Archive for February 7th, 2008
Alan Johnson ‘misleading’ over fluoride benefits
Alan Johnson ‘misleading’ over fluoride benefits
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
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PERCENT OF PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY POPULATION USING FLUORIDATED WATER AND STATE RANKING – map source :
http://www.maebrussell.com/Fluoride/Fluoride%20-%20Commie%20Plot%20or%20Capitalist%20Ploy.html
Tooth decay in children across Europe has fallen irrespective of whether there is fluoride in the water, authors of a report have said.
Mr Johnson has called for it to be added to all water supplies in the United Kingdom in an attempt to reduce the number of people seeking dental treatment.
He said children in Manchester, where water is not fluoridated, were twice as likely to have tooth decay as those in Birmingham, where it is added.
Mr Johnson said a review of evidence by York University had found that adding fluoride reduced the number of children with tooth decay by 15 per cent.
But the authors said their findings have been used selectively and the impact of adding fluoride to water supplies was unclear. They accused the Government of giving “an over-optimistic assessment of the evidence in favour of fluoridation”.
“The Department of Health’s objectivity is questionable,” said Sir Iain Chalmers, the editor of the James Lind Library in Oxford, and Prof Trevor Sheldon, the deputy vice-chancellor at York University, who conducted the review.
Pro-fluoride pamphlet, American Assoc. of Public Health Dentistry.
They said tooth decay in 12- year-olds has reduced across Europe irrespective of whether there is fluoride in the water.
The countries with the biggest drop in childhood tooth decay – Sweden, Netherlands, Finland and Denmark – do not fluoridate the water.
They said levels of tooth decay have fallen greatly in the past 30 years.
“This trend has occurred regardless of the concentration of fluoride in water or the use of fluoridated salt, and it probably reflects use of fluoridated toothpastes and other factors, including perhaps nutrition.”
Evidence about the potential harm of adding fluoride to the water – some studies have suggested a link to bladder cancer and hip fractures – was not of sufficient quality to draw firm conclusions, Sir Iain and Prof Sheldon said.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said: “Evidence on the potential benefits and harms of adding fluoride to water is relatively poor.”
Across the United Kingdom 5.5 million people use water with added fluoride and another half a million use a water supply where it occurs naturally.
Over the next three years, £14 million will be available to strategic health authorities which decide, after local consultation, to add fluoride.
Mr Johnson said: “Fluoridation is scientifically supported, it is legal, and it is our policy, but only two or three areas currently have it and we need to go much further in areas where dental health needs to be improved.
“It is an effective and relatively easy way to help address health inequalities – giving children from poorer backgrounds a dental health boost that can last a lifetime, reducing tooth decay and thereby cutting down on the amount of dental work they need.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health said it “made no apologies” for “promoting the benefits to oral health which fluoridation offers”.
“No evidence of risks to general health have been identified at the 1 part per million concentration used for artificially fluoridating public water supplies,” he said.
“Nevertheless, the department is committed to further research to strengthen the evidence base on the effects of fluoridation.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/06/ndental106.xml
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Related articles :
The dollar’s reserve currency role is drawing to an end
The dollar’s reserve currency role is drawing to an endby Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, February 7, 2008
It is difficult to know where Bush has accomplished the most destruction, the Iraqi economy or the US economy.In the current issue of Manufacturing & Technology News, Washington economist Charles McMillion observes that seven years of Bush has seen the federal debt increase by two-thirds while US household debt doubled.
This massive Keynesian stimulus produced pitiful economic results. Median real income has declined. The labor force participation rate has declined. Job growth has been pathetic, with 28 percent of the new jobs being in the government sector. All the new private sector jobs are accounted for by private education and health care bureaucracies, bars and restaurants. Three and a quarter million manufacturing jobs and a half-million supervisory jobs were lost. The number of manufacturing jobs has fallen to the level of 65 years ago.
This is the profile of a Third World economy.
The “new economy” has been running a trade deficit in advanced technology products since 2002. The US trade deficit in manufactured goods dwarfs the US trade deficit in oil. The US does not earn enough to pay its import bill, and it doesn’t save enough to finance the government’s budget deficit.
To finance its deficits, America looks to the kindness of foreigners to continue to accept the outpouring of dollars and dollar-denominated debt.
The dollars are accepted, because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
At the meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last week, billionaire currency trader George Soros warned that the dollar’s reserve currency role was drawing to an end: “The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it’s basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency. Now the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to accumulate dollars.”
If the world is unwilling to continue to accumulate dollars, the US will not be able to finance its trade deficit or its budget deficit. As both are seriously out of balance, the implication is for yet more decline in the dollar’s exchange value and a sharp rise in prices.
Economists have romanticized globalism, taking delight in the myriad of foreign components in US brand name products. This is fine for a country whose trade is in balance or whose currency has the reserve currency role. It is a terrible dependency for a country such as the US that has been busy at work offshoring its economy while destroying the exchange value of its currency.
As the dollar sheds value and loses its privileged position as reserve currency, US living standards will take a serious knock.
If the US government cannot balance its budget by cutting its spending or by raising taxes, the day when it can no longer borrow will see the government paying its bills by printing money like a Third World banana republic. Inflation and more exchange rate depreciation will be the order of the day.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8021
Comments :
More half-truths and utter claptrap
by Paperinoisback
Reading this article one would think that the whole problem of US deficit spending and the crisis of the dollar only happened because of managerial mistakes made since 2002 by the Chimp. This is baloney. THE WHOLE OF THE DOLLAR ECONOMY IS FOUNDED ON A SCAM (not that the Euro is much different, of course), since Bretton Woods. What we are witnessing today is simply the natural outcome of this aberration, prompted by the growth of alternative economies and the loosening of the US political clasp on the rest of the world. And the main reason why this process is still not complete is the oil question.
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Soros is never wrong…
by Legolas_Greenleaf
especially when it comes to currency matters. He’s widely considered a god on Wall Street, justly so, having “beat the street (by a wide margin) for 20 consecutive years.
Guess where he is putting his fortune? Yuans, rubles, rupees, and gold.
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Oh yes!
by poiuytr
The US wont see the end of 2008. Not in its present state, that is. I’m shocked at how quickly it came. Jan 2008 saw the effective end of US banking. Amazing! But all this was clear mid-2006 when the US monopoly on the west currency was shot to hell.
Now it’s time to begin moving off euro cause that’s the next piece of rubbish to go.
Deadly New Virus Kills 3 Organ Transplant Patients
Deadly New Virus Kills 3 Organ Transplant Patients
2-6-8
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
A previously unknown virus killed three women who got organ transplants from an Australian donor, and researchers say the technique they used to identify it could lead them to many more new infectious agents.
The as-yet-unnamed virus appears to be related to a bug called lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, which usually causes only a minor flu-like illness.
But this one killed the three transplant patients by causing encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, the team reported on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers used a relatively new method to find the virus, called high-throughput sequencing. They used powerful machines to get the full genetic sequences from the organs and from the patients, and filtered out everything but the sequences from the virus.
When the three women, ages 63, 64 and 44, all died in the Australian hospital after receiving a liver and two kidneys from the same man, doctors knew something was wrong. But a team at the Victoria Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory could not find a cause.
“That donor died of a stroke and was not thought to have had an infectious disease at all,” said Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York, who led the study.
Traditional methods such as trying to grow a virus or bacteria from samples, and even standard DNA sequencing, failed to turn up anything.
“As a result, the samples were sent to us,” Lipkin said in a telephone interview.
HEAVYWEIGHT GENE MACHINE
His team used a new machine — a high-throughput sequencer made by 454 Life Sciences, a part of Roche Applied Science and Roche AG.
These machines are usually used to mass-sequence entire genomes of large organisms, such as humans. It had never been used on a hunt like this one.
“After 100,000 different sequence analyses we found 14 (suspicious viral genetic sequences),” Lipkin said. “So it was a needle-in-a-haystack problem.”
The RNA resembled the RNA from a type of virus known as an arenavirus, specifically lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus or LCMV, known to cause transplant-related disease and birth defects in addition to mild flu-like illness in healthy people.
The 57-year-old organ donor had recently visited the former Yugoslavia before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in Australia, and Lipkin’s team said the virus looked like it was of “Old World” origin.
“The virus is new and was not detected in 100 organ recipients who were not linked to this cluster,” they wrote.
Lipkin said the method may be useful for diagnosing mysterious new ailments.
“We have so many diseases where there is no agent implicated,” he said. “Over half of pneumonia and over half of encephalitis and over half of diarrheal disease are never diagnosed,” he added.
“We need to be able to survey for old and new agents.”
Christopher McLeod, president of 454 Life Sciences, said the machine might help identify emerging new infections, like the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, virus that appeared suddenly in China in 2002 and killed nearly 800 people globally before it was contained two years later.
“Over 30,000 organ transplants are performed in the U.S. each year. Knowledge of the genetic sequence of this virus might enable improvements in screening that will enhance the safety of transplantation,” McLeod said in a statement.
(Editing by Will Dunham and Xavier Briand)
Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
Univ of West Indies
Please visit my “Emerging Diseases” message board at:
http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
Also my new website:
Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
Go with God and in Good Health
‘Mysterious’ Bird Flu Behavior Baffles Indonesian Scientists
‘Mysterious’ Bird Flu Behavior Baffles Indonesian Scientists
2-7-8
- JAKARTA (AFP) –
Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the “mysterious” behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world’s worst-hit nation.
Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year’s victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities.
Officials from the ministry of agriculture’s bird flu control unit told a media briefing that the risk factors for human infection remained unclear after studies were conducted around victims’ homes.
“In some of the cases we found the virus in the water and chickens, but in many other cases the studies showed no signs of the virus in the surroundings,” said the unit’s Tjahjani Widjastuti at the briefing late Tuesday.
The usual mode of transmission of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is directly from an infected bird — typically poultry — to humans.
“The behaviour (of the virus in Indonesia) is mysterious and we are competing with the dynamics of the virus. There needs to be deeper study on why there are more cases in humans, what are the risk factors… so we can cut the chain of infection to humans,” Widjastuti said.
Globally, scientists fear that the virus will eventually mutate into a form easily spread between people.
Indonesia has been sharply criticised for being slow to act in its fight to control bird flu, which has spread easily in a nation where many people keep chickens and other birds in their gardens and homes.
Bird flu is endemic in all of Indonesia’s 33 provinces except for Gorontalo on Sulawesi island and in North Maluku, said Widjastuti.
Man’s death linked to cotton swab use
Man’s death linked to cotton swab use
From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
February 7, 2008
MONTREAL — A Quebec coroner is calling for stricter product warnings from Health Canada after linking the death of a Montreal man to his use of cotton ear swabs.
Daniel St-Pierre, 43, died from meningitis last year after an infection from his outer ear migrated through his perforated eardrum and killed him, the coroner concluded.
Mr. St-Pierre had been a frequent user of cotton swabs, which probably ended up giving him an ear infection through overuse and repeated rubbing, coroner Jacques Ramsay said.
He then used a swab “with maybe a little more vigour than usual,” which perforated his eardrum, letting the outer ear’s infection travel into his inner ear, the coroner said.
“Once you’re in the inner ear, you’re millimetres away from the meninges and the brain,” Dr. Ramsay said in an interview yesterday. “You just need one time to perforate your eardrum, and that opens the barrier and allows the infection to migrate.”
While meningitis, an infection of the fluid around the spinal cord and brain, remains a “remote complication” from such a rupture, Health Canada should put stronger product warnings on cotton swab products, he said. Dr. Ramsay proposed a diagram of an ear with a red X through it.
Mr. St-Pierre went to a hospital emergency room one day last March after waking with pain and with blood coming out of his right ear. The outer ear was so inflamed, the doctor couldn’t even see the eardrum. Mr. St-Pierre was sent home with eardrops.
His condition worsened throughout the night and the next day. Finally, his wife called 911 and Mr. St-Pierre was transported by ambulance to Montreal General Hospital, where he died.
Dr. Ramsay says overuse of cotton swabs can lead to a swelling of the outer ear that can give users the sensation their ears are blocked.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080206.wear06/BNStory/National/home
Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots
Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots
by Richard Sauder
7 February 2008
The last week has seen a spate of unexplained, cut, undersea communications cables that has severely disrupted communications in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. As I shall show, the total numbers of cut cables remain in question, but likely number as many as eight, and maybe nine or more.
The trouble began on 30 January 2008 with CNN reports that two cables were cut off the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, initially severely disrupting Internet and telephone traffic from Egypt to India and many points in between.
According to CNN the two cut cables “account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East.“ CNN reported that the two cut cables off the Egyptian coast were “FLAG Telecom’s FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies”.
(10) Other reports placed one of the cut cables, SeaMeWe-4, off the coast of France, near Marseille.(9)(12) However, many news organizations reported two cables cut off the Egyptian coast, including the SeaMeWe-4 cable connecting Europe with the Middle East. The possibilities are thus three, based on the reporting in the news media:
1) the SeaMeWe-4 cable was cut off the coast of France, and mistakenly reported as being cut off the coast of Egypt, because it runs from France to Egypt;
2) the SeaMeWe-4 cable was cut off the Egyptian coast and mistakenly reported as being cut off the coast of France, because it runs from France to Egypt; or
3) the SeaMeWe-4 cable was cut both off the Egyptian and the French coasts, nearly simultaneously, leading to confusion in the reporting. I am not sure what to think, because most reports, such as this one from the International Herald Tribune, refer to two cut cables off the Egyptian coast, one of the two being the SeaMeWe4 cable,(11) while other reports also refer to a cut cable off the coast of France.(9)(12) It thus appears that the same cable may have suffered two cuts, both off the French and the Egyptian coasts. So there were likely actually three undersea cables cut in the Mediterranean on 30 January 2008.
In the case of the cables cut off the Egyptian coast, the news media initially advanced the explanation that the cables had been cut by ships’ anchors.(10)(13) But on 3 February the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said that a review of video footage of the coastal waters where the two cables passed revealed that the area had been devoid of ship traffic for the 12 hours preceding and the 12 hours following the time of the cable cuts.(5)(11) So the cable cuts cannot have been caused by ship anchors, in view of the fact that there were no ships there.
The cable cutting was just getting started. Two days later an undersea cable was reported cut in the Persian Gulf, 55 kilometers off of Dubai.(11) The cable off of Dubai was reported by CNN to be a FLAG Falcon cable.(10) And then on 3 February came reports of yet another damaged undersea cable, this time between Qatar and the UAE (United Arab Emirates).(6)(7)(11)
The confusion was compounded by another report on 1 February 2008 of a cut undersea cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka.(19) If the report is accurate this would represent a sixth cut cable. The same article mentions the cut cable off of Dubai in the Persian Gulf, but seeing as the Suez is on the other side of the Arabian peninsula from the Persian Gulf, the article logically appears to be describing two separate cable cutting incidents.
These reports were followed on 4 February 2008 with a report of even more cut undersea cables. The Khaleej Times reported a total of five damaged undersea cables: two off of Egypt and the cable near Dubai, all of which have already been mentioned in this report. But then the Khaleej Times mentions two that have not been mentioned elsewhere, to my knowledge: 1) a cable in the Persian Gulf near Bandar Abbas, Iran, and 2) the SeaMeWe4 undersea cable near Penang, Malaysia.(3) The one near Penang, Malaysia appears to represent a new incident. The one near Bandar Abbas is reported separately from the one off Dubai and is evidently not the same incident, since the report says , “FLAG near the Dubai coast” and “FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran” were both cut. Bandar Abbas is on the other side of the Persian Gulf from Qatar and the UAE, and so presumably the cut cable near Bandar Abbas is not the one in that incident either. Interestingly, the report also states that, “The first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag Telcoms FALCON submarine cable which was not reported.(3) This news article deals primarily with the outage in the UAE, so it raises the question as to whether this is a reference to yet a ninth cut cable that has not hit the mainstream news cycle in the United States.
By my count, we are probably dealing with as many as eight, maybe even nine, unexplained cut or damaged undersea cables within the last week, and not the mere three or four that most mainstream news media outlets in the United States are presently reporting. Given all this cable-cutting mayhem in the last several days, who knows but what there may possibly be other cut and/or damaged cables that have not made it into the news cycle, because they are lost in the general cable-cutting noise by this point. Nevertheless, let me enumerate what I can, and keep in mind, I am not pulling these out of a hat; all of the sources are referenced at the conclusion of the article; you can click through and look at all the evidence that I have. It’s there if you care to read through it all.
1) one off of Marseille, France
2) two off of Alexandria, Egypt
3) one off of Dubai, in the Persian Gulf
4) one off of Bandar Abbas, Iran in the Persian Gulf
5) one between Qatar and the UAE, in the Persian Gulf
6) one in the Suez, Egypt
7) one near Penang, Malaysia
8) initially unreported cable cut on 23 January 2008 (Persian Gulf?)
Three things stand out about these incidents:
1) all of them, save one, have occurred in waters near predominantly Muslim nations, causing disruption in those countries;
2) all but two of the cut/damaged cables are in Middle Eastern waters;
3) so many like incidents in such a short period of time suggests that they are not accidents, but are in fact deliberate acts, i.e., sabotage.
The evidence therefore suggests that we are looking at a coordinated program of undersea cable sabotage by an actor, or actors, on the international stage with an anti-Muslim bias, as well as a proclivity for destructive violence in the Middle Eastern region.
The question then becomes: are there any actors on the international stage who exhibit a strong, anti-Muslim bias in their foreign relations, who have the technical capability to carry out clandestine sabotage operations on the sea floor, and who have exhibited a pattern of violently destructive policies towards Muslim peoples and nations, especially in the Middle East region?
The answer is yes, there are two: Israel and the United States of America.
In recent years, Israel has bombed and invaded Lebanon, bombed Syria, and placed the Palestinian Territories under a pitiless and ruthless blockade/occupation/quarantine/assault.
During the same time frame the United States of America has militarily invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and American forces remain in both countries at present, continuing to carry out aggressive military operations.
Simultaneous with these Israeli and American war crimes against countries in the region, both Israel and the United States have made many thinly veiled threats of war against Iran, and the United States openly seeks to increase its military presence in Pakistan’s so-called “tribal areas”.(15) Israel and the United States both have a technically sophisticated military operations capability.
Moreover, the United States Navy has a documented history of carrying out espionage activities on the sea floor. The U.S. Navy has long had special operations teams that can go out on submarines and deploy undersea, on the seabed itself, specifically for this sort of operation. This has all been thoroughly documented in the excellent book, Blind Man’s Bluff:
The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (New York: Public Affairs, 1998). The classic example is Operation Ivy Bells, which took place during the Cold War, in the waters off the Soviet Union. In a joint, U.S. Navy-NSA operation, U.S. Navy divers repeatedly tapped an underwater cable in the Kuril Islands, by swimming out undersea, to and from U.S. Navy submarines.(14)
This sort of activity is like something straight out of a spy novel thriller, but the U.S. Navy really does have special submarines and deep diving, special operations personnel who specialize in precisely this sort of operation. So cutting undersea cables is well within the operational capabilities of the United States Navy.
Couple this little known, but very important fact, with the reality that for years now we have seen more and more ham-handed interference with the global communications grid by the American alphabet soup agencies (NSA, CIA, FBI, HoSec) and major telecommunication companies.
Would the telecommunication companies and the American military and alphabet soup agencies collude on an operation that had as its aim to sabotage the communications network across a wide region of the planet? Would they perhaps collude with Israeli military and intelligence agencies to do this? The honest answer has to be: sure, maybe so. The hard reality is that we are now living in a world of irrational and violent policies enacted against the civilian population by multinational corporations, and military and espionage agencies the world over. We see the evidence for this on every hand. Only the most myopic among us remain oblivious to that reality.
In light of the American Navy’s demonstrated sea-floor capabilities and espionage activities, the heavy American Navy presence in the region, the many, thinly veiled threats against Iran by both the Americans and the Israelis, and their repeated, illegal, military aggression against other nations in the region, suspicion quite naturally falls on both Israel and the United States of America.
It may be that this is what the beginning of a war against Iran looks like, or perhaps it is part of a more general, larger assault against Muslim and/or Arab interests across a very wide region. Whatever the case, this is no small operation, seeing as the cables that have been cut are among the largest communication pipes in the region, and clearly represent major strategic targets.
Very clearly, we are not looking at business as usual. On the contrary, it is obvious that we are looking at distinctly unusual business.
The explanations being put forth in the mainstream news media for these many cut, undersea communications cables absolutely do not pass the smell test. And by the way, the same operators who cut undersea cables in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, Malaysia and possibly the Suez as well, presumably can also cut underwater cables in the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. This could be a multipurpose operation, in part a test run for isolating a country or region from the international communications grid. The Middle East today, the USA tomorrow?
What’s that you say? I don’t understand how the world works? That kind of thing can’t happen here?
In any event, if the cables have been intentionally cut, then that is an aggressive act of war. I’m sure everyone in the region has gotten that message. I’m looking at the same telegram as they are, and I know that it’s clear as a “bell” to me.(14)
It is little known by the American people, but nevertheless true, that Iran intends to open its own Oil Bourse this month (February 2008) that will trade in “non-dollar currencies”.(16) This has massive geo-political-economic implications for the United States and the American economy, since the American dollar is at present still (if not for much longer) the dominant reserve currency internationally, particularly for petroleum transactions.
However, due to the mind-boggling scale of the structural weaknesses in the American economy, which have been well discussed in the financial press in recent weeks and months, the American dollar is increasingly shunned by corporate, banking and governmental actors the world over. No one wants to be stuck with vaults full of rapidly depreciating dollars as the American economy hurtles towards the basement.
And so an operational Iranian Oil Bourse, actively trading supertankers full of petroleum in non-dollar currencies, poses a great threat to the American dollar’s continued dominance as the international reserve currency.
The American fear and unease of this development can only be increased by the knowledge that, “Oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have set 2010 as the target date for adopting a monetary union and single currency.”
(2) The American government’s fear must have ratcheted up another notch when Kuwait “dropped its dollar peg” in May “and adopted a basket of currencies”, arousing “speculation that the UAE and Qatar would follow suit or revalue their currencies.”(2) Although all the GCC members, with the exception of Kuwait, agreed at their annual meeting in December 2007 to continue to peg their currencies to the American dollar,(2) the hand writing is surely on the wall.
As the dollar plummets, their American currency holdings will be worth less and less. At some point, they will likely decide to cut their losses and decouple the value of their currencies from that of the dollar.
That point may be in 2010, when they establish the new GCC currency, maybe even sooner than that.
If Iran succeeds in opening its own Oil Bourse it is hard to imagine that the GCC would not trade on the Iranian Oil Bourse, given the extremely close geographic proximity. And it is hard to believe that they would not trade their own oil in their own currency. Otherwise, why have a currency of their own? Clearly they intend to use it. And just as clearly, the three cut or damaged undersea communications cables in the Persian Gulf over the last week deliver a clear message.
The United States may be a senescent dinosaur, and it is, but it is also a violent, heavily armed, very angry senescent dinosaur. In the end, it will do what all aged dinosaurs do: perish. But not before it first does a great deal of wild roaring and violent lashing and thrashing about.
There can be no doubt that Iran, and the other Gulf States, were intended recipients of this rather pointed cable cutting telegram, for all of the reasons mentioned here; and additionally, in the case of Iran, probably also as a waning for its perceived insults of Israel and dogged pursuit of its nuclear program in contravention of NeoCon-Zionist dogma that Iran may not have a nuclear program, though other nations in the region, Pakistan and Israel, do.
I must mention that one of my e-mail correspondents has pointed out that another possibility is that once the cables are cut, special operations divers could hypothetically come in and attach surveillance devices to the cables without being detected, because the cables are inoperable until they are repaired and start functioning again. In this way, other interests who wanted to spy on Middle Eastern communications, let’s say on banking and trading data going to and from the Iranian Oil Bourse, or other nations in the Middle East, could tap into the communications network under cover of an unexplained cable “break”. Who knows? — this idea may have merit.
It is noteworthy that two of the cables that were cut lie off the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, and another passes through the Suez. During the height of the disruption, some 70 percent of the Egyptian Internet was down. (13) This is a heavy blow in a day when everything from airlines, to banks, to universities, to newspapers, to hospitals, to telephone and shipping companies, and much more, uses the Internet.
So Egypt was hit very hard. An astute observer who carefully reads the international press could not fail to notice that in recent days there has been a report in the Egyptian press that “Egypt rejected an Israeli-American proposal to resettle 800,000 Palestinians in Sinai.”
This has evidently greatly upset the Zionist-NeoCon power block holding sway in Tel Aviv and Washington, DC with the result that Israel has reportedly threatened to have American aid to Egypt reduced if Egypt does not consent to the resettlement of the Palestinians in Egyptian territory.(17) This NeoCon-Zionist tantrum comes hard on the heels of the Israeli desire to cut ties with Gaza, as a consequence of the massive breach of the Gaza-Egypt border by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in January 2008. (18)
What are NeoCon-Zionist tyrants to do when their diplomatic hissy fits and anti-Arab tirades no longer carry the day in Cairo? Or in Qatar and the UAE? Maybe they get out the underwater cable cutters and deploy some special operations submarines and divers in the waters off of Alexandria and in the Suez and in the Persian Gulf.
This would be completely in line with articulated American military doctrine, which frankly views the Internet as something to be fought. American Freedom Of Information researchers at George Washington University obtained a Department of Defense (Pentagon) document in 2006, entitled “Information Operation Roadmap”, which says forthrightly and explicitly that “the Department must be prepared to ‘fight the net’”.(20) This is a direct quote. It goes on to say that,
“We Must Improve Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability. To prevail in an information-centric fight, it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities.“ (20) It also makes reference to the importance of employing a “robust offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer network attack.”(8)(20)
So now we can add to our list of data points the professed intent of the American military to “fight the net”, using a “robust offensive suite of capabilities” in a “ full-range electronic and computer network attack.”
Maybe this sudden spate of cut communications cables is what it looks like when the American military uses a “robust offensive suite of capabilities” and mounts an “electronic and computer network attack” in order to “fight the net” in one region of the world. They have the means, and the opportunity, I’ve amply demonstrated that in this article. And now we also have the motive, in their own words, from their own policy statement. The plain translation is that the American military now regards the Internet, that means the hardware such as computers, cables, modems, servers and routers, and presumably also the content it contains, and the people who communicate that content, as an adversary, as something to be fought.
Oh yes, just a couple of more dots to connect before you fall asleep tonight:
1) The USS San Jacinto, an anti-missile AEGIS cruiser, was scheduled to dock in Haifa, Israel on 1 February 2008. The Jerusalem Post reported that this ship’s anti-missile system “could be deployed in the region in the event of an Iranian missile attack against Israel.”(1) Are we to expect another “false flag” attack, like the inside job on 9-11 perhaps? — an attack that will be made to appear that it comes from Iran, and that is then used as a pretext to strike Iran, maybe with nuclear weapons? And when Iran retaliates with its own missiles, then the Americans and Israelis will unleash further hell on Iran? Is that the Zionist-NeoCon plan, or something generally along those lines?
2) I have to wonder because just this past Saturday, there was a report in the news that, “Retired senior officers told Israelis … to prepare ‘rocket rooms’ as protection against a rain of missiles expected to be fired at the Jewish State in any future conflict.” Retired General Udi Shani reportedly said, “The next war will see a massive use of ballistic weapons against the whole of Israeli territory.”(4)
Now that we know the Israeli military establishment’s thinking, and now that we have a view into the American military mindset, we ought to be looking at international events across the board with a very critical, analytical eye, especially as they relate to possible events that either are playing out right now, or may potentially play out in the relatively near future, say in the time frame of the next one month to five years. These people are violent and devious; they have forewarned us, and we should take them at their word, given their murderous record on the international stage.
Contact the author at: dr_samizdat@yahoo.com
http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/ConnectingTheDots.htm
References
2) http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/business/?id=24186
4) http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080202132053.iohfg5ob&show_article=1
5) http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153455.htm
6) http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ
7) http://www.arabianbusiness.com/510132-internet-problems-continue-with-fourth-cable-break?ln=en
8) http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7980
9) https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean
10) http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/?iref=hpmostpop
11) http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/04/technology/cables.php
12) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
13) http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/31/Cut-cable-disrupts-Internet-in-Middle-East_1.html
14) http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html
15) http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2213925,00.html
16) http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=37468§ionid=351020103
17) http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/02/02/egypt-rejected-an-american-israeli-proposal-to-re-settle-800000-palestinians-in-sinai/
18) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/24/wgaza124.xml
19) http://www.smartmoney.com/news/on/index.cfm?story=ON-20080201-000320-0524
20) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf
Where is the USS Jimmy Carter?
Where is the USS Jimmy Carter?
Why would I care?
Well, for a couple of reasons. The USS Jimmy Carter isn’t just any old run-of-the-mill nuclear attack submarine. No, no. The Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) is one hot piece of kit. It is the one submarine in the US fleet which is designated a Multi-Mission Platform and is purpose built to carry out a number of roles in special warfare, undersea surveillance and other really sneaky stuff.
In short, USS Jimmy Carter, roughly 100 feet longer than its sister boats of the new Seawolf-class because of its unique role, is a spy machine.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, first of all, the sheets and pages of information on USS Jimmy Carter’s multi-mission capabilities have all disappeared off the US Navy’s sites. Even the commissioning announcement at Commander Submarine Group Two is gone.
The second thing is this:
Internet services in Qatar have been seriously disrupted because of damage to an undersea telecoms cable linking the Gulf state to the UAE, the fourth such incident in less than a week. Qatar Telecom (Qtel) said on Sunday the cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das on Friday. The cause of damage is not yet known, but ArabianBusiness.com has been told unofficially the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship’s anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.
Well actually, there is no evidence that ships anchors did anything of the sort. In fact, Egypt says ships did not sever the fiber-optic cables.
Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.
A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.
Egypt’s transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.
“The ministry’s maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area,” a statement said.
Those cables are about the width of a normal human thumb. And a ship’s anchor would indeed rip right through one. But four? In three different locations in under a week? Run that little coincidence by any police detective and ask what she/he thinks.
So, at the risk of perpetrating a conspiracy theory, I will state that I am highly suspicious and until someone can point at USS Jimmy Carter snuggly alongside at its berth in Bangor, Washington, the Bush administration becomes as strong a suspect as any other possible perpetrator. There is also the fact that USS Jimmy Carter was due to become operational this year.
The Jimmy Carter, interestingly, is purpose built where its predecessors were regular attack subs modified for specific jobs. USS Parche was equipped with a set of pick-up arms designed to rip an armoured fiber-optic cable from its meter deep trench and tap into it. As a matter of certain knowledge, the USN did exactly that with submarines on Soviet undersea copper cables during the cold-war. They conducted a successful tap on the Soviet navy’s Pacific Fleet headquarters when they tapped an undersea cable in the Sea of Okhotsk, which was discovered by the Soviets and another of the Kola Peninsula tapping into the Soviet Northern Fleet headquarters which remained undiscovered.
There have also been leaks which state that the US National Security Agency tapped a fiber-optic undersea cable with some success. The problem was the flood of information which NSA computers were unable to handle at that time.
Former intelligence officials say the agency made its tap with the help of a customized sub. “It’s a submarine capable of bringing a length of cable inside a special chamber, where the men then do the work,” while the sub hugs the ocean floor, says one former official. The surface ships used by undersea-cable companies to install and repair cables have similar chambers–called jointing rooms–where crews work on the delicate fibers. When repairing a broken cable, cable companies generally lift one end of the rupture to the surface and into the jointing room, splice in a new length of cable, then lift the other end of the rupture and repeat the process.
In fact, it is unlikely the Jimmy Carter would actually bring the cable into the submarine. Aside from being a gargantuan pain-in-the-ass it’s risky. However, given the dimensions of the Jimmy Carter, it is probably equipped with a lock-out system which would allow operations to occur outside the sub.
That’s not proof, however, and it still doesn’t explain a total break in the fiber-optic lines. Well, not quite. There is a possible explanation.
Whenever there is a tap on a fiber-optic line, there is a temporary interruption in the information stream. Although short, the operator of the system can detect it. In fact, they would see it instantly because the data-rate would drop immediately raising an alarm. There is also the fact that most cable operators diverge their systems by using two separate lines to stream data. The geographic routes of these lines are far enough apart that any rupture can be handled by rerouting data on the other line.
That’s what makes the breaks so suspicious. The last two breaks interfered with the secondary cable routes.
So, what explains the total breaks? Well, the fact that splicing the tap into the fiber-optic cable is detectable. Since the only way to get accurate data is to conduct a full splice, the only way to get accurate data is to alert the cable operator. They’re not going to be happy with that at all.
If I were conducting an intercept operation requiring an undersea fiber-optic cable splice which I knew the cable operator would detect, I need a way to prevent that operator from detecting it. Create a diversion.
By disabling the cable, either by severing it underwater or creating a problem ashore, it gives me time to do my splice undetected in a location far away from the diversionary problem. When the cable operator says it will be days before a repair ship can get to it, that gives me plenty of time to get the job done and get out of the area.
So, if I’m right then all we have to do is find USS Jimmy Carter. If I’m wrong, I’ve just given the NSA a strategy for making undetected taps. On the other hand, it might just be the most concerted attack on the global fiber-optic network by merchant ship anchors in history.
http://thegallopingbeaver.blogspot.com/2008/02/where-is-uss-jimmy-carter.html
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Comment : by Legolas_Greenleaf
Undersea taps are NOT necessary:
The entire internet is already tapped by US, Russia, and China, and probably UK, France and Israel as well…i think we can rule out surveillance as it would simply be redundant. Besides it would be much easier to park an NSA sniffer in client states like Philippines or Italy or Israel for intercepts, no need to go to all this trouble.
Probably this was a US/Israeli military test in preparation for the next war, to see if they could keep ‘problematic’ information (like a nuclear first strike on Iran) from getting out before it could be ‘cleansed’ or made palatable to the western public.
If that’s the case, then i would say the experiment failed rather miserably and probably benefited Iran in the long run: Iranian diesel subs could cut off CENTCOM’s Qatari fibre just as easily.
Like Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception.
India-Iran: Relations strained after spy satellite launch
India-Iran: Relations strained after spy satellite launch
New Delhi, 5 Feb. (AKI/Asian Age) – India’s relations with Iran have come under renewed strain following the government’s decision to launch an Israeli spy satellite to monitor military and other activities in Iran.
According to the Indian daily, The Asian Age, Iran’s ambassador Seyed Mahdi Nabizadeh said his government had raised the issue with the Indian government, which had justified the launch on technical and commercial grounds.
“We hope the issue could be considered from the political point of view also,” the ambassador said, maintaining that there were some countries that were trying to destroy “very strong and deep-rooted” relations between Iran and India.
Nabizadeh said Iran was optimistic that “wise and independent countries such as India would not give their space and technology to other countries to launch instruments for spying on friendly countries like Iran”.
According to The Asian Age, India hired out its launching pad to Israel for an undisclosed sum of money to launch its satellite, which some Israeli reports claimed was intended to spy on Iran and Syria.
The Iranian ambassador said his government had not been informed of the decision before the satellite was launched.
The Age said it was clear that Tehran had taken up the issue at a government-to-government level only to be given the official information that it was a commercial enterprise that would also help India test its technical prowess in this field.
The Israeli satellite launch reportedly took place from India in January. On Monday, Iran tested a missile capable of carrying satellites into space, Iranian state television.
The rocket was launched from a new Iranian space center, inaugurated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Meanwhile, negotiations on the India-Iran Pakistan pipeline have also stalled because of New Delhi’s refusal to attend the discussions and find a way out of the problems.
The paper said one of the sticking points is the transit fee being charged by Pakistan, which has now offered to renegotiate the charge.
Nabizadeh said the Iranian oil minister had approached his counterparts in India and Pakistan for a trilateral meeting.
“We expect a response from the Indian government tomorrow, and if it is positive, we hope to have this meeting on February 12 or 13,” he said.
India has been steadfast in refusing to attend any of the meetings convened by Iran or Pakistan on the gas pipeline in recent months with petroleum and natural gas minister Murli Deora keeping a distance from “pipeline diplomacy” since July last year.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh has also received an invitation from the Iranian government for a visit to India.
Nabizadeh said a meeting of the India-Iran joint commission was expected to be held in June.
Iran and India have been cooperating in the construction of roads in Afghanistan.
The ambassador said that Iran, Pakistan and India had been working with Afghanistan for peace and stability in the region.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1849442605
Chad rebels warn France against intervention – Chadian President Idriss Deby to pardon French kidnappers
Chad rebels warn France against intervention
Red Cross picks up more bodies from streets
NDJAMENA: Rebels in Chad warned France on Wednesday against intervening militarily to support President Idriss Deby Itno’s regime, as French Defence Minister Herve Morin made an unannounced visit to Ndjamena.
In the aftermath of weekend offensives in the capital, rebel forces have pulled back “to better camouflage themselves” about 70 kilometres (35 miles) from Ndjamena, rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said. “We warn France against all direct intervention; otherwise, things could very badly degenerate for it,” Koulamallah told AFP by satellite telephone.
“It would risk losing face in Chad and endanger the lives of all its nationals in Africa.” Morin – claiming that a column of rebel reinforcements was headed towards Ndjamena from the direction of Sudan – said he was carrying a “message of support” from France to Deby, who he was to see later in the day.
“France will do what it has done before within the limits of international law and the rules that the president of the republic (Nicolas Sarkozy) has given the military for this operation,” he told reporters.
Dead bodies: Some activity was seen returning to some parts of the capital Wednesday, but most businesses were shuttered, as the Chadian Red Cross picked up more dead bodies from the dusty streets after recovering 27 corpses since the weekend. General Mahamat Ali Abdallah, commander of government forces, appealed to the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 civilians who fled to neighbouring Cameroon to return, affirming that the government was in full control.
At stake in Chad is control of one of the poorest but most strategically situated countries in central Africa – one with promising oil reserves and a pourous border with Sudan’s remote and troubled Darfur region.
Sudan denies Chadian allegations that it is supporting the insurgency – an allegation that Chadian Prime Minister Delwa Kassire Coumakoye extended Wednesday to Libya, another neighbouring state.
“It is Kadhafi who is contributing to arming these people,” he said, referring to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi. “They are armed by Sudan and supported by Libya.” Sarkozy said Tuesday that France – with 1,450 troops and Mirage fighter jets stationed in Chad – was ready to “do its duty” and intervene if need be to shore up Deby’s government.
In a declaration Monday seen as a green light for potential intervention, the UN Security Council condemned the rebel attacks and called upon UN member states to support Deby’s government if requested by Ndjamena to do so.
The rebels – who last week crossed the width of Chad from their bases inside Sudan, and Monday threatened a fresh offensive –
responded Tuesday by saying they would agree to a ceasefire.
afp
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=200827\story_7-2-2008_pg4_4
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Aljazeera news : Chadian president remains defiant – 07 Feb 08
Chad to pardon French kidnappers
Chadian President Idriss Deby has said he is ready to pardon six French aid workers convicted of trying to fly 103 children out of the country.
The six were sentenced to eight years’ hard labour in Chad last year, but were flown home in December to serve equivalent jail terms in France.
Responding to Mr Deby’s statement, the French government said it was sending a pardon request.
The development comes as France is helping Chad fight a rebel offensive.
Interviewed about the fate of the convicted aid workers, the Chadian president told French radio that he was ready to pardon them if the Paris government requested it.
Later on Thursday, the French presidency said it was sending the request “immediately”, AFP news agency reported.
‘Vital information’
The aid workers, who are members of the charity Zoe’s Ark, denied kidnapping charges during the trial.
They said they had been tricked into thinking the children they were preparing to fly to France were Sudanese orphans from Darfur.
In fact the children were found to be from Chad itself, and many had parents who were still alive.
Mr Deby made the pardon offer in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, after talks with Defence Minister Herve Morin.
During the visit he thanked France, the former colonial power in Chad, for backing his government.
He said Paris had provided vital information in the face of a week-long assault, during which the rebels briefly stormed N’Djamena.
France has more than 1,400 troops in Chad.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7232327.stm
Iraqi insurgents attack during NBC interview
Iraqi insurgents attack during NBC interview
David Edwards and Nick Juliano
February 7, 2008
Mosul now more dangerous than two years ago, soldier says
As the war in Iraq largely slips from the front of Americans’ minds, a new report from Mosul demonstrates the daily hardships and constant threat of attack still faced by US troops trying to pacify the country.
NBC’s Richard Engel is in the middle of an interview with one member of the Army’s 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment when their combat outpost in Mosul comes under attack. Engel and the soldier he is interviewing — both outfitted in helmets and body armor — flinch as the first bullets fly toward the makeshift base.
“It’s clear the war here is as intense as ever,” Engel says, narrating his piece.
He asks the soldier if the attacks are a “constant problem.”
“Yes,” the soldier says grimly.
A 10-man team of insurgents attacked the base, and the US troops fan across the city searching for them. They come up empty-handed as visibly frightened residents of the city nonetheless offer no cooperation to the Army.
As al Qaeda insurgents have been driven out of Anbar provence, they have apparently regrouped and found a foothold in Mosul, a crumbling, depressed citiy in northern Iraq. The city also apparently has provided a cache of new recruits for the insurgency.
Over the several days Engel spends in Mosul, the soldiers face several attacks from insurgents, using guns and improvised explosive devices to target the US troops before they slip back into the general population.
Sgt. Robert Johnson, on his third tour in Iraq, “says Mosul is more dangerous now, than when he was here two years ago,” according to Engel.
“After this, I don’t want to come over here no more,” Johnson says. After tours lasting nine, 16 and 15 months, “my body is getting weary.”
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Iraqi_insurgents_attack_during_NBC_interview_0206.html
