Wednesday, May 26, 2010

No Latinos

Roadway sign hackers seem to be changing their focus.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Road-Rage-Hackers-Say-No-Latinos-on-Highway-Sign-94810499.html

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Barry using a stolen SS #

Hey, this one was right next to the last U-tube video on the U-tube site & it is a good one too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap-9VwlwfoE&feature=related

Fwd: Obama

Barry not legal citizen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCbVxkN9k5Y&feature=related

What's Really Wrong with the Health Care Industry

"... there are four major causes of rising prices in the healthcare market, and in every case government intervention has either directly cause or greatly exacerbated the problem."

What's Really Wrong with the Health Care Industry
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
by Vijay Boyapati

On May 3, 2010, I gave a talk to a class of students studying public health policy at the University of Washington. I began the talk by asking the students how many of them believed that the current healthcare system in America was flawed; everyone in the class raised their hand. I then asked how many of them believed that the recently passed healthcare legislation, supported by President Obama, was a step in the right direction in reforming America's healthcare system. Once again, everyone raised their hand.

While I agreed with the students on the first point, I disagreed that the recently passed legislation was a step in the right direction. My aim in giving the talk was to present the students with a consistent, libertarian, free-market perspective on healthcare reform, covering both the morality and the economics of why it would be desirable to eliminate government interference in the market.

The Morality of Healthcare Reform

One of the most important factors animating the libertarian rejection of public policy in general is the recognition that any state action must ultimately resort to the use or threat of aggression. As Ludwig von Mises observed,

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.[1]

Libertarians who value justice and recognize that the use of aggression cannot be logically justified must reject all state action in principle this includes the use of aggression in implementing healthcare policy.[2]

The Economics of Healthcare Reform

A common argument advanced in support of greater government intervention in the American healthcare market is that a large and growing fraction of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on healthcare, while the results, such as average life expectancy, do not compare favorably to the Western nations that have adopted some form of universal healthcare. This argument is spurious for two reasons:

A growing fraction of GDP spent on healthcare is not a problem per se. In the early half of the 20th century, the fraction of GDP spent on healthcare grew significantly as new treatments, medical technology and drugs became available. Growth in spending of this nature is desirable if it satisfies consumer preferences.
Attributing national-health results to the healthcare system adopted by different countries confuses correlation with causation and ignores the many salient variables that are causal factors affecting aggregate statistics (such as average life expectancy). Factors that are likely to be at least as important as the healthcare system include the dietary and exercise preferences of a population.

Another argument commonly used in healthcare-policy debates is that there are almost 46 million people who have no health insurance at all.[3] Again, this is not a problem in and of itself. According to the National Health Interview Survey, 40 percent of those uninsured are less than 35 years old, while approximately 20 percent earn over $75,000 a year.[4] In other words, a large fraction of those who are uninsured can afford insurance but choose not to buy it or are healthy enough that they don't really need it (beyond, perhaps, catastrophic coverage).

The real problem with the American healthcare system is that prices are continually rising, greatly outpacing the rate of inflation, making healthcare unaffordable to an ever-increasing fraction of the population particularly those without insurance.

If prices in the healthcare market were falling, as they are in other markets such as computers and electronics, the large number of uninsured would be of little concern. Treatments, drugs, and medical technology would become more affordable over time, allowing patients to pay directly for them. Identifying the cause of rising healthcare costs should be the first priority for anyone who seeks solutions to America's broken healthcare system.

As I explained to the students in the public-healthcare-policy class, there are four major causes of rising prices in the healthcare market, and in every case government intervention has either directly caused or greatly exacerbated the problem.

Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Perhaps the most important cause of rising healthcare prices in America is the employer-provided health-insurance system. The very existence of the system is itself a very strange occurrence and a big hint that government intervention played a key role in its creation. After all, employers do not pay for food or gasoline; why do they pay for healthcare?

Employer-provided health insurance has its origin in a tax policy passed in 1943, which made insurance provided by employers tax free. At the time the United States was engaged in World War II and had enacted wage and price controls,[5] preventing employers from competing for scarce labor using the normal mechanism of offering a higher salary. Instead, businesses used the availability of newly tax-subsidized healthcare as a means of differentiating themselves.

The tax advantages were made even more attractive and fully codified in the 1954 Internal Revenue Code. Over the next few decades, the government's subsidization of employer-provided health insurance lead to the dominance of that model of healthcare delivery, as the following data from the 1965 Sourcebook of Health Insurance Data makes clear.

The number of people with employer-provided health insurance

The most important economic consequence of the existence of the employer-provided health insurance is that consumers are much less likely to discriminate on cost. Beyond the deductible, the employer pays the cost of medical procedures through an insurance company. As anyone who has gone on a business trip knows, if the company is paying, then the employee is likely to purchase a more expensive ticket and accommodation. Where an economy ticket may have sufficed for a personal budget, a business-class ticket becomes far more attractive.

Not only are consumers less likely to discriminate on cost, but providers of healthcare services have greater incentive to provide medical treatments that are only marginally more effective at much higher cost. This is the opposite of how the price mechanism works in a free market, where consumers (who are paying out of their own pocket) search for the cheapest prices and providers work hard to provide services that are equally efficacious but less costly.

While employer-provided health insurance undermined price sensitivity among consumers, it did not completely destroy it. Businesses, being profit-maximizing organizations, have an incentive to push back when costs increase. However, because of privacy concerns, businesses are less able to push back against rising healthcare than they are for plane tickets. An employer is less likely to pry into the cost effectiveness of a particular surgical procedure undertaken by an employee than they would be to pry into the purchase of a substantially more expensive first-class plane ticket.

In 1965, Medicare was passed as part of the Social Security Act, essentially supplying employer-provided health insurance to all citizens above the age of 65. However, the "employer" in this case was the US government, which does not have the same economic incentives as a business, but rather has political incentives. Elected officials have a strong incentive to promise their elderly constituents an expansion in the range of treatments covered by Medicare, as well as to lower the deductible that Medicare consumers pay out of their own pocket. Both these factors further undermine a consumer's desire to discriminate on cost when seeking medical treatments.

In 1960, the government covered 21 percent of total medical expenditures with 55 percent coming out of consumer pockets. In 2000, 43 percent were covered by the government with 17 percent coming out of pocket. Unsurprisingly, the passing of Medicare in 1965 almost immediately lead to a precipitous rise in US healthcare spending as a fraction of GDP.

While price sensitivity has widely been undermined in the American healthcare system, there remain some exceptions to the rule, where the normal market mechanism remains intact. I gave two examples to the students of how price sensitivity is working in healthcare today in order to illustrate how it would work in a free market.

The first example was the LASIK corrective-vision procedure, which has become very popular over the last decade. LASIK is an elective procedure that is not covered by standard insurance, and consumers must pay directly for the service which means that they are much more likely to discriminate between providers both on cost and reported quality of the surgeon. With these incentives in place, the LASIK procedure has been reported to have fallen in cost by over 30 percent during the last decade.[6]

Even more importantly, the quality of the procedure has improved dramatically in that period as providers competed to deliver the most efficacious treatment. According to Erik Gross, an expert in the field of LASIK technology,

Early procedures were not LASIK at all, but uncomfortable surface ablations with no astigmatism correction. Subsequent generations of the procedure increased the treatable range, added correction for astigmatism, correction for hyperopia, the lasikflap to increase stability and comfort, accuracy and safety features, and finally moved to true custom wavefront analysis and correction.[7]

The second example I gave the students was from a personal experience, when I wanted to have a small epidermoid cyst removed from my back. The first practice I visited was a dermatologist's office, which deals primarily with insured customers and can afford to charge exorbitant rates. I explained to the assistant on my first consulting visit that I didn't have health insurance I choose not to and asked how much the procedure would cost if I paid cash. She quoted me $700 for a riskless procedure that takes about 15 to 20 minutes to perform, and would not in this instance be performed by the dermatologist, but by the assistant herself. As I explained to the students in the public-health-policy class, the fact that there are very basic procedures that cost the equivalent of $2,100 an hour is a glaring sign that the market's normal price mechanism has been broken.

On the recommendation of a friend, I decided to visit another medical practice, Country Doctor, which deals mostly with lower-income patients who do not have health insurance. Because its customers pay out of pocket, Country Doctor has a much stronger incentive to charge prices that its customers are willing to pay up front. When I had the procedure to remove the cyst done at Country Doctor, it was performed by an actual doctor, and it cost less than $50.

The moral of the story is that price sensitivity is a crucial factor in driving prices down over time. Government policy has undermined price sensitivity, and this has been a very important cause in the rising costs of the American healthcare system.

Licensure

Licensure is the practice of restricting entry into a market by forcing practitioners and providers to seek permission before doing so. A common fallacy is that medical licensure protects consumers yet having a license is no assurance of the ability of a person to practice medicine. Some who have received their license decades ago may no longer be fit to practice, demonstrated either by incompetence or lack of continued education.

From its inception, the practice of licensure has been motivated primarily by the control of supply by organized medicine in particular, the American Medical Association (AMA) to allow the increase of wages for members of the licensed group. In the early 20th century, for instance, a physician named J.N. McCormack spent several years traveling the United States on behalf of the American Medical Association in an attempt to convince doctors of "The Danger to the Public from an Unorganized and Underpaid Medical Profession."[8]

The restriction of supply and the attendant rise in prices faced by consumers is not the only detrimental factor that can be attributed to the actions of the AMA. As Milton Friedman pointed out,

It is clear that licensure is the key to the medical profession's ability to restrict the number of physicians who practice medicine. It is also the key to its ability to restrict technological and organizational changes in the way medicine is conducted.[9]

In other words, the AMA has sought not only to limit supply, but also to regulate who can practice various aspects of medicine. For instance, many medical procedures and decisions about prescriptions could be handled by nurses or medical technicians rather than doctors, whose labor is more expensive. Licensure limits the extent to which market forces that is, forces that lead to the cheapest and most effective results for consumers may determine the most efficient use of doctors, nurses, and technicians.

A recent example of the AMA's use of licensure was their attempt ostensibly for "patient safety," to regulate Walmart's creation of low-cost retail clinics by preventing the clinics from operating using only nurse practioners.[10] The practioners would have only been providing very basic medical services, such as administering needles and prescribing drugs, which Van Ruth et al. conclude carries no extra risk to patients.[11]

It is precisely the sort of clinics operated by Walmart that allow consumers and especially the poorest in society access to basic, affordable healthcare. By regulating these clinics and reducing the supply of doctors and providers, the AMA has caused higher prices for American consumers of healthcare.

The Obesity Epidemic

In terms of its cost, obesity is perhaps the largest medical problem in America. Finklestein et al. estimate that medical expenditures for treatment of patients who are either overweight or obese accounted for almost 10 percent of all medical expenditures in 1998, at a cost of 92 billion dollars (in 2002 inflation-adjusted dollars).[12] They also estimate that almost half of all Americans are either overweight or obese, with the numbers in each category growing by 70 percent and 12 percent, respectively, during the decade prior to 2003. Sturm estimates that obese adults incur annual medical expenditures that are 36 percent higher than those of normal weight incur.[13]

One might conclude from these statistics that obesity in America is a clear example of a failure of the free market that undirected consumers, without the protection of a benevolent government agency, have taken to consuming increasingly high-calorie and unhealthy foods, leading to America's obesity epidemic. However, this specious (yet popular) narrative is contrary to the facts and disregards the crucial role government policy has played in encouraging the production of unhealthy foods supplied to American consumers.

Recent research has uncovered the baneful influence that corn-based sweeteners have had on America's obesity epidemic. It is estimated that Americans consume 73 pounds of corn-derived sweetener per person per year,[14] and as Michael Pollan points out, the growth of corn-based sweeteners is a direct result of the government's farm policy, which subsidizes corn production.[15] A basic consequence of economic law is that when something is subsidized, more of it will be produced. Pollan writes,

Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.

Pollan also correctly notes that the calories from high-fructose corn syrup are unhealthier than those from natural sweeteners such as sugar. Research by Powell et al. concludes that "[r]ats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same."[16] Avena, commenting on their study, said that "[o]ur findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic."

The obesity epidemic in America has been exacerbated by the abundance and relative cheapness of high-fructose corn syrup. The growth of calories produced, and in particular the abundance of unhealthy calories, is not an outcome of the free market but rather the direct if perhaps unintended consequence of government farm policy. As Pollan observes,

Since 1977 an American's average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent…. This was, of course, the same decade that America embraced a cheap-food farm policy…. Since the Nixon administration, farmers in the United States have managed to produce 500 additional calories per person every day.[17]

Only by removing the subsidies available to corn producers, and allowing local and organic farmers to compete on an even playing field, will healthier calories become more economically attractive to consumers.

Intellectual Property

A patent is a government-granted monopoly on production. Holders of pharmaceutical patents are free of the strictures of competition when deciding the price at which to sell the drugs they produce. In practice this means that drug companies are able to charge significantly higher prices than they could in a market free of government intervention. Kesselheim et al. estimate that for three drugs alone (amoxicillin, metformin, and omeprazole), the delayed availability of generic alternatives cost Medicaid 1.5 billion dollars between 2000 and 2004.[18]

The following chart illustrates the effect of generic competition on the price of a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, between 2000 and 2001.[19]

Before the availability of a generic competitor the brand cocktail cost over $10,000. Once generic competition was introduced, the price rapidly dropped to $712. The dramatic difference in cost hardly covers the human cost of government-granted monopolies on drug production namely, the tens of thousands infected with HIV who died for want of affordable treatment.

One common myth in the economics profession is that intellectual-property rights are necessary to foster innovation in the production of ideas. Recent work by Boldrin and Levine[20] and Stephan Kinsella[21] has exploded the fallacies underpinning this widely believed economic shibboleth.

In particular, Boldrin and Levine devote a chapter of their book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, to the pharmaceutical industry. They argue that the actual cost of bringing drugs to market is substantially lower than the estimates produced by the pharmaceutical industry a group with a vested interest in lobbying for strong patent protections. They also provide evidence that in many instances the existence of patents hinders research in drug production.

Patents are not a natural outcome of the free market but are government-granted monopolies on production. Contrary to conventional economic wisdom, patents are not an unequivocal benefit in fostering the development of ideas. The existence of patents is, on the contrary, a clear contributor to the high cost of medical treatments available to American consumers.

Conclusion

In giving the talk to the class of public-health students, my aim was to disabuse them of the widely held belief that America's healthcare system is an example of a free-market failure and that a free market in healthcare compares poorly to that of government-provided, universal care. In fact, the US healthcare system has endured substantial government intervention albeit intervention of a different variety than that of Europe or Canada. And the areas in which the government has intervened in the market have seen substantial increases to costs for consumers.

None of the causes of higher prices identified in this essay are adequately addressed by the recently passed healthcare legislation. Indeed, the problem of high costs will be further exacerbated by extending insurance to cover more people and more procedures while also reducing deductibles.

The only solution to increasing costs is to eliminate government interference in the market and to allow the price mechanism to work as it should. Consumers who pay out of their own pocket will search for the cheapest solutions to suit their needs, while providers of healthcare will compete, through constant innovation, to drive prices down and discover the most efficacious treatments.[22]

Vijay Boyapati is a former Google engineer. In 2007 he started Operation Live Free or Die, a grassroots organization to help Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. Since 2009 he has devoted himself to studying Austrian Economics. Send him mail. See Vijay Boyapati's article archives.

Notes

[1] Ludwig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), p. 15.

[2] For a discussion of the logical justification of libertarian morality, see Hans-Herman Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), ch. 13.

[3] Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008," p. 27.

[4] For a summary of the National Health Institute Survey, see here .

[5] "Compensation from World War II through the Great Society," Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[6] "Lasik Price and Quality Concerns Raised to Congress."

[7] This paragraph comes from my personal correspondence with Erik Gross, formerly an engineer with Visx, AMO, and Abott labs, who worked on many of the improvements to LASIK mentioned.

[8] Illinois Medical Journal , vol. 9 (Springfield: The Illinois State Medical Society, 1906), pp. 260–2.

[9] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 154.

[10] Meg Marco, "American Medical Assocaition Goes After Walmart-Style Retail Clinics," The Consumerist.

[11] L.M. Van Ruth, P. Mistiaen, and A.L. Francke, "Effects Of Nurse Prescribing Of Medication: A Systematic Review," The Internet Journal of Healthcare Administration, vol. 5 no. 2 (2008).

[12] Eric A. Finkelstein, Ian C. Fiebelkorn, Guijing Wang, "National Medical Spending Attributable to Overweight and Obesity: How Much, And Who's Paying?," Health Affairs (2003).

[13] R. Sturm, "The Effects of Obesity, Smoking, and Drinking on Medical Problems and Costs," Health Affairs (March/April 2002): p. 245–53.

[14] "Sugarcane Profile," Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.

[15] Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 108.

[16] M.E. Bocarsly, E.S. Powell, N.M. Avena, and B.G. Hoebel, "High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristics of obesity in rats: Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels," Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior (2010).

[17] Omnivore's Dilemma, pp. 102–3

[18] Aaron S. Kesselheim, Michael A. Fischer, and Jerry Avorn, "Extensions Of Intellectual Property Rights And Delayed Adoption Of Generic Drugs: Effects On Medicaid Spending," Health Affairs 25 no. 6 (2006): 1637–47.

[19] "AIDS, Drug Prices, and Generic Drugs," AVERT.

[20] Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

[21] N. Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008).

[22] I would like to thank my friend Amy Iacopi for her original invitation to speak to the public-health-policy class, and Professor Doug Conrad and his students for being so welcoming and open to considering a perspective on healthcare different from their own. I was pleased, and a little surprised, that after giving the talk most of the questions the students had focused on the morality of a free market (since I had only devoted a small portion of the talk to issue of morality and spent most of it on the economics) and how a purely voluntary society might function in practice. I would also like to thank my friend Jon Perlow, whose brilliant essay, "Government, Free Markets, and Healthcare," was the original motivation for my talk.

Read more: What's Really Wrong with the Health Care Industry - Vijay Boyapati - Mises Daily http://mises.org/daily/4434#ixzz0p3LwMS5o

India is Sinking into Earth's Mantle

Fun fact for you: scientists don't really know how the Himalayas formed. I mean yeah, they realize that the India tectonic plate is slamming into the Eurasia plate and has been for about 50 million years, but the mystery is why the mountain range is still growing. Usually when two continents collide it's like a car wreck -- there may be a bunch of mangled crust in the middle (mountains), but both vehicles stop moving.

Turns out, India appears to be sinking into the mantle. A new study based on computer models of the two plates shows that the formation and continued growth of the world's highest mountain range makes the most sense if a dense piece of India is down in the mantle, dragging the rest of the continent down with it.

That may not sound so weird but continents are buoyant; they're supposed to float, not sink. All the subduction you hear about all over the world is dense ocean crust sinking underneath continents. Except in the Himalayas. It's as though two cars collided, and one started to sink into the pavement.

This video gives you a rough outline of the old idea of how the Himalayas form. India's bending here, but it doesn't start heading it into the mantle on its own:

Notice how India seems to float magically into Eurasia, and then just keeping going. But why? Why would a continent willingly flatten itself against another continent? Doesn't make sense. That's the big problem with the old idea.

Now, it's by no means certain that the researchers in the new study -- led by Fabio Capitanio of Monash University in Australia -- have nailed this thing. It's one of the most persistent mysteries about plate tectonics on the planet. But if Capitanio and his team are wrong, it would mean we still don't understand how Earth's greatest mountain range got there, or why it's getting taller to this day.

Source: Nature Geoscience (sub required for full article)

http://news.discovery.com/earth/india-is-sinking-into-earths-mantle.html

**Earth's Mantle in Overdrive Under Alaska *

Earth's Mantle in Overdrive Under Alaska

The mantle under Alaska is moving 20 to 30 times faster than the crust -- reversing the usual order of plate tectonics.

A new 3-D model shows the mantle flowing "screaming fast" around the Alaska subduction zone.
The speed comes from the descending slab of crust swirling the mantle.
Energy used to mix the mantle means less power available to make mega-quakes.

enlarge

A computer generated model shows Alaskan mantle rock swirling around the plunging slab of crust (in gray) like water around a paddle dipped in a stream. Click to enlarge this image.
Margarete Jadamec

A new 3-D model of the mega-quake and tsunami-launching subduction zone in Alaska has uncovered a big surprise: The Earth's mantle there is moving a whopping 20 to 30 times faster than the crust.

So instead of being dragged along for the ride as a slab of crust is pushed under another, the solid rock mantle rock is swirling around the plunging slab like water around a paddle dipped in a stream.

What the models predict are flows up to 90 centimeters per year around the descending slab of crust, said geologist Magali Billen of the University of California at Davis. Billen co-authored a report on the new model with former graduate student and lead author Margarete Jadamec in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"On plate tectonics timescales that's screaming fast," said Billen.

More typical plate speeds range from one to 10 centimeters per year.

WATCH VIDEO: Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, oh my! See how scientists are studying natural disasters.

Related Links:

The model, developed by Jadamec, includes 100 million data points and takes 48 hours to run on a supercomputer with 400 processors.

It incorporates the latest in genuine evidence from the Alaska subduction zone. This includes something called seismic anisotropy, which exploits special seismic properties of the mineral olivine in the mantle to detect directions rocks are flowing in the mantle.

Because the mantle rocks are under great pressure, they flow like Silly Putty while remaining solid.

Other seismic pieces of the subduction computational puzzle include the shape of the slab that's now being pushed into the mantle and the viscosity of the mantle, explained Billen. Put the flow direction, viscosity and shape of the slab together with a lot of computer power and you can start to work out the details of what's going on.

"As long as we can put (into the computational model) the right driving force, that's how fast the flow is," Billen explained.

The model also allows researchers to turn up the speed and see how the subduction process might proceed.

"It takes millions of years for the slab (of subducted plate) to descend," said geophysicist Geoff Abers of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. "These kinds of models allow the slabs to flap around, which is something you could not do and cannot see."

The swirling of the mantle around the sinking slab could have implications for the super powerful megathrust quakes and tsunamis that the subduction zone is capable of generating, said Billen.

Instead of all the force of the colliding plates being bound up in their collision and vented by large quakes, some energy is being transferred into stirring up the mantle.

"This is a good thing," said Billen.

The model could also help to figure out if a chunk of crust is about to fall off into the mantle and stop the subduction dead in its tracks. This, in turn, could help to explain why subduction zones start and then stop in different places said Billen.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/earth-mentle-crust-alaska.html

Fwd: What is a Natural Born Citizen?

This is good. spend a couple of minutes and listen to it!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEnaAZrYqQI&feature=related

***Did the U.S. Army help spread Morgellons and other diseases?

Did the U.S. Army help spread Morgellons and other diseases?
by Hank P. Albarelli Jr.*, Zoe Martell*

Last week's Voltaire Network article concerning the mysterious spread of a fungus disease in the Northwest United States provoked a number of readers to contact Mr. H. P. Albarelli Jr., the author of both these articles, with new information concerning strange diseases and the U.S. Army's covert biological warfare activities which involve the use of chemical and biological weapons against human beings. There is a history of U.S. secret human experimentation. In this case, it is unsuspecting U.S. citizens that are the victims.

I went to put some of the medicated salve on the lesions on my face and when I put the salve near them the filaments beneath my skin moved into a group and then moved away from the area I was going to treat. I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to think. I screamed for my husband to come … the damn things beneath my skin were alive; they moved to avoid treatment.
Morgellons victim, Vermont, May 2010.

One reader, former military scientist, Dr. Hanley Watson, revealed that the Army, "from 1950 to at least mid-1976" conducted "numerous experiments simulating biological or germ warfare attacks in dozens of locations across the country." Said Watson, "Previously these experiments were downplayed by the Pentagon as 'harmless tests' occurring in about 8 areas in the US and employing benign substances, but this couldn't be further from the truth."

Watson was referring to a 1976 Pentagon press conference during which an Army spokesman revealed that researchers with the Army's Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal, both in Maryland, conducted "simulated germ warfare attacks, using nondisease [sic] causing biological substances in 8 areas of the US." Among these experiments were a 1950 operation off the coast of San Francisco; a 1966 biological warfare experiment in Manhattan in which "the vulnerability of the New York subway system was tested"; and at least three experiments conducted in Pennsylvania, Fort McClellan, Alabama, and California with "fungal substances" to "perform field evaluations to determine vulnerability to enemy biological attack."

As widely reported in the mid-1970s, the San Francisco experiment resulted in the death of at least one person. Additionally, the 1952 Alabama experiments resulted in a doubling of pneumonia cases in the surrounding areas. Nonetheless, Army officials stated, "There is nothing we have that shows any links between these tests and any outbreak of infection or any deaths."

Army officials went on in defending themselves and the experiments by stating that the substance the Army used in many of the experiments was Serratia marcescens, which they maintained is harmless. Said the Pentagon, "The substance is present throughout the environment and is considered not to cause disease." But other physicians said this claim is simply wrong. Several responsible physicians pointed out that Serratia marcescens does cause infection in humans; and is commonly found in bathrooms and public rest rooms. Doctors also state that some strains of the bacterium are resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Eventually in 1976, the Pentagon amended its position, stating: "For some individuals who lack a capability to develop immunity to most disease Serratia marcescens could conceivably act as an opportunist and produce an infection." Assumably, the Pentagon was not referring to AIDS patients, however, it is interesting to note that 1976 was about 6 years into its research on a disease that sounded remarkably like AIDS. Also, apparently the Pentagon was unaware of a 1946 Fort Detrick medical journal paper by Dr. Tom F. Paine, which detailed an Army experiment with Serratia marcescens that resulted in illness and infection in 4 subjects exposed to the bacterium delivered in aerosol form.

Explained Watson further, "The experiments conducted from the early 1950s through 1976 were many more in number than officially stated, and they were conducted in many more locations than the reported eight." Added Watson, "In the 1950s and 1960s alone there were easily about two dozen experiments conducted in the New England area." One of the larger experiments, as detailed in my book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments [1], is the strange, and allegedly coincidental, experiment at a Manchester, New Hampshire woolen mill that resulted in the anthrax-related tragic deaths of 4 mill employees. In September 1957, at the same time the outbreak took place, biochemists from Fort Detrick just happened to be on site at the mill performing tests with an anthrax vaccine. Fort Detrick researcher Dr. George G. Wright had developed the prototype vaccine being tested at the mill. Wright's vaccine is essentially the same controversial serum administered today to American troops.

Watson also cited a number of Army experiments conducted during the same time period and later with spore-borne diseases. One of these experiments was conducted in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. There the Army used a fungal substance known as aspergillus fumigatus. Watson said that this fungal substance could result in disease and severe infection in humans. In addition to the aspergillus fungus, Watson and a former Fort Detrick microbiologist said the Army, through the Special Operation Division (SO) at Fort Detrick, experimented with several other fungus substances including spore-borne C. gattii from Australia, and with a "substance very much like Morgellons disease in its effects."

This substance was referred to as "FD-CPX." Said the former Detrick scientist, who worked under project MK/NAOMI, a joint CIA-Army program for 6 years, "CPX was a problematic substance for us. We worked with it in mutated form, and a number of sub-contractors came down with the disease and that caused all sorts of additional problems. They were still working with it when I left the post. I don't know if SO ever got it right."

The Mechanicsburg experiment took place, according to Pentagon officials, "in a warehouse in the area" that "was completely closed off to others not participating in the tests." Said an Army spokesman, "The fungus was not released into the atmosphere outside the warehouse and presented no dangers to anyone unrelated to the activity."

In light of future developments in Mechanicsburg, following the experiment, this assertion is difficult to accept. Several years after the Army activities, scientists in Pennsylvania began to notice that an unusually large number of animals, including cats, dogs and horses that had become ill from the fungus infection. Reportedly, the number of animals that became ill increased for a number of years.

Dr. Watson, along with two other former Fort Detrick researchers, including the late Dr. Henry Eigelsbach, also revealed an odd experiment that took place in Pascagoula, Mississippi and produced one of the most puzzling UFO and strange entity cases on record in America. This was the incident, detailed in Albarelli's book, involving two local fishermen who claimed to have been abducted by aliens from a fishing pier in October 1973. Much overlooked in the case is that the pier was not far away from a former Fort Detrick research site, Horn Island. The barrier island was formally used from 1943 to 1945 by Army researchers, but former microbiologists with the military report that several experiments were conducted on the island, and other islands off the coast of Maryland, in the late-1960s and early1970s. Detrick microbiologists conducted intensive experiments on the islands "involving human research subjects" and a number "of natural hallucinogenics as well as advanced neuroscience techniques" aimed at the objection of producing "previously unexplored and unique psychological warfare methods." Some researchers maintain that these experiments were part of the Army's top-secret Operation Strange Man, which is said to have involved "mutated human subjects." As unbelievable as these reports seem, there have been unexplained sightings, some by law enforcement officials, of very odd humanoid creatures in several of the related locations over the years. Said one of Watson's former Detrick colleagues: "These were experiments involving human subjects that went way beyond what anyone could imagine. Some of the findings and technology was transferred to Southeast Asia during the later stages of the war there."

Besides Horn Island, the Army's Chemical Corps and Fort Detrick conducted numerous experiments at Plum Island off the coast of New York. Plum Island, originally known as Fort Terry, In the early 1950s it was under the command of the Army Chemical Corps, and then in 1954 it was nominally transferred to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the mission of its research was changed from "one which encompassed studies on various exotic animal diseases to determine both their offensive and defensive potentialities as biological warfare agents to one which pertains only to the defensive aspects of [animal diseases]," according to writer Michael Carroll, who wrote a book on Plum Island. Despite the changes made to the official record, research at Plum Island changed little in reality; diseases with the potential to be used as offensive agents continued, unhindered, and a close relationship remained in place between Plum Island and the Department of Defense.

Lyme disease is a tick-vectored spirochetal disease, which was identified in 1975 when a mysterious illness broke out among residents in Old Lyme, Connecticut. It rarely appears by itself in humans, with sufferers often testing positive for infection by several tick-borne diseases concurrently. The Plum Island animal diseases laboratory is located a mere twelve miles from the first identified cases of Lyme disease.

Research at the Plum Island facility is known to have included diseases carried by arthropods; in fact, Carroll describes in his book the historical presence of a large "tick colony" on the premises. Carroll's history of the testing done at the facility indicates that outdoor, field testing of diseases was done on and near Plum Island, and also details numerous breaches in safety procedures throughout the history of the laboratory's operation. In 1978, for example, a cattle disease called Hoof and Mouth disease escaped from the Plum Island, infecting cattle in neighboring areas.

According to declassified army documents, Fort Derick scientists also experimented widely with Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyelitis Virus (VEEV). Several documents cite that Fort Detrick assigned some its top researchers to efforts to weaponized the virus, but say nothing about the number of former Nazi biochemists who worked closely with Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal researchers, including the much overlooked German scientist, Dr. Gernot Bergold.


Gernot H. Bergold (1911–2003)

The U.S. Army's Project Paperclip [2] secretly brought Bergold to the United States after the war. In America, Dr. Bergold, who under Hitler's Third Reich headed the Nazi's Entomological Department and the Department of Insect Vectors of the Division of Virus Research, secretly worked on the VEE virus for the military at Fort Detrick, and then at a military-sponsored facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Psychologist Dr. Karen Cronick, who now works in Venezuela, reports that in the 1970s, at about the same time Bergold was conducting his work with VEE, there was an outbreak of the virus in Michigan. This outbreak has been virtually blacked out by the media and state officials.

Dr. Cronick states, "The coincidence of these events has always troubled me. A tropical disease that was researched in Michigan suddenly appeared there in the general population. There is no way the insect vector that transmits the disease could get so far north by any normal migration. Could the Michigan outbreak have been a controlled experiment? It is the perfect place to carry one out: the Great Lakes and winter are natural limits to any unrestrained expansion of infected vectors."

As reported in an earlier Voltaire Network [3] by this author, Morgellons disease, which was experimented with by Fort Detrick in the 1960s and beyond, has recently been reported as a "disease of high-level concern" in certain areas of the country, including Vermont, and Florida, Texas and California. For reasons thus far unknown, Morgellons seems to be wide spread among Vermont's small population of 600,000. Some doctors in Chittenden County, Vermont's most populated region estimate that about 300 people in the state have the disease.

According to a number of organizations dedicated to the study of Morgellons, there are about 15,000 people in the US suffering from the disease. Included in this number are many well-known names, singer Joni Mitchell, baseball player Billy Koch, and others.

Natasha Cebek, 44, who lives in Vermont with her 3 children, reported that she has had Morgellons disease for about 3 years. "I don't really know how I contracted the disease," she said in an interview this week. "I came to Vermont years ago to live in a clean, natural environment free from pollution and environmental assaults and never imagined anything like this would happen to me."

Cebek says she has been to several physicians nearly all of whom "gave me a Stepford wives-type smile. One even offered to send me to a psychotherapist. That made me quite angry; I had been healthy all my life; I had taken special care to eat properly and live a quality life and to teach my children to do the same. I didn't need psychological attention; I needed medical care; quality, expert care."

Cebek states, "There's no comfort in numbers. I've learned that well over a hundred people have sought treatment for this disease at the same facilities I've visited. That's a major outbreak in my view; that's a major public health problem, but health officials here don't speak about it publicly."


One form of Mogellons disease.

Kathleen Vanoudenallen, a registered nurse who is a close friend of Cebek's, and who has intensively studied Morgellons for years, and first diagnosed Cebek, stated this week, "I don't think there's much doubt that Morgellons looks like something that has been altered, something not natural that may have been created in a lab, something weaponized. Some former military researchers say they worked on just such a disease years ago. How it got out into the general population is anyone's guess. Nobody wants to go the record with information about the government's work with the disease."

Recounted Cebek, "When I learned that this disease could possibly be a result of covert biological warfare work performed by our government I was outraged. I wanted to scream, to smash the wall. How dare they do this to unsuspecting citizens? How dare they use people like this? What gives them the right? Who the hell do they think they are?"

http://www.voltairenet.org/article165450.html

Hank P. Albarelli Jr.

Investigative journalist and writer who lives in Florida and Vermont. Last book published : « A Terrible Mistake : The murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's secret Cold War Experiments ». Albarelli's forthcoming 2011 book from TrineDay is entitled: The Secret Order: An Exploration of the High Strangeness and Synchronicities of the JFK Assassination.

US Build-up for Possible Attack on Iran - Persian Gulf Deployment

http://www.artishok.co.il/pages/AttackOnIran08.html

Martial Law & The U.S. Post Office Secret Room:

Martial Law & The U.S. Post Office Secret Room
As the "Hour of Martial Law" is nearly upon us, this chapter answers important questions for dealing with martial law: Is there a Secret Room in the government post offices? What role do the Freemasons undertake in the U. S. Post Office. Is the Post Office a tool of the globalists for destroying nationalism What are the martial law plans for your post office?
ATTACHED

Morning Bell: A Crisis of Competence in the Gulf

"Let's be clear: Every day that this oil sits is one more day that more of our marsh dies," Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA) said Monday. "We've been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late for the oil hitting our coast," he continued. Specifically, Jindal is frustrated by the failure of the federal government to produce the 8 million feet of oil-blocking booms it asked for back on May 2nd and 3rd. So far Louisiana has only received 815,000 feet of boom, and even then the federal government has failed to place it in the correct locations.

Worse, Obama administration regulators continue to deny Louisiana officials permission to build up barrier islands between the coast's marshes and the gulf. Federal regulators have so far refused to permit the state to act, fearing the unintended long-term damage to local wildlife. So instead of action, the oil continues to float on shore threatening the livelihoods of millions of Louisianans.

Meanwhile the Environmental Protection Agency again demonstrated its uselessness when it informed BP it had 24 hours to find a less toxic alternative to the chemical it had been using to break up the oil. BP informed the EPA that no alternatives were available in sufficient quantity to deal with the spill, and when the EPA's deadline came and went with no change in BP's practices, the EPA meekly said they would study the issue, which was an acknowledgment that it has no answer either.

The federal government's failure to know how to handle the Deepwater Horizon oil spill does not end with the EPA. It goes all the way to the top. Frustrated by his government's inability to master the problem, President Barack Obama reportedly cut aides short recently, ordering them to "plug the damn hole." As if no one had thought of that already. But instead of focusing on the problem at hand, President Obama moved to appoint an unaccountable commission to study the problem substituting process for action at a time when leadership was needed. The commission shifts the responsibility from the persons we elect to oversee these issues to unelected bureaucrats.

The Pew Research Center has released a poll showing a majority of Americans give President Obama and his administration bad marks for its handling of a massive oil spill. To combat this rising discontent, the Obama administration flew Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen up to Washington to provide some clear answers as to who was in charge of the operation. Just this past Sunday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had said of BP: "If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately." But when asked about Salazar's comments Monday, Allen responded: "Well, I would — I would — I would say that that's more of a metaphor. … You need equipment and expertise that's not generally within the government — federal government, in terms of competency, capability or capacity. There may be some other way to get it, but I'm a national incident commander. And right now, the relationship with BP is the way I think we should move forward."

BP, rather than taxpayers, should be held responsible for the costs of the clean-up and liability, and under current federal law that is the case. BP is currently responsible for every penny it costs to clean the mess up. Furthermore, they are responsible for up to $75 million in liability costs (i.e. the secondary costs incurred by businesses and communities) directly, and up to $1 billion additionally comes from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. And the $75 million cap is waived if the responsible party is found to be grossly negligent. Calls to increase these caps retroactively are not needed and are more political expediency then either stopping the leak or mitigating its consequences. Equally frustrating are calls to raise the gas tax, and transfer the costs of this spill onto American consumers.

And that right there, in a nutshell, is the problem not only with the Obama administration's handling of this crisis, but with the entire regulatory state. The Obama administration is set to announce new and stricter regulations on the oil industry tomorrow. But as the NEPA waivers and MMS failures of this accident show, the existing regulatory framework is already not being enforced. So how will new regulations piled on top of the old ones fix the problem? When government micromanages how private enterprises are run, those entities are not incentivized to prepare for the worst outcomes. Now no one has developed a plan or the expertise to deal with this spill.

The Obama administration's leftist narrative is that after eight years of deregulation under the Bush administration, American businesses are dangerously under regulated. But this simply is not true. By every objective measure, regulation increased – not decreased – during the Bush years. Instead of adding on new regulations, the old ones should be reformed to restore incentives through profit and loss. Instead of retroactively raising the cap on BP's economic liability, thus undermining the rule of law, Congress should look to raising or eliminating the cap in the future. But most importantly, President Obama needs to accept the responsibility that the federal government is the ultimate owner of the land BP is drilling on, and as the primary responsible party he must show more leadership in solving this crisis.

Quick Hits:

According to the latest CBS News poll, seven in ten Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in Washington; including 22 percent who say they are "angry" about the situation.
According to Rasmussen Reports, confidence in America's efforts in the War on Terror has fallen again this month with 52% saying the country is not safer today than it was before 9/11.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index showed prices of single-family homes dropped for the sixth straight month.
Moody's Investors Service Inc. again warned that the U.S. government's Aaa bond rating will come under pressure in the future unless additional measures are taken to reduce projected record budget deficits.
Senators will have less background to help make their decision on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan due to her lack of a judicial record.

Sestak White House scandal called 'impeachable

Sestak White House scandal called 'impeachable offense'

'It's Valerie Plame, only bigger, a high crime and misdemeanor'

Posted: May 25, 2010
8:45 pm Eastern

If a Democratic member of Congress is to be believed, there's someone in the Obama administration who has committed a crime – and if the president knew about it, analysts say it could be grounds for impeachment.

"This scandal could be enormous," said Dick Morris, a former White House adviser to President Bill Clinton, on the Fox News Sean Hannity show last night. "It's Valerie Plame only 10 times bigger, because it's illegal and Joe Sestak is either lying or the White House committed a crime.

"Obviously, the offer of a significant job in the White House could not be made unless it was by Rahm Emanuel or cleared with Rahm Emanuel," he said. If the job offer was high enough that it also had Obama's apppoval, "that is a high crime and misdemeanor."

"In other words, an impeachable offense?" Hannity asked.

"Absolutely," said Morris.

The controversy revolves around an oft-repeated statement by Rep. Sestak, D-Pa., that he had been offered a job by the Obama administration in exchange for dropping out of the senatorial primary against Obama supporter Sen. Arlen Specter.

Sestak said he refused the offer. He continued in the Senate primary and defeated Specter for the Democratic nomination.

But Karl Rove, longtime White House adviser to President George W. Bush, said the charge is explosive because of federal law.

"This is a pretty extraordinary charge: 'They tried to bribe me out of the race by offering me a job,'" he said on Greta Van Susteran's "On the Record" program on the Fox News Channel. "Look, that's a violation of the federal code: 18 USC 600 says that a federal official cannot promise employment, a job in the federal government, in return for a political act.

"Somebody violated the law. If Sestak is telling the truth, somebody violated the law," Rove said. "Section 18 USC 211 says you cannot accept anything of value in return for hiring somebody. Well, arguably, providing a clear path to the nomination for a fellow Democrat is something of value.

He continued, citing a third law passage: "18 USC 595, which prohibits a federal official from interfering with the nomination or election for office. ... 'If you'll get out, we'll appoint you to a federal office,' – that's a violation of the law."

Staffers with Sestak's congressional office did not respond to WND requests for comment. But the congressman repeatedly confirmed that he was offered the position and refused and that any further comments would have to come from someone else.

"I've said all I'm going to say on the matter. … Others need to explain whatever their role might be," Sestak said on CNN this week. "I have a personal accountability; I should have for my role in the matter, which I talked about. Beyond that, I'll let others talk about their role."

That's not fulfilling his responsibilities, Rove said. He said Sestak needs to be forthcoming with the full story so "the American people can figure out whether or not he's participating in a criminal cover-up along with federal officials."

The Obama White House has tried to minimize the issue.

"Lawyers in the White House and others have looked into conversations that were had with Congressman Sestak, and nothing inappropriate happened," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has stated.

Gibbs told the White House press corps, "Whatever conversations have been had are not problematic."

And on CBS' "Face the Nation" he said, "I'm not going to get further into what the conversations were. People who looked into them assure me they weren't inappropriate in any way."

But the administration also is taking no chances on what might be discovered.

According to Politico, the Justice Department has rejected a request from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., for a special counsel to investigate and reveal the truth of the controversy.

The report said Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich confirmed no special counsel would be needed. But the report said Weich also gave no indication that the Justice Department actually was looking into the claims by Sestak.

"We assure you that the Department of Justice takes very seriously allegations of criminal conduct by public officials. All such matters are reviewed carefully by career prosecutors and law enforcement agents, and appropriate action, if warranted, is taken," Weich wrote in the letter.

Issa had suggested that the alleged job offer may run afoul of federal bribery statutes.

He said in a statement to Politico, "The attorney general's refusal to take action in the face of such felonious allegations undermines any claim to transparency and integrity that this administration asserts."

He's also made a decision to raise the profile of his concerns.

"The bottom line is all fingers are being pointed back to the White House," he said in a statement released as ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"This Chicago-style politicking is an assault on our democracy and is downright criminal. President Obama faces a critical choice – he can either live up to his rhetoric of transparency and accountability by disclosing who inside his White House tried to manipulate an election by bribing a U.S. Congressman or he can allow his administration to continue this stonewalling and relinquish the mantle of change and transparency he is so fond of speaking on."

Issa suggested, "Could the reason why Congressman Joe Sestak refuses to name names is because the very people who tried to bribe him are now his benefactors? For months, Sestak has repeatedly said without equivocation that the White House illegally offered him a federal job in exchange for dropping out of the race. Was Joe Sestak embellishing what really happened, or does he have first-hand knowledge of the White House breaking the law? If what he said is the truth, Joe Sestak has a moral imperative to come forward and expose who within the Obama Administration tried to bribe him."

Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman, as well as Sen. Dick Durban of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, have joined the chorus suggesting the White House needs to answer some questions.

Former judge Andrew Napolitano, an analyst for Fox News, said the level of the offer simply isn't an issue.

"It wouldn't matter if it was a job as a janitor. Offering him anything of value to get him to leave a political race is a felony, punishable by five years in jail," he said.

The Section 600 statute states:

Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Douglas Sosnik, the White House political director for Bill Clinton, said offering jobs to political friends is "business as usual," but said Obama's promise was that "business as usual" wouldn't continue in his White House.

"It cuts against the Obama brand," he told the New York Times.

Ron Kaufman, who served under the first President Bush, also told the newspaper such offers are not unusual.

"But here's the difference – the times have changed and the ethics have changed and the scrutiny has changed. This is the kind of thing people across America are mad about," Kaufman said.

WND previously reported on the Sestak controvesy and a similar one concerning Democrat Senate candidate in Colorado, Andrew Romanoff, reporterd in the Denver Post.

The Post said Jim Messina, Obama's deputy chief of staff and "a storied fixer in the White House political shop, suggested a place for Romanoff might be found in the administration and offered specific suggestions."

Romanoff at the time was challenging another major Obama supporter, Sen. Michael Bennet, for the Democratic primary for the Senate seat from Colorado. He has since won top-line position over Bennet in a coming primary.

The report said Romanoff turned down the overture, but it is "the kind of hardball tactics that have come to mark the White House's willingness to shape key races across the country, in this case trying to remove a threat to a vulnerable senator by presenting his opponent a choice of silver or lead."

The newspaper affirmed "several top Colorado Democrats" described the situation, even though White House spokesman Adam Abrams said, "Mr. Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation, who has been monitoring the Obama administration, told WND the offer of reward for some government official's actions raises questions of legal liability.

"There's a federal statute and federal law seems to make clear if you offer a government official some sort of remuneration, directly or indirectly, it's a crime," he said.

Our Identification with Christ / Baptized into Christ, What happened to Jesus, happened to us!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c10B74vYaH8&playnext_from=TL&videos=L1TWj0Tk-YI

John W. Schoenheit of Spirit & Truth Fellowship International ( http://www.stfonline.org ) teaches on the subject of "Our Identification with Jesus Christ."

Romans 6:2-6
(2) ...We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
(3) Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
(4) We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
(5) If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
(6) For we know that our old self was crucified with him...

Just a Reminder / VIDEO

Just a Reminder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMsldaEZJvU&playnext_from=TL&videos=qnDJstXoDlA

http://before-the-harvest.blogspot.com/

********IDF has gas masks for 60% of public'

Photo by: AP

'IDF has gas masks for 60% of public'

By YAAKOV KATZ
25/05/2010

Army sources: In emergency, shortfall can be quickly remedied.


Due to a budget dispute with the Treasury, the IDF has been unable to refurbish 40 percent of the gas masks required to complete the redistribution of the kits to the public, The Jerusalem Post learned on Monday, as the Defense Ministry held the second day of a nationwide civil defense exercise. Called Turning Point 4, the exercise Monday focused on 40 different local councils, which drilled a number of scenarios – including massive missile attacks – to see how they would function in the event of an all-out regional war. RELATED: IDF still waiting to receive full budget to return gas masks Gas-mask credit-card scam surfaces Pilot gas mask center opens in Or Yehuda The Defense Ministry began collecting the public's gas mask kits in 2006, and earlier this year began the redistribution process of the refurbished kits. According to senior defense sources, though, the IDF has only been able to refurbish 60% of the kits required to complete the redistribution to the public. Behind the shortfall is a disagreement between the Defense Ministry and the Treasury over where the funding for the continued refurbishment and distribution of the masks is to come from. The Defense Ministry has asked for a budget supplement, while the Treasury has argued that the money should come from the regular defense budget. IDF sources stressed, however, that in the event of an emergency such as a war, it would be able to quickly procure and manufacture the additional gas masks required. On Monday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i, who is in charge of the drill, said it was aimed at preparing the nation for realistic threats. "The scenarios scare some people, but they were formulated according to the threats that exist," Vilna'i said. "There is no reason to be concerned if we prepare accordingly." OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan downplayed the rise in tensions with Hizbullah and said that Israel did not need to be concerned about the possibility that war might break out due to the exercise. "There is nothing more calming than an exercise like this," Golan said. "This is how a mature and serious nation behaves when it faces these types of threats." Defense sources said that some 30 foreign military officers and officials were in Israel to watch the drill. The foreigners came from India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Europe. The foreign guests visited the site of a search-and-rescue drill and heard lectures from top defense officials, including National Emergency Administration head Zeev Zuk-Ram. http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=176373

Due to a budget dispute with the Treasury, the IDF has been unable to refurbish 40 percent of the gas masks required to complete the redistribution of the kits to the public, The Jerusalem Post learned on Monday, as the Defense Ministry held the second day of a nationwide civil defense exercise.

Called Turning Point 4, the exercise Monday focused on 40 different local councils, which drilled a number of scenarios – including massive missile attacks – to see how they would function in the event of an all-out regional war.

RELATED:
IDF still waiting to receive full budget to return gas masks
Gas-mask credit-card scam surfaces
Pilot gas mask center opens in Or Yehuda

The Defense Ministry began collecting the public's gas mask kits in 2006, and earlier this year began the redistribution process of the refurbished kits. According to senior defense sources, though, the IDF has only been able to refurbish 60% of the kits required to complete the redistribution to the public.

Behind the shortfall is a disagreement between the Defense Ministry and the Treasury over where the funding for the continued refurbishment and distribution of the masks is to come from. The Defense Ministry has asked for a budget supplement, while the Treasury has argued that the money should come from the regular defense budget.

IDF sources stressed, however, that in the event of an emergency such as a war, it would be able to quickly procure and manufacture the additional gas masks required.

On Monday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i, who is in charge of the drill, said it was aimed at preparing the nation for realistic threats.

"The scenarios scare some people, but they were formulated according to the threats that exist," Vilna'i said. "There is no reason to be concerned if we prepare accordingly."

OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan downplayed the rise in tensions with Hizbullah and said that Israel did not need to be concerned about the possibility that war might break out due to the exercise.

"There is nothing more calming than an exercise like this," Golan said. "This is how a mature and serious nation behaves when it faces these types of threats."

Defense sources said that some 30 foreign military officers and officials were in Israel to watch the drill. The foreigners came from India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Europe. The foreign guests visited the site of a search-and-rescue drill and heard lectures from top defense officials, including National Emergency Administration head Zeev Zuk-Ram.
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=176373

Hidden video shows Ohio cows beaten / WARNING vulgar & demonic

Hidden video shows Ohio cows beaten

By Meghan Barr

The Associated Press

Posted May 26, 2010 @ 12:36 AM

CLEVELAND —

An animal welfare group said Tuesday that a graphic video it secretly recorded shows workers at a dairy farm beating cows with crowbars, stabbing them with pitchforks and punching them in their heads.

The video was recorded in an undercover investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc., said Mercy For Animals, a not-for-profit group that publicizes what it calls cruel practices in the dairy, meat and egg industries and promotes a vegan diet.

The video shows workers holding down newborn calves and stomping on their heads. It shows one worker wiring a cow's nose to a metal bar near the ground and repeatedly beating it with another bar while it bleeds.

Conklin Dairy Farms, a fourth-generation family operation based in Plain City, said it takes the care of its cows and calves very seriously and had reviewed the video.

"The video shows animal care that is clearly inconsistent with the high standards we set for our farm and its workers, and we find the specific mistreatment shown on the video to be reprehensible and unacceptable," Gary Conklin, of Conklin Dairy Cattle Sales LLC, said Tuesday night in an e-mailed statement. "We will not condone animal abuse on our farm."

The company said it would interview its farm workers and anyone found to have willfully abused the cows or calves would be fired.

Last year, Mercy For Animals, which is based in Chicago, released a video showing workers at an Iowa egg hatchery tossing male chicks into a grinder. Industry groups said such instantaneous euthanasia was a common practice because male chicks can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be sold for meat.

Mercy For Animals' executive director, Nathan Runkle, said the cow video was shot between April 28 and Sunday by an undercover worker at the dairy, about 25 miles northwest of Columbus. He said the documented abuse violates Ohio's anti-animal cruelty statute.

The group presented the video and the evidence it collected to the prosecutor's office in Marysville. The prosecutor's office didn't respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

http://www.mercyforanimals.org/ohdairy/
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/

http://www.cantonrep.com/newsnow/x289837620/Hidden-video-shows-Ohio-cows-beaten

============
This group is in favor of vegetarianism and I myself have no interest in a world full of only soybeans and humans. I also understand why some farmers may be wary of suburban and city do-gooders who have no idea of the needs and practical care of thousand-pound-plus animals.

It is NOT an "undercover video". The perp is quite aware that he is being filmed; in several places he positions himself to give a better camera shot of what he is doing.

Farmers are businessmen. You don't treat your means of production like that, nor do you tolerate such treatment by your employees. Aside from being unnecessary cruelty, it's not in their own best interest.

WPAFB delays Pacific flight test for 24 hours

By John Nolan, Staff Writer 5:48 PM Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The Air Force has postponed until Wednesday, May 26, a flight test of a scramjet-powered aircraft over the Pacific Ocean, because the Navy spotted a ship in waters near the craft's anticipated plunge into the ocean.

The first hypersonic flight test of the X-51A Waverider aircraft had been scheduled to be done Tuesday, but was postponed 24 hours, officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said. The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson is managing the X-51A program.

A Navy plane's crew spotted a freighter ship in international waters under a block of restricted airspace several hundred miles off the California coast in the vicinity of the X-51A's anticipated splashdown area, the Air Force said.

Weather permitting, the flight test is to be done Wednesday afternoon.

A B-52 aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., had been preparing to take off with the X-51A under its wing when Tuesday's flight was scrubbed.

Officials hope that the scramjet (short for supersonic combustion ramjet) engine eventually will make possible speedier transitions between conventional aircraft in the atmosphere and rockets in outer space for satellite deployments and reconnaissance or attack missions. The X-51A's trip is to be the first full-scale flight test of the multi-year program.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/wpafb-delays-pacific-flight-test-for-24-hours-727895.html