Wednesday, January 26, 2022

 

Monday, June 27, 2011

Citizens gain a legal weapon
in fight to thwart Big Brother

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted individual citizens the right to contend in federal court questions of excessive federal power.

The case hinges on the prosecution of a woman for the use of chemicals to attack her husband's lover. The prosecution was based on a federal law implementing the chemical weapons treaty, with the petitioner arguing that that law violated the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states or the people powers not spelled out as belonging to the federal government.
Bond v. United States

The justices did not rule on whether the plaintiff's argument had merit, but only on the right of a citizen to use the federal courts to invoke rights under the Tenth Amendment. The decision would seem to imply that a citizen may also invoke Ninth Amendment protections, the two amendments being closely intertwined.

The amendments read:

9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10
. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

There are already plans under way to use this standing to challenge the compulsory purchase of health insurance under the new federal health care law.

The ruling also opens the door to challenges of  the numerous expansions of federal power in recent years, including various Patriot Act provisions, the Treasury's power to block bank accounts of organizations deemed -- based on speech -- terrorist, and the use of "secret law." or Justice Department interpretations of public laws that it conceals from the public.




Thursday, June 23, 2011

E. coli mystery raises
specter of terrorism

Scientists unraveling the deadly outbreak of a very rare strain of E. coli are still puzzled at how the disease hopped from place to place, the New York Times reports today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/research/23ecoli.html

The disease was traced to contaminated bean sprouts at a German farm, after patrons of a restaurant became ill. But, according to the Times, experts are asking "why was the German outbreak so widespread, and where did the bacteria go between outbreaks?"

British security authorities were immediately suspicious and warned that al Qaeda was capable of conducting food poisoning attacks, according to the Sunday Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8557373/Food-chain-at-risk-of-being-poisoned-by-terrorist-groups.html

Gina Kolata wrote in the Times that the usual culprit in deadly E. coli outbreaks is O157:H7, which lives in livestock and has been troubling the world since the 17th century. However, the German pathogen E. coli O104:H4 is not known to infect livestock. One E. coli expert, Dr. Helge Karch, "thinks it smoldered in human populations, causing mild illness in most and occasionally causing severe disease."

"Then, somehow it was passed to the bean sprouts by someone who harbored the bacteria," Kolata wrote.

The 0104:H4 outbreak was traced to the Kartoffelkeller pub in Lubeck, Germany, which is home to the University of Lubeck, a center of medical and biological research.

A number of al Qaeda terrorists have shown technical expertise, though it is not known whether any could have obtained access to bio-engineered strains in research laboratories.

Terrorists poisoning food supplies in different locations would account for the hopscotch nature of the outbreak. However, authorities -- perhaps fearful of public panic -- have not identified terrorism as a likely cause and no terrorist claims of responsibility have been reported.

Organic manure a suspect

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-ecoli-beansprouts-idUSTRE7552N720110606

Senate's 'socialism' vote
likely to chill recovery

The Senate's unanimous vote to confirm Leon Panetta as defense secretary -- even after his history of communist networking became known -- sends a chilling message to Main Street and Wall Street.

With confidence already wavering, American business is likely to take a very dim view of the sudden appearance of control on behalf of a man who maintained a close friendship and political alliance with Hugh De Lacy and his wife, people Panetta should have known had strong communist backgrounds.

The fact that the Senate and the mainstream press could unite to stonewall a fact deemed unmentionable by the extremist left shows that "the system" is dysfunctional and that the "dirty rotten capitalists" can go hang when it comes to ultra-leftist -- in fact, communist -- honor.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Press omits explanation
of Senate's Panetta ploy

Why was zero opposition permitted to the confirmation of Leon Panetta as defense secretary? The Republican leadership clearly decided to close ranks and brook no opposition from the Tea Party wing.

Ordinarily, the GOP wants to register some opposition to President Obama's nominees, and has in fact thwarted quite a few of his choices.

It may be that lawmakers did not want to offend one of their own, Panetta having been a Democratic congressman from California who went on to serve as President Clinton's chief of staff. Yet ordinarily, the status of former lawmaker is insufficient to overcome partisan politicking.

This leaves the question of why the Senate leadership promoted such bipartisan unanimity. The probable answer is that this was a maneuver to protect lawmakers voting in favor of Panetta from "McCarthyism." With everyone voting in his favor, charges of promoting a man with communist networking credentials would be diluted.

Yet, this apparent motive was censored by media reporting the vote, quite apparently in order to black out all mention of communist connections.

Again, a unified front is erected against "McCarthyism" that shields the public from awareness of communist political networking in America.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Schizophrenic coverage of communism
Though the New York Times' coverage of communist activism in America is poor, the newspaper has been doing a good job covering communist cruelties in China.

The newspaper's spotlight again demonstrates
What's wrong with communism
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/world/asia/18china.html?smid=tw-nytimesglobal&seid=auto
in the brutal treatment of a committed lawyer and his wife and child

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Times, mum on Panetta's red links,
inferentially excuses CIA silence

As an uproar over CIA chief Leon Panetta's pro-Soviet friends was exploding, the New York Times discovered another CIA controversy that conveys the point that the CIA is forbidden to "spy on Americans."

The Times did not mention conservative disclosure of Panetta's sympathies for pro-Soviet activists.

Washington insiders wonder whether the Times' focus on the legal prohibition of domestic surveillance of Americans will suffice to deflect questions about why the CIA didn't strenuously object to Panetta's appointment as agency chief.

Related questions are why the FBI didn't flag Panetta's appointment following a background check or why the White House ignored the issue.
 
In recent decades, disclosures of communist connections have been routinely passed over in silence by mainstream media and lawmakers of both parties. However, the rise of the Tea Party wing of the GOP and the increasing use of alternative internet news sources may alter standard political calculations.


Today's Times story tells of a Bush White House attempt to use the CIA to get derogatory information on Juan Cole, a professor whose anti-war writings were considered annoying. A retired CIA officer was quoted as saying the CIA was forbidden to spy on Americans.

However, Cole's writings on the 9/11 attacks indicate that he, whether as a witting agent or a dupe, has been running interference for the 9/11 conspirators. Much of the discredited 9/11 commission report came from unverifiable CIA claims about what captives purportedly said.

Cole, anxious to denounce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also denounced anyone who disagreed with the official U.S. narrative about the events of 9/11. "Ahmadinejad’s recent speech to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry reiterates this ‘truther’ crackpot conspiracy theory about 9/11," Cole wrote in one post.

The John Birch Society, which is considered by some as "far right," is leading a drive to block Panetta's nomination as defense secretary, based on what it sees as a record of pro-Soviet sympathies.
http://www.jbs.org/component/content/article/1009-commentary/6772-stop-the-confirmation-of-leon-panetta-for-secretary-of-defense


The following information was largely provided by Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group.
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/who-checked-out-leon-panetta/


Panetta, as a Calfornia congressman representing Santa Cruz, inserted a tribute in the April 11, 1984, Congressional Record to one of his constituents, Lucy Haessler, calling her a “woman of peace” for her work in the pro-Soviet Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Panetta said that Haessler participated in “peace conferences” sponsored by the Women’s International Democratic Federation “in France, the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany." At the time, Poland and East Germany were members of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact.

Panetta’s praise for Haessler got the attention at the time of Human Events, a national conservative weekly, which noted that the women's federation “appears to take the Soviet line on virtually every issue that comes up, ranging from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and yellow rain [communist chemical warfare] to the issue of new U.S. missiles in Europe."

Panetta told Human Events that he was unaware of the extremist nature of the women's league and other groups, countering: “Let me tell you something. I don’t know if you know about Santa Cruz, but Santa Cruz is a center for people who’ve been real activists in all kinds of organizations. If I started doing those kinds of checks on people who help out…I’d never stop. It’s just that kind of place.”

Yet Panetta's tribute to Hugh De Lacy, a man who had refused to tell Congress whether he was a communist, was inserted into the Congressional Record in 1983. Panetta, in fact, applauded De Lacy for standing up to "McCarthyism."

The series of “Dear Hugh” and “Dear Leon” letters discovered by conservative journalist Trevor Loudon in the Hugh De Lacy papers at the University of Washington shows that Panetta had had a working and cordial relationship with him. In fact, Panetta provided De Lacy, identified as a key contact of a communist spy ring, with sensitive documents.

De Lacy was never prosecuted for espionage. His communism, however, was attested by John Abt, longtime general counsel of the Communist Party, in his memoirs.

"Judging from the tone of some of the letters," AIM charges, "De Lacy appears to be telling Panetta what to say and do as a sitting member of Congress.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

CIA chief linked to reds
by conservative journos

Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA who has been tapped as the next defense secretary, was on friendly terms with a fellow West Coast progressive who balked at telling Congress whether he was or had been a communist.

However, the West Coast progressive, Hugh De Lacy, was identified by John Abt, longtime Communist Party counsel, as a fellow communist, according to material provided by Accuracy in Media, a conservative organization.

De Lacy however was not prosecuted over charges that he had consorted with Soviet spies.

After De Lacy's death in 1983, Panetta, then of Carmel Valley, Calif., entered a tribute to De Lacy and his wife, Dorothy, into the Congressional Record. It read in part: "The causes to which they have dedicated their lives--peace, jobs, an end to race and sex discrimination, a halt to the costly and dangerous arms race--are causes for which we are still working today."

A Los Angeles Times obituary mentions De Vry's tussle over communism, but a Wikipedia entry simply says he served in Congress, without mentioning the communism controversy.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/panettagate-a-real-scandal-involving-national-security/

www.usasurvival.org/docs/pannetta.pdf

Journalist Wes Vernon relates that the "late columnist Robert Novak told me that he had learned shortly after arriving in Washington in the fifties that the press corps had imposed a 'self-censorship' in ignoring certain stories — that among these were congressional investigations of Communist influence in our society" and that "this de facto 'cartel' turned a blind eye to 'a lot' that was 'still' going on" as of 2007.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/vernon/110613

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Strange pathogen emerged
near medical research center
The source of a deadly E. coli outbreak remains a mystery, helping fuel suspicion that the pathogen escaped from a research laboratory at a medical institute near where the outbreak first occurred.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the strain of the E. coli bacteria was "very rareand had never been seein an outbreak form before.

"It has been seein sporadic caseand is very rare," according to Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman.

The 0104:H4 outbreak was traced to the Kartoffelkeller pub in Lubeck, Germany, which is home to the University of Lubeck, a center of medical and biological research.

Despite extensive efforts to track the bacteria, health authorities were unable to identify the source. No evidence has substantiated initial suspicions of contaminated cucumbers or sprouts.

There is no indication as to whether any of the kitchen staff of the Kartoffelkeller pub might have been exposed to an errant research strain.

The outbreak is the latest example of the emergence of a new form of an old disease now resistant to antibiotics and the antibodies of the human immune system. It appears that 0104:H4 picked up resistance to a whole range of antibiotics. The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria is a persistent problem, with hospitals becoming increasingly prone to such contamination.

Little is publicly known about how 0104:H4 acquired the set of genes necessary for such resistance. The usual suspect is overuse of antibiotics, which brings about what scientists call "selective pressure" to breed the occasional mutants resistant to particular drugs.

On occasion, however, experimental pathogens escape from a laboratory and cause deadly outbreaks. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a routine research tool of molecular biologists. E. coli is perhaps the most studied of all the types of bacteria, because of its availability and genetic properties. E. coli strains occur naturally in the human gastrointestinal system and are generally benign, as are most research strains used by scientists. However, scientists find it relatively easy to breed drug-resistant pathogens for either research or biowar purposes (though bioweapons require further processing).

Research into E. coli and other pathogens has burgeoned in recent years because of the explosion of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Numerous virology links
http://www.virology.net/garryfavweb12.html

Emerging Infectious Diseases (CDC journal)
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/

Naming viruses
http://www.ictvdb.org/

New math in HIV fight (WSJ)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576397491582757396.html

Biotech or bioterror: a global dilemma
http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html  

Biotech, bioterror, emergent disease
http://www.zkea.com/ 

No comments:

Post a Comment