Obama-Allied Unions Threatened With Gun Violence For Town Hall Participation

From Huffinton Post / Aug. 6, 2009

One of the country's largest unions has been hit by a wave of hostile calls and even death threats from people upset with its involvement in town-hall health care debates.

The Service Employers International Union was, as one aide put it, "deluged" with calls on Friday after several conservative media outlets accused the organization of trying to assault demonstrators who had showed up to protest Obama's health care agenda. Making it even scarier for union employees, the address of the union's St. Louis headquarters was mentioned on air by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Callers who reached both the front desk and the communications department compared the union officials to Nazis, union aides say. On Twitter, organizers of the town hall protest urged people to take pictures and write down the license plate numbers of attending SEIU officials. More alarming than anything else, angry callers and protesters pledged to take up arms against the union.

"If ACORN/SEIU attends these meetings for disruptive purposes, and you have a license to carry....carry," read one tweet.

"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights," one caller warned. "That, or you all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment."

The union had actually put up a petition on Thursday for its organizers and members to attend these town hall events and "honor the long-standing American tradition of town hall meetings and public forums to allow citizens to participate in our democracy." Things got a bit hairy during the evening, however, when the SEIU helped turn away people at a forum in Tampa Bay, Florida, and a near riot ensued. Similarly, in St. Louis, an SEIU staffer was arrested after a scuffle ensued with protesters at a town hall event with Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.).

The SEIU wasn't the only Obama ally receiving threats on Friday. An official of the AFL-CIO, which has pledged to counter conservative protests at these town hall events across the country, said that union received angry emails throughout the day as well -- mostly accusations that it was promoting communism and socialism.

Click on title above to go to original article and to see vid;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/obama-allied-unions-threa_n_254204.html

Pentagon EHR contract award under investigation

As appeared in "FierceMedicine.Com"
August 5, 2009

By Neil Versel

The Pentagon is investigating allegations by a Military Health System employee that the MHS improperly awarded a contract to a small but well-connected IT firm to help build an EHR system that is interoperable with VistA at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

NextGov reports that Maj. Frank Tucker, chief of product development for the Defense Health Information Management System, was instructed last month by a superior to give software and related documentation to San Jose, CA-based Adara Networks several days before the company won a sole-source contract to provide hardware and software for the Defense Health Information Management System program. Adara was the beneficiary of earmarks inserted into Department of Defense appropriation bills for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Cochran is attempting to put another Adara earmark into the 2010 funding legislation, according to NextGov. One earmark last year was a $4 million appropriation for a "next-generation networking electronic medical records project."

Adara reportedly has revenue of just $8 million a year and fewer than 50 employees, but it won Department of Defense contracts worth $7.2 million in 2007 and $13.7 million in 2008. The company reportedly paid $240,000 in lobbying fees to a firm with ties to former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), a level of spending usually associated with much larger companies.

And the possible Cochran-Mississippi connection? NextGov reporter/columnist Bob Brewin found that Adara and Sun Microsystems were to install telecommunications infrastructure for an upscale housing development just outside Jackson, MS, the state capital. A predecessor company also won a contract in 2003 to provide a broadband network to the University of Mississippi with the same routers Adara plans to use in the MHS system.

To learn more about this investigation:
- see Tucker's accusations in this NextGov story
- read about the earmarks in this follow-up piece
- learn the Mississippi connection in Brewin's blog post
- find out what Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) thinks of the revelations in this post

Town on Lockdown as Citizens Flee Plague Quarantine

PLAGUE, PNEUMONIC - CHINA (03): (QINGHAI)
*****************************************
A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases


[1]
Date: Wed 5 Aug 2009
Source: Xinhua News Agency [edited]



As of late Tuesday [4 Aug 2009], 12 cases of pneumonic plague have
been confirmed in Xinghai County in the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture of northwest China's Qinghai Province. The cases include 3
deaths, 1 near death, and 1 in serious condition. The others are stable.

Local government has sealed off and quarantined the town of Ziketan,
the source of the outbreak and provincial health authorities have
deployed a team of experts to the area. There has been no report of
new infections.

At present, 218 people are quarantined in hospital, and 115 of them
had been in close contact with those infected. Local authorities have
handed out more than 40 000 leaflets and disks on plague prevention.

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail


******
[2]
Date: Tue 4 Aug 2009
Source: The Associated Press (AP) [edited]



Residents of a remote farming town in western China said Tuesday [4
Aug 2009] people were seeking to flee in defiance a lockdown by
authorities to prevent the spread of highly infectious pneumonic
plague, which has claimed 3 lives in the area.

Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan in Qinghai province, a
town of 10 000 people, which has been put under quarantine after at
least a dozen people caught the lung infection, which can kill within
24 hours if untreated.

Some people tried to leave the quarantined area Monday evening [3 Aug
2009], mostly by foot, after the 3rd death was reported, 2 residents
reached by The Associated Press said. Most of the town's residents
are Tibetan herders of yaks, sheep, and pigs.

"A lot of people ran off last night when they heard that another
person died of this plague. They are mostly from other provinces,"
said a food seller who runs a stall at the Crystal Alley Market.
"They headed back home with food, water, and their donkeys."

Medical workers in Ziketan were disinfecting and killing rodents and
fleas that can be carriers for the bacteria that cause the plague,
according to a notice on the provincial health department website.

A Tibetan woman, a migrant construction worker from another village
in Qinghai, said there were very few people on the streets. "I've
heard the migrant workers who build projects went home last night [3
Aug 2009]," she said by telephone. "My boss told me that more than 50
of the 100 construction workers on our project left homes already."

It was unclear if the people who headed out of the town made it past
the police checkpoints, which residents say have been set up in
17-mile (28-kilometer) radius around Ziketan, which lies more than
300 miles (480 kilometers) west of Beijing.

The outbreak in Ziketan was first detected Thursday [30 Jul 2009],
although it isn't clear when the 1st victim died. The official Xinhua
News Agency said the latest victim was a 64-year-old man, a neighbor
of the first 2 fatalities, described in reports as a 32-year-old
herdsman and a 37-year-old man. The herdsman fell sick after burying
his dog, which had died suddenly, according to a report by the
official China National Radio, citing a hospital official. He died 4
days after the dog's burial and the relatives who handled his funeral
were showing symptoms within days, the report said.

Those relatives were among a further 9 people who are infected and in
a hospital, according to the local health bureau. One is in extremely
serious condition and another has developed symptoms of coughing and
chest pain, but the rest are in stable condition, Xinhua and the
health department said.

China has had cases of plague before. WHO said in a 2006 report that
most cases in China's northwest occur when hunters are contaminated
while skinning infected animals. In 2004, 8 villagers in Qinghai
province died of plague, most infected after killing or eating wild
marmots, creatures related to gophers and prairie dogs.

[Byline: Henry Sanderson]

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

[It is now clearly stated that pneumonic plague has occurred in all
12 individuals, 11 of whom were exposed to the index case. It is not
stated how soon antimicrobial therapy was begun in the affected
persons. It is generally said (1) that treatment of primary plague
pneumonia (primary here means acquired via the respiratory route)
should be begun once of the diagnosis is suspected since a delay of
more than 18 hours produces a very high mortality rate. It is also
not stated whether antimicrobial prophylaxis is being used in the 115
individuals who had been in close contact with the cases.

Reference
---------
1. Oyston PCF, Titball RW: Plague. In, Beyond Anthrax. The
Weaponization of Infectious Diseases. (Lutwick LI, Lutwick SM, eds),
Humana Press, New York, 2009, 55-76. - Mod.LL]

[Ziketan town can be located on the HealthMap/ProMED-mail interactive map at
. - Sr.Tech.Ed.MJ]

[see also:
Plague, pneumonic - China (02): (QH) 20090803.2724
Plague, pneumonic - China: (QH), RFI 20090801.2702
Plague, human - Mongolia: (BO), RFI 20090612.2177
2007
----
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia (Gobisumber) 20070924.3163
Plague, human, fatal - Mongolia (Hovsgol) (03) 20070810.2602
Plague, human, fatal - Mongolia (Hovsgol) 20070807.2567
Plague, rodents - Russia (Volgograd, Astrakhan): susp. 20070128.0368
2005
----
Plague - China (Tibet) 20050626.1798
Plague, camels - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan: susp. 20050212.0479
2004
----
Plague - Turkmenistan (Dashoguz): susp (02) 20040707.1820
Plague - Turkmenistan (Dashoguz): susp 20040706.1811
Plague warning - Russia: RFI 20040427.1178
2003
----
Plague - Mongolia 20030908.2255
Plague, bubonic - Kazakhstan (Kzyl-Orda) 20030822.2119
Plague - Kazakhstan (Mangistausk): suspected 20030801.1881
2002
----
Plague - Mongolia 20020919.5361
2001
----
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia (Central): correction 20010904.2115
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia (Central) 20010808.1871
2000
----
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia & China: background (03) 20000924.1645
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia & China: background (02) 20000920.1620
Plague, bubonic - Mongolia & China: Background 20000802.1290
Plague, bubonic, marmots - Mongolia: RFI 20000801.1274
1999
----
Plague, bubonic - Kazakhstan (05) 19990817.1418
Plague, bubonic - Kazakhstan 19990802.1322
1998
----
Plague, marmots - Kyrgyzstan (Dzhetyoguz) 19980811.1572]
...................................ll/mj/dk

*##########################################################*
************************************************************
ProMED-mail makes every effort to verify the reports that
are posted, but the accuracy and completeness of the
information, and of any statements or opinions based
thereon, are not guaranteed. The reader assumes all risks in
using information posted or archived by ProMED-mail. ISID
and its associated service providers shall not be held
responsible for errors or omissions or held liable for any
damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon posted
or archived material.
************************************************************
Become a ProMED-mail Premium Subscriber at

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Visit ProMED-mail's web site at .
Send all items for posting to: promed@promedmail.org
(NOT to an individual moderator). If you do not give your
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Meat & Technology or......

"Of Sausage And Servers"

Aug 1, 2009

By KevinDickens, P.E.

In which the author isn’t trying to stir up trouble, really. As a society, we may not like to know exactly how the demands of modern technology get supported. But as designers, we have a duty to hone in on the physics of the data center situation, avoiding prefab filler and delivering answers that cut the mustard.

As I write this from my laptop at O’Hare International in Chicago, I’m thinking about meat.

As I survey the waiting area, I see a scene that takes place in all the nation’s airports. The guy across from me is working on his laptop. The gal next to him pounds away on her BlackBerry’s ridiculously small keyboard. The kid next to her yaks away on his cell phone. And the guy I don’t see is the poor schlub in the parking lot who will miss the plane because he depended too much on his rental car’s GPS.

And I’m musing on meat?

My Kind of Town …

I live in St. Louis, and it’s a great town, but Chicago is a real city. Back in the 1800s, St. Louis bet it all on steamboats while Chicago put its marker on railroads, and I don’t have to tell you who won that bet.

Tied to Chicago’s railroad legacy are the Union Stock Yards and the reinvention of meat packing.

Up until the mid-1800s, meat processing was provided by the local butcher, and what he butchered depended largely on the time of year and his proximity to the game and his customers. But the large centralized stockyards of Chicago — and the “R” in ASHRAE — led to technological breakthroughs that dramatically altered the industry.

In 1872, packers began using ice cooled units to preserve meat. With this technology, meatpacking was no longer limited to cold weather months and could continue year-round. In 1882, the first refrigerated railroad car showed up, thus making it possible to ship processed meat to far away markets. And decades before Henry Ford churned out a Tin Lizzy, meat packers had pioneered and perfected assembly line production.

One result of these innovations was that demand for meat increased. In a relatively short period of time, folks who may not have been able to afford or get access to beef or pork could. Meat was available. Meat was fresh. Meat was cheap. Mmmmm ... more meat.

So here we are in 2009. You can buy fresh meat at any grocery store and have a bratwurst at Wrigley and never think twice. In fact, if meat couldn’t be found at these places, then you would notice. In spite of PETA’s best efforts, we eat chickens, pigs, and cows at an ever-increasing rate. And processing facilities have become so efficient that it takes less than two minutes for the cow at the front door to become the packaged steaks out back.

Big Macs to Macs

By now you see where I’m going, right? That iPod in your hand is the proverbial hamburger of the 21st century. We have come to depend on technology to such an extent that we often don’t appreciate it until it is interrupted. We are consumers of the red meat that is technology, and just like the bovine variety, we are mostly (and in many cases consciously) oblivious to the incredible apparatus and infrastructure required to satiate our appetites.

The conventional wisdom says if the average American saw the machinations in a packing plant, they would likely reconsider that hot dog. And similarly, most in the U.S. probably don’t know, nor do they want to know, the impact their Google fix has on the planet. It’s more likely they would rather just boot up blindly every morning, answer their e-mail, twitter their life’s banal details to the universe, and then talk on their cell phone while driving home.

They harangue the auto industry for making SUVs and righteously buy a hybrid. They swap their incandescent bulbs for CFLs and pat themselves on the back. They mount overpriced solar panels on roofs and plant obtrusive windmills in fields and crow about how sustainable they have become. But at the same time, we are using and escalating our use of technology, which in turn demands more and more power and more and more infrastructure.

And just to peg the irony meter, how many “green” websites are out there? How many online calculators are there for carbon foot prints calculations, mpg comparisons, waterless urinal payback analysis, and the like? How many watts do we burn at data centers just so we can figure out how many watts we might save if we applied some sustainable strategy?

Moore, Page, and Madden

In 2007 it was estimated that approximately 1.5% of the total energy consumed in the U.S could be attributed to data centers, and the raw power required was expected to double by 2011.1 These dramatic figures can partly be attributed to Moore’s Law (named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore), which portends that computing power doubles every two years or so (Figure 1). At the same time, the less precise Page’s Law (named for Google co-founder Larry Page) contends that software gets twice as slow about every 18 months due to complexity.

So about every year and a half our computing speed doubles, but we consume that capacity with more sophisticated programs and applications and in turn, no efficiencies are realized. In the meantime, consumers are exposed to more and more applications, which in turn drives demand for even more applications.

This phenomenon can be seen in the far too familiar realm of video games. As an example, in the early ’80s in the vestibule of a Woolworth in St. Ann, MO, a lonely dork (me) played the now classic arcade game Space Invaders on a console the size of a refrigerator. Today my three boys (dorks as well), play incredibly life-like games (like Madden Football in our basement on a gaming system about the size of a small brief case, which puts out as much heat as an inefficient toaster.

But unlike their old man who toiled alone, they are playing online and in real time with other lazy bums from around the world. Thirty years have passed, and the standalone video game has become a quasi-portable networked marvel requiring an enterprise data center somewhere to support it. Makes me wonder what Elroy Jetson will be playing and what resources will be required to support him.

So what’s my point? Am I saying technology will consume us all and in so doing advocating anarchy? Have I painted a dire picture of techno-dependency as a set up to some Mad Max scenario? No. My intention is to convey that we are increasingly dependent on technology and the requisite energy it consumes, and this calls for a great deal of awareness, foresight, and innovation on the part of HVAC professionals.

What Now?

Like the humble butcher of yesteryear who couldn’t have visualized a modern packing plant, so, too, are we. I don’t believe that any of us can conceive of what the data processing enterprise of tomorrow will look like. So it begs the question: How do we design today in anticipation of tomorrow?

For starters, I think we are at a crossroads when it comes to data center design. The data center of yesterday, with its sole dependence on computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units and underfloor air distribution (UFAD), seems remarkably awkward and inefficient. On the other hand, some of the modern air-based designs being posited, which incorporate hot or cold air containment, feel rigid and inflexible with their roots firmly planted in the regimented hot aisle/cold aisle layout. Water-based cooling is coming, but I know of no one who has (or should have) committed 100%.

On top of that, manufacturers of servers, mainframes, racks, and cabinets are not standardized on any configuration or cooling medium. Because of this, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see water-based mainframes, open racks, and enclosed chimney cabinets in the same facility. Unlike the big guys (Intel, HP, Google, Microsoft, et al.) who can build around a particular brand or concept, most data center owners can’t and frankly shouldn’t lock into anything proprietary.

So here we are at that fork in the road. The past is prologue, the present is in flux, and the future is unknown. What now?

Avoid the Shelf

A very wise man once told me,

“In design engineering there are two resources available: The laws of physics and the products of the market. The designer of excellence works with the former and the designer of mediocrity works with the latter.”2

What that means to us as data center designers is that we have to throw away the marketing hype of the equipment manufacturers and shun off-the-shelf solutions.

Note, I’m not denigrating the many firms dedicated to our industry. They provide valuable tools, research, insights, and products and are an integral part of what we do. But as designers, we are system synthesizers, and we have the ability (and arguably the obligation) to assemble the pieces and parts necessary to meet the requirements that the physics demand.

Unfortunately, many system designers begin with the knowledge of the products available, and when faced with a design quandary, they assemble a solution using those established components like a kid with a Tinker Toy set. But the problem with trying to accomplish a design with a fixed equipment rubric is that it inevitably introduces more complexity. An example of this is the legacy CRAC and UFAD concept.

Most of us would never design a comfort conditioning system using an open supply plenum extending across a broad floor plate. The idea of dumping air into a plenum and then banking on diffusers strategically placed over workstations to provide adequate environmental control in an open office environment is counterintuitive, if not down right nuts. But that is basically what we do in the legacy data center.

Starting with this paradigm, we work to solve the inevitable problems it creates. First we try to establish order with hot aisles and cold aisles. Then to avoid mixing, we introduce means of separation and isolation. Because we cannot figure out underfloor air distribution intuitively, and it’s too complicated to calculate manually, an entire industry is built around computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling.

Just think of all of the band-aid products that are out there, designed in good faith and sold honestly, but which are band-aids none the less. But have we just overcomplicated our designs when perhaps the underlying premise may be fatally flawed … especially as we approach higher watt densities?

Now, I’m not trashing CRACs and UFAD. In some situations, they are the right solution. And I recognize that all systems cannot be custom and that we must use the technologies and equipment available to us. But I would suggest that in your design calculus you think of all of these “givens” like CRACs, UFAD, and hot aisle/cold aisle as outcomes instead of inputs.

Problemetrics

As long as I’m on a roll, I will drop another nugget from my mentor,

“If you can write an equation for a problem, you will have the solution” Every month in at least one of the four primary industry journals (ES, ASHRAE Journal, HPAC, and Consulting-Specifying Engineer), there is an article on data center design. And almost everyone has a green spin. One of the best, by some of the best, was in a recent issue of HPAC.3 In the article, the high-performance building experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) discussed a number of key metrics for quantifying efficiency in data centers.

One of the problemsolving metrics that I found useful was the return temperature index (RTI), which is the ratio of the airside Delta-T at the AHU or CRAC over the Delta-T across the IT equipment:

RTI = ((T2 – T1)/ (T4– T3)) × 100

where:

T1: Supply air temperature

T2: Return air temperature

T3: Rack inlet mean temperature

T4: Rack outlet mean temperature

An RTI less than 100% indicates that the air at the AHU is lower than at the equipment, and in turn some supply air must be bypassing the racks, while a value greater than 100% indicates the recirculation of hot air (Figure 2).4

This simple ratio may seem too simple, especially since I told you what the values indicate. But think of the solutions that fall out of understanding the product of the equation.

The equation tells us that we want to minimize, and ideally eliminate, bypass, and recirculation at the racks. Assume you have never seen a data center before but you understand the equation. You walk into a room full of distributed IT racks. Intuitively, do you really think you would choose to put CRACS around the perimeter of the room, provide uncontrolled supply air in front of the cabinets, and then return the hot air back over the racks to the CRACS with no separation? And yet, that’s a textbook legacy design (Figure 3)!5

How could that be? The early data center designers weren’t idiots. How did such a counterintuitive approach become the norm? Well, it isn’t necessarily because they didn’t understand the physics. They probably did. But they were working in a raised floor environment which was a product of the IT infrastructure, not of the HVAC infrastructure. So voila, necessity births invention, and we find we can cool relatively low watt densities using a supply plenum approach — albeit inefficiently, but no one cared about energy … until now.

Conclusion

Sometimes when I’m feeling a bit ornery, I choose to irritate my wife. She is apt to look at me sternly and ask in disbelief, “Why do you want to poke the bear?” As I wrote this, I worried that I might come off like I was poking the bear. But annoying admonishment is not my intent.

Like ham steaks, hot dogs, and hamburgers, technology is everywhere and taken for granted. Demand for new and better gadgets and applications increases exponentially, and the infrastructure required to support it merely keeps pace. The current state–of-the-art for data centers is anything but static, but designers still have to design today with only a glimpse of tomorrow.

The key to success, then, is to avoid designing around existing products and rote strategies and instead understand the physics so that you can identify and apply the appropriate tools. And to understand a problem, you must first boil it down to its equational essence.

As we look forward, we may not know the answers, but we should understand the challenge. It’s the same test we always face, just on a grander scale: To meet the environmental demand using the least amount of energy. But in the end, we have to recognize that in the arena of data center design, design evolution without innovation is merely change. And change alone just isn’t good enough. ES

Cited Works

1. EPA. Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency Public Law 109-431, August 2, 2007.

2. Coad, William. “The Engineering Design Process,” in Energy Engineering and Management for Building Systems, New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold Company, 1982.

3 Mathew, Greenberg, Ganguly, Sartor and Tschudi. “How Does Your Data Center Measure Up?” HPAC Magazine, May, 2009: 16-21.

4. Image courtesy of LBNL. http://hightech.lbl.gov/benchmarking-guides/data.html.

5. Image courtesy of HP. Technology Brief TC040202TB, “Optimizing Data Centers for High-Density Computing.” February, 2004.

Tracing Our Stimulus $$$: 3.5M to North Shore Yacht Club

Stephen Crowder takes a road trip cross-country attempting to track down where some of our stimulus money went. Be sure to click on title above to see his hilarious vid and to see all the wonderful comments. People are "FED-up" with the Federal Spending Spree to Big Corporations and just about everything and everone else except to those working class and poor famlies struggling to stay in their homes and make ends meet. Indeed people ARE Fed-Up and beginning to wize up to the way things really are in this country....stacked deck against the hard working middle class and poor.

Where’s My Stimulus Money?!
by Steven Crowder

It seems that a lot of people have completely forgotten about the billions of tax-payer dollars that have already been spent. Don’t you worry folks, I’ve got you covered. Steve the P.A. from Iowa and I hightailed it across the country to see if our money was truly being put into a legitimate recovery program… Or being spent on frivolities. Take a guess!

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/scrowder/2009/07/31/wheres-my-stimulus-money/

FBI Whistleblower Tells All: Bin Laden a U.S. Operative!

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman

Former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, Sibel Edmonds.

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia

The goals of the American ’statesmen’ directing these activities included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs

Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that “our fingerprint is all over it.”

Of course, Sibel isn’t the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

“were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China.”

And also that:

“Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia.”

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

“That illustrates Henry Kissinger’s bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden’s collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this.”

Rogues Gallery

Last year, Sibel came up with a brilliant idea to expose some of the criminal activity that she is forbidden to speak about: she published eighteen photos, titled “Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery,” of people involved the operations that she has been trying to expose. One of those people is Anwar Yusuf Turani, the so-called ‘President-in-exile’ of East Turkistan (Xinjiang). This so-called ‘government-in-exile’ was ‘established‘ on Capitol Hill in September, 2004, drawing a sharp rebuke from China.

Also featured in Sibel’s Rogues Gallery was ‘former’ spook Graham Fuller, who was instrumental in the establishment of Turani’s ‘government-in-exile’ of East Turkistan. Fuller has written extensively on Xinjiang, and his “ Xinjiang Project” for Rand Corp is apparently the blueprint for Turani’s government-in-exile. Sibel has openly stated her contempt for Mr. Fuller.

Susurluk

The Turkish establishment has a long history of mingling matters of state with terrorism, drug trafficking and other criminal activity, best exemplified by the 1996 Susurluk incident which exposed the so-called Deep State.

Sibel states that “a few main Susurluk actors also ended up in Chicago where they centered ‘certain’ aspects of their operations (Especially East Turkistan-Uighurs).”One of the main Deep State actors, Mehmet Eymur, former Chief of Counter-Terrorism for Turkey’s intelligence agency, the MIT, features in Sibel’s Rogues Gallery.


Eymur was given exile in the US. Another member of Sibel’s gallery, Marc Grossman was Ambassador to Turkey at the time that the Susurluk incident exposed the Deep State. He was recalled shortly after, prior to the end of his assignment, as was Grossman’s underling, Major Douglas Dickerson, who later tried to recruit Sibel

into the spying ring.
The modus operandi of the Susurluk gang is the same as the activities that Sibel describes as taking place in Central Asia, the only difference is that this activity was exposed in Turkey a decade ago, whereas the organs of the state in the US, including the corporate media, have successfully suppressed this story.

Chechnya, Albania & Kosovo

Central Asia is not the only place where American foreign policy makers have shared interests with Bin Laden. Consider the war in Chechnya. As I documented here, Richard Perle and Stephen Solarz (both in Sibel’s gallery) joined other leading neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and Morton Abramowitz in a group called the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). For his part, Bin Laden donated $25 million to the cause, as well as numerous fighters, and technical expertise, establishing training camps.

US interests also converged with those of al-Qaeda in Kosovo and Albania.

Of course, it is not uncommon for circumstances to arise where ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ On the other hand, in a transparent democracy, we expect a full accounting of the circumstances leading up to a tragic event like 9/11. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to provide exactly that.

State Secrets

Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony.

In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ’sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…” This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.

As Sibel says in the interview:

I have information about things that our government has lied to us about… those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.

Summary

The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.

It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.

The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.


http://blacklistednews.com/news-5056-0-20-20--.html

U.S. to Hog Swine Flu Vaccines?

Will U.S. follow World Health Organizations' Recommendations on Vaccine Formulation with "adjuvants," or will it hog up all the "good stuff" for itself and create a world wide shortage?

INFLUENZA PANDEMIC (H1N1) 2009 (11): VACCINE ISSUES
***********************************************
A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases


In this update:
[1] Strategy
[2] Production problems

******
[1] Strategy
Date: Tue 21 Jul 2009
Source: Nature, online 460, 446 (2009), 21 Jul 2009 [edited]



Imminent decisions on a strategy for H1N1 pandemic flu vaccination in
the United States could leave other countries short of vital doses if
it elects not to follow World Health Organization (WHO) advice on
vaccine formulation. The United States is the biggest buyer among a
group of rich countries whose combined orders for vaccine against the
H1N1 2009 virus could potentially tie up most of the world's pandemic
vaccine production capacity for 6 months or longer, so depriving
other countries of vaccine.

To counter this prospect, the WHO recommended on 13 Jul 2009 that
countries use shots that contain adjuvants, chemicals that boost the
immune system's response to a vaccine. This allows smaller amounts of
antigen -- the molecule that stimulates the immune response -- be
used in each dose, boosting the overall amount of vaccine available
from existing production capacity and allowing orders to be filled
more quickly.

The United States' global responsibility to consider dose-sparing
strategies is briefly alluded to in the minutes of a mid-June 2009 US
National Bio defense Science Board meeting, released on 17 Jul 2009:
"Federal decision-making will affect not only the 300 million
Americans who depend on the government to support the public health
system but also people all around the world."

The United States has certainly kept open the option of using
adjuvants. It has already allocated almost USD 2 billion for antigen
and adjuvant to provide every American with up to 2 doses of vaccine.
That sum includes orders of USD 483 million for Novartis's MF59
adjuvant, and USD 215 million for GlaxoSmithKline's AS03 adjuvant.

But although Canada and many European countries are set to use
adjuvanted pandemic flu vaccines, the United States may do so only as
a last resort. "All things being equal, an unadjuvanted vaccine is
often just fine in terms of giving protection against influenza
virus," Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, told a media briefing on
17 Jul 2009.

"Adjuvant use would be contingent upon showing that it was needed or
clearly beneficial," added Jesse Goodman, acting chief scientist and
deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "But
we want them on the table in case there are issues where they might
be needed to protect people in this country." If there is significant
genetic drift in the virus, for example, adjuvanted vaccines are
better able to handle such strain variations. And early attempts at
pandemic vaccine manufacture are so far producing 2 to 4 times less
antigen than seasonal flu strains, raising the threat that the
world's production capacity is actually much less than was hoped.

If each shot of pandemic flu vaccine contains 15 micrograms of
antigen -- the dose used in seasonal flu -- and no adjuvant, annual
global capacity stands at about 876 million doses, according to the
WHO. But as virtually no one is immune to the virus, most experts say
that each person will need 2 doses, immediately halving that
capacity. Moreover, higher doses of antigen may be needed to get an
adequate response, further reducing capacity. Using adjuvants would
boost annual capacity to more than 2 billion doses in some WHO
projections.

Europe is well placed to quickly authorize adjuvanted pandemic
vaccines. Since 2003, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has had a
fast-track approval system in which manufacturers can prepare
"mock-up dossiers," vaccine registration applications that use
non-pandemic viral strains but for which pandemic strains can
subsequently be substituted. GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis already
have mock-up dossiers in place for the H5N1 avian flu virus and plan
to file H1N1 substitutions by the end of July 2009.

Although the EMEA requires the companies to provide new clinical
testing and data as they roll out their products, the product itself
can be approved in 5 days if the agency is satisfied that the
extrapolation to the new strain is valid, says Martin Harvey-
Allchurch, a spokesman for the EMEA. In contrast, the United States
has never licensed an adjuvanted flu vaccine and has no fast-track
system in place, although the FDA can give emergency authorization
for new vaccines. The regulators are also mindful of political and
public concerns about mass vaccination of the population, given that
a vaccination programme in 1976 against a new strain of swine flu
caused neurological side effects in about one in 100 000 people and
killed 25. Modern flu vaccines, however, have a very good safety
record.

The WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety says "no
significant safety concern or barriers" exist to using adjuvanted
pandemic H1N1 vaccines. But regulatory agencies may have to approve
pandemic vaccines -- both adjuvanted and non-adjuvanted -- without
all the data they would normally require, warns Marie-Paule Kieny,
the WHO's vaccine research director. Some preliminary clinical and
safety data may be available by September 2009, when flu cases could
surge in the Northern Hemisphere, but complete data for adults are
unlikely to be available until the end of December 2009, and not
until February 2010 for children. Regulators would accompany pandemic
vaccine rollouts with parallel clinical trials, and, as in any
mass-vaccination campaign, extensive surveillance would monitor for
any adverse side effects.

[Byline: Declan Butler]

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

******
[2] Production problems
Date: Tue 21 Jul 2009
Source: CFRB Newstalk 1010, The Canadian Press report [edited]



It may take substantially longer to make the full amounts of swine
flu vaccine countries have contracted to buy because efforts to
improve the yield of the vaccine seed strains aren't bearing fruit,
experts say. Three of the laboratories involved in the work are
sounding increasingly pessimistic that the yield problem can be fixed
in the short term. Vaccine manufacturers have reported they are
getting between 50 per cent and 75 per cent less vaccine with the new
H1N1 virus as they do when they make seasonal flu vaccine. "It's not
looking very bright at the moment," John Wood, principal scientist at
Britain's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control,
said in an interview Tuesday [21 Jul 2009]. "In effect, it means if
we continue like this, manufacturers will have to keep on producing
(pandemic) vaccine for longer to make the number of doses needed."

The flu laboratories at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have
made 3 new seed strains and are in the process of completing the
paperwork needed to ship them to the manufacturers. The head of the
CDC's influenza division said while the new vaccine candidate viruses
are growing well in the hands of her scientists, there's no guarantee
they will produce a better yield when manufacturers start to work
with them. Dr. Nancy Cox said the issue isn't simply about growth,
but also about how well the vaccine viruses hold up during the
various steps of the manufacturing process. "I think it is possible
we won't have a better yielding virus," she admitted from Atlanta.
"(But) I think that it's still too early to say how this will impact
the amount of vaccine that's available."

Each flu virus has its own characteristics, and vaccine makers are
accustomed to working with new strains, fine-tuning processes to try
to coax maximum yield from a virus. A spokesperson for vaccine giant
Sanofi Pasteur said the company feels it hasn't yet exhausted efforts
to improve the yield of the seed strain for the pandemic vaccine.
Still, Len Lavenda suggested Sanofi doesn't expect those efforts to
fully correct the problem. "Although we think it's too soon to
project what the final yield will be, we anticipate it will remain
lower than seasonal vaccine yield," Lavenda said from Sanofi's
headquarters in Swiftwater, Pa. "Certainly if the yield doesn't
increase, it means it will take longer to produce the vaccine. (But)
I think at this point in time we remain hopeful that we'll be able to
increase the yield and think it's premature to throw in the towel, so
to speak."

The various companies making pandemic vaccine have been working with
a seed strain produced at New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y.
Its laboratory pioneered the process of engineering vaccine viruses
to maximize growth decades ago, and scientists there have produced
many of the vaccine seed strains used since. Its 1st swine flu seed
strain was overwhelmingly viewed as the best yielder by vaccine
manufacturers. But even at that, manufacturers said they got about
half of the yield generated with seasonal flu production. Doris
Bucher, who heads the lab, says her team is trying other options, but
they haven't seen anything promising yet. And she's heard
manufacturers' efforts aren't paying off either. "Usually, they tweak
it, and it grows better. But it hasn't responded to tweaking. ...
That's the feedback I'm getting."

Seed strains are hybrid viruses that have the surface genes of the
virus the vaccine is meant to protect against merged with the
internal genes of an old flu virus that is known to grow well in
eggs. Typically those hybrids -- called reassortants -- are made up
of 6 genes from the high-growth virus with 2 genes from the target
virus, which in this case is the new H1N1.

Seed strains can be made by 2 different processes. One, called the
classical method, involves co-infecting growth medium with the 2
types of viruses and letting them swap genes on their own. The other
involves a patented process called reverse genetics that essentially
allows scientists to piece together the desired constellation of
genes. Bucher's 1st seed strain was made using the classical method,
which means any vaccine made from it wouldn't require manufacturers
to pay royalties for the seed strain. But the new CDC-produced seed
strains were made using reverse genetics. If manufacturers switch to
use one of them, royalties for every dose of vaccine sold will be due
to the U.S. vaccine company MedImmune, which holds the patent. Bucher
said her original seed strain was made with 3 genes from the swine
flu virus and 5 from the high-growth virus. Her team is now trying to
see if a 6 and 2 constellation would work better. But she and others
admitted the yield problem may be due to something inherent in the
swine flu viruses.

"It possibly is," admitted Wood, whose lab also generated seed
strains in the 1st round of production. "This is unusual, having all
the labs who usually do this work and there still being a less than
satisfactory outcome. Usually, we get at least one virus which is
good, average to good. And this time, none of them are."

[Byline: Helen Branswell]

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

[The logistics of production and delivery of an effective influenza
pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus vaccine are complex and will take time to
resolve. As suggested by previous correspondents, dose sparing
measures (such as intradermal vaccination) may have to be brought
into play in the short term at least to conserve materials. - Mod.CP]

[see also:
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (10): vaccine 20090720.2577
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (09): UK, pig stockman 20090718.2560
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (08): pandemic origins 20090718.2559
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (07): Argentina, swine, alert 20090718.2557
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (06): case reporting 20090717.2553
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (05): vaccine 20090716.2540
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (04): pandemic origins 20090715.2527
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (03): vaccine 20090713.2505
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (02): obesity risk factor 20090711.2482
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 - Viet Nam: patient data 20090708.2450
Influenza A (H1N1) - worldwide (86): official nomenclature 20090706.2430]
.......................................................cp/msp/lm

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Obomba: The War President

The Note: July 20, 2009 8:34 AM

By JONATHAN KARL

We’ll get to health care in a moment, but first a reminder that for all the bold domestic initiatives, President Barack Obama is a war president. Unwelcome and uncontrollable developments on the war front have a way of overshadowing everything else. Just ask Lyndon Johnson.

We are not there yet, but consider today’s headlines:

• U.S. soldier taken hostage. The Taliban released a 28-minute video of Pfc Bowe Bergdahl. It’s a typical propaganda video, featuring Private Bergdahl, clearly under duress, speaking about his family and against the war. The vigil in his tiny Idaho hometown dominated the network morning shows and will likely continue to do so.

• Another coalition soldier was killed late yesterday, bringing the death toll so-far this month (52) to the highest since the war started in September 2001.

• The death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan is on the verge of 5,000. A reminder of that toll will come later this week when, the LA Times reports, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is scheduled to visit Arlington Cemetery.

• A civilian helicopter working with NATO crashed, killing 16 aid workers. British and American fighter jets also crashed over the weekend.

• The Drug Enforcement Administration, belatedly perhaps, is surging its own agents into Afghanistan in an effort to target. The LA Times calls this “a new kind of ‘surge,’ targeting trafficking networks that officials say are increasingly fueling the Taliban insurgency and corrupting the Afghan government.”

• The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is going to miss a Congressionally mandated deadline to submit its plan for closing Gitmo. Does anybody outside of the administration think the gitmo prison will be closed by January?

• The NYT reports the even bigger detainee problem: the 15,000 held in nightmarish prisons inside Afghanistan. Under consideration: a new, U.S.-built Afghan prison “for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants.” Could this Gitmo with a different address?

For now, President Obama seems to have the confidence of the public, most Congressional leaders and even Republicans for his Afghan policy. In today’s ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent give him high marks on Afghanistan.

But President Obama’s political and national security teams know support may be fleeting. Privately, senior White House officials will tell you they have at most a year to start turning things around before losing Congressional Democrats who, if a Republican were in the White House, would already be demanding tangible progress, firm benchmarks, and a timetable for withdrawal.

The War at Home: Obama approval slides, especially on health care

Support for the domestic agenda, however, is beginning to crumble. The latest ABC News/ Washington Post poll has lots of troubling numbers for the White House, but none more than this: For the first time, less than 50 percent approve of his handling of health care.

In just the last month – a time when the White House has put health reform plans front-and-center in Congress – the president’s approval rating on the issue has slid from 57 percent to 49, with disapproval rising from 29 to 44.

The sliver lining for the White House: the public trusts Republicans even less. But, that may not matter much, the Republicans aren’t trying to pass the biggest, most expensive piece of health care reform in the history of the Republic.

The erosion of support has been most pronounced among independents, more of whom now disapprove of Obama’s handling of health care (49 percent) than approve (44 percent).

The poll also shows declining support for the president’s handling of the deficit, unemployment and of the economy overall. As usual, the president is more popular than his positions on the issues, but his personally approval rating (59 percent) has dropped below 60 percent for the first time in the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

“Until the economy heads up, his popularity is likely to continue down,” writes ABC News’ polling guru Gary Langer.

More Troubles

The New York Times finds some really bad news for the Obama Administration at the National Governor’s Association meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The White House wants help from the governors to sell its health plan, instead it is finding they are terrified the states will be stuck paying for it.

“The sentiment among those who were could not have been more consistent, regardless of political party,” report Kevin Sack and Robert Pear. “The governors said in interviews and public sessions that the bills being drafted in Congress would not do enough to curb the growth in health spending. And they said they were convinced that a major expansion of Medicaid would leave them with heavy costs.”

More: “Although many governors said significant change in how the nation handles health care was needed, they said their deep-seated fiscal troubles made it a terrible time to shift costs to the states.

“Each of several health care bills coursing through Congress relies on a large increase in eligibility for Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for the poor, as one means of moving toward universal coverage.

“Because the states and the federal government share the cost, any increase in eligibility levels, benefits or payments to doctors would impose new burdens on the states unless Washington absorbs them. In at least one of several bills circulating in Congress, the states would eventually pick up a share of the new costs, and the governors fear they cannot count on provisions in other bills that they will not bear costs.”

Does this make it any easier? The health bill may include taxpayer money for abortions.

Here’s a man-bites-dog story in the bailout era:

The CIT Group, which was denied another federal bailout last week, is on the verge of securing private funding to keep it afloat.

“The development appeared to vindicate U.S. regulators, who balked at appeals to help CIT. And it suggested that, unlike in recent months, private capital is available to plaster over cracks in the financial system.”

Tapper has been all over this one

The fired Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service is suing to get his job back.

The Kicker:

“It’s not health care reform to dump more money into Medicaid.” - Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-TN)

“As a governor, my concern is that if we try to cost-shift to the states we’re not going to be in a position to pick up the tab,” - Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA)

“I’m personally very concerned about the cost issue, particularly the $1 trillion figures being batted around,” - Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM)

Obomba Notion to Make Vets Pay for HealthCare an ObombaNation!

Crossposting for Concerned Vets;

Obama's response to his proposal that vets pay for their own health-care insurance
IS A RUMOR

Click on title above to see why;
-------------

Below is the "false" post that is going around;

HERE IS HIS RESPONSE WHEN HE BACKED OFF FROM HIS DECISION TO LET
THE MILITARY PAY FOR THEIR WAR INJURIES.
SEND THIS TO EVERYONE TO SHOW JUST WHAT HE THINKS OF OUR MILITARY WHO
FIGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY AND GET HURT PROTECTING OUR
FREEDOM!!!

Bad press, including major mockery of the plan by comedian Jon
Stewart, led to President Obama abandoning his proposal to require
veterans carry private health insurance to cover the estimated $540
million annual cost to the federal government of treatment for
injuries to military personnel received during their tours on
active duty.

The President admitted that he was puzzled by the magnitude of
the opposition to his proposal.
"Look, it's an all volunteer force," Obama complained. "Nobody
made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted
the risks.. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It
doesn't compute..."I thought these were people who were proud to sacrifice for
their country," Obama continued. "I wasn't asking for blood, just
money. With the country facing the worst financial crisis in its
history, I'd have thought that the patriotic thing to do would be
to try to help reduce the nation's deficit. I
guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow
Americans."

Please
pass this on to every vet and their families whom you
know.
Make the vets pay for
their own medical conditions, while giving free insurance to those who
aren't citizens or those who never contribute one cent of taxes..
It's an obama-nation.


--

The "War on Truth" Exposed

Click on title above to go to a series of new videos exposing the TRUTH about the war on truth our govt launched waay back in the 1970s.....

http://www.freewebs.com/recruitnrevolt/thewarontruth.htm

which is still in effect, more than ever, today.

Hurry before they get "poofed." !!

CIA Admits Used "Fire Ants" for Torture

By Aram Roston / Huffington Post
July 15, 2009



A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of "insects" in interrogations. "You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect," Jay Bybee, then a Justice Department lawyer and now a federal judge, wrote in 2002. He opined that as long as the bug wasn't actually harmful, it would not violate the law to use one to scare a terrorist detainee.

That was the first mention of insects to become public. But the memo's release may make it worth looking back to a brouhaha that occurred in secret at the agency in 2005. A CIA supervisor involved in the "enhanced interrogation" program bragged to other CIA employees about using fire ants while during questioning of a top terror suspect, according to several sources formerly with the Agency. The official claimed to other Agency employees, the sources say, to have put the stinging ants on a detainee's head to help break him.

The CIA insists, however, that no matter what the man said, it never took place. In fact, even though the Bush administration lawyers condoned the use of non-harmful insects, as the memo revealed, the technique wasn't employed, the agency says. "The CIA did not use insects as part of its terrorist interrogation program," said CIA Spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That didn't happen, period."

The CIA supervisor who purportedly bragged of using insects was, and still is, a high-level official, working at the Senior Executive Service level. Because he is still in the CIA covert side, his name cannot be published. But he was in the field and helped oversee, according to sources, the way "enhanced" interrogation techniques were used.

In fact, he was so close to the program that sources say he was caught on the CIA interrogation tapes made in Thailand inside the secret facility where Zubaydah and other terrorists were questioned. The tapes were later destroyed in circumstances currently under investigation.

"He was on the tapes," a former CIA source said. No one can know if that is true, since they were destroyed. But several sources say that although he may have been on the tapes, he actually had no direct role in interrogating anyone, but that he was present as a high-ranking supervisor. (And there were no reported insects or fire ants on the videotape.)

The official is a storied veteran of covert operations who had just returned from Bagdhad. "He's a bullshitter," said one former officer, explaining that the man had a reputation for telling tall tales and embellishing.

So what is one to make of his bizarre claim to have used fire ants to get a terrorist suspect to talk? When he made the boast, according to officials familiar with the events, he was at the CIA's bar at "The Farm," where the CIA trains case officer cadets, down at Camp Peary in Virginia. It's an old U-shaped bar, as officers decribe it, topped with cheap linoleum, and a couple of little booths like those found in an old cafeteria. The room opens up to a large lounge with a big open fireplace. Back in the old days, the area was decorated with photographs from Southeast Asia and other regions of CIA derring-do, but now it is a dreary place.

According to those who were told about the incident, the official was putting down drink after drink at the bar. "He was running his mouth," said one ex-officer, "carrying on." Sources say the supervisor bragged loudly that he had used fire ants to torment an al Qaeda suspect to get him to talk. As one version of the evening has it, he bragged of putting the stinging bugs in a helmet and then putting the helmet on the detainee.

Some officials say it should not be taken seriously. First, he was talking while people were drinking in a bar so his account was hardly reliable. Second, he'd just returned from one of the toughest war zones of recent memory: perhaps a bit of bizarre story-telling is to be expected in the privacy of the intelligence service's own bar. But it was all strange enough that complaints started quickly from CIA people who over heard the conversation.

The CIA launched its own review, the intelligence sources say. The agency concluded that there was no such torture and that the supervisor was simply making it up.

Still, that was before the release of the Bybee memo authorizing the use of insects. With new speculation that the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder might launch an investigation into the "enhanced interrogation," perhaps it is, at least worth recalling the in-house insect buzz at the CIA.

Meanwhile, there is already an open inquiry into the question of the destroyed tapes.

--------------------
Click on title above for original article in the Huffington Post w/ place to comment;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aram-roston/cia-supervisor-claimed-he_b_231303.html

The Back Door Way to Ignore the Bill of Rights

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Among the most shocking aspects of Barack Obama’s presidency so far has been his embrace of the power that George W. Bush assumed to incarcerate people suspected of terrorism for the rest of their lives, without a jury trial to determine whether they are in fact guilty of the offense. There is absolutely no reason why Obama and any future president cannot expand that power to other federal criminal offenses, including drug crimes and gun crimes.

Let’s keep in mind, after all, that terrorism is a federal criminal offense. It was a federal criminal offense before 9/11 and it continued to be one after 9/11.

Under America’s system of justice, people suspected of having committed a criminal offense are indicted by federal grand juries and tried in federal district court. Examples of criminal defendants who have been indicted and convicted of terrorism in federal court include Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, and Jose Padilla.





One of the fundamental principles of a criminal trial is the presumption of innocence. In order to get a conviction, the government must overcome that presumption with sufficient competent evidence that convinces a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is, in fact, guilty of the offense.

What was so revolutionary about what George W. Bush did was that he took a federal criminal offense and simply converted it into an illegal act of war, which he said gave the government the power, at its option, to incarcerate a suspected violator of the terrorism statutes for life, without the benefit of trial by jury to determine whether he really committed the offense.

Now, consider the war on drugs. Since the president has been permitted the power to declare terrorism an illegal act of war, thereby enabling him to treat suspected terrorists as illegal enemy combatants (or criminal defendants, at his option), there is absolutely no reason why he cannot do the same in the war on drugs or the war on guns (or any other federal criminal offense), especially given that many of the terrorists are using the drug trade to finance their terrorist operations and given that drug lords are using guns to commit their murders.

Each year, the drug lords kill far more people than the number of people that the terrorists are killing in the United States. The many thousands of people being killed every year in Mexico include Mexican law-enforcement agents, judges, and other government officials.

Most of the drug-war violence is along the U.S.-Mexico border. The possibility that the drug-war violence will spill over into the United States is causing U.S. officials to consider dispatching U.S. troops to the border to help civilian law enforcement fight the war on drugs. In fact, some state and local officials are now actively requesting the president to send U.S. troops to the border.

At the same time, law-enforcement officials are claiming that the one of the principal causes of drug-war violence is the ease by which people are able to purchase guns along the border. Already there are signs of a government crackdown on gun dealers as part of the war on guns.

Now, imagine that the drug lords begin wreaking violence on the U.S. side of the border, including killing sprees in which U.S. law-enforcement agents, judges, and other public officials are the predominate victims, as they are in Mexico.

With the power the president now wields to convert federal criminal offenses into illegal acts of war, there is now nothing to prevent Barack Obama from expanding such power to the war on drugs and the war on guns. That means, of course, that the U.S. government would then have the option of treating suspected drug-law violators and gun-law violators in the same was as suspected terrorists, subject to being incarcerated for life, without the benefit of a jury trial to determine whether they truly are guilty.

Thus, those who enthusiastically supported Bush’s assumption of this omnipotent power — the power to convert a federal criminal offense into an illegal act of war — might come to rue the day they did so, especially if Obama expands the principle to drug crimes and gun crimes.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, publisher of Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman.

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/31890/26/

Globally mandated toxic Swine Flu vaccinations are coming.

From: Freedoms Phoenix; http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Feature-Article.htm?Info=0062561&From=News

Stephen Lendman
Date: July 15, 2009
Subject: Health and Physical Fitness

Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination Alert - by Stephen Lendman

On July 13, a World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alert headlined, "WHO recommendations on pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccinations" suggest that universally mandated ones are coming. It stated that on July 7, the pharmaceutical industry-dominated Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization held an "extraordinary meeting in Geneva to discuss issues and make recommendations related to vaccine for the pandemic (H1N1) 2009."

There's no pandemic nor until recently a single death anywhere attributable to Swine Flu. Yet WHO said the virus "is considered unstoppable," while admitting little evidence of spread so far, most cases are mild, and many people recover unaided. Nonetheless, all countries will need vaccines and should follow these priorities as initial supplies will be limited:

-- immunize health care workers "to protect the essential health care infrastructure;" then

-- pregnant women; children over six months of age "with one of several chronic medical conditions;" healthy young adults aged 15 - 49; healthy children; healthy adults aged 50 - 64; and finally healthy adults aged 65 or older.

WTO suggested the risks in stating "new technologies are involved in the production of some pandemic vaccines, which have not yet been extensively evaluated for their safety in certain population groups..." As a result, "post-marketing surveillance" and "post-marketing safety and effectiveness studies" are essential so that countries can adjust their vaccination policies.

WHO "recommendations" are binding on all 194 member countries in case a pandemic emergency is declared under the 2005 International Health Regulations Act and April 2009 WHO pandemic plan.

It's crucial to understand that these vaccines are experimental, untested, toxic and extremely dangerous to the human immune system. They contain squalene-based adjuvants that cause a host of annoying to life-threatening autoimmune diseases. They must be avoided, even if mandated. It's also known that vaccines don't protect against diseases they're designed to prevent and often cause them. They should be banned but proliferate anyway because they're so profitable, and if globally mandated to the greatest extent ever.

Get ready because that's precisely what's coming - universal orders to risk toxic vaccine hazards. In the coming weeks, the dominant media globally will get into high gear fear-mongering mode to convince people voluntarily to submit to jeopardizing their health and well-being. It's essential to refuse and be safe and international law absolutely allows it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
------------------
SEE ALSO: "Studies Show & Drs Agree "Ignore Swine Flu - DO Not Vaccinate"
Click on title above to see this important ProMed article;

http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2009/06/study-suggests-doctors-agree-ignore.html

ALSO PLEASE NOTE another Important ProMed Alert:

SWINE FLU PRODUCTION HITS A SNAG

This article will show you that THERE IS NO Swine Flu Vaccine! Anything they DO come up with will be EXPERIMENTAL and the guinea-pigs R' US!

INFLUENZA PANDEMIC (H1N1) 2009 (03): VACCINE
********************************************
A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases

In this update:
[1] WHO update
[2] Canada Press report

******
[1] WHO update
Date: Mon 13 Jul 2009
Source: World Health Organisation (WHO), Global Alert and Response,
EPR [edited]

Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 briefing note 2: WHO recommendations on pandemic
(H1N1) 2009 vaccines
------------------------------------------
On Tue 7 Jul 2009, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on
Immunization held an extraordinary meeting in Geneva to discuss issues
and make recommendations related to vaccine for the pandemic (H1N1)
2009. SAGE reviewed the current pandemic situation, the current status
of seasonal vaccine production and potential A(H1N1) vaccine
production capacity, and considered potential options for vaccine use.

The experts identified 3 different objectives that countries could
adopt as part of their pandemic vaccination strategy:
- protect the integrity of the health-care system and the country's
critical infrastructure;

- reduce morbidity and mortality; and
- reduce transmission of the pandemic virus within communities.

Countries could use a variety of vaccine deployment strategies to
reach these objectives, but any strategy should reflect the country's
epidemiological situation, resources and ability to access vaccine, to
implement vaccination campaigns in the targeted groups, and to use
other non-vaccine mitigation measures.

Although the severity of the pandemic is currently considered to be
moderate, with most patients experiencing uncomplicated, self-limited
illness, some groups such as pregnant women and persons with asthma
and other chronic conditions such as morbid obesity [body mass index
(weight/square of height) = 40 plus. - Mod.JW] appear to be at
increased risk for severe disease and death from infection.

Since the spread of the pandemic virus is considered unstoppable,
vaccine will be needed in all countries. SAGE emphasized the
importance of striving to achieve equity among countries to access
vaccines developed in response to the pandemic (H1N1) 2009.

The following recommendations were provided to the WHO Director-General:

- All countries should immunize their health-care workers as a 1st
priority to protect the essential health infrastructure. As vaccines
available initially will not be sufficient, a step-wise approach to
vaccinate particular groups may be considered. SAGE suggested the
following groups for consideration, noting that countries need to
determine their order of priority based on country-specific
conditions: pregnant women; those aged above 6 months with one of
several chronic medical conditions; healthy young adults of 15 to 49
years of age; healthy children; healthy adults of 50 to 64 years of
age; and healthy adults of 65 years of age and above.

- Since new technologies are involved in the production of some
pandemic vaccines, which have not yet been extensively evaluated for
their safety in certain population groups, it is very important to
implement post-marketing surveillance of the highest possible quality. In addition, rapid sharing of the results of immunogenicity and
post-marketing safety and effectiveness studies among the
international community will be essential for allowing countries to
make necessary adjustments to their vaccination policies.

- In view of the anticipated limited vaccine availability at global
level and the potential need to protect against "drifted" strains of
virus, SAGE recommended that promoting production and use of vaccines
such as those that are formulated with oil-in-water adjuvants and live
attenuated influenza vaccines is important.

- As most of the production of the seasonal vaccine for the
2009-2010 influenza season in the northern hemisphere is almost
complete and is therefore unlikely to affect production of pandemic
vaccine, SAGE did not consider that there was a need to recommend a
"switch" from seasonal to pandemic vaccine production.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan endorsed the above
recommendations on 11 Jul 2009, recognizing that they were well
adapted to the current pandemic situation. She also noted that the
recommendations will need to be changed if and when new evidence
becomes available.

SAGE was established by the WHO Director-General in 1999 as the
principal advisory group to WHO for vaccines and immunization. It
comprises 15 members who serve in their personal capacity and
represent a broad range of disciplines from around the world in fields
such as epidemiology, public health, vaccinology, paediatrics,
internal medicine, infectious diseases, immunology, drug regulation,
programme management, immunization delivery, and health-care
administration.

Additional participants in the SAGE meeting included members of the ad
hoc policy advisory working group on influenza A(H1N1) vaccine, chairs
of the regional technical advisory groups and external experts.
Observers included industry representatives and regulators who did not
take part in the recommendation process in order to avoid conflicts of
interest.

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail

******
[2] Canada Press report
Date: Sun 12 Jul 2009
Source: The Canadian Press [edited]

Swine flu vaccine production has hit a snag, with manufacturers
reporting a disappointingly low yield when vaccines viruses are grown
in eggs. The World Health Organization [WHO] says so far the yield for
egg-based production is half or less than what manufacturers get when
they make vaccine to protect against seasonal H1N1 viruses. The lion's
share of influenza vaccine is made by companies that grow the viruses
in eggs.

New seed strains are being made in the hopes of increasing the vaccine
yield, a report by the WHO's vaccine chief, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny,
says. But if the yield cannot be increased, it will slow the rate at
which pandemic vaccine comes out of the production pipeline, adding to
the time it takes to protect populations in countries like Canada that
have purchased vaccine. And countries that haven't pre-ordered
pandemic vaccine would face substantial delays before manufacturers
have product to sell to them.

"There's nothing to suggest it will take longer to make vaccine, if in
fact everything goes as planned. The question is: How much?" says Dr.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases
Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "There is nothing
magical about making this virus. The questions will be: How much?
When? and Where will it be available?"

The yield problem is revealed in presentations WHO staff made to last
week's special meeting of the expert panel that advises the
Geneva-based global health agency on vaccine issues. The body --
called the strategic advisory group of experts on immunization, or
SAGE -- was convened to give WHO counsel on a variety of questions
about pandemic vaccine use. Those include which groups should be given
priority when vaccine becomes available and whether the WHO should
recommend companies use adjuvants, which are boosting compounds that
could help stretch limited supplies.

Kieny, head of the WHO's initiative for vaccine research, was not
available for interview Sunday [12 Jul 2009]. The WHO is expected to
reveal details of the SAGE's deliberations and recommendations on
Monday [13 Jul 2009 [but not included in the preceding WHO press
release - Mod.CP]. But a report to the meeting by Dr. Wenqing Zhang of
the WHO's global influenza program says that vaccine manufacturers who
use so-called wild-type viruses (unmodified viruses like those now
circulating around the globe) are reporting yield rates similar to
what they get when they grow seasonal H1N1 viruses in Vero cells, a
cell culture medium. However, few manufacturers produce flu vaccine
this way.

Most make vaccine in eggs, using a reassortant or hybrid seed strain
designed to improve the chances of a good yield. These seed strains
can be made by a couple of methods, but the end result is a hybrid
with the external genes of the virus that vaccine is to protect
against and the internal genes of a virus with a proven track record
for growing well. Zhang's presentation says that of the various
reassortant vaccine viruses that have been made, the one with the
highest output still only generates about half of the yield seen with
seasonal H1N1 vaccine production.

Kieny's presentation calls the yield "less than optimal" and says
laboratories in the WHO's lab network are generating new sets of
vaccine viruses as quickly as possible. Her presentation illustrates
the impact low yield would have on availability of vaccine. Somewhere
between 850-900 million and 1.8 billion doses of pandemic vaccine are
already spoken for, she reports. The low end of the scale represents
what would be needed by countries with contracts if it is shown that
one shot will be enough to protect a person; the high end represents
what those countries would need if 2 shots per person are required. If
all manufacturers used the lowest possible effective dose, if yields
are on a par with seasonal H1N1 production and if countries only used
one dose per person, manufacturers could fill all their [advance]
purchase orders by mid-November 2009, Kieny's presentation suggests.

That best-case scenario also requires that all manufacturing capacity
remains devoted to pandemic vaccine and no portion shifts back to the
production of seasonal vaccine for next year's [2010] Southern
Hemisphere flu season. If companies don't use low doses and countries
that have pre-purchased vaccine demand 2 shots for all their citizens,
it could be mid-April [2010] before the vaccine manufacturers in
high-income countries have free capacity to devote to making vaccine
for middle and low income countries, Kieny's presentation estimates.
90 per cent of the world's flu vaccine production capacity is in the
high-income countries that use seasonal flu vaccine. A lower yielding
vaccine "would considerably push back the time lines," the
presentation warns. Assuming the yield is half that of seasonal flu
vaccine production, it would be mid-January 2010 before producers
could fill all contracts if they use a single-shot, low-dose regime,
Kieny estimates.

She suggests even with low-dose shots, a low-yield scenario would mean
manufacturers would not be able to fill all their existing contracts
until next June [2010] if the countries opt for 2 shots per person for
all their citizens.

[Byline: Helen Branswell]

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

[see also:
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (03): official nomenclature -- to be archived
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (02): obesity risk factor 20090711.2482
Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 - Viet Nam: patient data 20090708.2450
Influenza A (H1N1) - worldwide (86): official nomenclature 20090706.2430]
....................................................cp/msp/jw
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http://exposingfdanusda.blogspot.com/2009/07/swine-flu-vaccine-production-hits-snag.html

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Feature-Article.htm?Info=0062561&From=News

Update on Diabolical Dick

Will we ever know the extent of what Dick Cheney was up to?

Over the weekend, news surfaced that the former vice president ordered the CIA to withhold information from Congress about a secret spying program. This came in the wake of a report Friday that showed the Bush Administration ran an "unprecedented" surveillance system that went far beyond warrantless wiretapping.

These are just more examples of the Bush Administration's disrespect for the checks and balances established by our Constitution and for the rule of law. We cannot and will not turn a blind eye to these transgressions.

Urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Bush Administration abuses of power!

The special prosecutor must be given a wide mandate, given the extraordinary number of allegations that have surfaced over the past few years. In addition to these most recent claims of secret CIA dealings, the prosecutor must have authority to look into questions around

* Torture and "enhanced interrogation" tactics
* Warrantless wiretapping and additional surveillance systems
* The politicization of the Bush Justice Department
* Abuse of executive privilege and signing statements
* Any other abuses of power that come to light in the course of the investigation

The Attorney General has indicated that he's willing to appoint a prosecutor to investigate a narrow set of issues related to torture.

That's not good enough.

It is critical that this prosecutor have a wide berth to investigate the totality of alleged abuses of power by the past Administration. Continued secrecy and indifference to prior misconduct will do lasting damage to the very fabric of our democracy.

Now is the time. We cannot wait for another news story about another transgression by Cheney or other former officials.

Urge Attorney General Holder to appoint a special prosecutor on Bush Administration abuses of power immediately.

Thanks for all you do.

Sincerely,

Bob Edgar
and the rest of the team at Common Cause

Chavez denounces Costa Rica mediation as trap set by Obama, Clinton

Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:52 am (PDT)

http://dianabarahona.blogspot.com/2009/07/thursday-june-9.html
Chavez denounces Costa Rica mediation as trap set by Obama, Clinton

Thursday, June 9. After initially taking the bait of a "mediation" by Costa
Rican President Oscar Arias, a long time Washington ally, Zelaya and his
foreign minister Patricia Rodas left Costa Rica.

President Hugo Chavez denounced the mediation and said that "Zelaya quickly
got out of the trap."

>From Radio Mundial:

During a press conference with national and international media, the
Venezuelan president said that it was a "crass error" on the part of the
United States to propose a dialogue. "A dialogue with whom? With these
usurpers? The same ones who at this time are persecuting Hondurans? Who have
killed several people?" Chavez stressed that that would be an outrage. "I
hope that President Arias realizes the responsibility that he has taken on."

Chavez said that the United States should correct its mistakes before it's
too late, and added that "a whole world of contradictions is flourishing"
within the U.S. government. He said that the United States should
demonstrate now its condemnation of the coup in Honduras with actions, since
there have only been timid measures.

"We are giving the benefit of the doubt, and we are believing that it was a
mistake, and we don't want to think that it was a plan by Obama and Clinton.
That would constitute a trap for democracy, a danger and a serious mistake,
not only for Honduras but for the whole American continent, what happened in
San Jose, Costa Rica," he said.

He stressed that fortunately, President Manuel Zelaya got out of that trap
quickly, and regretted that Oscar Arias wanted Zelaya and "Goriletti" to sit
down at the same table. He said that "Goriletti" should be arrested as an
international criminal.

-------

Durante una rueda de prensa con medios nacionales e internacionales, el
mandatario venezolano afirmó que fue un "craso error" de Estados Unidos
proponer un diálogo. "¿Un diálogo con quién? ¿Con estos usurpadores? ¿Los
mismos que a estas horas están persiguiendo hondureños? ¿Los que ya han
matado a varias personas?", se preguntó Chávez, y destacó que eso sería
indigno. "Espero que el presidente Arias tome conciencia de la
responsabilidad que ha asumido".

Indicó que Estados Unidos debería rectificar a tiempo, y señaló que en el
gobierno norteamericano "esta aflorando un mundo de contradicciones". Chávez
señaló que EE.UU. ahora debe demostrar con acciones su condena al golpe de
estado en Honduras, ya que ha habido solo tímidas medidas.< br>
"Estamos dando el beneficio de la buena fe y estamos creyendo que fue un
error, más no queremos pensar que se trate de un plan de Obama con Clinton.
Esto constituiría una trampa para la democracia, un peligro y grave error no
sólo para Honduras, sino para todo el continente Americano, esto que ocurrió
en San José de Costa Rica", sostuvo.
Destacó que afortunadamente el presidente Manuel Zelaya salió rápido de esa
trampa, y lamentó que Oscar Arias pretendiera que Zelaya y Goriletti (al que
ahora también bautizó este viernes como "Carmonetti") se sentaran en la
misma mesa. Opinó que Goriletti debería ser detenido como delincuente
internacional.-

----------------------------------------------------------

Published: Friday, July 10, 2009
Bylined to: Wire Services

Venezuelan President Chavez attacks USA's plan to solve Honduras coup d'etat

* Wire
Services:*Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced a US-backed
effort to ease
Honduras' coup crisis on Friday even as mediators tried *-- so far
unsuccessfully --* to find a compromise by rival contenders for the
presidency.
-

Chavez objected to the very idea of giving those who ousted President
Manuel Zelaya the same treatment as the leader himself.-

The talks mediated by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias "became a trap that
set a very grave precedent," Chavez told a news conference in Caracas. "How
horrible to see a legitimate president receiving a usurper and giving him
the same treatment," Chavez said, referring to Arias' Thursday night meeting
with Roberto Micheletti, the Honduran congressional leader who was sworn in
as president when the military threw Zelaya out of the country on June 28.

*Chavez said Micheletti should have been arrested in Costa Rica.*

**

US officials have promoted the talks in Costa Rica's capital, hoping to ease
Zelaya back into the presidency without violence while resolving the
concerns of Honduras' Supreme Court, Congress and military, which say they
legally removed the president for violating the constitution by maneuvering
to extend his time in power. That mediation at least briefly overshadowed
Chavez' more belligerent crusade to have his ally Zelaya returned to power.



The United Nations and Organization of American States *-- including the Obama administration, --*have demanded that Zelaya be returned to power so he can serve out
a term that ends in January. No foreign government has recognized Micheletti.

Arias met both Honduran leaders on Thursday, but failed to convince them to
talk together. Each continues to insist that the other give up claims to
lead the country. "We have no illusions. This may take longer than we
imagined," said Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping
resolve Central America's civil wars.

A new CID-Gallup poll indicated that Hondurans were split on the coup, with
a slight majority appearing to oppose it. 46% said they disagreed with
Zelaya's ouster and 41% said they approved of it, according to the
face-to-face survey of 1,204 Hondurans in the days following the ouster.
Another 13% declined to answer. They were about evenly divided on Zelaya
himself, with 31% saying they had a positive image of him and 32% negative.
That was close to findings of a similar poll four months ago in which
positive views outpaced negative by percentage points. The pollsters said
the survey, conducted in 16 of Honduras' 18 provinces from June 30 to July
4, had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

*Both Zelaya and Micheletti left Costa Rica after their meetings with Arias.
* While the two leaders left, delegates continued meetings with Arias' team
on Friday, but OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said "there is lack
of willingness to discuss things."

Back in Honduras,

Micheletti said he was ready to see Zelaya come back -- "but to be sent
directly to the courts," referring to criminal charges including treason and
usurping public functions.

Zelaya, meanwhile, flew to the Dominican Republic, where President Leonel
Fernandez received him with full military honors and promised to speak for
Zelaya at the upcoming summit of the Nonaligned Movement in Egypt.

Thousands of Zelaya blocked a road and burned tires in the Honduran capital
of Tegucigalpa on Friday, but there were no reported clashes with troops or
police. One of the protesters, union member Jose Luis Vaquedano, 55,
dismissed the talks in Costa Rica as "a delaying tactic by the US government
meant to give the coup leaders time to consolidate power."

http://www.chicoer.com/news/national/ci_12808151