher, and consumption lower, than widely appreciated. Elsewhere, there is plenty of oil available now that much of the Dark Inventory has been liquidated, and this liquidation was probably why in November 2011 we saw the highest Saudi monthly deliveries in 30 years.

Finally, we see North Sea oil being shipped – for the first time since 2008 – half way around the world to find Far East buyers. We also see Petroplus, a major independent Swiss refiner, crippled by inflated crude oil prices, and shutting down three refineries because demand for its products has disappeared, and it can no longer finance crude oil purchases now that banks have pulled its credit lines.

In my world, refineries closed due to reduced demand for their products imply a reduction in demand for crude oil: but not, apparently, on the Planet Hype of investment banks with funds to sell.

History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and my forecast is that the crude oil price will fall dramatically during the first half of 2012, possibly as low as $45 to $55 per barrel.

Then What?

As the price collapses we will see producer nations generally and OPEC in particular once again going into panic mode, and genuinely cutting production. We will also see the next great regulatory scandal where a legion of risk-averse retail investors who have lost most or all of their investment will not be pleased to hear that they were warned on Page 5, paragraph (b); clause (iv) of their customer agreement that markets could go down as well as up.

At this point, I hope and expect that consumer and producer nations might finally get their heads together and agree that whereas the former seeks a stable low price, and the latter a stable high price, they actually have an interest – even if intermediaries do not – in agreeing a formula for a stable fair price.

We can’t solve 21st century problems with 20th century solutions and I shall address the subject of resilient global energy market architecture in my next post.

This is a guest post by Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange.

By Chris Cook
Original Source: The Oil Drum

The Best of Gingrich Video Blowout

2012-01-20T00:35:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul WINNING in South Carolina -- NOT

2012-01-19T23:55:00.000-08:00

Revealing Opposition Research File on Romney Leaked

2012-01-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

Source Doc: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/102095500/The-Romney-Book

Article Source: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/18/opposition-file-on-romney-hits-the-internet-likely-from-2008-mccain-campaign/
Massive Opposition Research File on Romney Hits Internet, Likely from 2008 McCain Campaign

By David Martosko The Daily Caller’s Executive Editor 01/18/2012

If you think you’ve already heard everything there is to know about Mitt Romney, think again. A 200-page document that appears to be Sen. John McCain’s entire 2008 election-year opposition research file on the former Massachusetts governor hit the Internet with a vengeance Tuesday evening. And it’s an eye-opener.

The file explores everything from the assessed value of Romney’s house (“$3.162 million”) to his views on the Boy Scouts’ ban of homosexuals (“publicly opposed … in 1994 and 2002 campaigns”). It was made public Tuesday on the social media website Buzzfeed, although it appears to have been accessible online for two months.

The document, given the name “The Romney Book,” was viewed less than 100 times on the page where it was originally uploaded by its anonymous leaker on November 11.

Neither McCain nor his former presidential campaign staffers have authenticated the untitled document, and McCain’s recent endorsement of Romney makes that highly unlikely. Still, the file is comprehensive enough — even by Washington, D.C. opposition-research standards — to suggest that it was assembled as a tool to counter a Romney candidacy on a national scale. And the news articles it references stop late in 2007.

After a four-page introduction and timeline of Romney’s personal and professional life, the file’s next six pages cover what the authors called “top hits.” The last six pages are an appendix describing a “Boston Video Archive.”

The biggest portion consists of a detailed and heavily sourced exploration of Romney’s evolving positions on social issues (22 pages), economic issues (21 pages) and domestic policy (48 pages).

A 33-page section details his business record at Bain Capital, and 16 pages cover political issues that the authors believed can be exploited against Romney.

Another 11 pages are devoted to his “flip-flops.”

Read the Romney File:

The Romney Book

The extensive research on Romney’s business history includes many snippets and quotations from news stories that are no longer available online or have disappeared behind newspaper paywalls, making the file a likely gold mine for Romney’s political rivals this year.

For instance, a 1991 Boston Globe article explored how Bain “cultivated a mystique around the secretive firm, which was once dubbed ‘the KGB of consulting.’ Partners didn’t carry business cards and referred to clients by code names. … And it inculcated in the recruits such a sense of mission that young consultants became known as Bainies, a reference to the Unification Church’s Moonies.”

Citing a 1994 Globe article, the file concludes that “Romney used Drexel Burnham junk bonds to finance [a] 1988 leveraged buyout, right around the time SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] officials were taking formal action against the company.”

In a followup article cited in the file, the Globe reported that Romney and another Bain Capital partner “defended their decision to hire Drexel before the SEC suit — at a time when rumors of the investigation were rife on Wall Street — as well as after the suit was filed.”

The dossier also explores the history of Bain’s business transactions related to Ampad, Maytag, Haier Group, and seven other companies that were subjects of Bain takeovers...

Santorum on SOPA, Freedoms, and U.S. Veterans

2012-01-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

Santorum on SOPA: "Like any freedom, THERE HAS TO BE REGULATION."

Article Source: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/how-rick-santorum-ripped-off-american-military-veterans

How Rick Santorum Ripped Off American Veterans
A controversial land deal by the presidential candidate robbed a vets' home of tens of millions of dollars.
By Andy Kroll on Wed. January 18, 2012

Like any good presidential candidate, Rick Santorum heaps praise on America's soldiers and veterans. He's pledged to "make veterans a high priority" if elected president, adding, "This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democratic issue, it is an American issue." But as a US senator, Santorum engineered a controversial land deal that robbed the military's top veterans' home of tens of millions of dollars and worsened the deteriorating conditions at the facility.

The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as "premier home for military retirees and veterans." The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.

But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn't enough to keep the Home operating fully. In the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency, trimming its staff by 24 percent and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older historic facilities slipping into disrepair and decay. To grapple with its worsening shortfall, officials running the Home eyed a valuable, 49-acre piece of land worth $49 million as a potential financial lifeline.

Under one scenario, by leasing the parcel of land and letting it be developed, the Home could pocket $105 million in income over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-chairman of the Home's board of directors, told Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a buyer. "Once land is sold," he said, "it is lost forever as an asset."

Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The amendment forced the Home to sell—and not lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land's value and $83 million less than what it could've made under the lease plan. Santorum's amendment sparked an outcry from veterans' groups and fellow US senators, who barraged his office with complaints.

Laurence Branch, then the executive director of the Home's board, says Santorum's amendment was "a travesty" and the Church's lobbying for the land a case of "coveting thy neighborhood's goods." To this day, Branch says he blames Santorum for the Home not receiving more money for the 49-acre parcel of land. "I'm convinced Sen. Santorum is no friend of veterans," Branch says. (A spokesman for Catholic University did not respond to a request for comment.)

At the time, Santorum said the amendment was the product of "a consensus agreement" and "was certainly not an attempt to shortchange the veterans." (A spokesman for the Santorum campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Santorum's advocacy for Catholic University isn't at all surprising. A practicing Catholic, Santorum embodies the church's anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage positions as well as its support for charities and alleviating poverty. While in Congress, he was a fierce advocate for the Catholic Church. A former Santorum aide told New York Times Magazine in 2005 that the senator was "a Catholic missionary who happens to be in the Senate.'' That same year, Time magazine named him one of America's ''25 Most Influential Evangelicals.''

Meanwhile, the $22 million from the land sale hardly stanched the flow of red ink at Armed Forces Retirement Home. Financial records, court documents, and government reports from the 2000s show how the Home cut back on the services it provided veterans as it grappled with funding problems. The slashing of services got so bad that in 2003 veterans living at the Home filed a class-action suit against the Home and its director, Timothy Cox, alleging shoddy health care and less access to that care. As a result of cutbacks and declining quality in care, the suit claimed, the suicide rate at the Home spiked from 59 in 2000 to 131 in 2003.

In 2007, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office came to similarly troubling conclusions. The watchdog's head, David Walker, reported that one Home resident had been admitted to the hospital with maggots in a wound. Other vets were admitted with bad pressure sores, suggesting they'd been left unattended for dangerously long stretches of time by the Home's health care employees. In the aftermath of the GAO's investigation, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) demanded an independent investigation into the quality of health care at the Home.

Yet today, despite some improvement in the Home's financial health, its campus is pocked with boarded-up, decrepit buildings. All but one of the Home's gatehouses is shuttered, as are some of the Home's more elegant buildings, including the historic Grant building (named after the Civil War general) and the red-brick hospital that now sits empty, bearing a sign warning off trespassers. Some veterans believe the Home's constant financial struggles have led to a slow-motion decline of the Home. As longtime resident and Navy vet Robert Devaney says, "I like to call it demolition by neglect."

Frontline: Fukushima Nuclear Aftershocks

2012-01-17T21:55:00.000-08:00

Watch Nuclear Aftershocks on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Mitt Romney WINS South Carolina?

2012-01-17T01:11:00.000-08:00

South Carolina Leader on the key issue in this election:

The question you have to ask yourself, are you confident enough to really change America for the better? Then view the next video from RonvsMitt.com:

"When Mitt Romney Came to Town"

2012-01-13T01:09:00.000-08:00

Video Source: http://www.webcasts.com/kingofbain/

Article Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mitt-romneys-defense-bain-capital-and-private-equity-industry-here-are-some-facts

"On Mitt Romney's Defense Of Bain Capital And The Private Equity Industry - Here Are Some Facts" by 'Tyler Durden' of Zerohedge on 01/10/2012

Lately, Bain founder and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has found himself in a spirited defense of the private equity industry, doing all he can to spin decades of data which confirm, without failure, that PE Leveraged Buy Outs are nothing but "efficiency maximizing" transactions whose only goal is the "maximization" of EBITDA in the pursuit of dividend recap deals, IPOs or outright sales, while loading up the company with untenable amounts of leverage. All this with a 3-5 year investment horizon, which ignores the long-term viability of a company and seeks to streamline (read fire as many as possible) operations as quickly as possible in the goal of maximizing short-term returns. We wish him luck in his endeavor. As for the other side of the equation, we recreate a post we penned back in November 2009 which analyzes just how effective the mega-LBOs have been for the economy, and the workers involved. In other words - the facts. In a nutshell, here they are: "The Disastrous Performance Of Private Equity: Of The Top 10 LBOs, 6 Are In Distress, 4 Have Defaulted." Read on for the full details.

From November 6, 2009

One sometimes wonders why the idiots in Washington have still not bailed out the private equity industry. After all, for the low, low price of about $100 billion (which is about how much keeping Fannie on life support will cost US taxpayers in the first quarter of 2010 alone), Congress can ensure that thousands of PE associates, VPs and MDs can once again frequent Hustler Club, order dozens of bottles of Cristal at Lotus, and eat sushi straight off geisha bodies at Bar Masa. In other words, a return to those oh so difficult days of 2007. Furthermore, looking at the track record of PE, especially as characterized by its 10 largest deals in history, one can make the mistake that KKR, Apollo, Bain, Carlyle and Providence are all employing exclusively government workers: therefore the government would in essence be bailing out itself.

For those who are interested in more information, Moody's has compiled a useful report, entitled "$640 billion & 640 days later: how companies sponsored by big private equity have performed during the U.S. recession." The track record is simply abysmal: Of the top 10 deals, only Hertz, HCA and First Data are considered "stable" which is actually saying a lot ("stable" by Moody's means these firms are likely about to have an alien burst out of their ribcage). For fear of being sued with impunity by the benevolent IR team at Hertz we won't say much, save to say that the firm is exclusively reliant on a stable economy, healthy business travel, vibrant tourism and the lack of default of fleet car makers, and which is leveraged up its colon in double digit leverage multiples. Also, saying HCA and FDC are "stable" in public and one risks being involuntarily committed. Therefore one can say that virtually all of the blockbuster LBO deals are on the verge of collapse/bankruptcy/default/insolvency, etc. If that is not deserving of communist handouts courtesy of Comrade Obama, nothing is.

And while these companies life expectations are limited at best, regardless of how Hertz' lawsuit against anyone who has a sell rating against the firm goes, the biggest threat is to the entire PE industry, which just like the CRE space, will be facing a massive refi threat into 2014. Between 2011 and 2014, there is roughly half a trillion in LBO debt maturing. Add that to the $1.5 trillion in bank debt due for rolling, and the roughly $3 trillion in CRE debt that is also supposed to be refinanced, and one can see how the next president will have his arms full as he/she will need to find a way to roll about $5 trillion in debt without the benefit of securitizations. Furthermore, since the economy will be on stimulus #10 by then courtesy of a drunk with power Obama, America will be on fast track to sovereign and corporate Armageddon.

Anyway, here is the chart that shows the upcoming debt maturities:

And since no Zero Hedge post is complete without ridiculing someone away from the Administration or the Fed (the last two are like shooting fish in an excess liquidity barrel), here is the rating of the worst of the worst PE firms. Not surprisingly, Cerberus is the worst PE firm in the history of the universe, followed promptly by Leon Black's Apollo, of whose 20 deals initiated before 2008, 5 are in distressed and 8 are in default. Hey Calpers, how is that evaluation of your Apollo relationship going?

Click on above image to enlarge.

And as we are confident that the White House will be all over this to find their next bail out target (those $1.1 trillion in excess reserves have to hit the money in circulation somehow), we will present you will the full Moody's report. If, in addition to this, our dear White House readers are in need of reading, comprehension and math lessons, those can be purchased at our Paper Street headquarters: we accept compensation in the form of perpetual, non-accruing, non-PIKing TLGP zeros.

Romney: The Republican Obama
By Kurt Nimmo

Mitt Romney is the Republican Obama. He earns this title because on crucial issues he mirrors Barack Obama. The two agree on the following two key issues among many:

Romney-Obamacare:

Obama was so enthralled with Romney's statist health care boondoggle that he based his plan on it.

"Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney's landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney's own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act," NBC reported last October.

Cap-and-Trade and carbon taxes:

Romney has stated he believes in the unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming. In 2005, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney imposed strict state limitations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In a memo issued by Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Hale, the Romney administration bragged that it was "the first and only state to set CO2 emissions limits on power plants."

In his book, No Apology, Romney advocates carbon taxes through a "tax-swap plan" and declares that resultant "higher energy prices would encourage energy efficiency." The plan is favored by economist and Romney adviser Greg Mankiw and many other "Republican-leaning economists." In 2007, Mankiw wrote an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax." He wrote that "if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax."

Mitt Romney is basically indistinguishable from Obama and supports the same agenda, albeit with "conservative" flourishes. His flip-flopping on key issues is designed to make his pre-arranged agenda more palatable to voters, who would be hoodwinked as they have been in prior election cycles upon his election. In a telling Freudian slip, even John McCain below revealed as much this week in South Carolina:

Ron Paul WINS New Hampshire!

2012-01-10T03:47:00.000-08:00

Source: IBTimes - Ron Paul and Rand Paul - Click on image to enlarge

Mitt Romney WINS New Hampshire!

2012-01-10T03:30:00.000-08:00

Full 27 minute movie "When Mitt Romney Came to Town" due to be released soon...

Rick Santorum WINS New Hampshire! -- NOT

2012-01-10T03:05:00.001-08:00

Video Source: Jan. 9-10, 2012, Skip ahead to 11:30 min. in this video.

"Ricky" Santorum and the gay Penn State College Republicans

Article Source: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/11/09/santorum-angel-award-for-psus-sandusky/

Santorum: ‘Angel’ award for Penn State’s Sandusky
by Joel Connelly on November 9, 2011

Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, running for the Republican presidential nomination, in 2002 nominated former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for a “Congressional Angels in Adoption Award.”

The nomination by Santorum was made in the same year that a Penn State graduate assistant spotted Sandusky allegedly performing a sex act with a young boy in a shower at the university’s athletic complex. He reported the incident a day later to head football coach Joe Paterno.

“Its philosophy is simple: It is easier to develop a child than to rehabilitate an adult,” read the citation from Santorum in an awards dinner program dated Sept. 24, 2002.

The citation was referring to The Second Mile, a charity launched by Sandusky in 1977 to serve disadvantaged children. It was first reported Wednesday by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sandusky has since been charged with multiple counts of child abuse. The university’s athletic director and a vice president have been charged with perjury. Paterno, 84, coach for more than four decades, announced on Wednesday that he will retire at the end of the year.

Santorum is running for president as a social conservative and family values champion. He is a strong opponent of abortion, critic of contraception, and outspoken foe of such gay and lesbian causes as marriage equality.

Santorum, a 1980 Penn State graduate, defended Paterno in an ABC News interview, saying he hoped the spreading sex-abuse scandal would not damage a coach who “served in such distinction for all these years.”

The Angels in Adoption awards program is sponsored each year by the non-profit Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Jon Huntsman WINS New Hampshire! -- NOT

2012-01-10T02:43:00.000-08:00

Article Source: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/06/20/jon-huntsmans-iranian-missile-problem

Jon Huntsman's Iranian Missile Problem
by PAUL CONSTANT on MON, JUN 20, 2011

Jon Huntsman isn't involved with Huntsman Corp. anymore, but you can bet that Republican voters aren't going to accept that as an explanation for this:

Shortly after Jon Huntsman began his tour as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China, an unwelcome letter from an anti-Iran nuclear watchdog group arrived at Huntsman Corp., the chemical company founded by his father.

The bluntly worded missive singled out a Tehran-based subsidiary — purchased when Huntsman worked for the company — for selling polyurethane that could be used in solid fuel for Iranian missiles, among other things.

“How can it be that Ambassador Huntsman could persuade the Chinese government to impose further economic sanctions on Iran when his namesake former company continues to do business in Iran?” read the letter from United Against a Nuclear Iran, a nonpartisan group founded by the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke and veteran Mideast envoy Dennis Ross.

Jon Huntsman's family business could be arming the Iranians. That's a little spicier than Newt's Tiffany's problem. This might even be considered...light treason.

UANI Letter regarding Huntsman/Iran Business: http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/sites/default/files/UANI_Huntsman_Reply_120809.pdf

The Romney Con

2012-01-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

50 Reasons to Oppose Water Fluoridation

2012-01-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

By Paul Connett, PhD and other members of the Fluoride Action Network (including James Beck, MD, PhD, Michael Connett, JD, Hardy Limeback, DDS, PhD, David McRae and Spedding Micklem, D.Phil.)

Introduction

Fluoridation is the practice of adding a fluoride compound to the public drinking water supply ostensibly for the purpose of fighting tooth decay. The levels used range from 0.6 to 1.2 milligrams of fluoride ion per liter (or parts per million, ppm). The practice began in the U.S. in 1945 and was endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) in 1950. Very few countries have adopted this practice to any significant extent. Only eight countries in the world have more than 50% of their populations drinking artificially fluoridated water (Australia, Colombia, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the U.S.). In Europe, only Ireland (with 73% of the population fluoridated), the U.K. (10%) and Spain (10%) fluoridate some of their water supplies. In the U.S., about 70% of the population is drinking fluoridated water – that is approximately 200 million people and about half the number of people drinking artificially fluoridated water worldwide. Some countries have areas with high natural fluoride levels in the water. These include India, China and parts of Africa. In these countries measures are being taken to remove the fluoride because of the health problems that fluoride can cause.

Fluoridation is a bad medical practice

Fluoride is the only chemical added to water for the purpose of medical treatment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies fluoride as a drug when used to prevent or mitigate disease (FDA 2000). As a matter of basic logic, adding fluoride to water for the sole purpose of preventing tooth decay (a non-waterborne disease) is a form of medical treatment. All other water treatment chemicals are added to improve the water's quality or safety, which fluoride does not do.
Fluoridation is unethical. Informed consent is standard practice for all medication, and one of the key reasons why most of Western Europe has ruled against fluoridation. With water fluoridation we are allowing governments to do to whole communities (forcing people to take a medicine irrespective of their consent) what individual doctors cannot do to individual patients. While referenda are preferential to imposed policies from government, it still leaves the problem of individual rights versus majority rule. Put another way: Does a voter have the right to require that their neighbor ingest a certain medication (even if it is against that neighbor's will)?
The dose cannot be controlled. Once fluoride is put in the water it is impossible to control the dose each individual receives because people drink different amounts of water. Being able to control the dose a patient receives is critical. Some people (e.g., manual laborers, athletes, diabetics, and people with kidney disease) drink substantially more water than others.
The fluoride goes to everyone regardless of age, health or vulnerability. According to Dr. Arvid Carlsson, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology and one of the scientists who helped keep fluoridation out of Sweden:

"Water fluoridation goes against leading principles of pharmacotherapy, which is progressing from a stereotyped medication -- of the type 1 tablet 3 times a day -- to a much more individualized therapy as regards both dosage and selection of drugs. The addition of drugs to the drinking water means exactly the opposite of an individualized therapy" (Carlsson 1978).

People now receive fluoride from many other sources besides water. Fluoridated water is not the only way people are exposed to fluoride. Other sources of fluoride include food and beverages processed with fluoridated water (Kiritsy 1996; Heilman 1999), fluoridated dental products (Bentley 1999; Levy 1999), mechanically deboned meat (Fein 2001), tea (Levy 1999), and pesticide residues (e.g., from cryolite) on food (Stannard 1991; Burgstahler 1997). It is now widely acknowledged that exposure to non-water sources of fluoride has significantly increased since the water fluoridation program first began (NRC 2006).
Fluoride is not an essential nutrient (National Research Council [NRC] 1993; Institute of Medicine [IOM] 1997, NRC 2006). No disease has ever been linked to a fluoride deficiency. It has never been shown that ingested fluoride is needed to produce decay-free teeth. Not a single biological process has been shown to require fluoride. On the contrary there is extensive evidence that fluoride can interfere with many important biological processes. Fluoride interferes with numerous enzymes (Waldbott 1978). In combination with aluminum, fluoride interferes with G-proteins (Bigay 1985, 1987). Such interactions give aluminum-fluoride complexes the potential to interfere with signals from growth factors, hormones and neurotransmitters (Strunecka & Patocka 1999; Li 2003). More and more studies are indicating that fluoride can interfere with biochemistry in fundamental ways (Barbier 2010).
The level in mothers' milk is very low. Considering reason #6 it is perhaps not surprising that the level of fluoride in mother's milk is remarkably low (0.004 ppm, NRC, 2006). This means that a bottle-fed baby consuming fluoridated water (0.6 – 1.2 ppm) can get up to 300 times more fluoride than a breast-fed baby. There are no benefits (see reasons #11-19), only risks (see reasons #21-36), for infants ingesting this heightened level of fluoride at such an early age (an age where susceptibility to environmental toxins is particularly high).
Fluoride accumulates in the body. Healthy adult kidneys excrete 50 to 60% of the fluoride they ingest each day (Marier & Rose 1971). The remainder accumulates in the body, largely in calcifying tissues such as the bones and pineal gland (Luke 1997, 2001). Infants and children excrete less fluoride from their kidneys and take up to 80% of ingested fluoride into their bones (Ekstrand 1994). The fluoride concentration in bone steadily increases over a lifetime (NRC 2006).
No health agency in fluoridated countries is monitoring fluoride exposure or side effects. No regular measurements are being made of the levels of fluoride in urine, blood, bones, hair, or nails of either the general population or sensitive subparts of the population (e.g., individuals with kidney disease).
There has never been a single randomized clinical trial to demonstrate fluoridation's effectiveness or safety. Despite the fact that fluoride has been added to community water supplies for over 60 years, "there have been no randomized trials of water fluoridation" (Cheng 2007). Randomized studies are the standard method for determining the safety and effectiveness of any purportedly beneficial medical treatment. In 2000, the British Government's "York Review" could not give a single fluoridation trial a Grade A classification – despite 50 years of research (McDonagh 2000). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to classify fluoride as an "unapproved new drug."

Swallowing fluoride provides no (or very little) benefit

Benefit is topical not systemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 1999, 2001) has now acknowledged that the mechanism of fluoride's benefits are mainly topical, not systemic. There is no need whatsoever, therefore, to swallow fluoride to protect teeth. Since the purported benefit of fluoride is topical, and the risks are systemic, it makes more sense to deliver the fluoride directly to the tooth in the form of toothpaste. Since swallowing fluoride is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous, there is no justification for forcing people (against their will) to ingest fluoride through their water supply.
Fluoridation is not necessary. Most western, industrialized countries have rejected water fluoridation, but have nevertheless experienced the same decline in childhood dental decay as fluoridated countries. (See data from World Health Organization presented graphically in Figure 1).

Fluoridation's role in the decline of tooth decay is in serious doubt. The largest survey ever conducted in the US (over 39,000 children from 84 communities) by the National Institute of Dental Research showed little difference in tooth decay among children in fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities (Hileman 1989). According to NIDR researchers, the study found an average difference of only 0.6 DMFS (Decayed, Missing, and Filled Surfaces) in the permanent teeth of children aged 5-17 residing their entire lives in either fluoridated or unfluoridated areas (Brunelle & Carlos, 1990). This difference is less than one tooth surface, and less than 1% of the 100+ tooth surfaces available in a child's mouth. Large surveys from three Australian states have found even less of a benefit, with decay reductions ranging from 0 to 0.3 of one permanent tooth surface (Spencer 1996; Armfield & Spencer 2004). None of these studies have allowed for the possible delayed eruption of the teeth that may be caused by exposure to fluoride, for which there is some evidence (Komarek 2005). A one-year delay in eruption of the permanent teeth would eliminate the very small benefit recorded in these modern studies.
NIH-funded study on individual fluoride ingestion and tooth decay failed to find a significant correlation. A multi-million dollar, U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) -funded study (Warren 2009) found no relation between tooth decay and the amount of fluoride ingested by children. This is the first time that tooth decay has been investigated as a function of individual exposure as opposed to mere residence in a fluoridated community.
Tooth decay is high in low-income communities that have been fluoridated for years. Despite some claims to the contrary, water fluoridation cannot prevent the oral health crises that result from rampant poverty, inadequate nutrition, and lack of access to dental care. There have been numerous reports of severe dental crises in low-income neighborhoods of US cities that have been fluoridated for over 20 years (e.g., Boston, Cincinnati, New York City, and Pittsburgh). In addition, fluoridation has been repeatedly found to be ineffective at preventing the most serious oral health problem facing poor children, namely "baby bottle tooth decay," otherwise known as early childhood caries (Barnes 1992; Shiboski 2003).
Tooth decay does not go up when fluoridation is stopped. Where fluoridation has been discontinued in communities from Canada, the former East Germany, Cuba and Finland, dental decay has not increased but has generally continued to decrease (Maupomé 2001; Kunzel & Fischer, 1997, 2000; Kunzel 2000; Seppa 2000).
Tooth decay was coming down before fluoridation started. Modern research (e.g., Diesendorf 1986; Colquhoun 1997) shows that decay rates were coming down before fluoridation was introduced in Australia and New Zealand and have continued to decline even after its benefits would have been maximized (see Figure 2). Many other factors influence tooth decay.

Figure 2. The number of decayed teeth in 5-year olds in New Zealand, over the period 1930-1990. The percentage of the population drinking fluoridated water and the percentage of the total toothpaste sold containing fluoride are shown on the right hand axis (Colquhoun, 1993).

The studies that launched fluoridation were methodologically flawed. The early trials conducted between 1945 and 1955 in North America that helped to launch fluoridation, have been heavily criticized for their poor methodology and poor choice of control communities (De Stefano 1954; Sutton 1959, 1960, 1996; Ziegelbecker 1970). According to Dr. Hubert Arnold, a statistician from the University of California at Davis, the early fluoridation trials "are especially rich in fallacies, improper design, invalid use of statistical methods, omissions of contrary data, and just plain muddleheadedness and hebetude." Serious questions have also been raised about Trendley Dean's (the father of fluoridation) famous 21-city study from 1942 (Ziegelbecker 1981).

Children are being over-exposed to fluoride

Children are being over-exposed to fluoride. The fluoridation program has massively failed to achieve one of its key objectives, i.e., to lower dental decay rates while limiting the occurrence of dental fluorosis (a discoloring of tooth enamel caused by too much fluoride. The goal of the early promoters of fluoridation was to limit dental fluorosis (in its very mild form) to10% of children (NRC 1993, pp. 6-7). In 2010, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that41% of American adolescents had dental fluorosis, with 8.6% having mild fluorosis and 3.6% having either moderate or severe dental fluorosis (Beltran-Aguilar 2010). As the 41% prevalence figure is a national average and includes children living in fluoridated and unfluoridated areas, the fluorosis rate in fluoridated communities will obviously be higher. The British Government's York Review estimated that up to 48% of children in fluoridated areas worldwide have dental fluorosis in all forms, with 12.5% having fluorosis of aesthetic concern (McDonagh, 2000).
The highest doses of fluoride are going to bottle-fed babies. Because of their sole reliance on liquids for their food intake, infants consuming formula made with fluoridated water have the highest exposure to fluoride, by bodyweight, in the population. Because infant exposure to fluoridated water has been repeatedly found to be a major risk factor for developing dental fluorosis later in life (Marshall 2004; Hong 2006; Levy 2010), a number of dental researchers have recommended that parents of newborns not use fluoridated water when reconstituting formula (Ekstrand 1996; Pendrys 1998; Fomon 2000; Brothwell 2003; Marshall 2004). Even the American Dental Association (ADA), the most ardent institutional proponent of fluoridation, distributed a November 6, 2006 email alert to its members recommending that parents be advised that formula should be made with "low or no-fluoride water." Unfortunately, the ADA has done little to get this information into the hands of parents. As a result, many parents remain unaware of the fluorosis risk from infant exposure to fluoridated water.

Evidence of harm to other tissues

Dental fluorosis may be an indicator of wider systemic damage. There have been many suggestions as to the possible biochemical mechanisms underlying the development of dental fluorosis (Matsuo 1998; Den Besten 1999; Sharma 2008; Duan 2011; Tye 2011) and they are complicated for a lay reader. While promoters of fluoridation are content to dismiss dental fluorosis (in its milder forms) as merely a cosmetic effect, it is rash to assume that fluoride is not impacting other developing tissues when it is visibly damaging the teeth by some biochemical mechanism (Groth 1973; Colquhoun 1997). Moreover, ingested fluoride can only cause dental fluorosis during the period before the permanent teeth have erupted (6-8 years), other tissues are potentially susceptible to damage throughout life. For example, in areas of naturally high levels of fluoride the first indicator of harm is dental fluorosis in children. In the same communities many older people develop skeletal fluorosis.
Fluoride may damage the brain. According to the National Research Council (2006), "it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain." In a review of the literature commissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fluoride has been listed among about 100 chemicals for which there is "substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity." Animal experiments show that fluoride accumulates in the brain and alters mental behavior in a manner consistent with a neurotoxic agent (Mullenix 1995). In total, there have now been over 100 animal experiments showing that fluoride can damage the brain and impact learning and behavior. According to fluoridation proponents, these animal studies can be ignored because high doses were used. However, it is important to note that it takes 5-20 times more fluoride to reach the same plasma levels in rats as reached in humans (Sawan 2010). In fact, one animal experiment found effects at remarkably low doses (Varner 1998). In this study, rats fed for one year with 1 ppm fluoride in their water (the same level used in fluoridation programs), using either sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride, had morphological changes to their kidneys and brains, an increased uptake of aluminum in the brain, and the formation of beta-amyloid deposits which are associated with Alzheimer's disease. Other animal studies have found effects on the brain at water fluoride levels as low as 5 ppm (Liu 2010).(For a complete listing of these studies.
Fluoride may lower IQ. There have now been 24 studies from China, Iran, India and Mexico that have reported an association between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ. One of these studies (Lin Fa-Fu 1991) indicates that even just moderate levels of fluoride exposure (e.g., 0.9 ppm in the water) can exacerbate the neurological defects of iodine deficiency. In the absence of iodine deficiency, another research team (Xiang 2003a,b) estimated that fluoride may lower IQ at 1.9 ppm, while a recent preliminary study (Ding 2011) found a lowering of IQ in children drinking water at levels ranging from 0.3 to 3 ppm. The authors of this latter study reported that for each increase of 1 ppm fluoride measured in the urine there was a loss of 0.59 IQ points. None of these studies indicates an adequate margin of safety to protect all children drinking artificially fluoridated water from this affect. According to the National Research Council (2006), "the consistency of the results [in fluoride/IQ studies] appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence." Except for an early and small IQ study from New Zealand (Shannon et al., 1986) no fluoridating country has investigated the matter for themselves.
Fluoride may cause non-IQ neurotoxic effects. Reduced IQ is not the only neurotoxic effect that may result from fluoride exposure. At least three human studies have reported an association between fluoride exposure and impaired visual-spatial organization (Calderon 2000; Li 2004; Rocha-Amador 2009); while three other studies have found an association between prenatal fluoride exposure and fetal brain damage (Han 1989; Du 1992; Yu 1996).
Fluoride affects the pineal gland. Studies by Jennifer Luke (2001) show that fluoride accumulates in the human pineal glandto very high levels. In her Ph.D. thesis, Luke has also shown in animal studies that fluoride reduces melatonin production and leads to an earlier onset of puberty (Luke 1997). Consistent with Luke's findings, one of the earliest fluoridation trials in the U.S. (Schlesinger 1956) reported that on average young girls in the fluoridated community reached menstruation 5 months earlier than girls in the non-fluoridated community. Inexplicably, no fluoridating country has attempted to reproduce either Luke's or Schlesinger's findings or examine the issue any further.
Fluoride affects thyroid function. According to the U.S. National Research Council (2006), "several lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function." In the Ukraine, Bachinskii (1985) found a lowering of thyroid function, among otherwise healthy people, at 2.3 ppm fluoride in water. In the middle of the 20th century, fluoride was prescribed by a number of European doctors to reduce the activity of the thyroid gland for those suffering from hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) (Stecher 1960; Waldbott 1978). According to a clinical study by Galletti and Joyet (1958), the thyroid function of hyperthyroid patients was effectively reduced at just 2.3 to 4.5 mg/day of fluoride ion. To put this finding in perspective, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, 1991) has estimated that total fluoride exposure in fluoridated communities ranges from 1.6 to 6.6 mg/day. This is a remarkable fact, particularly considering the rampant and increasing problem of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) in the United States and other fluoridated countries. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include depression, fatigue, weight gain, muscle and joint pains, increased cholesterol levels, and heart disease. In 2010, the second most prescribed drug of the year was Synthroid (sodium levothyroxine) which is a hormone replacement drug used to treat an underactive thyroid.
Fluoride causes arthritic symptoms. Some of the early symptoms of skeletal fluorosis (a fluoride-induced bone and joint disease that impacts millions of people in India, China, and Africa), mimic the symptoms of arthritis (Singh 1963; Franke 1975; Teotia 1976; Carnow 1981; Czerwinski 1988; DHHS 1991). According to a review on fluoridation published in Chemical & Engineering News, "Because some of the clinical symptoms mimic arthritis, the first two clinical phases of skeletal fluorosis could be easily misdiagnosed" (Hileman 1988). Few, if any, studies have been done to determine the extent of this misdiagnosis, and whether the high prevalence of arthritis in America (1 in 3 Americans have some form of arthritis - CDC, 2002) and other fluoridated countries is related to growing fluoride exposure, which is highly plausible. Even when individuals in the U.S. suffer advanced forms of skeletal fluorosis (from drinking large amounts of tea), it has taken years of misdiagnosesbefore doctors finally correctly diagnosed the condition as fluorosis.
Fluoride damages bone. An early fluoridation trial (Newburgh-Kingston 1945-55) found a significant two-fold increase in cortical bone defects among children in the fluoridated community (Schlesinger 1956). The cortical bone is the outside layer of the bone and is important to protect against fracture. While this result was not considered important at the time with respect to bone fractures, it did prompt questions about a possible link to osteosarcoma (Caffey, 1955; NAS, 1977). In 2001, Alarcon-Herrera and co-workers reported a linear correlation between the severity of dental fluorosis and the frequency of bone fractures in both children and adults in a high fluoride area in Mexico.
Fluoride may increase hip fractures in the elderly. When high doses of fluoride (average 26 mg per day) were used in trials to treat patients with osteoporosis in an effort to harden their bones and reduce fracture rates, it actually led to a higher number of fractures, particularly hip fractures (Inkovaara 1975; Gerster 1983; Dambacher 1986; O'Duffy 1986; Hedlund 1989; Bayley 1990; Gutteridge 1990. 2002; Orcel 1990; Riggs 1990 and Schnitzler 1990). Hip fracture is a very serious issue for the elderly, often leading to a loss of independence or a shortened life. There have been over a dozen studies published since 1990 that have investigated a possible relationship between hip fractures and long term consumption of artificially fluoridated water or water with high natural levels. The results have been mixed – some have found an association and others have not. Some have even claimed a protective effect. One very important study in China, which examined hip fractures in six Chinese villages, found what appears to be a dose-related increase in hip fracture as the concentration of fluoride rose from 1 ppm to 8 ppm (Li 2001) offering little comfort to those who drink a lot of fluoridated water. Moreover, in the only human epidemiological study to assess bone strength as a function of bone fluoride concentration, researchers from the University of Toronto found that (as with animal studies) the strength of bone declined with increasing fluoride content (Chachra 2010). Finally, a recent study from Iowa (Levy 2009), published data suggesting that low-level fluoride exposure may have a detrimental effect on cortical bone density in girls (an effect that has been repeatedly documented in clinical trials and which has been posited as an important mechanism by which fluoride may increase bone fracture rates).
People with impaired kidney function are particularly vulnerable to bone damage. Because of their inability to effectively excrete fluoride, people with kidney disease are prone to accumulating high levels of fluoride in their bone and blood. As a result of this high fluoride body burden, kidney patients have an elevated risk for developing skeletal fluorosis. In one of the few U.S. studies investigating the matter, crippling skeletal fluorosis was documented among patients with severe kidney disease drinking water with just 1.7 ppm fluoride (Johnson 1979). Since severe skeletal fluorosis in kidney patients has been detected in small case studies, it is likely that larger, systematic studies would detect skeletal fluorosis at even lower fluoride levels.
Fluoride may cause bone cancer (osteosarcoma). A U.S. government-funded animal study found a dose-dependent increase in bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in fluoride-treated, male rats (NTP 1990). Following the results of this study, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reviewed national cancer data in the U.S. and found a significantly higher rate of osteosarcoma (a bone cancer) in young men in fluoridated versus unfluoridated areas (Hoover et al 1991a). While the NCI concluded (based on an analysis lacking statistical power) that fluoridation was not the cause (Hoover et al 1991b), no explanation was provided to explain the higher rates in the fluoridated areas. A smaller study from New Jersey (Cohn 1992) found osteosarcoma rates to be up to 6 times higher in young men living in fluoridated versus unfluoridated areas. Other epidemiological studies of varying size and quality have failed to find this relationship (a summary of these can be found in Bassin, 2001 and Connett & Neurath, 2005). There are three reasons why a fluoride-osteosarcoma connection is plausible: First, fluoride accumulates to a high level in bone. Second, fluoride stimulates bone growth. And, third, fluoride can interfere with the genetic apparatus of bone cells in several ways; it has been shown to be mutagenic, cause chromosome damage, and interfere with the enzymes involved with DNA repair in both cell and tissue studies (Tsutsui 1984; Caspary 1987; Kishi 1993; Mihashi 1996; Zhang 2009). In addition to cell and tissue studies, a correlation between fluoride exposure and chromosome damage in humans has also been reported (Sheth 1994; Wu 1995; Meng 1997; Joseph 2000).
Proponents have failed to refute the Bassin-Osteosarcoma study. In 2001, Elise Bassin, a dentist, successfully defended her doctoral thesis at Harvard in which she found that young boys had a five-to-seven fold increased risk of getting osteosarcoma by the age of 20 if they drank fluoridated water during their mid-childhood growth spurt (age 6 to 8). The study was published in 2006 (Bassin 2006) but has been largely discounted by fluoridating countries because her thesis adviser Professor Chester Douglass (a promoter of fluoridation and a consultant for Colgate) promised a larger study that he claimed would discount her thesis (Douglass and Joshipura, 2006). Now, after 5 years of waiting the Douglass study has finally been published (Kim 2011) but in no way does this study discount Bassin's findings. The study, which used far fewer controls than Bassin's analysis, did not even attempt to assess the age-specific window of risk that Bassin identified. Indeed, by the authors' own admission, the study had no capacity to assess the risk of osteosarcoma among children and adolescents (the precise population of concern). For a critique of the Douglass study, click here.
Fluoride may cause reproductive problems. Fluoride administered to animals at high doses wreaks havoc on the male reproductive system - it damages sperm and increases the rate of infertility in a number of different species (Kour 1980; Chinoy 1989; Chinoy 1991; Susheela 1991; Chinoy 1994; Kumar 1994; Narayana 1994a,b; Zhao 1995; Elbetieha 2000; Ghosh 2002; Zakrzewska 2002). In addition, an epidemiological study from the US found increased rates of infertility among couples living in areas with 3 ppm or more fluoride in the water (Freni 1994), two studies have found reduced level of circulating testosterone in males living in high fluoride areas (Susheela 1996; Barot 1998), and a study of fluoride-exposed workers reported a "subclinical reproductive effect" (Ortiz-Perez 2003). While animal studies by FDA researchers have failed to find evidence of reproductive toxicity in fluoride-exposed rats (Sprando 1996, 1997, 1998), the National Research Council (2006) has recommended that, "the relationship between fluoride and fertility requires additional study."
Some individuals are highly sensitive to low levels of fluoride as shown by case studies and double blind studies (Shea 1967; Waldbott 1978; Moolenburgh 1987). In one study, which lasted 13 years, Feltman and Kosel (1961) showed that about 1% of patients given 1 mg of fluoride each day developed negative reactions. Many individuals have reported suffering from symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, rashes and stomach and gastro intestinal tract problems, which disappear when they avoid fluoride in their water and diet. Frequently the symptoms reappear when they are unwittingly exposed to fluoride again (Spittle, 2008). No fluoridating government has conducted scientific studies to take this issue beyond these anecdotal reports. Without the willingness of governments to investigate these reports scientifically, should we as a society be forcing these people to ingest fluoride?
Other subsets of population are more vulnerable to fluoride's toxicity. In addition to people suffering from impaired kidney function discussed in reason #30 other subsets of the population are more vulnerable.to fluoride's toxic effects. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR 1993) these include: infants, the elderly and diabetics. Also vulnerable are those who suffer from malnutrition (e.g., calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin D and iodine deficiencies and protein-poor diets. See: Massler & Schour 1952; Marier & Rose 1977; Lin Fa-Fu 1991; Chen 1997; Teotia 1998).

No Margin of Safety

There is no margin of safety for several health effects. No one can deny that high natural levels of fluoride damage health. Millions of people in India and China have had their health compromised by fluoride. The real argument is about whether there is an adequate margin of safety between the doses that have been shown to cause harm in published studies and the total dose people receive consuming uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water and non-water sources of fluoride. This margin of safety has to take into account the wide range of individual sensitivity expected in a large population (a safety factor of 10 is usually applied to the lowest level causing harm). Another safety factor is also needed to take into account the wide range of doses to which people are exposed. There is clearly no margin of safety for dental fluorosis (CDC, 2010) and based on the following studies nowhere near an adequate margin of safety for lowered IQ (Xiang 2003a,b; Ding 2011); lowered thyroid function (Galletti & Joyet 1958; Bachinskii 1985; Lin 1991); bone fractures in children (Alarcon-Herrera 2001) or hip fractures in the elderly (Kurttio 1999; Li 2001). All these harmful effects are discussed in the NRC (2006) review.

Environmental Justice

Low-income families penalized by fluoridation. Those most likely to suffer from poor nutrition, and thus more likely to be more vulnerable to fluoride's toxic effects, are the poor, who unfortunately, are the very people being targeted by new fluoridation programs. While at heightened risk, poor families are least able to afford avoiding fluoride once it is added to the water supply. No financial support is being offered to these families to help them get alternative water supplies or to help pay the costs of treating unsightly cases of dental fluorosis.
Black and Hispanic children are more vulnerable to fluoride's toxicity. According to the CDC's national survey of dental fluorosis, black and Mexican-American children have significantly higher rates of dental fluorosis than white children (Beltran-Aguilar 2005, Table 23). The recognition that minority children appear to be more vulnerable to toxic effects of fluoride, combined with the fact that low-income families are less able to avoid drinking fluoridated water, has prompted prominent leaders in the environmental-justice movement to oppose mandatory fluoridation in Georgia. In a statement issued in May 2011, the Rev. Andrew Young, a colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr., and former Mayor of Atlanta and former US Ambassador to the United Nations, stated:

"I am most deeply concerned for poor families who have babies: if they cannot afford unfluoridated water for their babies' milk formula, do their babies not count? Of course they do. This is an issue of fairness, civil rights, and compassion. We must find better ways to prevent cavities, such as helping those most at risk for cavities obtain access to the services of a dentist…My father was a dentist. I formerly was a strong believer in the benefits of water fluoridation for preventing cavities. But many things that we began to do 50 or more years ago we now no longer do, because we have learned further information that changes our practices and policies. So it is with fluoridation." (see:http://www2.fluoridealert.org/Alert/United-States/Georgia/Atlanta-Civil-Rights-Leaders-Callfor- Halt-to-Water-Fluoridation)

Minorities are not being warned about their vulnerabilities to fluoride. The CDC is not warning black and Mexican-American children that they have higher rates of dental fluorosis than Caucasian children (see #38). This extra vulnerability may extend to other toxic effects of fluoride. Black Americans have higher rates of lactose intolerance, kidney problems and diabetes, all of which may exacerbate fluoride's toxicity.
Tooth decay reflects low-income not low-fluoride intake. Since dental decay is most concentrated in poor communities, we should be spending our efforts trying to increase the access to dental care for low-income families. The highest rates of tooth decay today can be found in low-income areas that have been fluoridated for many years. The real "Oral Health Crisis" that exists today in the United States, is not a lack of fluoride but poverty and lack of dental insurance. The Surgeon General has estimated that 80% of dentists in the US do not treat children on Medicaid.

The largely untested chemicals used in fluoridation programs

The chemicals used to fluoridate water are not pharmaceutical grade. Instead, they largely come from the wet scrubbing systems of the phosphate fertilizer industry. These chemicals (90% of which are sodium fluorosilicate and fluorosilicic acid), are classified hazardous wastes contaminated with various impurities. Recent testing by the National Sanitation Foundation suggest that the levels of arsenic in these silicon fluorides are relatively high (up to 1.6 ppb after dilution into public water) and of potential concern (NSF 2000 and Wang 2000). Arsenic is a known human carcinogen for which there is no safe level. This one contaminant alone could be increasing cancer rates – and unnecessarily so.
The silicon fluorides have not been tested comprehensively. The chemical usually tested in animal studies is pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride, not industrial grade fluorosilicic acid. Proponents claim that once the silicon fluorides have been diluted at the public water works they are completely dissociated to free fluoride ions and hydrated silica and thus there is no need to examine the toxicology of these compounds. However, while a study from the University of Michigan (Finney et al., 2006) showed complete dissociation at neutral pH, in acidic conditions (pH 3) there was a stable complex containing five fluoride ions. Thus the possibility arises that such a complex may be regenerated in the stomach where the pH lies between 1 and 2.
The silicon fluorides may increase lead uptake into children's blood. Studies by Masters and Coplan 1999, 2000, 2007 show an association between the use of fluorosilicic acid (and its sodium salt) to fluoridate water and an increased uptake of lead into children's blood. Because of lead's acknowledged ability to damage the developing brain, this is a very serious finding. Nevertheless, it is being largely ignored by fluoridating countries. This association received some strong biochemical support from an animal study by Sawan et al. (2010) who found that exposure of rats to a combination of fluorosilicic acid and lead in their drinking water increased the uptake of lead into blood some threefold over exposure to lead alone.
Fluoride may leach lead from pipes, brass fittings and soldered joints. Maas et al (2007) have shown that fluoridating agents in combination with chlorinating agents such as chloroamine increase the leaching of lead from brass fittings used in plumbing. While proponents may argue about the neurotoxic effects of low levels of fluoride there is no argument that lead at very low levels lowers IQ in children.

Continued promotion of fluoridation is unscientific

Key health studies have not been done. In the January 2008 issue of Scientific American, Professor John Doull, the chairman of the important 2006 National Research Council review, Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Review of EPA's Standards, is quoted as saying:

What the committee found is that we've gone with the status quo regarding fluoride for many years—for too long really—and now we need to take a fresh look . . . In the scientific community people tend to think this is settled. I mean, when the U.S. surgeon general comes out and says this is one of the top 10 greatest achievements of the 20th century, that's a hard hurdle to get over. But when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on.

The absence of studies is being used by promoters as meaning the absence of harm. This is an irresponsible position.

Endorsements do not represent scientific evidence. Many of those promoting fluoridation rely heavily on a list of endorsements. However, the U.S. PHS first endorsed fluoridation in 1950, before one single trial had been completed and before any significant health studies had been published (see chapters 9 and 10 in The Case Against Fluoride for the significance of this PHS endorsement for the future promotion of fluoridation). Many other endorsements swiftly followed with little evidence of any scientific rational for doing so. The continued use of these endorsements has more to do with political science than medical science.
Review panels hand-picked to deliver a pro-fluoridation result. Every so often, particularly when their fluoridation program is under threat, governments of fluoridating countries hand-pick panels to deliver reports that provide the necessary re-endorsement of the practice.

In their recent book Fluoride Wars (2009), which is otherwise slanted toward fluoridation, Alan Freeze and Jay Lehr concede this point when they write:

There is one anti-fluoridationist charge that does have some truth to it. Anti-fluoride forces have always claimed that the many government-sponsored review panels set up over the years to assess the costs and benefits of fluoridation were stacked in favor of fluoridation. A review of the membership of the various panels confirms this charge. The expert committees that put together reports by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1941, 1944 and 1954; the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, 1971, 1977 and 1993; the World Health Organization in 1958 and 1970; and the U.S. Public Health Service in 1991 are rife with the names of well-known medical and dental researchers who actively campaigned on behalf of fluoridation or whose research was held in high regard in the pro-fluoridation movement. Membership was interlocking and incestuous.

The most recent examples of these self-fulfilling prophecies have come from the Irish Fluoridation Forum (2002); the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC, 2007) and Health Canada (2008, 2010). The latter used a panel of six experts to review the health literature. Four of the six were pro-fluoridation dentists and the other two had no demonstrated expertise on fluoride. A notable exception to this trend was the appointment by the U.S. National Research Council of the first balanced panel of experts ever selected to look at fluoride's toxicity in the U.S. This panel of twelve reviewed the US EPA's safe drinking water standards for fluoride. After three and half years the panel concluded in a 507- page report that the safe drinking water standard was not protective of health and a new maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) should be determined (NRC, 2006). If normal toxicological procedures and appropriate margins of safety were applied to their findings this report should spell an end to water fluoridation. Unfortunately in January of 2011 the US EPA Office of Water made it clear that they would not determine a value for the MCLG that would jeopardize the water fluoridation program (EPA press release, Jan 7, 2011. Once again politics was allowed to trump science.

More and more independent scientists oppose fluoridation

Many scientists oppose fluoridation. Proponents of fluoridation have maintained for many years— despite the fact that the earliest opponents of fluoridation were biochemists—that the only people opposed to fluoridation are not bona fide scientists. Today, as more and more scientists, doctors, dentists and other professionals, read the primary literature for themselves, rather than relying on self-serving statements from the ADA and the CDC, they are realizing that they and the general public have not been diligently informed by their professional bodies on this subject. As of July 2011, over 3700 professionals have signed a statement calling for an end to water fluoridation worldwide. This statement and a list of signatories can be found on the website of the Fluoride Action Network (see: www.FluorideAlert.org). A glimpse of the caliber of those opposing fluoridation can be gleaned by watching the 28-minute video "Professional Perspectives on Water fluoridation" which can be viewed online at the same FAN site.

Proponents' dubious tactics

Proponents usually refuse to defend fluoridation in open debate. While pro-fluoridation officials continue to promote fluoridation with undiminished fervor, they usually refuse to defend the practice in open public debate – even when challenged to do so by organizations such as the Association for Science in the Public Interest, the American College of Toxicology, or the U.S. EPA (Bryson 2004). According to Dr. Michael Easley, a prominent lobbyist for fluoridation in the US, "Debates give the illusion that a scientific controversy exists when no credible people support the fluorophobics' view" (Easley, 1999). In light of proponents' refusal to debate this issue, Dr. Edward Groth, a Senior Scientist at Consumers Union, observed that, "the political profluoridation stance has evolved into a dogmatic, authoritarian, essentially antiscientific posture, one that discourages open debate of scientific issues" (Martin 1991).
Proponents use very dubious tactics to promote fluoridation. Many scientists, doctors and dentists who have spoken out publicly on this issue have been subjected to censorship and intimidation (Martin 1991). Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was fired from her position as Chair of Toxicology at Forsythe Dental Center for publishing her findings on fluoride and the brain (Mullenix 1995); and Dr. William Marcus was fired from the EPA for questioning the government's handling of the NTP's fluoride-cancer study (Bryson 2004). Many dentists and even doctors tell opponents in private that they are opposed to this practice but dare not speak out in public because of peer pressure and the fear of recriminations. Tactics like this would not be necessary if those promoting fluoridation were on secure scientific and ethical grounds.

Conclusion

When it comes to controversies surrounding toxic chemicals, vested interests traditionally do their very best to discount animal studies and quibble with epidemiological findings. In the past, political pressures have led government agencies to drag their feet on regulating asbestos, benzene, DDT, PCBs, tetraethyl lead, tobacco and dioxins. With fluoridation we have had a sixty-year delay. Unfortunately, because government officials and dental leaders have put so much of their credibility on the line defending fluoridation, and because of the huge liabilities waiting in the wings if they admit that fluoridation has caused an increase in hip fracture, arthritis, bone cancer, brain disorders or thyroid problems, it will be very difficult for them to speak honestly and openly about the issue. But they must, not only to protect millions of people from unnecessary harm, but to protect the notion that, at its core, public health policy must be based on sound science not political expediency. They have a tool with which to do this: it's called the Precautionary Principle. Simply put, this says: if in doubt leave it out. This is what most European countries have done and their children's teeth have not suffered, while their public's trust has been strengthened.

Just how much doubt is needed on just one of the health concerns identified above, to override a benefit, which when quantified in the largest survey ever conducted in the US, amounts to less than one tooth surface (out of 128) in a child's mouth?

While fluoridation may not be the greatest environmental health threat, it is one of the easiest to end. It is as easy as turning off a spigot in the public water works. But to turn off that spigot takes political will and to get that we need masses more people informed and organized. Please get these 50 reasons to all your friends and encourage them to get fluoride out of their community and to help ban this practice worldwide.

Postscript

Further arguments against fluoridation, can be viewed at http://www.fluoridealert.org and in the book The Case Against Fluoridation (Chelsea Green, 2010). Arguments for fluoridation can be found at http://www.ada.org

Publication history of the 50 Reasons

These 50 Reasons were first compiled by Paul Connett and presented in person to the Fluoridation Forum in Ireland in October 2000. The document was refined in 2004 and published in Medical Veritas. See: http://www.fluoridealert.org/50reasons.htm In the introduction to this 2004 version it was explained that after over four years the Irish authorities had not been able to muster a response to the 50 Reasons, despite agreeing to do so in 2000. Eventually, an anonymous, incomplete and superficial response was posted on the Irish Department of Health and Children's website (see this response and addendum at:http://www.dohc.ie/other_health_issues/dental_research/. Paul Connett's comprehensive response to this response can be accessed at http://www.fluoridealert.org/50reasons.htm We learned on August 7, 2011 that this governmental response was prepared by an external contractor at a cost to the Irish taxpayers' of over 30,000 Euros. See: http://www.independent.ie/national-news/staggering-sums-spent-on-reportscommissioned- by-the-state-2841922.html Since 2004, there have been many major scientific developments including the publication of the U.S. National Research Council report (NRC, 2006); the publication of Bassin's study on Osteosarcoma (Bassin 2006), and many more studies of fluoride's interaction with the brain, that have necessitated a major update of the 50 Reasons. This was compiled in August 2011.

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Fluoride Science is Tobacco Science

2011-12-31T12:18:00.000-08:00

Chris Neurath quotes Chris Bryson (author of The Fluoride Deception) when he says: "Fluoride Science is Tobacco Science" and this osteosarcoma story is a very good example of that. Bryson's full quote (made in FAN's videotaped interview with him), is:

Fluoride science is corporate science,
fluoride science is DDT science,
it's asbestos science,
it's tobacco science,
it's a racket!

Not only does Chris Neurath help us distinguish the good from bad science on both sides of this issue, but he also has the ability to effectively communicate the complexities of scientific research to the FAN team and others, which is extremely valuable to our efforts. Our readers will have observed this skill from Chris's graphical presentation of the World Health Organization's data on tooth decay trends by country. This colorful graph has been used literally thousands of times around the world. In one simple picture it shows that tooth decay rates in 12-year-olds have been decreasing as fast (if not faster) in non-fluoridated countries as fluoridated ones. In other words, as far as tooth decay today is concerned there is no difference in 12-year-olds whether that child has grown up in a fluoridated or a non-fluoridated country.

A few years ago a similar graph appeared in the British Medical Journal, but no acknowledgment was given to Chris. Others might have been upset by this omission but not Chris. He is happy simply to reveal the truth to anyone who is prepared to look for it. Over to Chris.

How I ended up fighting fluoridation.
By Chris Neurath

I was raised by my parents to believe fluoride and fluoridation were wonderful, progressive things. Before fluoridated toothpaste was available, and before our tap water was fluoridated, my father brought home bottles of fluoride drops from the pharmacy. My brothers and I were supposed to put it in orange juice every day. I remember wondering why we were given something from a bottle with a huge skull and crossbones on it. I don't remember my parent's explanations, but I'm sure I trusted them on this.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't like orange juice so I only occasionally took the fluoride. I had no cavities growing up, in contrast to the mouthfuls of both parents, and I always attributed this to the fluoride drops. Our family dentist encouraged this belief. Little did I know that in my generation we all had fewer cavities than our parents, irregardless of whether we ingested fluoride.

It wasn't until sometime in my 30s that I ever came across anyone who openly questioned fluoridation. He was a genial older man who suddenly became argumentative when the subject somehow arose and I claimed my lack of cavities was living proof that fluoride worked. I dismissed him as a crank. Not until years later did I realize I might have been the uninformed person.

When I first met Paul and Ellen Connett they were working on trash incinerators, not fluoride. I worked on this and several other environmental issues for many years with them. Paul and Ellen are both naturally talented at seeing through the lies and spin that poison so many environmental health issues. I was trained as a scientist, but it took me a while to realize how much science gets twisted when a vested interest is at stake. But even with my developing suspicion of manipulated science, I was stunned to read an investigative article on the dark history of fluoridation, first published by the Connetts in their tiny circulation environmental newsletter. The Christian Science Monitor had cancelled the story, and no mainstream media would touch it, so the authors Chris Bryson and Joel Griffiths gave it to the Connetts.

The Bryson/Griffith article tied the early promotion of fluoridation to promotion of atomic weapons. One memorable personal incident from my youth was probably what kept me from dismissing this as outrageous "conspiracy theory".

Back in high school, we got a reprieve from my chemistry class one day, to see a special presentation by a traveling "lecturer" from the Atomic Energy Commission, given to the entire school. He started out by tossing three whiffle balls into the audience, one of which chanced to go straight to me. He then asked the catchers of the balls to join him on stage. Once there, he announced that one of the balls was radioactive, whereupon the kid next to me dropped his like a hot potato. Being by nature more reserved, I just stood there waiting to find out what would happen next. The presenter singled me out to stay on stage as a "volunteer". He then offered a bottle of Coca-cola and asked me to drink some, after which he announced it had been spiked with radioactive iodine. He held his impressive looking Geiger counter at my neck, near my thyroid, and the clicking went crazy. This entire "stunt" was framed to demonstrate how harmless radiation really was. Although I was not at all happy with what went on, I came away, as did most of the kids in the audience, assuming that radiation really was something that could be "fun" to play with, and not that threatening.

That subliminal message stuck with me for years ... until I chanced to run into the brainiest kid from my high school, who was then studying physics at MIT. Somehow that presentation on atomic energy came up and he said he had been asked to help the presenter behind the scenes ... and he knew what had really gone on. The stunts with radioactivity were all faked. The presenter's Geiger counter had a tiny radioactive collar which he could slip back and forth over the detector to make it click at will. There was no radioactive whiffle ball, and no radioactive Coke. I was stunned to realize our government lies - intentionally - to deceive school children. In particular, about the safety of radiation and atomic energy.

The almost unbelievable revelations in the Bryson/Griffith article finally got me to seriously question my previous faith in fluoridation. But I can understand why most Americans still believe what they were told time and again as children ... that fluoridation is wonderful and anyone who questions it is crazy. For several more years I was still wary of joining the Connett's campaign on fluoridation. But then I started delving into the science itself.

The first dip I took was when Paul asked me to review the seminal reports of the first fluoridation "community trials" in the US, from the 1940s. I couldn't believe the shoddiness of these studies. They are truly "junk science".

But I was still wary of getting involved in the issue. Then Paul asked me to look into some of the cancer studies. Having investigated other environmental causes of cancer I had a special interest in this field, so I accepted. The Yiamouyiannis/Burk work was intriguing, but not fully convincing to me. Then a member of the National Research Council (NRC) committee reviewing fluoride suggested I look at a much more recent case-control study on fluoride and bone cancer by Kitty Gelberg. I started wading through the 400 page dissertation and the published paper, and realized there were gross errors in both. For example, Gelberg had somehow confused the males with the females! She had never caught this error and neither had the peer reviewers or any readers. In several key tables, she confused cases with controls, which is an even more fundamental error than switching males with females. There were other errors and many questionable interpretations. Gelberg concluded there was no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma, but buried in her study I saw evidence that suggested otherwise. I called Gelberg to try to straighten out the errors and to ask about some of the interpretations. It was the first she had ever heard about the possibility of errors in the 10 years since her work had been published. After grudgingly admitting the errors, she broke off any communication. My respect for "fluoridation science" dropped to a new low. Gelberg works as an epidemiologist for the New York State Department of Health, which happens to be one of the leading promoters of fluoridation in the US. It was a disappointing revelation that public servants can stonewall and ignore inquiries from the public.

About the same time as this Gelberg experience, in 2005, FAN was tipped off to the existence of Elise Bassin's Harvard doctoral dissertation on fluoride and osteosarcoma. This study had been completed four years previously but had been so effectively buried that it was unknown even to the expert NRC panel doing an exhaustive review of fluoride toxicology. Michael Connett went to Harvard to read the only "public" copy available anywhere, but was only allowed to photocopy a limited portion of it. His initial impression was this was a very important study. I made an appointment to see it myself. I was stunned by what I read. Bassin's high quality study had found a very strong link between fluoride exposure during a certain period of life (6th - to 8th years), and later developing osteosarcoma. I was equally shocked by the fact that this work had been hidden from the public for four years while Bassin's faculty advisor, Chester Douglass, who ran the study, went around the world lying to people, saying his research had found no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma.

Reading the Bassin dissertation, deep in the bowels of Harvard's Medical Library, was the turning point for me on fluoride. Here was clear evidence that the fluoride added to 2/3rds of American's drinking water was causing a frequently fatal form of cancer. This study isn't enough to "prove" fluoride causes cancer, but the fact that it had been hidden from the public and scientific community oof that, in Chris Bryson's words: "fluoride science is tobacco science".

With pressure from FAN, and with the Environmental Working Group leading the demand for an investigation of the cover-up of the Bassin study, the Bassin study was eventually brought to the world's attention ... and has created a stir ever since. The NRC final report notes it as a crucial piece of evidence on the question of carcinogenicity. Later, Bassin finally published her work in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, with three respected Harvard co-authors.

But the opening salvo of the "tobacco science" attack on Bassin's work appeared on the same day her paper was published, in the same journal! Douglass wrote a "letter to the editor" where he questions the repeatability of Bassin's findings, and announces he is analyzing additional data sets from his study and believes they will not confirm her findings. Douglass says he will publish his results within months. His letter is full of omissions and misleading claims, but will be used for the next five years to dismiss Bassin's paper. In those five years, Douglass kept promising to publish his results for all to see, but never did ... until this year (Kim et al 2011). The publication of what Douglass suggests is the "last word" on fluoride and osteosarcoma, took him nearly 20 years! The study was originally scheduled to be completed in about 5 years.

And what does his "final word" paper actually contain? No evidence able to refute Bassin's study, because Douglass never even addresses the key evidence in Bassin's study (i.e. the critical period when children were exposed` - their 6th to 8th years). Douglass' study was actually much smaller than Bassin's, especially in the age group of 0-20 years. Douglass' paper even states that he had insufficient number of subjects in this age range to derive any conclusions.

Douglass also ended up with a control group that was much older and had a much different sex ratio, than his case group. Such drastic differences mean his entire study is of questionable validity. He is essentially comparing apples to oranges.

Douglass claims his method of estimating fluoride exposure is superior to Bassin's. Douglass used bone fluoride levels, whereas Bassin used a careful history of drinking water and other fluoride sources. Douglass' method using bone fluoride is incapable of pinpointing when a child was exposed to fluoride, whereas Bassin's is the best available method for timing exposure. The timing of exposure turned out to be the critical risk factor in Bassin's study. Douglass' study can not even address this key factor.

Douglass ignored a large portion of his data from a control group of people who did not have any cancer. Instead, he looked only at a control comparison group comprised of people who had types of bone cancer other than osteosarcoma. Bassin's controls did not have any type of cancer. Since fluoride concentrates so highly in bone tissue, there is a plausible mechanism for it to increase the risk of any type of bone cancer, not just osteosarcoma. Virtually no fluoride studies have ever looked for risks in anything but osteosarcoma, so it is disingenuous for Douglass to imply that there is no evidence linking these other types of bone cancer to fluoride. If fluoride does cause these other types of bone cancer, then his bone cancer controls are a terrible choice and invalidate his findings.

Given these three potentially fatal weaknesses of Douglass' much-heralded study, the fluoridationist spin machine had to go into overdrive to claim his work refuted Bassin's.

Perhaps because of the vulnerability of Douglass' final word on fluoride-osteosarcoma, there has been a recent flurry of low quality ecological studies from fluoridating countries, all claiming to find no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma. Or perhaps these studies were done because Douglass was so many years late in producing his promised work, that fluoridating countries decided they needed something to try to counter Bassin. I have carefully reviewed each of these studies, from Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They are all much weaker study designs than Bassin's case-control study. It is not surprising that these studies were unable to find a link.

So, on the final day of 2011, the issue of fluoride's carcinogenicity is still hot. It is a potential death knell for fluoridation, and the promoters know it and are scared. FAN will continue to use the best science to uncover the truth.

As Dr. John Colquon asked, is there any number of "prevented cavities" that can justify the life of one child who dies of bone cancer?

Video: Cell damage as Fluoride is introduced to the cellular environment http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=8D1299CC3E46CB378C44D0E39AC6AB7A

The Real Ron Paul

2011-12-29T00:56:00.000-08:00

Latest on Tsunami Debris Increase Hitting West Coast Vancouver Island & Washington State

2011-12-28T01:36:00.000-08:00

Source: AFP Dec. 26, 2011

Source: CBC Dec. 27, 2011

Implications of the MF Global Scandal

2011-12-28T00:32:00.000-08:00

Source: http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2011/12/run-on-global-banking-systemhow-close.html

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2011

A Run On The Global Banking System—How Close Are We? by Gonzalo Lira

Nine weeks after its bankruptcy, the general public still hasn’t quite realized the implications of the MF Global scandal.

My own sense is, this is the first tremor of the earthquake that’s coming to the global financial system. And how the central banks and financial regulators treated the “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” that had exposure to MF Global—to the detriment of the ordinary, blameless customer who got royally ripped off in its bankruptcy—is both the template of how the next financial crisis will be handled, and an accelerator that will make the next crisis happen that much sooner.

So first off, what happened with MF Global?

Simple: It went bankrupt—because it made bad bets on European sovereign debt, by way of leveraging positions 100-to-1. Yeah, I know: Stupid. Anyway, they went bankrupt—which in and of itself is no big deal. It’s not as if it’s the first time in history that a brokerage firm has gone bust. But to me, the big deal in this case was the way the bankruptcy was handled.

Now there are several extremely serious aspects to the MF Global case: Specifically, how their customers were shut out of their brokerage accounts for over a week following the bankruptcy, which made it impossible for those customers to sell out of their positions, and thus caused them to lose serious money; and of course how MF Global was more adept than Mandrake the Magician at making money disappear—about $1 billion, in fact, which still hasn’t turned up. These are quite serious issues which merit prolonged discussion, investigation, prosecution, and ultimately jailtime.

But for now, I want to discuss one narrow aspect of the MF Global bankruptcy: How authorities (mis)handled the bankruptcy—either willfully or out of incompetence—which allowed customer’s money to be stolen so as to make JPMorgan whole.

From this one issue, it seems clear to me that we can infer what will happen when the next financial crisis hits in the nearterm future.

Brokerage firms hold clients’ money in what are known as segregated accounts. This is the money that brokerage firms hold for when a customer makes a trade. If a brokerage firm goes bankrupt, these monies are never touched—because they never belonged to the firm, and thus are not part of its assets.

Think of segregated accounts as if they were the content in a safety deposit box: The bank owns the vault—but it doesn’t own the content of the safety deposit boxes inside the vault. If the bank goes broke, the customers who stored their jewelry and pornographic diaries in the safe deposit boxes don’t lose a thing. The bank is just a steward of those assets—just as a brokerage firm is the steward of those customers’ segregated accounts.

But when MF Global went bankrupt, these segregated accounts—that is, the content of those safe deposit boxes—were taken away from their rightful owners—that is, MF Global’s customers—and then used to pay off other creditors: That is, JPMorgan.

(The mechanics of how this was done are interesting, but insanely complicated, and ultimately not relevant to this discussion. To grossly simplify, MF Global pledged customer assets to JPMorgan, in a process known as rehypothecation—customer assets which MF Global did not have a right to. Needless to say, JPMorgan covered its ass legally. Ethically? Morally? Black as night.)

This was seriously wrong—and this is the source of the scandal: Rather than being treated as a bankruptcy of a commodities brokerage firm under subchapter IV of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, MF Global was treated as an equities firm (subchapter III) for the purposes of its bankruptcy.

Why does this difference of a single subchapter matter? Because in a brokerage firm bankruptcy, the customers get their money first—because after all, it’s theirs—while in an equities firm bankruptcy, the customers are at the end of the line.

In the case of MF Global, what should have happened was for all the customers to get their money first. Then everyone else—including JPMorgan—would have picked over the remaining scraps. And the monies MF Global had already pledged to JPMorgan? They call it clawback for a reason.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which handled the bankruptcy, should have done this—but instead, the Merc was more concerned with making JPMorgan whole than with protecting the money that rightfully belonged to MF Global’s 40,000 customers.

Thus these 40,000 MF Global customers had their money stolen—there’s no polite way to characterize what happened. And this theft was not carried out by MF Global—it was carried out by the authorities who were charged with handling the firm’s bankruptcy.

These 40,000 customers were not Big Money types—they were farmers who had accounts to hedge their crops, individuals owning gold (like Gerald Celente—here’s his account of what happened to him)—

—in short, ordinary investors. Ordinary people—and they got screwed by the regulators, for the sake of protecting JPMorgan and other big fry who had exposure to MF Global.

That, in a nutshell, is what happened.

Now, what does this mean?

It means that nobody’s money is safe. It means that regulators care more about protecting the so-called “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” than about protecting Ordinary Joe investors. It means that, when crunchtime comes, central banks and government regulators will allow SIFI’s to get better, and let the Ordinary Joes get fucked.

So far, so evil—but here comes the really troubling part: It is an open secret that there are more paper-assets than there are actual assets. The markets are essentially playing musical chairs—and praying that the music never stops. Because if it ever does—that is, if there is ever a panic, where everyone decides that they want their actual asset instead of just a slip of paper—the system would crash.

And unlike with fiat currency, where a central bank can print all the liquidity it wants, you can’t print up gold bullion. You can’t print up a silo of grain. You can’t print up a tankerful of oil.

Now, question: When is there ever a panic? When is there ever a run on a financial system?

Answer: When enough participants no longer trust the system. It is the classic definition of a tipping point. It’s not that all of the participants lose faith in the system or institution. It’s not even when most of the participants lose faith: Rather, it’s when a mere some of the participants decide they no longer trust the system that a run is triggered.

And though this is completely subjective on my part—backed by no statistics except scattered anecdotal evidence—but it seems to me that MF Global has shoved us a lot closer to this theoretical run on the system.

As I write this, a lot of investors whom I know personally—who are sophisticated, wealthy, and not at all the paranoid type—are quietly pulling their money out of all brokerage firms, all banks, all equity firms. They are quietly trading out of their paper assets and going into the actual, physical asset.

Note that they’re not trading into the asset—they’re simply exchanging their paper-asset for the real thing.

Why? MF Global.

“The MF Global scandal has made it clear that the integrity of the system has disappeared,” said a good friend of mine, Tuur Demeester, who runs Macrotrends, a Dutch-language newsletter out of Brugge. “The banks are insolvent, the governments are insolvent, and all that’s left is for the people to realize what’s going on—and that will start a panic.”

He hit it on the head: Some of the more sophisticated people—like Tuur, like some of my acquaintances, (like myself, frankly)—have realized that the MF Global scandal means that there is no safety for any paper investment: The integrity of the systems has been completely shattered. If in the face of one medium-sized brokerage firm going under, the regulators will openly allow ordinary people to be ripped off for the sake of protecting the so-called “Systemically Important Financial Institutions”—in this case JPMorgan—what will happen if there is a system-wide run? What if two or three MF Globals happen simultaneously?

Will they protect the citizens’ money? Or will they protect the “Systemically Important Financial Institutions”?

I think we know the answer.

And I think we all know the answer to the question of whether there will be crisis flashpoint in the near-term future: After all, as Demeester pointed out, all the banks and all the governments are broke.

Thus it’s only a matter of time before they come for your money.

At SPG, we’ve been putting together Scenarios for other black swan events which are becoming increasingly likely: What to do if the eurozone breaks up, what to do if you have to leave America, what to do if there is an Israeli-Iranian war, what to do if there is forced dollar devaluation, and so on.

Now, because of this open kleptocracy and cronyism being shown by the financial authorities in the wake of the MF Global bankruptcy, we’ve been obliged to put together a new Scenario, devoted exclusively to preparing for a run on the markets: What to do in order to protect your assets from regulatory malfeasance, if there is a system-wide MF Global-type breakdown and a subsequent run on the entire financial system.

And there will be such a run on the system: It’s only a matter of time. In fact, the handling of the MF Global affair has sped up the timeframe for this run on the system, because the forward-edge players—such as Demeester, myself, and my other acquaintances who understand the implications of the bankruptcy—realize that the regulators will side with the banksters, and not the ordinary investors: So we are preparing accordingly.

Once there is a full-on panic, anyone with money in the system will lose at least a big chunk of it, in one of two ways, or a combination thereof:

• One, the firms—commodities brokerage firms, equity firms, investment banks and commercial banks—will not allow people to withdraw the totality of their money, and/or they will put a withdrawal cap of some sort, enforced by the central banks and other regulatory bodies. (Like they did in Argentina.)

• Two, the central banks will “provide liquidity”—that is, print money—while simultaneously declaring a banking holiday to, quote, “calm the markets”. During that bank holiday, the currency will be devalued by double digits—which will mean that your cash holdings will essentially be taxed to save the banksters—again. (Like they did in Argentina.)

Thus apart from proving that the United States really is Argentina with nukes, the MF Global bankruptcy has proven something crucial: The central banks and government regulators have completely fallen into the trap of confusing the welfare of the “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” with the welfare of the system itself. They don’t seem to realize that the SIFI’s are actors within the system—not the system itself.

We critics of the current, corrupt state of affairs also sometimes confuse the SIFI’s with the system itself, whenever we say, “The whole system is corrupt!”

But the system is not corrupt—it’s the regulators and SIFI’s who are corrupt. If nothing else, the handling of the MF Global bankruptcy has proven that, once and for all. That’s why we’re pulling out our money now—while we still can.

Because once the general public catches on to what we already know . . . oh boy.

If you’re interested, check out the SPG preview page. The various Scenarios I discussed above (”When the Euro Breaks”, ”Exit America”, ”An Israeli-Iranian War”, etc.) are currently available. The Scenario discussing how to protect assets from a system-wide run will appear on January 20.

Failure to curb oil speculation indicates continued economic failure of Obama Administration

2011-12-27T00:49:00.000-08:00

Source: http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2011/05/failure-to-curb-oil-speculation.html

Friday, May 27, 2011

Posted by Tony Wikrent at 11:49 AM

Most people on the left in the U.S hailed Barack Obama's election as President as proof of the man's political genius. Here was an African-American, with the middle name Hussein, who defied the political odds, to win the White House. Never mind that the Republicans had mis-ruled the country into the worst financial and economic collapse since the First Great Depression (Krugman is now writing about this period we live in being the third big depression in the country's history), causing an overwhelming number of Americans to demand a radical change in policies. In this wave of euphoria from November 2008 on, those few (such as your correspondents) who warned that Obama's choices of economic advisers and officials were danger signals that Obama was going to error badly on economic policies, were ignored or even shouted down. (See also The Bankers on Obama's Team, from Mother Jones, January 2010.)

The President's choices showed clearly he was an acolyte of the ruling elites' "neo-liberal" a.k.a. conservative a.k.a. shock doctrine economic policies in which the so-called "free market" is considered more astute and more efficient at allocating society's resources than the political system of government is. One example of the complete failure of "neo-liberal" economic policies is that the United States is more dependent than ever on foreign sources of energy, after four solid decades of complete bi-partisan "consensus" that the U.S. should achieve energy independence. I for one explicitly warned that the failure to destroy the political power of Wall Street and enact policies that favored investment in the real economy of production and distribution instead of the financial economy of speculation and regulatory arbitrage, would lead Obama into a terrible economic situation when it came time for his re-election: Will Obama forfeit a second term because of Wall Street?

The steep rise of oil and gasoline prices since the eruption of mass social protests in the Middle East and North Africa is a prime example of how the Obama administration's reluctance to interfere in the "free market" creates the economic conditions that will make the President's re-election ever more difficult. Simply put, Americans are feeling squeezed at the gas pump, and this is smothering whatever precious little economic recovery there is. The CEO of Wal-Mart last month sniffled that high gas prices are forcing Wal-Mart customers to spend a lot less this year.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Wikileaks show that Saudi officials have repeatedly warned American officials to crack down on speculators in the oil markets since 2008. The Saudis even told our not-so-bright public servants that if more oil was pumped out of Saudi fields, it would be near impossible to find actual buyers for the oil.

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — When oil prices hit a record $147 a barrel in July 2008, the Bush administration leaned on Saudi Arabia to pump more crude in hopes that a flood of new crude would drive the price down. The Saudis complied, but not before warning that oil already was plentiful and that Wall Street speculation, not a shortage of oil, was driving up prices.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al Naimi even told U.S. Ambassador Ford Fraker that the kingdom would have difficulty finding customers for the additional crude, according to an account laid out in a confidential State Department cable dated Sept. 28, 2008,
"Saudi Arabia can't just put crude out on the market," the cable quotes Naimi as saying. Instead, Naimi suggested, "speculators bore significant responsibility for the sharp increase in oil prices in the last few years," according to the cable.
What role Wall Street investors play in the high cost of oil is a hotly debated topic in Washington. Despite weak demand, the price of a barrel of crude oil surged more than 25 percent in the past year, reaching a peak of $113 May 2 before falling back to a range of $95 to $100 a barrel.
The Obama administration, the Bush administration before it and Congress have been slow to take steps to rein in speculators.
Read more.

FireDogLake is now reporting that yesterday a group of Democratic Senators, and Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, met with the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler. Gensler is a former Goldman Sachs vampire squidling, and was decried, by yours truly and others, as an example of all that's wrong with American political economy when he was nominated by Obama. Senator Sanders apparently took a very hard line with Gensler in demanding that the CFTC use its new powers under Dodd-Frank to regulate the oil futures markets by to setting position limits on what any one firm can hold in oil futures contracts:

I found it somewhat unusual for Sanders to so bluntly state that the CFTC is flat-out breaking the law, especially after their enforcement action this week. But it’s hard to come to another conclusion. Dodd-Frank was explicit, that position limits needed to be in place by January 17, 2011. It’s May 27, and nothing has happened.
Read more.

Other examples of the way Obama's continued belief in neo-liberal "shock doctrine" economics is crippling the administration's economic policies were provided by another writer on FireDogLake, who noted the following points:

1. All seven of the firms represented on the Obama Jobs Commission are increasing their overseas investments, thus undermining all efforts at creating jobs for American citizens;

2. The administration continues to be in favor of passing the free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, though it is trying to use the trade agreements as pressure to get Republicans to accept expanded assistance for American workers who will lose their jobs. Thus, there is no longer any real debate over whether or not so-called "free trade" agreements help create new American jobs by boosting exports; the loss of American jobs is simply accepted as a result of the "free market."

3. And, the administration is doing nothing about the terrible practice of companies refusing to even consider people who are unemployed in their hiring of new employees. This is having disastrous effects on Americans who have been unemployed for more than a few months.

The FireDogLake author points to a USA Today article last Thursday on the horrible job market in the U.S.:

The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s.
In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Right now, the political elites in the Democratic Party are merrily reassuring themselves that the recent victory of a Democrat in the special Congressional election in the hard red 26th District in upstate New York means, because of Republicans' over-reaching in their attempt to dismantle Medicare, the tide has now turned in Democrats' favor for the general election next year. What's really going on is that the citizens continue to shift back and forth between two terrible political choices, in their increasingly desperatesearch to find leaders who do not worship at the altar of economic shock doctrine neo-liberalism. Until Wall Street and the futures markets in Chicago are smashed, and the credit, monetary, and banking systems are forced to again be subservient and submissive to the needs of working people and the real economy, there can be no economic recovery - a recovery that the Obama team will be increasingly desperate to find, or conjure up through spin, as election day approaches.

Ron Paul Campaign Theme Song

2011-12-22T01:31:00.000-08:00

Source: http://itunesbomb.com/

http://rcreader.com/commentary/paul-personifies-party-platform/

Picture Source: Iowa River Cities Reader

Source: The Daily Paul / RevPAC

MF Global: What Really Happened & Where the Customers' Money Is

2011-12-19T22:09:00.000-08:00

It's a complex story and an early example of what is happening between the City of London and the EU right now. The following article by Bob English is indispensable in understanding what MF Global and it's internal and external counter parties and custodian have done. Should also look up recent reporting on "rehypothecation."

Source: http://english.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/11/mf-global-bankruptcy-cheat-sheet-where.html

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2011

The MF Global Bankruptcy Cheat Sheet: Where are the missing customer funds and how can customers and creditors preserve their rights?

Currently, over $500,000,000 in customer segregated funds is missing from MF Global Inc., the US broker/dealer and futures commission merchant (FCM) that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last Monday, October 31, 2011. This is simply unprecedented in the futures industry, which passed relatively unscathed through the 2008 turmoil. When an FCM is about to declare bankruptcy, the brokerage accounts have historically been separated or sold from the failing entity to protect the integrity of the customer accounts. This did not occur with MF Global, and now the cash in 50,000 active accounts is frozen and subject to the actions of the trustee, James W. Giddens (the same trustee who was appointed to Lehman Bros.).

How could this have happened? Where are the missing funds? What can be done about it? This article will attempt to offer some theories and possible courses of action...

[Long but good read at: http://english.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/11/mf-global-bankruptcy-cheat-sheet-where.html]

Medical Journal Article: Effects of Fukushima Fallout in the U.S.

2011-12-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/medical-journal-article--14000-us-deaths-tied-to-fukushima-reactor-disaster-fallout-135859288.html

Medical Journal Article: 14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout

Separate Source: Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported March 13-Sept.3, 2011.

Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2011 -- An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.

The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org.

Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S. The highest detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were as follows (normal is about 2 picocuries I-131 per liter of water): Boise, ID (390); Kansas City (200); Salt Lake City (190); Jacksonville, FL (150); Olympia, WA (125); and Boston, MA (92).

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, said: "This study of Fukushima health hazards is the first to be published in a scientific journal. It raises concerns, and strongly suggests that health studies continue, to understand the true impact of Fukushima in Japan and around the world. Findings are important to the current debate of whether to build new reactors, and how long to keep aging ones in operation."

Mangano is executive director, Radiation and Public Health Project, and the author of 27 peer-reviewed medical journal articles and letters.

Internist and toxicologist Janette Sherman, MD, said: "Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five-fold in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults."

Dr. Sherman is an adjunct professor, Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of "Chernobyl - Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" published by the NY Academy of Sciences in 2009, and author of "Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life's Delicate Balance - Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues weekly reports on numbers of deaths for 122 U.S. cities with a population over 100,000, or about 25-30 percent of the U.S. In the 14 weeks after Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. (March 20 to June 25), deaths reported to the CDC rose 4.46 percent from the same period in 2010, compared to just 2.34 percent in the 14 weeks prior. Estimated excess deaths during this period for the entire U.S. are about 14,000.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A streaming audio replay of a related news event will be available on the Web at http://www.radiation.org as of 4 p.m. EST/2100 GMT on December 19, 2011. Embargoed copies of the medical journal article are available by contacting Ailis Aaron Wolf, (703) 276-3265 or aawolf@hastingsgroup.com.

SOURCE: Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman, International Journal of Health Services

Latest on Fukushima Tsunami Debris

2011-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/report-first-debris-japan-tsunami-reaches-west-coa/nF3mS/

Source: MOXNEWS.COM of KIRO7 TV: Washington state

Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011
Report: First debris from Japan tsunami reaches West Coast
Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham

PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Two Seattle oceanographers say a large black float that was found two weeks ago at the northwestern tip of Washington is the first piece of debris identified as coming from the tsunami in Japan, the Peninsula Daily News reports.

The researchers who have tracked wind and water currents in the Pacific since 1970 had predicted that the first debris to appear would be something like the large, 55-gallon sized float because it is lightweight and sits well above the water. They said about a fourth of the 100 million tons of debris from Japan should reach beaches up and down the West Coast.

"It's just a monstrous debris field coming our way," said Curt Ebbesmeyer, one of the oceanographers.

Just how monstrous? About the size of California, according to Ebbesmeyer's estimation. While the bulk of it is still in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at least 10 black buoys with Japanese markings, commonly used in fish farming, have washed up on beaches from Ocean Shores to Neah Bay. Similar ones have been found wedged into a debris field [well] north of Hawaii.

Graphic: Mar. 11, 2011 Tsunami debris missing Hawaii,

Source: http://flotsametrics.com/

"That's about as good as the evidence gets for first arrivals," Ebbesmeyer said.

He said computer models by his partner, Jim Ingraham, predicted that the first flotsam would arrive in Washington by last Halloween. The buoys are relatively light and ride high on the water, where the wind can carry them 20 miles per day -- about three times faster than the majority of the debris is moving.

"We're at the beginning of the beginning," Ebbesmeyer said.

He added that he hopes beachcombers will treat the debris with respect because some of it will contain human remains and personal belongings. He advised anyone who finds debris to call police if they spot it, so it can be secured, inspected and that loved ones in Japan can be notified. He also said he thinks it would be prudent to check the debris for radioactivity.

People can report debris at http://flotsametrics.com/

Source: Canada TV: Tofino, BC

Source: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_IAEA_to_coordinate_Pacific_monitoring_141211a.html

IAEA to Coordinate Pacific Monitoring

by World Nuclear News, 14 December 2011

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is bringing together 24 countries in the Pacific Ocean region to help monitor the movement of radionuclides released from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The accident in March this year on Japan's Eastern seaboard caused an unprecedented emission of radioactive materials to sea, mainly iodine and caesium. A major outflow occurred between 1-6 April when a leak from a trench containing electrical cables caused an estimated 4.7 petabecquerels of radioactivity to be released. Lesser outflows have also continued to occur as run-off from the plant and countryside has taken place, while an unknown amount is due to atmospheric emissions which have blown out to sea.

Many countries in the Pacific region have expressed concern that this contamination could potentially damage their coastal environments and negatively impact communities and economies. This led to the IAEA board approving a technical cooperation project during its annual meeting in June.

Twenty-four countries are particpating in the project:

Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Cook Islands, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Running from 2011 to 2015 under Australian leadership, the budget allocated for the project is around $1.3 million.

(U.S., Canada, Russia not listed in this project.)

The project seeks to harmonise the measurements of various radioisotopes in marine waters, biota, sediments and suspended material so that a more comparable and verifiable picture of the wider ocean contamination can be established. The IAEA will serve to boost local measurement capabilities, and facilitate the exchange of data between countries.

According to the IAEA, despite the fact that radioactive material is expected to be "significantly diluted by time" as it has mixed with the vast body of water in the Pacific, ocean currents will act to transport material throughout the wider Pacific area "for the foreseeable future."

"It is expected that the enormous dilution capacity of the Pacific Ocean will lead to low residual concentrations of radionuclides in ocean waters such that any significant contamination of marine food in coastal waters outside of Japan will not occur," said IAEA technical officer Hartmut Nies. "To date, only caesium -134 and caesium -137 were detected far offshore from the Japanese coast in the prevailing Kuroshio Ocean current at levels of less concern."

The first meeting for the project took place in Australia in August, while a training workshop was held in the IAEA Environmental Laboratories in Monaco from 21-25 November. The workshop led to the adoption of a quality management system and database for the future monitoring efforts. The project is expected to run till 2015, with a first progress report due in 2012.

BREAKING AD: Newt Gingrich: "Selling Access"

2011-12-12T11:46:00.000-08:00

Another Shade of Blue: Tahiti, Moorea, Rangiroa, & Huahine

2011-12-11T22:31:00.000-08:00