Defence redefined means securing cheap energy

As troops and equipment pour into the Gulf for a looming war with Iraq, United States military thinkers admit that "defence" means protecting ... cheap oil. As far back as 1975, Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, said America was prepared to wage war over oil. Separate plans advocating US conquest of Saudi oilfields were published in the '70s. So it should come as little surprise that ... four months before the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York - a battle plan for Afghanistan was already being reviewed by the US Command that would carry it out after September 11. Military strategists were highlighting the energy wealth of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia and its importance to America's "security". The Indian media and Jane's Intelligence Review reported that the US was fighting covert battles against the Taliban, months before the "war on terrorism" was declared. Over several months beginning in April last year a series of military and governmental policy documents was released that sought to legitimise the use of US military force in the pursuit of oil and gas. A spring 2001 article by Jeffrey Record in the War College's journal, Parameters, argued the legitimacy of "shooting in the Persian Gulf on behalf of lower gas prices". Mr Record [is] a former staff member of the Senate armed services committee (and an apparent favourite of the Council on Foreign Relations). [He] advocated the acceptability of presidential subterfuge in the promotion of a conflict. Mr Record explicitly urged painting over the US's actual reasons for warfare with a nobly high-minded veneer, seeing such as a necessity for mobilising public support for a conflict.

A dangerous dose

Marcia Angell [is] a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School [and one of the] former editors of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her new book, "The Truth About the Drug Companies," is a sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power. How does the drug industry deceive us? It plies attending physicians with expense-paid junkets to St. Croix and Key West, Fla., where they are given honoraria and consulting fees to listen to promotional presentations. It promotes new or little-known diseases such as "social anxiety disorder" and "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" as a way of selling the drugs that treat them. It sets up phony front groups disguised as "patient advocacy organizations." It hires ghostwriters to produce misleading scientific articles and then pays academic physicians to sign on as authors. It sends paid lackeys and shills out onto the academic lecture circuit to ''educate" doctors about a drug's unapproved uses. It hires multinational PR firms to trumpet dubious studies as scientific breakthroughs while burying the studies that are likely to harm sales. It buys up the results of publicly funded research. It maintains a political chokehold on the by donating more money to political campaigns than any other industry in the country. For many years the drug industry has reaped the highest profit margins of any industry in America. In 2002, the top 10 American drug companies had profit margins of 17 percent; Pfizer, the largest, had profit margins of 26 percent. So staggeringly profitable is the drug industry that in 2002 the combined profits for the top 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 were greater than those of all the other 490 companies combined.

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this. "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" ... argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned ... around the world." Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people? Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing? The film ... directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda. "The nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

Enron Schemes Caught On Tape

During the West Coast Power crisis homes went dark and streetlights were out ... causing injuries and accidents. But the danger didn't stop Enron's energy traders from having a good laugh. CBS ... reports on the Enron scheme, as caught on new audio tape. The traders and plant operator laugh and plot in a display that seems to prove the theory that years before the energy crisis, Enron manipulated markets. "They had to do a rolling blackout through the town and there was a red light there he didn't see," one Enron trader says on tape. "That's beautiful," a second voice responds. Enron secretly shut power plants down so they could cause, and then cash in on, the crisis. Enron also pulled power out of states like California, causing emergency conditions to worsen. "Sorry California," an Enron trader says. "I'm bringing all our power out of state today." Plant operators were coached on how to lie to officials. "We want you guys to get a little creative..." one voice says on the tape, "and come up with a reason to go down. Just call 'em, Hey guys…we're coming down." The plant operator replies, "OK, so we're just comin' down for some maintenance?" "Right," the trader says. "And that's cool?" the plant operator asks. "Hopefully," the trader responds, to which the men are heard laughing. Enron also pulled power out of states like California, causing emergency conditions to worsen. The "shut downs" and "pull outs" triggered sky high power prices. "We're just making money hand over fist!" one voice is heard saying on the tape. And when states complained, the guys at Enron seemed to have a response. "Get a f****** clue," one says. "Yeah," another chimes in. "Leave us alone. Let us make a little bit of money."

Patents Over Patients

, progress against cancer by changing the way drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market — no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result. The reason for this problem is that bringing a new drug to market is extremely expensive. In 2001, the estimated cost was $802 million; today it is approximately $1 billion. To ensure a healthy return on such staggering investments, drug companies seek to formulate new drugs in a way that guarantees watertight patents. In the meantime, cancer patients miss out on treatments that may be highly effective and less expensive to boot. In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf compound called 3-bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover, the investigators estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents per day. Yet, three years later, no major drug company has shown interest in developing this drug. The hormone melatonin, sold as an inexpensive food supplement in the United States, has repeatedly been shown to slow the growth of various cancers when used in conjunction with conventional treatments. Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical, dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent. However ... dichloroacetate is not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical. Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific merit, not on their patentability.

Obama Says

President Obama, speaking of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, said: "Justice has been done." It has been widely assumed that, if bin Laden is now dead, the person most responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been brought to justice. But the US government has never provided evidence that the attacks were carried out by bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. In September 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to provide this evidence, but the next day recanted, saying "most of [the evidence] is classified." In October, Prime Minister Tony Blair provided evidence that bin Laden and al-Qaeda planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. But he added: "This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law." The FBI's acts that made bin Laden a "Most Wanted Terrorist" do not include the 9/11 attacks. The FBI's chief of investigative publicity explained: "The FBI has seen no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Could al-Qaeda have carried out the attacks? Scientists for 9/11 Truth views the rapid, symmetrical, straight-down collapses of the Towers and nearby WTC 7 as consistent only with controlled demolition. And 1500 members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth agree: The 9/11 attacks were not the work of al-Qaeda.

Hypnotic Experimentation and Research

A posthypnotic of the night before ( , you will sleep) was enacted. Misses [deleted] and [deleted] immediately progressed to a deep hypnotic state with no further suggestion. Miss [deleted] was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [deleted] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [deleted]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” [deleted] for failing to awaken. Miss [deleted] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [deleted] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. Both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [deleted] was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.