Monday, May 26, 2008

NASA's Hidden Agenda?


On a day when the Phoenix lander descends onto the surface of Mars, this appreciation of Richard Hoagland’s and Mike Bara’s book ‘Dark Mission’, which I have just finished reading, seems rather timely.

Today, mainstream news reports are posing the big question ‘will they find evidence of life, past or present, on the ‘red planet’?

Such questions beggar belief after having read ‘Dark Mission’ as well as scores of other accounts by various authors over the years that their exists certain evidence that there was intelligent life on Mars in the past, and, following a cataclysmic event possibly relatively recently on a cosmic timescale, life continues to exist on Mars albeit in a more simple biological form.

Such evidence in ‘Dark Mission’ also reinforces the supposition that we, as an Earthly race, are being actively denied access to ancient knowledge about our ancestry and the more esoteric aspects of physics. It seems the truth is being deliberately kept from us.


Seeds of doubt


Richard C Hoagland was a former NASA consultant and CBS News advisor to Walter Cronkite during the Apollo Programme, while Mike Bara has worked as an aerospace structural engineer for Boeing. Over the years both authors became increasingly concerned with NASAs behaviour and its apparent eagerness to obscure the truth of its findings during its long history of space exploration. As the authors dug deeper, it started to become apparent that more esoteric forces were at work within the agency and a hidden agenda appeared to be at work, clearly giving credence to NASAs unofficial title of ‘Never A Straight Answer’.


NASA - not what it seems

One thing the authors set straight right from the outset is NASAs true status. Contrary to popular belief that the agency is an open and strictly civilian organisation, NASA was in fact set up from the start as a branch of the US Department of Defense tasked with aiding the security of the US at the start of the Cold War. Therefore any intelligence gathered from its missions, whether it be photographic, anecdotal or otherwise, could be censored by the President of the United States or any of his surrogates ‘for reasons of national security’.

No sooner had the agency been formed when it engaged the services of the well-known Washington DC-based think tank, the Brookings Institute who, in 1959, published its NASA-sponsored mandate ‘Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs’. Amid all of the mountains of statistics and analyses included in the report was an admission to the near-certainty that during its missions the agency would discover evidence of extra-terrestrial life and/or artifacts implying the existence thereof.

The combination of NASAs status as an arm of the DoD and these paragraphs embedded within the Brookings Report would clearly account for the disinformation and withholding of vital information by the agency over the years that followed.

One myth Hoagland does dispel however, is the conspiracy theory that man has never been to the Moon. I must admit, I fell for that one given the propensity of truth-spinning and sheer lying that exists in official US government circles. In reality it appears that the man-made Moon landing myth was originated by NASA itself as a deliberate attempt to deflect the prying public gaze into what the Apollo 11 and other missions had discovered and the questions being asked. This and the very fact that there have been no return manned flights to the Moon for the last 30 years also begs the question, just what is it they don’t want us to know?


Strange artifacts

Photographs from Apollo 11 and the later Mariner programmes brought with them clear evidence for Hoagland and Bara that intelligently-built structures existed on the surface of the Moon, evidence that was denied or simply blacked out by NASAs PR team right from the start. This denial, also by the astronauts themselves, who must surely have seen for themselves these artifacts with transcripts of telemetry conversations on several occasions suggesting that they were witnessing out-of-the-ordinary sights, make the authors conclude that they were under duress or deliberate mind control not to disclose what they saw.

The first Lunar Orbiter images that Hoagland had access to, clearly implied the ruins of what once must have been vast glass-like dome structures on the Moon’s surface that had disintegrated into highly reflective glass dust but, because of the zero gravity nature of the Moon, and had largely stayed in position, suggesting their original shape. It seemed that the Brookings report had surely been right in its suggestion that evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligences would very likely be found.

But if these revelations seemed more than suggestive that intelligent beings had once inhabited the Moon, evidence from the Mars missions brought with it even more striking imagery of what appeared to be the evidence of an advanced civilisation having once graced its surfaces. In 1976, the second Viking Lander brought pictures from the area of Mars known as Cydonia and one anomaly that immediately stood out in the images sent back was that of a large feature in the likeness of a humanoid-looking face. Hoagland immediately set about trying to resolve the authenticity of this anomaly in order to determine whether it was an artificial structure or merely a fluke of shadow and light as NASA postulated. But closer examination seemed to suggest an intelligent authorship, since the correlation of its features just bore too many parallels to that of a real humanoid face.

From this point on, NASA - just brushing it off as a trick of light - seemed very hesitant to investigate the matter further. Subsequently released photographs from later missions showed the ‘Face’ as anything but with an obsure angle of lighting and seeming jiggery-pokery of the image by NASA being responsible, presumably in the hope that interest in the ‘Face’ would evaporate.

Undaunted, Hoagland decided to see if other evidence of artificiality lay within the Cydonia region to support his supposition that this was no mere natural ‘trick of light’ but an intelligently-built artifact.

And indeed it did. Five-sided pyramidal constructions lay to the west of the ‘Face’ with mounds, trenches, straight ridges and elsewhere worm-like tunnels of regular construction most of which could not be the product of natural formation. But, what was more intriguing were the geometrical relationships between these various features which strongly implied some conscious and intelligent raison d’être.

Hoagland employed the services of Erol Torn a cartographer and satellite image interpreter with a degree in geology and specialism in geomorphology to analyse these artifacts. After careful study and eliminating any interpretational bias, Torun discovered that their geometric relationships contained repeated references to fundamental mathematical relationships and that the all of the geometry was ‘dimensionless’, that is, not dependent on cultural conventions of counting in tens or measuring angles based on the 360º system. The geometry would work in any number system.

One recurring angle in the relation of these artifacts in the Cydonia region was that of 19.5º. The significance of this angle lies in its relationship to the tetrahedron. If a tetrahedron is circumscribed by a sphere with its apex anchored at either the north or south pole, the three vertices of the base will touch the sphere at precisely 19.5º. The tetrahedron is the most fundamental and simplest of the so-called five Platonic solids and being the ‘lowest order’ geometric shape, so to speak, makes it an ideal and fundamental candidate for communication across time.

Moreover the magical angle of 19.5º had, from previous observations, a strong link to hyperimensional physics. It has been noted that upwellings of activity in many solar bodies had been observed to be emanating at that precise angle on planets’ surfaces - Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and many others. Were the creators of this artificial Martian landscape employing and communicating some deep fundamental fact about our perceivable 3-dimensional world and its relationship to other levels?

This may seem a bit Dr Who-ish to many but the maths and visual observation behind this discovery suggested that these artifacts were the result of some intelligent civilisation and certainly not the product of natural formations and chance.


Esoteric connections

But the awareness of this seminally important and fundamental geometry seemed to be known in other areas - in the higher ranks of NASA itself. Hoagland first began to suspect some esoteric NASA connection when he realised that the early official Apollo ‘patches’ sported by the astronauts, seemed so inappropriate to their stated goals on the Moon. In the book Hoagland explains in detail the seemingly dual significance he deduced from the designs for the various mission patches. This led him to explore in great detail ancient Egyptian lore, its relationship to the seemingly symbolic naming and hidden graphical messages of the mission patch designs to the chosen landing sites and dates of the various missions. To his amazement he found that the precise timing and landing locations of many missions correlated precisely to specific 19.5º alignments of the stars that held high significance to the ancient Egyptians. From this he was able to make some correct predictions about the landing dates and details of future missions.

Substantiating this esoteric link even further was NASAs appointment of Farouk el-Baz to work on the Apollo project, among other things he was empowered with the decisions of where the various landings were to take place, making him one of the most singly important people in the whole American space programme. More intriguingly though, Hoagland discovered that el-Baz’s father was an expert in Egyptian religions including the stellar religions of the ancients! This could be no mere coincidence, there appeared to be a deliberate employment of ancient ritual and knowledge in the planning of the space programme.

What was becoming apparent was that secret brotherhoods were at work in the highest echelons of NASA, employing ancient, handed-down lore and even many of the astronauts themselves belonged at some level or another to this clique. Many were hand-picked high-ranking Masons.

Hoagland chronicles in detail the endless misinformation, withholding of data, reluctance to further investigate the Cydonia region and provide clear high-resolution imagery and open and frank information on what might be found and continual obsfucation by NASA over the years. Clearly the findings of the Brookings report had set the tone from the outset and its recommendation that disclosure upon the public of evidence which supported the existence of other ancient highly developed extra-terrestrial civilisations that had - and still might - inhabit our solar system was a no-go area. Political dictat had made it so.

This stonewalling and dismissal of his theories had also officially discredited Hoagland’s ability to provide mathematical and visual correlations and similarities between the artificial constructs in Cydonia and the pyramids and other ancient sites on Earth, thus deflecting any suggestion that we may be descendents, or be in some other way indirectly related or linked to those extra-terrestrial civilisations. It also undermined his attempts to have seriously entertained the notion that fundamental knowledge might be derived from the ancients’ seeming understanding of keys to hyper-dimensional physics evidenced through the uncovered geometry of the Cydonia region of Mars.

‘Dark Mission’ leaves you with good evidence that a strong clique of Illuminati figures whose influence is firmly embedded in NASA and the DoD exist and they don’t want this information out - at least not yet.

The book also asks the question why, after so many years of inactivity of manned-space flight to the Moon, is President Bush now urgently re-engaging those activities. Is there a dark ulterior motive at play here?

In later blogs I will attempt to suggest possible reasons - with evidence from a number of sources - why we are being denied the truth and why those Illuminati figures may have an ulterior motive for keeping us in the dark.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Thursday 22 May 2008



Latest from NO2ID

Banks in Belgium are telling customers that their accounts will be blocked if they do not show their ID cards. Legislation in Belgium requires that all banks must take copies of each customer’s ID.
ID cards have been in use in Belgium since last year and are issued to citizens at birth. They carry an embedded digital signature that allows holders to participate in online banking, filing tax returns and carrying out e-government transactions. Unlike the proposed UK ID Cards, they allow users to check all of the information held about them on the national register, although they cannot change their data.

More data leaks. This time in Chile. Personal data on 6 million Chileans was stolen at the beginning of this month and was briefly published on a website. The hacker admits to stealing the data online from the health ministry, electoral authority and state-run telephone company.
In Germany the government has admitted to the disappearance of 189 desktop computers, 328 laptops, 38 data storage devices and 271 mobile phones in their employ between 2005 and 2007. Sensitive data was contained on a number of these devices.

"The new questionnaire, known as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), is part of a £20million programme called Every Child Matters (ECM), ostensibly set up to ensure youngsters are safe and leading positive lives.
Professionals - such as police officers, teachers and doctors - and volunteers are now under orders to subject children to a questionnaire if they consider them "at risk": a definition so broad that many decent parents could find themselves labelled as potential abusers.
The questions don't need a parent's consent since any child over 12 is deemed responsible enough to grant permission for an interview.
Any child not achieving the Government's five "outcomes" - being healthy, staying safe, enjoying life, "making a positive contribution", and achieving " economic well-being" - is now defined as having "additional needs". The Daily Mail 17/5/08

£10.5 million has just been wasted on another piece of abortive BB technology. The Identity and Passport Service has canceled its highly complicated online passport applications system because of rising costs and technical difficulties, which entailed about 5,000 applications becoming stuck in the system.

The government has finally admitted that it cannot definitively say that the £5.4 billion spent on the National Identity Scheme (NIS) will bring the expected benefits to justify the expense. James Hall, chief executive of the Identity & Passport Service, said, "Many of these benefits (of the NIS) may be hard to quantify and potentially harder to articulate in financial terms within the scheme's business case."

Despite government promises to the contrary, it seems that anyone could gain access to patients’ confidential data on the NHS computer database since a GP has found that he could log onto it without any security checks!

Cyber-Ark's Inter-Business Vault has just been installed by Sunderland City Council. This system will allow data sharing among many NGAs as well as the police and council in a bid to stop anti-social behaviour. Of course it will do nothing of the sort, just enable BB to snoop 24/7!

Friday, May 09, 2008

Saturday 10 May 2008


Latest from NO2ID

The cost of ID Cards seems to have gone down by £1 billion, according to the 4th “Identity Cards Scheme Cost Report”. That’s until you look at the small print. With sleight of hand the government has merely off loaded that £1 billion to the private sector, making their own headline figures look better. What isn’t spelt out is to whom the private sector will pass on that sum. However, the report also reveals that the cost of enrolling people onto the National Register has increased by 60%, although it insists this won’t affect the purchase price of an ID Card to UK citizens, currently standing at £30, as these costs will be fully recovered from charges made to foreign nationals. The government is aware that the cost of the ID scheme is the biggest objection most people have to the scheme and this financial jiggery-pokery is intended to allay those objections. But the message that must be got over to the unwitting majority is the infringement of personal liberties and privacy that these cards pose and the misuse the technology can provide for crooks, government (the same!) and commerce, which are by far the most crucial factors.

Just to show that this whole ID business is born out of cloud cuckoo land, another talking shop has been set up to comment on the scheme. Composed of the vultures and sharks of this world - bankers and mobile phone company spokespeople - its report is full of meaningless management speak, the sort of convoluted crap that so many people spend all of their days dreaming up to make themselves sound heavyweight and cutting edge. Here are a few extracts, one in which they advise "that the Scheme would benefit from a robust and transparent operational data governance regime and a clear data architecture" and this "The Panel feels that a prerequisite of cross-Government adoption of the Scheme is a strategy for harmonising technical and usage standards for identity management across Government and achieving the cooperation of separate Government departments". In fairness, the report is somewhat critical of the ID Scheme so perhaps that accounts for the doublespeak they feel is deemed necessary when addressing their views to government.

Even though tender negotiations are well under way between the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) and suppliers of the technology, measures to counter harmful losses of personal data are far from being finalised. In a letter to Alan Hughes on the Independent Scheme Assurance Panel (ISAP) whose report to IPS had criticised it for making inadequate provisions for preventing data losses, IPS chief executive, Alan Hall admitted that the IPS had only started to work out how they could prevent citizen's personal data being leaked from the ID Scheme. But it was still early days. How reassuring!

Under the banner of easing airport congestion a British airport is to introduce facial scanning this summer for those holding biometric passports. The scheme has been severly criticised since it is based on unproven technology and could lead to more inconvenience for passengers. Gus Hosein at the London School of Economics said “It's a laughable technology. U.S. police at the SuperBowl had to turn it off within three days because it was throwing up so many false positives. The computer couldn't even recognise gender. It's not that it could wrongly match someone as a terrorist, but that it won't match them with their image. A human can make assumptions, a computer can't”. The technology is programmed to err on the side of caution and innocent passengers could well find themselves stopped because the scanners may not recognise them. Nevertheless, the scheme is planned to be rolled out to more airports across the UK, demonstrating the ardent will of those behind all of this track and trace technology to have it implemented ASAP, regardless of whether it works or not. It’s a case of getting us used to checks, scans and presenting our identities to the authorities at every turn in order to get us climatised to the new police state.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Monday 28 April 2008

A postscript - at least for the time being - to my ongoing correspondence with Alex Demetris at the Department of Health over the fluoridation of our water supplies, his last brief letter appears to show that the government is treading a little more carefully in this matter, entertaining other research opinions in open forum debates on a local level where further fluoridation may be considered.

But we must never become complacent and watch the DoH like hawks.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Friday 25 April 2008


Latest from NO2ID

Last Tuesday the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas addressed the Information Security Conference at Olympia on the poor record of data security in recent months, among which was the loss of 600,000 records from a Ministry of Defence laptop. The crucial question which was not addressed, of course, is the reason why there were details of 600,000 people, who had only been making casual enquiries about joining the forces, being held on the laptop in the first place, even though the data was 10 years old? It seems to be given as red that in the data collection community that records of as many people as possible should be garnered. These employees who mindlessly do what they’re told, and don’t question the why’s and wherefore’s of why they are doing it, only perpetuate the problem.

The trade in selling data is becoming a great worry. It is known that private investigators and others that have a market for such information including financial institutions, law firms, local authorities and the press, have been routinely involved in the theft of data. This has prompted the Information Commissioner’s Office to call on government to increase the penalties for such underhand activities, making the theft of data a prisonable offence. Unfortunately, with backlash from the media, who thrive on obtaining private information, the proposed measures are being watered down. The Daily Mail alone has been identified with being involved in 952 such transactions of sensitive information, information that could be used indiscriminately.

The Home Office says that it is determined to drive down the cost of ID Cards. Yes, abolish them altogether would be my solution!

The Border Agency is producing an Olympic ID card for the 2012 games in London. The announcement was made on Wednesday at the Secure Document World Conference by Lin Homer who wishes to see it being developed as a beta test for other such initiatives. Under a former programme called Project Semaphore, extensive data on all international passenger movements has led to 1,700 arrests according to Homer. Of course, we are never told how legitimate those arrests were, people like Homer just like to cite statistics to make it all sound worthwhile and justifiable. Although the use of biometric data is not being actively considered in the 2012 scheme, she hopes to expand the use of ‘voluntary’ biometrics with the use of Iris scanners, allowing people to be fast-tracked through passport control. Seeing this as ‘a fantastic opportunity’, Homer is making the violation of people's rights all sound like a brownie-points game. It probably is for her career!

The compulsory interviews for new passport applicants which are being conducted from interrogation centres being set up all around the country look like being another gross waste of public money. Of the 88,000 interviews so far, not one interviewee has been rejected. The scheme which has cost £50 million to set up with a further annual running budget of £30 million just seems to be more money down the drain in this ludricrous anti-terrorist confabulation.

More than 5,000 children a month are being added to the DNA database. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph “Between October and January, 25 per cent of those added were 18 or younger, compared with less than 11 per cent of those already listed on it. In total, 152,066 people were put on the database between October and January - 37,818 of whom were 18 or under”. It is expected that by next year 1 in every 10 children will be included on the database. Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman Jenny Willott said: “There is something horribly Big Brotherish about a society that is adding over 5,000 kids a month to a DNA database when they're not even old enough to get a National Insurance Number. These shocking figures demonstrate just how many children are being dragged into the criminal justice system by the Government." Over 1 million children in the UK now have their DNA permanently included on the database.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Thursday 17 April 2008


Latest from NO2ID

The government is currently rolling out ‘invitation-only Ministerial consultation events’ to allow local businesses and civic leaders the opportunity to learn more about the proposals contained in the recently published National Identity Scheme Delivery Plan 2008 and also for the organisers to get feedback. The recent Cambridge event certainly provided plenty of negative feedback when the number of protesters to the ID scheme greatly outnumbered the invitees. The local Cambridge NO2ID group got local BBC radio to attend and pose direct questions to the ID minister, Meg Hillier. NO2ID is keen to find out when other ministerial consultations are due to take place in order to stage similar protests and confrontations.

The German government believes that adoption of the EUs directive on data retention would help improve up the crime clear-up rate. Despite the estimated cost of 332m euros to implement the scheme - which of course comes out of the German taxpayers pockets - it is only expected to increase the conviction rate by 0.006%. They can’t be serious!

Last February, the ID Minister, Meg Hillier told the Home Affairs Committee that "The National Identity Register, essentially, will be a secure database; ...hack-proof, not connected to the Internet... not be accessible online; any links with any other agency will be down encrypted links." But by the time the transcript of her presentation was published and duly posted on the web, the wording had changed to "The National Identity Register, essentially, will be a secure database; it will not be accessible online; any links with any other agency will be down encrypted links." Some key assurances missing there. You’ve got to watch them, they’re up to every trick in the book to deceive.

E-passport security is not all it is made out to be. According to John Leyden reporting in The Register. "Most newly issued passports carry an embedded RFID containing digitally signed biometric information. Access to this chip is wireless, which introduces a security risk, the possibility that an attacker might be able to access data on a person’s passport without the owner knowing.
Security precautions ought to prevent unauthorised access to data held on a next-generation e-passport. But a trio of researchers from Lausitz University of Applied Sciences, Germany and Radboud University, in The Netherlands, have shown that its trivial to at least remotely detect the presence of a passport and determine its nationality. "Although all passports implement the same international standard, experiments with passports from ten different countries show that characteristics of each implementation provide a fingerprint that is unique to passports of a particular country," the researchers explain.
To frustrate wireless reading of passport content without an owner’s consent, e-passports use a mechanism called Basic Access Control (BAC). The approach means that in order to read data from the RFID chip you need to optically read a key, printed in passports. This key is based on a passport serial number. Subsequent communication between a passport and a reader is then encrypted to prevent eavesdropping. All EU passports implement BAC.
Weaknesses in the encryption mechanism used in BAC in withstanding brute force attacks have already been reported.
The latest research uncovers a different shortcoming - the possibility that thieves could use technology to detect the presence and nationality of passports in a crowd, the sort of information that might be useful for a hi-tech pickpocket.
"This turns out to be surprisingly easy to do," the researchers report. "Although passports implement the same standard, there are differences that can be detected, especially by sending ill-formed requests, before Basic Access Control takes places."

HSBC is the latest high-profile organisation to lose data. A computer disk containing the details of 370,000 of its customers, including names, dates of birth and their levels of insurance cover has disappeared.

A German court has ruled against a law that empowers German police to scan car licence plates. The use of ANPR scanners in trying to identify stolen cars has been declared a violation of human rights.

In a more light-hearted vain but with a serious message, senior politicians’ fingerprints are being sought. In the UK NO2ID is running a series of posters offering cash to anyone who can legally obtain the fingerprints of both Gordon Brown and/or Jacqui Smith. Meanwhile in Germany, a hacker club reckons it already has the fingerprints of the country’s Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, who happens to be a staunch supporter of the collection of citizens’ unique physical characteristics as a means of combating terrorism.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Friday 28 March 2008


Latest news from NO2ID

According to a survey conducted by The British Computer Society among over 1,000 people, it was found that two-thirds of those asked had less confidence than previously in the ability of government institutions to correctly manage their data. Those who expressed this concern would now be very wary, if asked, to divulge their personal details to such government departments and would want much more information as to who would be accessing those details.

Staff working on the Home Affairs Committee’s ‘A Surveillance Society?’ inquiry last week scored an own goal when they were individually emailed the announcement of the final evidence session. The sender had forgotten to exclude the other recipients names and email addresses from the email header, with their full contact details available for all to see!

Fingerprinting all of those who enter the new Terminal 5 building at Heathrow has been suspended for the time being following a ruling from the Information Commissioner’s Office that the measure may be illegal. Domestic and international passengers transferring onto domestic flights at Heathrow were to be fingerprinted from the start of business on Thursday. However, since the opening of the new terminal yesterday turned out to be a complete disaster with check-in and luggage systems badly malfunctioning, it’s just as well. Knowing BAA’s incompetence, all of those thumb scans might have ended up posted on You Tube by now!

Nevertheless, BAA is pressing ahead with the photographing, or ‘biometric capture’ of all passengers passing through Terminal 5. Those who refuse will be denied access to their flights. Although BAA cites this as a requirement by the Department for Transport, when one ex-pat asked the DfT about this he was told that, in fact, the issue was the responsibility of the Border & Immigration Agency. After contacting them on the issue of compulsory biometric capture, BIA denied any involvement, re-directing the ex-pat back to the DfT! It seems that there is even more chaos attached to the new terminal apart from that which filled the headlines yesterday. Do you trust having your biometric mugshot being bandied around by these fools?

Since the first interviews have been conducted for new passport applicants last May, no fraudulent applications have been found so far. This goes a good way to admitting that the whole regime is not to detect fraud but to inconvenience ordinary people with wholly uneccessary intrusions into their lives.

Airport workers and members of Unite are protesting the imposition of ID cards upon their members and have met with the Home Office on the subject.

In another chapter of the ‘terrorist threat’ myth, MI5 are now requesting total access to commuters travel records under proposed new counter-terrorism powers.

Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned that the British government has persistently failed to take data protection seriously.

If you are asked to give, what appears to be unecessarily probing personal information, fingerprinting or biometric capture in this country - right to your MP. Only by creating strong opposition to these intrusions will we re-gain any of our rights as citizens and expose this ‘terrorism’ myth that our government is using as a vehicle to incarcerate our lives for their advantage.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Thursday 27 March 2008

Knocking your head against a brick wall

I received a predictable reply to my last letter from the Department of Health regarding water fluoridation.




My reply:

Dear Mr Demitris

Fluoridation of Water Supplies

Thank you for your further reply to my concerns over the fluoridation of our water supplies dated 14 March.

It appears from the tenor of your reply that the Government has for some time, set its mind upon a continued course of water fluoridation and is making the evidence fit that initiative. The last two sentences of the fourth paragraph of your letter, quote “It is true that the Government recognises the need to conduct further research into fluoridation’s health effects. However, this is to strengthen the evidence base on the effect of fluoridation on health, which the Government already believes to be safe” more or less confirms that impression.

I find this reminiscent of the way pharmaceutical companies boast the benefits of their drugs, making the results of research and tests fit those claims, while ignoring or marginalising any ill-effects that they may promote, examples of which have been legion over recent years.

You continue to cite the University of York’s findings upon which your Department and the Government put its faith, yet you have not addressed the critique of that research which I enclosed with my last letter, which highlighted the less than comprehensive nature of that research.

Clearly, the Government and Department of Health is locked in a rigid stance on this subject and doesn’t seemed prepared to, at least, consider the enormous amount of evidence that the fluoridation of our mains water appears contrary to our best interests, only a small amount of which I included with my previous letters.
Even the American Dental Association issued an emailed statement to its members last November that fluoridated water should not be mixed into formula or foods intended for babies aged 1 and younger and research by the Centers for Disease Control has shown that fluoride absorbs into tooth enamel topically, but its ingestion can cause adverse reactions. Also, the CDC has now admitted that enamel fluoride concentration is not inversely related to cavities.

Surely these admissions should cause your department to re-evaluate this subject in a more holistic manner.

As long as your position continues, I will continue to campaign against this adulteration of our drinking water and will fight tooth and nail against any change of policy my water provider, Southern Water, may make in deciding to fluoridate its water supplies and hope to see an end to this unnecessary and highly doubtful practice.

Yours sincerely

Friday, March 14, 2008

Latest from NO2ID



Although the media front is fairly silent on the ID Card issue at present following news reports of its unworkability and extreme cost, the government is, nevertheless, pressing ahead quietly with its implementation.

This is being done by stealth, first concentrating on youngsters applying for student grants or passports. From this coming November non-EEA foreign national students or those on a marriage visa, an ID card will be mandatory. Airside staff at Britain’s airports will also have to carry ID cards as from next year. Then it’s a case of young people being coerced into carrying ID cards, initially under a voluntary scheme, simply presented and with ‘benefits’ for those who comply. But, of course, once you divulge your vital statistics you are on the National Identity Register for life and subject to all of the penalties attached for those who do not continually keep the authorities informed to any change of personal details and circumstance.

It is this subtle coercive stance that the government is taking - hiding the true realities of being an ID card carrier and NIR enrolee - that is most insidious and we must be aware from now on of any intrusions the government will take in prising personal information out of us.


The latest news:
The government has been busy releasing a whole gamut of policy documents on ID cards, most of which are spun to bury the bad news. The spectre of ID cards is as bad as ever and no backward steps have been taken by them to dilute their effect upon our lives.

A report entitled 'Challenges and opportunities in identity assurance', authored by Sir James Crosby, former chief executive of banking group HOBS, has just been released. The report states that any national identity card scheme should be free to users, involve minimum amounts of information and not be promoted as an anti-crime initiative. It criticises the ‘uncoordinated’ way in which the government has rolled out the scheme. The report’s publication just happened to coincide with the government’s release of their ID scheme delivery plan, trumping the report. Although Crosby’s recommendations are less onerous than those of the government, they still represent an unnecessary intrusion into our lives, largely built on the back of the phony terrorism ruse.

The MoD has lost 11,000 ID cards over the last two years. Small by comparison to the 25 million records lost by HM Revenue & Customs, it still represents about 1 in 18 of all the armed forces.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has gone to the extent of resurrecting a 319-year old law designed to protect freedom of speech to try to stop the publication of Home Office reports on the failing ID card scheme. This appears to be a desperate attempt to hide information that would greatly damage the credibility of the scheme.

Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, which is being officially opened today by the Queen, is to have mandatory fingerprinting for all boarding flights. I was fingerprinted and had my eyes photographed recently at the immigration desk at Minneapolis airport.

A computer repairman discovered confidential government CD hidden inside a notebook computer which had just been bought on eBay.

Don’t worry, one day all of our personal details will be blowing about in the wind for anyone who wants to borrow or steal our identities!

Micro-chipping
In response to my signing a petition for government to introduce a law to ban the micro-chipping of human beings in the UK, HMG has responded in a not very re-assuring way. “The Government is not aware of any organisation or individual that is planning to micro chip humans, and so although in principle the Government would be against this practice, it seems disproportionate to legislate to ban it”. So we can’t rule out mass micro-chipping of individuals in future!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Friday 29 February 2008

The latest NO2ID news

  • The right of the police to keep DNA records of individuals who have been proved innocent has been challenged in the EU Court of Human Rights by two such gentlemen. They rightly contend that is a breach of their right to privacy.
  • Out of the 4 million people whose DNA is held on the government’s database, 550,000 samples have been found to have the wrong individual’s attached to them or that they are misspelt.
  • Despite this blunder and countless others regarding the lack of security employed in keeping citizens’ personal details secure, Home Office minister Meg Hillier has stated that there will be stringent security and no risks of ‘disks flying round’ when the National Identity Register comes into being. Oh yes!
  • Medical professionals have been raising concern that the government will profit by allowing pharmaceutical and insurance companies access to 60 million patients’ health records. According to one Labour MP, Kevin Baron, this view is ‘palpable nonsense’. With the government continuously lobbied by big pharma, who knows what kick-backs there might be. But that doesn’t get away from the fact that in a moral sense, releasing confidential patient records to commercial organisations is wholly wrong.
  • Biometric ID is to start in earnest in Britain with airport workers. Unite union members are asking for full consultation with the airport group BAA after it was found out that BAA was quietly in talks with the Home Office over the plan.
  • Students may be forced to hold ID cards if they want to apply for a student loan - and just how many students don’t?


Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The ongoing fluoridation saga

I have received a reply - if a rather predictable one - from the Department of Health in response to my letter to Alan Johnson on the 5th of February on the fluoridation of public water supplies in England, reproduced below.





Here is my response. The link to the critique mentioned in the letter can be found at http://www.fluoridealert.org/york-critique.htm

Alex Demitris
Customer Service Directorate
The Department of Health
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
LONDON
SW1A 2NS

21 February 2008

Dear Mr Demitris

Fluoridation of water supplies

Many thanks for your reply to my letter dated 5 February in which you state your department’s position regarding the fluoridation of water in England.

Unfortunately, your comments in no way ameliorate my concerns regarding this initiative.

Although you say that no ill-effects of water fluoridation have been identified in the UK, using the University of York’s review to substantiate that assertion, I would like to draw your attention to the enclosed critique of that review by Paul Connett, PhD which highlights that review's many shortfalls and its exclusion of animal and toxicological studies in its compilation of evidence. (See item 2.8 in that critique).

It is the wider implications and dangers of water fluoridation that concerns me most and appears to be largely absent from the York review. Although the maintenance of 1ppm of fluoride in our drinking water is to be the applied benchmark, its introduction and maintenance at that level will filter through into all our beverages and processed foodstuffs and it is this multiplier effect that is most worrying. 1ppm may not effect those who drink little but will have a much greater effect on those who habitually drink more - tea (which already includes natural levels of fluoride) and beer drinkers for example, or those in heavy manual jobs that need to re-hydrate themselves on a regular basis. Why should they necessarily have to incur the cost of buying bottled water to avoid running the risk of imbibing higher amounts of fluoride?

Since your department’s whole premise for the introduction of fluoride in water supplies is to combat the reduction in tooth decay, then why, as suggested by Nobel Laureate, Dr. Arvid Carlsson, cannot topical treatment be provided. Teeth are easily accessible to such treatment.

I also find it quite amazing that you are pressing ahead with such an initiative when your department admits that it is still instigating further research into the effects of fluoridation. Surely this is the wrong way round. (See 2.5 - 2.7 in critique).

Let me conclude by listing just a few of the scientific developments that have been noted in 2007 regarding concerns over the collateral damage that water fluoridation may and is believed to be responsible for.

1. Impairment of brain development
In 2007 research was conducted in Brazil, China, India, Italy, Mexico and the US all of which strengthened concern previously raised by the US National Research Council the previous year. According to the authors “We found that exposure to F (fluoride) in urine was associated with reduced Performance, Verbal, and Full IQ scores before and after adjusting for confounders. The same pattern was observed for models with F in water as the exposure variable.... The individual effect of F in urine indicated that for each mg increase of F in urine a decrease of 1.7 points in Full IQ might be expected”.

2. Links to skeletal fluorosis
Since the 1930s, the link between too much fluoride intake and stiff and painful joints has been known. Although the symptoms can mimic other forms of arthritis more research is required to establish the true source of such complaints in the knowledge that excess fluoride can be a cause. A lifetime’s intake of fluoridated water and other beverages could be problematic, particularly in the elderly. As one ages the ability of the liver to discharge toxins becomes impaired, thus their greater retention having an increasingly deleterious effect on bones.

3. Silicofluorides may increase lead exposure
Last year, scientists at the University of North Carolina demonstrated that when brass water pipes containing lead were submerged in water simultaneously containing chlorine and fluoride, the leeching effect of the pipe’s lead content was increased causing increased toxification of the water supply. Although the tests were conducted with fluoride added at 2ppm, even at 1ppm - the recommended level - the leeching effect would still be tangible.

4. Fluoridation linked to sperm damage
Subjecting rats to fluoride concentrations of 10ppm have shown to seriously effect their sperm levels. Since rats are particularly resilient to fluoride it is thought that an equivalent human concentration - 2ppm - may affect humans similarly.

5. Effects of fluoride on the pineal gland
Dr Jennifer Luke of the University of Surrey has discovered that the pineal gland is the primary target of fluoride accumulation. "In conclusion, the human pineal gland contains the highest concentration of fluoride in the body. Fluoride is associated with depressed pineal melatonin synthesis by prepubertal gerbils and an accelerated onset of sexual maturation in the female gerbil. The results strengthen the hypothesis that the pineal has a role in the timing of the onset of puberty. Whether or not fluoride interferes with pineal function in humans requires further investigation."

These are just some of the many areas in which further research is needed. Is it worth subjecting whole populations to these possible, and in some cases, very likely ill-effects for the sake of a small minority of society who cannot, or will not, engage in basic human hygiene?

I believe that it should be the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children look after their teeth without resorting to a state recommendation that everyone should have their water fluoridated.

Until there is a sound and honest verdict given, based on rational and scientific evaluation of the benefits and dis-benefits of fluoride in our water supplies, I believe that any further moves to fluoridate them should be suspended.

Yours sincerely

Friday, February 15, 2008

Friday 15 February 2008


Latest from the NO2ID

The number of people deeply troubled by the spectre of ID cards is rising. A Joseph Rowntree survey showed that those who are very concerned has grown from 17% last year to 25%. Overall, those who consider ID cards to be a bad idea now has just begun to outweigh those who are unconcerned.

Bridport Town Council in Dorset has passed a motion against the government’s ID scheme, agreeing not to take part in any pilot scheme or feasibility programme but would draw the line at unlawful un-cooperation. Not good enough!

The EU is looking at an entry-exit system using biometric identifiers, for each third-country national admitted to the Schengen area (those 25 countries within the EU where borders have been effectively eliminated). As the UK is outside of the Schengen area, implementation of this agreement could require all UK residents wishing to travel to mainland Europe to be subject to these biometric checks. Coercion into this scheme of biometric checks could start - according to the EU’s Justice Commissioner, Franco Frattini - on a ‘voluntary’ basis. But Frattini is believed to favour border surveillance levels to be at least equal to, if not in excess of those used in the US.

According to a poll conducted by the government’s Identity and Passport Service and reported by the Daily Mail shows that less than 25% of those questioned believe that the ID card scheme will work.

Every child in Britain is to have their exam results registered on a national database for life.

More evidence of official inability to safeguard confidential information. Now the NHS admits to having lost some four thousand smartcards which are used to access its computer systems.

The Guardian newspaper has published two articles within a week of each other over its acute concern of Britain repidly becoming a surveillance state and is calling for its halt. Over quarter of a million intrusions of private citizens were recorded last year. According to one correspondent “When the Stasi started spying on me, as I moved around East Germany 30 years ago, I travelled (to Britain) on the assumption that I was coming from one of the freest countries in the world to one of the least free. I don't think I was wrong then, but I would certainly be wrong now”. We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society, and we must wake up".

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Tuesday 12 February 2008

Reactionary police state news continues to roll in. The latest ‘initiative’ is the ‘mosquito’, a high-frequency sound device that creates discomfort to under 25s when used.

The idea is to use the device to break up anti-social behaviour, but, as always, when dealing with social disbehaviour, reactionary measures always predominate and no thought is given to attempting to solve the root of the problem. This indiscriminating device, although, I would suspect is highly directional, would, nevertheless unnecessarily cause discomfort to innocent children in the vicinity and I would also guess that its medical effects, especially if repeatedly used, just haven’t been considered.

Of course, it doesn’t take a PhD to realise that reactionary measures such as these only further alienate those who are targeted and drive larger wedges between elements of society instead of creating co-operation - more draconian doctrine from the divide and rule camp.

The Children's Commissioner for England and the civil liberties group Liberty, are calling for them to be scrapped. They are rightfully concerned that there is an increasingly negative attitude being adopted by authorities in dealing with social problems.

Michigan State Police have just released a preposterous video entitled ‘7 Signs of Terrorism’ to encourage ‘snitching’ upon those who may seems to be indulging in terrorist acts. This has all of the Orwellian hallmarks of the ‘Youth League’ doctrine of spying on those who don’t fall into line, and owes nothing to those who commit genuine terrorism like the CIA or FBI who stage such terrorist activities usually designed as a prelude to eventually usher in this very same Orwellian dictat. If taken seriously it could just about incriminate everyone. When I take my camera to the States in a few weeks time and decide to take a few photos in public places I may well be setting myself up for a bit of trouble!

Friday, February 08, 2008

Medicine - the number one killer?


In the current issue of Nexus magazine is a revealing article by biochemist and toxicologist, Walter Last. He shows how iatrogenic diseases (diseases caused by medical treatment) are the leading cause of death in the West. With an annual fatality rate in the US of 783,936 in 2001, caused by fatal drug reactions, medical errors or unnecessary medical and surgical procedures, this outstripped the death rate caused from heart disease and cancer in the same year.
Ironically, when doctors went on strike in Los Angeles county in 1976, the death rate fell by 18% and in 1973 in Israel a similar strike saw the number of deaths during that period reduce by a staggering 50%!

Last discusses the pioneering work done by Dr Orian Truss in the early 50s in which he saw a direct correlation between candisiasis - a fungal over-growth in the intestines that can cause food allergies, muscle aches and many other eventually fatal complications - and antibiotics.

Antibiotics are widely prescribed among the medical profession and aren’t the only ones to cause such problems. Drugs used in chemotherapy, anti-inflammatory steroidal and other long-term drug therapies can have an equally debilitating effect on patients which can also eventually result in death.

Last explains that under normal conditions the body produces natural amounts of intestinal flora, mainly based on lactobacteria, which helps in the digestion of food and at the same time protects the body from harmful bacteria, such as salmonella. This ability is severely compromised when these drugs are continually administered and candida establishes itself as a result. This process is known as dysbiosis. “With chronic dysbiosis, the intestinal wall becomes inflamed, causing ulcers, appendicitis, malabsorption and Crohn’s disease and as the intestinal membrane erodes, the patient develops multiple food allergies, arthritis and autoimmune diseases”, Last adds. The vicious cycle is exacerbated by the medical profession’s preference to administer more antibiotics in an erroneous attempt to treat these conditions.


The good old days

Although, back in the early 1900s, diets were often high in saturated fats, heart attacks were rare, contrary to present-day philosophy. The ascent of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease began with the pasteurisation of milk and the use of chlorine in water supplies to kill bacteria. It seems that these preventative measures to kill off natural bacteria in both milk and water had prevented a natural line of defence in our bodies derived from such bacteria. In countries such as Africa, China, Japan and other parts of Asia where the chlorination of water and pasteurising of milk were not introduced, heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases were unknown.

Also back in the last half of the nineteenth century, scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough and measles had declined by 90% following improvements in public health and before the introduction of vaccines. These very vaccines have, however, brought with them an increase in the death rate from the targeted diseases as well as some cot deaths with immunised babies. The presence of toxic heavy metals in vaccines have also been connected to the rise in autism and Attention Deficiency Disorders. The Amish in America, who refuse vaccinations, suffer from none of these.



Until 1980, the rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity were fairly uncommon and stable. But when health authorities started to advise against eating foods containing fats and cholesterol, recommending instead, a higher intake of carbohydrates - exacerbated by a food industry peddling such badies - obesity and associated type 2 diabetes increased from just 15% among the US population in 1980 to a chronically obese rate of 31% today, and if one adds the marginally obese, that figure rises to almost 65%.


Chemical cocktails

One of the main problems with the introduction of new drugs is that they are not tested for long enough. With continual administering the accumulative effect of many drugs can be devastating whereas their short-term use may be acceptable. Many people can find themselves prescribed a whole plethora of different drugs for different complaints and it is the mixing of such medications which is rarely, if ever, examined. Several years on a cocktail of drugs can create an entanglement of effects, almost impossible to unravel.


Natural is best

Many proven natural cancer treatments have been traditionally shunned by conventional medical science and alternative health practitioners who offer such remedies have often being brought before the courts and imprisoned.

The driving force behind this rejection of natural health remedies, not just with cancer but with many other diseases, is the drug cartel lobby that virtually runs our health services in the West. Not only do they have a strong influence in directing doctor’s to prescribe their, at best doubtful and at worst harmful wares but also direct and fund clinical research, whose reports weigh heavily in favour of their products while rubbishing the claims of alternative natural practitioners products and claims. This big pharma influence also begins in the medical schools whose students are unknowingly influenced with biased teaching.

The message one gleans from Last’s evidence is clear. Eat and live healthily, sourcing natural remedies wherever possible, rendering your GP and hospital as a last resort.

Further reading: ‘Heal Yourself and Healing Foods’ by Walter Last (Penguin Books)

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Letter to Alan Johnson

Alan Johnson
The Health Secretary
The House of Commons
LONDON
SW1A 0AA

5 February 2008

Dear Sir

Fluoridation of water supplies

It is with regret that I read in the press this week of the renewed intiative from your department to fluoridate mains water supplies in areas in England with the highest rates of tooth decay.

The reason given - that it would help safeguard the teeth of children who do not regularly brush their teeth - is the most disingenuous argument I have heard on any subject for many years and its naivety beggars belief. For decades now, a mass of evidence has existed in the public domain of the dangers of fluoridating water and the highly negative effects on the body that this poisonous toxin has when imbibed constantly over many years.

Must we all be subjected to its ill-effects on the basis that certain parents are incapable of ensuring that their children clean their teeth or that they cannot afford the price of a tooth brush! Extensive and proven research has shown that dental decay is more a matter of bad diet and fluoridating water supplies does nothing in arresting decay and in the long term poses far greater dangers to the well-being of those that are constantly subject to it.

I enclose just a mere fraction of the evidence posted on the Internet and also draw your attention to Christopher Bryson’s well-researched book on the subject ‘The Fluoride Deception’ published by the Seven Stories Press.

Such niave reasoning behind introducing fluoridation into England’s water supplies, only leads me to believe that there is another agenda at work here, either generated by the industries who benefit from the disposal of this toxic waste, or something more fearful. Was not the fluoridation of water first introduced to the inmates of Auschwitz by IG Farben. I’m sure that wasn’t for altruistic reasons!

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

The US primaries - it's a stitch-up!

Clinton’s fortunes seem to have clearly reversed in New Hampshire despite a pre-polling deficit defeat recorded by Zogby, showing Obama leading Clinton by 13%. She has now beaten him, while Ron Paul, whose pre-polling statistics showed 10% of the resident’s votes in Sutton, New Hampshire, has gained not a single vote in the elections there. Like the previous presidential elections, the whole thing seems to be a complete fraud, with Clinton the pre-selected horse, while all the others complete a supporting cast in a phoney so-called democratic process and those that have something truly worthy to say, like Paul, are effectively silenced and ignored.

But it only gets worse.


Fraud uncovered as we speak!


Following pressure from voters in the small township of Sutton, New Hampshire who voted for Ron Paul and were miffed by the fact that not one vote was recorded against his name, Jennifer Call, the town clerk of Sutton, had to confirm that Ron Paul did get 31 votes despite the fact that none were officially recorded. Officials made the lame excuse that it was a ‘mistake’. Oh yes!

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, an independent organisation funded by voluntary public donations, reports that the Diebold voting system in use in Sutton is run by LHS Associates. Its Vice President is Jon Silvestro, who has been a convicted for cocaine trafficking!

But let Bev Harris take up the story of her research into some of the corruption and fraud in just one US electronic polling organisation and you’ll soon realise how rigging elections in the US can be easy to carry out with many polling companies being run by government-funded crooks and felons with little or no accountability.

Last fall, with the help of some New Hampshire citizens, Black Box Voting began working on a "New Hampshire Chain of Custody" project, in which we identified some of the areas of concern that might affect many jurisdictions at once. First on the list is LHS Associates, a vendor with inside access to every memory card in New Hampshire, as well as to the chips containing the "brain" of the Diebold optical scan machines.

LHS Associates programs all the memory cards in New Hampshire and Connecticut; about all of Vermont's voting machines, and has a lock on almost all of Massachusetts as well.



RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE


In an unusual confluence of available video, we obtained footage of Silvestro grappling with Harri Hursti, the master hacker who had his way with the Diebold optical scans in Leon County, Florida in the famous exploit that was showcased in the film Hacking Democracy.

The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine. Because the voting machine locations tend to be urban, this represents about 81 percent of the New Hampshire voters.

The video shows Harri Hursti testifying on Sept. 19 before the New Hampshire legislature, attempting to explain significant vulnerabilities requiring urgent mitigations; throughout his testimony, Silvestro inserted his own comments, opinions, misstatements and speculations.



VOTING MACHINE CHECKUP


One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn't hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.


Hursti pointed out that hiring programmers with a lack of knowledge is generally not considered a security feature, and also that an average high schooler can learn to exploit the system in two days to two weeks.



WE THINK IT DOESN'T TAKE THAT LONG


Black Box Voting purchased a Diebold optical scan with 1.94w firmware, and chose a computer repair shop out of the phone book, took it in, grabbed the first available technician. It took him less than 10 minutes to zero in on the memory card as a point of critical vulnerability -- and oh my, did he point out some other interesting things!



NEW HAMPSHIRE HASN'T UPGRADED SYSTEM SECURITY


Silvestro tries to claim that the security problems have been fixed in newer editions. Whether or not they have been, it's a moot point in New Hampshire where the upgrade is not made unless the Ballot Law Commission meets, and they have not met for ages.


Silvestro then points to extraordinary measures taken by other states to enact special procedural safeguards, but of course none of those were implemented in New Hampshire either, because the Ballot Law Commission has not bothered to meet since March 2006.



IN FACT, NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS NOT IMPLEMENTED MITIGATIONS FOR KNOWN RISKS


Not only that, they have turned all the programming over to a sole source private company, taking vote counting for 81 percent of New Hampshire citizens out of the public domain.

LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.

Here is the YouTube video containing various footage taken by Black Box Voting and New Hampshire citizens:







CONTROL OVER THE "BRAINS" OF THE MACHINE: ACCESS TO THE CHIP

Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.


Silvestro stated that the chip has "read only memory" and cannot be reprogrammed without frying it under ultraviolet light overnight.


Hursti never had a chance to examine the hardware, nor have most of the recent university studies had access. But our friendly neighborhood computer repair guy differed with Silvestro on the point of plug & play reprogramming of the guts of the machine.


After I push the button to send this message out to the media and the citizenry, I'll work on getting a short YouTube video of the Accuvote checkup by our local computer repairman. And before you say, "But wait! He's not a world class expert!" -- That's just the point.

He may hit or miss on some of his analyses. You'll all be able to try your hand at second guessing him as soon as the video is up. But if he hits even one of his ideas for how to exploit the machine to steal votes, that's all it takes. From someone who is not, certainly, a world class hacker or even a hacker at all.

Courtesy Bev Harris
Go to www.bbvforums.org for details of that video and more information on rigged voting.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

WARNING: vitamins could endanger your health...

... or so EU food supplementation legislation suggests.

There is a growing amount of evidence to show that vitamin and mineral deficiency is a growing problem among the population of the EU. In the UK alone, 3.6 million people are now clinically described as suffering from malnutrition, a condition which costs the NHS £7.3 billion annually. With further estimates suggesting that up to 6% of the population in Britain now suffer from serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies, it comes as something of an absurdity that the EU has, since the turn of this century, made a distinct move to make those badly-needed vitamins and minerals more difficult to acquire.

As part of a legal harmonisation across our growing European ‘superstate’, the nutritional content of our foods, mineral and vitamin supplements are now controlled by a plethora of legislation.

In 2005 the British government forced through parliament the EU’s Food Supplements Directive outlawing an estimated 5,000 vitamin and mineral supplements and making it illegal for any shopkeeper to stock them.


The EU Food Supplements Directive

Although the Food Supplements Directive (FSD) could be seen as an attempt to draw a clear line between what should be considered as natural sources of nutrients and that which should be considered to be pharmaceutical in nature, it effectively bans the use of a great number of proven natural vitamins and minerals while ‘dumbing down’ others.

Currently the FSD relies on a ‘positive list’ of supplements that it has drawn up which largely comprise of synthetic vitamins and inorganic minerals, and anything not on that list is effectively banned. While there does exist a derogated list of more natural vitamins and minerals which are in the ‘pending tray’ so to speak, it is feared that many of these may be outlawed and end up on the banned list by 2009.

These are just a very few of the large number of vitamins and minerals excluded from the FSD ‘positive list’.
Boron - all forms - required for absorbtion of calcium
Vitamin E - the naturally occurring tocopherols and tocotrienols - these are antioxidants which protect against damage by free radicals associated with cancer and other degenerative diseases
Calcium - in 23 food forms - good for bones, teeth and cell function
Chromium - in 17 forms - for balancing blood sugar levels in diabetics
Magnesium - in 30 forms - for healthy bones and teeth
Potassium - in 21 forms - good for maintaining healthy blood pressure and heart beat
Silica - all forms - working in conjunction with boron, calcium and other minerals it maintains the wellbeing of bones, arteries, connective tissue, hair, skin and nails
Selenium - in 14 forms - an antioxidant which is important for heart function and a health immune response

The FSD not only dictates what nutrients can be added into food supplements, but it also dictates the maximum allowable dosages. It is these Maximum Permitted Levels (MPLs) that have been arrived at on a risk assessment basis that is unnecessarily restrictive, drawing a line that is too low and only allowing dosages which are very often too small to be of any real benefit to the recipient. For instance, the MPL for beta-carotene is being set so low that it is less than you would consume in two carrots! If the authorities believe that dosages higher than this are harmful then should there not be a limit on the number of carrots we eat (ie two) or any other food in which these ‘capped’ supplements are naturally found in abundance? Since when has taking vitamins and nutrients in doses large or small been harmful to man? Below is a diagram showing relative mortality risks. As you can see death by nutrients is virtually nil.




A partial answer to the seeming irrationality of the FSD provisions appears to come from the...


The Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation


This piece of legislation in its most positive light, appears to straighten out the business of erroneous medicinal claims made by manufacturers of supplements. Subtending from this will be two types of claim which can be made: generic claims and disease reduction (and childrens’ health) claims. These claims have to be approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and in the case of the disease reduction claims, very expensive and onerous data requirements are required making the granting of a claim out of reach for many small to medium-sized manufacturers which would include very many of the pioneering natural health businesses. It is feared that these key producers of highly beneficial alternative and effective homeopathic products would be put out of business, clearing the way for the large multi-nationals and drug cartels to further dominate while producing dumbed down supplements, no doubt at maximum profit for what will be ineffectual products. And, of course, if you decide to double or triple the dosage in order to get some benefit from their low-strength concoctions you only end up giving them more profit!

When one looks at this side of the legislation the contradictions of what has been stated above take on a rather unsavoury nature and in my view clarify a lot of what the EU is really all about - centralised control by mega-corporations under the auspices of a totalitarian regime!


The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH)


The ANH which represents these smaller and alternative producers of natural health foods and supplements has been lobbying the European authorities on this very issue for several years. It is currently urging the EU to reconsider key elements of this legislation and the EU's trend to allow centuries-old natural remedies in effective dosages to become only available through a doctor's prescription. This will only allow further concentration the monopoly of big pharma and state regulate people's rights to choose nutrients that will keep them healthy.

I urge you to support ANHs work and also by writing to your MEP expressing your concern over the diminishing ability of our choice to live a healthy life.

For more information go to: http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/

and watch the presentation below by Dr Robert Verkerk, Executive Director of the Alliance for Natural Health.

Friday, December 14, 2007

The news you don't hear

Each year the Project Censored Team at Sonoma State University in California publishes a list of those stories selected from literally thousands in the US that received little or no coverage in the mainstream media for that year.

When one considers the immense importance that each of these stories carry in terms of our and other’s daily lives, it really brings home the way in which that same mainstream media is conditioned to deny us access to the truth.

Clearly, we are meant to remain ignorant of these controversial issues, for if they did become mainstream knowledge there would surely be a hue and cry and shouts of outrage from very many quarters.

Nexus magazine publishes these stories each year, here are the top twenty for 2006/7.


1. The denial of Habeas Corpus


On October 17th 2006, Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, the provisions of which effectively suspend an individual’s right to appeal against wrongful arrest or detention that the provisions of Habeas Corpus provide. The Act institutes a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for ‘any person’, civilian or otherwise, regardless of American citizenship. This means that any US citizen can be legally regarded as ‘an enemy of the state’ and the judgment lies solely with Bush himself.


2. Martial Law provisions made

With the signing of the John Warner Defense Authorisation Act on the same day provision is now made to station military troops anywhere in the US who are then able to over-ride state-based National Guard troops without the consent of the state governor or local authorities, in order to ‘suppress public disorder’. This legislation completely rescinds the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which places strict prohibition on US military involvement in domestic law enforcement.


3. Africa’s resources come under US Military control

The creation of the US African Command (AFRICOM) was announced by the White House in February of this year and will come into force in September 2008. Although conveniently presented as a humanitarian guard against the ‘War on Terror’, its real aim is to commandeer Africa’s oil resources and its global delivery systems. AFRICOM will be targeting African resistance groups who it claims are part of international ‘terrorist’ networks, but most of whom have a sole aim to rightfully proclaim these resources as their country's own and engage in free trade. This action is clearly another deliberate hindrance which would prevent African nations from creating their own wealth as a means to escape poverty and keeps their rich mineral wealth firmly in the control of the NWO/US juggernaut.


4. Destructive trade agreements

Neatly fitting in with AFRICOM’s aims are a plethora of US and EU destructive bi-lateral trade agreements which require enormous irreversible concessions from developing countries, while offering little or nothing in return. This will entail the US and EU dumping subsidised agricultural goods on underdeveloped countries denying them the ability to build their own self-sustaining agricultural programmes while at the same time denying those countries local farmers to be self-sufficient.


5. Forced labour used to build US Embassy in Iraq


The $592 million, 104-acre US Embassy, currently being built in Iraq will be as large as the Vatican City and will be the most heavily fortified embassy in the world. It is being constructed using forced labour trafficked from South Asia under US contracts. Thousands of citizens from countries that have been banned from travelling to or working in Iraq are being tricked by being smuggled by First Kuwait Trading and Contracting and Halliburton/Kellogg Brown Root into Iraq only to find themselves embroiled in inhumane labour camps and forced to months of forced servitude in the building site right in the middle of the ‘Green Zone’ and right under the nose of the US State Department!


6. Blackwater

That great vanguard of the NWO and the most powerful mercenary firm in the World, Blackwater, is to receive over half a billion dollars in federal contracts, allowing the company under its head neo-con supremacist Erik Prince, to bolster his private army of 20,000 soldiers, helicopter gunships and private intelligence division. The benefit of this enhanced Blackwater empire to the Bush administration is to be able to co-opt its troops which have almost no oversight or effective legal constraints, are politically expedient and whose death toll goes uncounted in official figures. This all amounts to an undisclosed covert expansion of Iraq’s occupation.


7. Operation FALCON


Seen as part of Bush’s positioning for martial law, FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally) have been busily engaged in staging heavy-handed dragnet raids across the US, arresting over 30,000 so-called ‘fugitives’ - the worst of the worst criminals on the run, particularly sex offenders. Yet, of the numbers arrested less than 10% were suspected as being sex offenders and less than 2% owned firearms. The question that has failed to be asked in the mainstream media is why were the other 90% arrested and why has no formal announcement been made as to whether they have been charged or released.


8. Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA)

As many as 28,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide over the last decade because of the debt incurred from failed GM crops and competition from subsidised US crop imports. Yet in March 2006 Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh signed the KIA which is backed by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Wal-Mart which will allow a land grab of India’s seed business and of its retail sector. Wal-Mart is already opening, 500 stores across the sub-continent, compounding the distress among the country’s farmers and threatening the loss of livelihood for 14 million small vendors, damaging India’s self-sufficiency and food security.


9. US infrastructure sold off

More than 20 states in the US have have enacted legislation to sell off public highways at knock down prices to private companies as toll roads for the maximum return on their investments. Many of these agreements come with ‘noncomplete’ clauses which limit state governments from expanding or improving adjacent non-privatised roads, eventually forcing drivers to use the privatised ones.


10. Vulture funds threaten third-world debt relief

Otherwise known as ‘distressed-debt investors’, vulture funds are undermining attempts to relieve impoverished third-world nations who have become burdened by unpayable debt to international bank loans. These debts, which are deemed near default and unpayable, are bought up by financial organisations who pay the original investor mere pennies on the dollar for the debt then go after the debtor in court. Most of these vulture funds have strong ties to powerful world leaders and many to the Bush administration giving them virtually financial immunity as their political influence greatly out weighs the poor nations they are suing.


11. The reconstruction of Afghanistan myth

It is estimated that less than 20% of funds destined for the reconstruction of Afghanistan actually end up being used for that purpose. Because of the ‘rigged’ way that IMF, World Bank and USAID loans operate, much of the money ends up being returned to those organisations thereby failing to benefit the countries to which they are supposedly destined. Furthermore, much of the construction contracts do not go to Afghan contractors but to the likes of Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater and other consortia in bed with the same people allied to those finance organisations.


12. More UN massacres

As with Bosnia and elsewhere, eyewitness testimony confirms that UN troops massacred over 30 people including women and children in Haiti’s Cité Soleil in retaliation for a mass demonstration of 10,000 people demanding the return of former President Aristide in the light of the foreign military occupation of their country.


13. US gains cheap labour from immigrant round-ups

As a deliberate attempt to undermine Mexican farmers by flooding the country with cheap American imports under NAFTA agreements, some two million farmers have been bankrupted resulting in an influx of Mexican migrants into the US. There they have become an important factor in the low-income end of the workplace, often replacing US union-based labour and since 9/11 many of these ’illegal’ immigrants have been ‘rounded up’ under an anti-terrorist guise but really intended as a means of creating a strong non-union immigrant workforce.



14. US war crime immunity

Hidden in the Military Commissions Act, already mentioned, is a clause which re-defines ‘torture’, removing some of the most harshest techniques used from the definition of ‘war crimes under the Geneva War Crimes Act, effectively re-writing that Act’s safeguards. These exemptions will be back-dated to November 1997 thus exonerating the actions of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush should any sworn testimonies by inmates from Abu Ghraib come to light in a court of law, which, without this clause would hold them guilty.


15. Effects of toxic exposure could be passed on to our offspring

In a new field of genetic research called ‘epigenetics’, it has been found that exposure to toxic chemicals, both in our food and the environment, effect our genes and in turn can influence those of our offspring. On average 1,800 new chemicals are registered with the US federal government each year of which about just under half find their way into foods, detergents, cosmetics etc. without any real prior testing for health and environmental effects. Although the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) directive was adopted by the EU last year in an effort to ensure new chemicals are thoroughly tested before they are sold, there is no guarantee as to how closely chemical companies will adhere to these new restrictions putting at risk future generations wellbeing.



16. 9/11 and bin Laden - no connection identified



Why did the US invade Afghanistan to smoke out Bin Laden from his cave for his supposed links to 9/11 (not to mention the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya) when he doesn’t even appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted poster. The truth of the matter is that the Bureau has no hard evidence of any connection between bin Laden and those atrocities according to Rex Tomb, the FBI’s Head of Investigative Publicity. This comes despite Rumsfeld’s claims just after 9/11 that ‘there was no doubt of bin Laden’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks'.


17. Military and Corporate contamination of water

Despite the 1972 Clean Water Act, Americans suffer increasingly polluted water supplies, thanks to the Bush administration’s circumvention of the act’s provisions. A Public Interest Research Group report entitled ‘Troubled Waters: An Analysis of Clean Water Act Compliance’ published in July 2006 shows that between July 2003 and December 2004 more than 62% of industrial and municipal facilities discharged pollutants into US waterways that are way above the prescribed limit. Furthermore, the US Department of Defense has received exemptions from the act with the results of increased disposal of trichloroethylene, into public aquifers, a toxin which has known links to kidney cancer, autoimmune disease and impaired neurological functions.


18. Mexico’s rigged election

With Felipe Caulderón of the conservative PAN party the ‘desired’ candidate in Mexico’s 2006 presidential elections, overwhelming evidence of a fraudulent and a ‘rigged’ campaign have come to light. Although it is illegal for the US to influence elections in other countries, companies such as Wal-Mart and Halliburton have been financing Mexican TV ad campaigns to denigrate the more liberal opposition candidate, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador who wanted to ensure that the country’s oil industry remained in national hands. Although good for Mexico, such a move would violate the Security and Prosperity of North American (ASPAN) accord signed in 2005 by former president Vicente Fox, the US and Canada in establishing a North American Union. In order for this multi-lateral agreement to move forward without public opposition, pro-ASPAN Caulderón’s ascendancy to power is viewed as essential in an election that was riddled with arithmetical errors in his favour.


19. South American backlash to the neo-con agenda

The US ‘free trade’ model with its vanguards, the IMF and World Bank, are being increasingly shunned by South American countries. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela have all managed, thanks to profits from foreign sales of their natural resources, to pay off all of their IMF debts contrary to that organisation’s predictions. The leaders of each country have vowed not to further engage in any relationship with the IMF, break ties with the US and their privatisation plans for each country’s natural resources and instead use the profits from these publicly-owned assets for the benefit of each respective country and its people.


20. Definitions of ‘Terrorism’ broadened to include animal rights activists

In a bill that was passed with only 6 out of 435 congresspersons present, The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) has broadened the definition of terrorist acts to those who protest the abuse of animal rights. Dozens of organisations have registered their protest against the bill and its rather ‘vague wording’ saying that it violates First Amendment rights, including demonstrations, leafleting and undercover investigations.