'Most importantly, the Methodists warn of the danger of eugenics in our own time'

Methodists Nail Darwinian Nazi Record, Repent U.S. Past, Warn About 21st Century Eugenics

The quadrennial international convention of the Methodist Church, meeting in Fort Worth, today adopted an historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of Darwinian eugenics that saw its 20th century extreme expression in the theories of Adolf Hitler.

Yes, that would be the Nazi ideology that the Darwinists of today—and major media—pretend sprang on the world fresh from the head of Hitler, wholly unconnected to the history of Darwin's theory, Francis Galton and Ernst Haeckel. For the ten minutes it spent on this topic, the current film Expelled, starring Ben Stein, has been the target of unstinting left wing media attack and revisionist history.

The Methodists' resolution—adopted by a vote of 836 to 28—apologizes for the denomination's own failure to resist the eugenics movement in this country in the 20th century. They were not alone, as John West explains in Darwin Day in America. But no other mainline Protestant denomination has yet had the courage to admit to the racism of Darwinist eugenics and the supine attitude that leading American religious leaders, as well as the scientific establishment, adopted towards it.

Perhaps most importantly, the Methodists warn of the danger of eugenics in our own time. This is a significant development in an era of growing and cavalier genetic experimentation. The Methodists are the third largest religious denomination in America and a major force internationally. Their voice matters.

I can't wait to see Cornelia Dean explain the Methodists' concerns in The New York Times. Will the Anti-Defamation League rebuke the Methodists for daring to mention the historic link between Darwinism and Hitler? Will Richard Dawkins be quoted calling the resolution "outrageous"? Will MSNBC and other major media that have smeared Ben Stein and Expelled call Stein and his colleagues for their reaction? Or—this being an increasingly sensitive, revealing and inconvenient subject for America's modern social engineers—will they try to ignore it and hope nobody notices?

The trouble for them is that plenty of people are noticing. The issue is diverse and complex—and consequential.

Click here for full text of the resolution, "An Apology for Support of Eugenics."

 

Waterloo Watch Says Fluoride In Our Tap Water Is Unnecessary

 

Recent research demonstrates clearly that drinking fluoridated water does not prevent cavities. The same research shows a growing list of harmful effects. In a recent Globe and Mail article (Nov 28, 2007) Warren Bell, former head of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment stated; "The days of wholesale deliberate fluoridation ... are numbered." 

 

There have been significant developments in policy and in the research which are worth noting. For example, Health Canada now states that prescribing controlled doses of pharmaceutical grade fluoride under the care of a doctor is no longer recommended: "Health Canada does not recommend the use of fluoride supplements (drops or tablets)."

 

Fluoride is a toxic chemical. Read the government warnings regarding toothpaste and mouthwash:  

 

• "Keep out of reach of children under 6 yrs of age."
•  "If you swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help or contact a PoisonControlCenter right away."
• "If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Centre right away." 
• "Never give fluoridated mouthwash or mouth rinses to children under six years of age, as they may swallow it." 
• "Use non-fluoridated toothpaste or no toothpaste for young children."

A pea-size amount of fluoridated toothpaste contains about 0.25mg of fluoride. One glass of fluoridated water contains the same amount of fluoride. We are told not to ingest the pharmaceutical grade fluoride in toothpaste. We are told to ingest the industrial grade fluoride in drinking water.

The fluoridation chemicals (hydrofluorosilicic acid, arsenic and lead) are all toxic substances from Schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Agency list. Toxic substances are man-made and accumulate in our bodies over our life time.

 

Environment Canada also states that; "Hydrofluorosilicic acid is identified as a dangerous good under the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations and has been classified as a Class 8 corrosive substance." The disposal of these "hazardous waste" products is expensive. They may not be put into our lakes, rivers or streams.

 

We are paying companies to put their hazardous waste into our drinking water, hence source water. Shouldn't these companies pay for the disposal of their own hazardous waste, in a manner that does not cause environmental or human health harm?

 

The new 2002 Safe Drinking Water Act of Ontario does not permit the addition of "drinking water health hazards" to our drinking water and dilution of contaminants is "no defense". Toxic substances by definition are "drinking water health hazards."

 

Health Canada, the US Food and Drug Administration, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, have not been able to find any chronic toxicology studies to demonstrate safety of the actual products used in water fluoridation systems after 60 years of use.

 

~ more... ~

 

 

 

How Israel can make peace with Syria

The basic parameters of any peace deal between Israel and Syria have been clear for years. Israel wants diplomatic relations and an end to Syria acting as a sponsor of terror and a key ally of Iran. Syria wants the return of the Golan Heights as well as international recognition and financial aid from the West to prop up its economy.

The strategically important Golan, with little biblical significance for Israel and whose settlers are less than hard-line, would become a demilitarised zone to prevent the attacks on the Galil that were rampant before it was captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. Syria has indicated its agreement to Israel keeping early-warning stations on the Golan and part of it remaining under Israeli control on a long-term lease or as a nature reserve.

At least five Israeli prime ministers have been prepared to discuss the details of these shopping lists, without clinching a final deal. The last attempt broke down in 2000. This time, the circumstances might be different.

 

~ more... ~

 

Wither Macedonia?

On the face of it, the Greek protests seem pretty silly. It is true that in ancient times, Macedonia was part of the Greek-speaking world, the northernmost cultural and linguistic outpost of peninsular Greece; true, too, that Alexander (356-323 BCE) and his father, Phillip, who unified ancient Greece by military conquest, were every bit as Greek as Plato and Aristotle (who tutored Alexander when the latter was a boy); true as well that the Greeks call the northern region of Greece "Macedonia" to this day; true, too, that this region is where Phillip and Alexander hailed from. But Slavic tribes overran part of historical Macedonia as long ago as the early Middle Ages, and after World War II, communist Yugoslavia named its southernmost province The People's Republic of Macedonia. Why, then, after the breakup of Yugoslavia into separate independent states, should not the Bulgarian-speaking population of this ex-"people's republic" have the right to go on calling its new country by the same name? Why should Greek national feelings, or Greek national pride, get in the ways of this?

And yet it's not quite so simple, as Jews are in a good position to realize. Just a few days ago, for example, I came across (and not for the first time) a reference to the great "Czech writer" Franz Kafka. Now, Kafka was in fact born, and lived nearly all his life, in Prague, but the language he wrote in was German and he was no more a Czech writer than Alexander the Great was a Slavic warrior. Moreover, calling him a German writer, as he is also sometimes labeled, is equally misleading, because he had absolutely no sense of German identity. He came from a German-speaking Prague Jewish family and had an intense (if anguished) sense of Jewishness. One could reasonably, I suppose, call Kafka a "Czech Jewish writer," and, perhaps most accurately, a "German-language Czech Jewish writer," but "Czech writer" by itself can strike one only as a purloining of him for Czech national purposes.

Let's take another, similarly aggravating case: the description one sometimes finds of the great Jewish thinker and legal scholar Moshe ben Maimon ("the Rambam"), or Maimonides, as a "Spanish philosopher." (One of many places you'll encounter this in is Webster's Online Dictionary.) This is even more absurd than calling Kafka a Czech writer, because Maimonides, who was born in Muslim Cordoba in 1135, left Spain with his family when he was a child, wrote his works in Hebrew and in an Arabic spelled with Hebrew characters, and knew no Spanish at all. To claim him for Spanish culture and tradition, as the Spanish government has taken to doing in recent years, can only irritate Jews, even if this claim acknowledges that, as a "Spanish philosopher," Maimonides devoted himself entirely to Jewish subjects. He may have been a Spanish-born philosopher, as he is more accurately referred to in other places, but he certainly was not a Spanish one.

Is the case of Macedonia really that different? Historically, after all, the name was a Greek one never used by Slavs before modern times. And this would seem even truer of naming the airport of a Slavic country for a Greek national hero, like Alexander the Great. If a Jew can feel annoyed when the Czechs appropriated Kafka, certainly a Greek can feel the same about Alexander.

~ more... ~

 

U.S. Lexus, Mercedes Sales Fall as Affluent Succumb to Slowdown

U.S. sales of luxury auto brands including Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus and Daimler AG's Mercedes- Benz fell in April, adding to evidence that the economic slowdown is causing even wealthy buyers to curb spending.

Sales by automakers' luxury divisions -- broadly defined by analysts as those selling autos for $40,000 aimed at the most- affluent consumers -- dropped 13 percent from a year earlier, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Autodata. That outpaced the 8.9 percent decline in sales of all vehicles.

~ more... ~

 

EPA opens chemical assessment to corporate lobbying

New Process Marginalizes Government Scientists and Promotes Industry Influence

Washington, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled a new process for assessing the health risks of new chemicals that allows chemical manufacturers and other industries to play key roles. As a result, it will be much easier to inject corporate influence into public health determinations that should be purely scientific, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

The overhaul of the EPA "Integrated Risk Information System" became effective on April 10, 2008, the day it was announced. EPA said the changes "created several important opportunities" for affected interests to weigh in "at key points throughout the nomination and assessment" of new environmental contaminants. One hallmark of the changes is pushing government research to the side in favor of outside research which is largely industry-funded. As a consequence –

• Affected corporations will be intimately involved in each step of EPA's risk assessment and will be able to know what staff are assigned to which work, making the agency "research plan" vulnerable to political manipulation through the appropriations process;
• The Defense and Energy Departments will have a formal role on how pollutants, such as the chemical perchlorate, are evaluated. In addition, these agencies could declare a particular chemical to be "mission critical" that would allow them to control how "data gaps" are to be filled. All intra-and inter-agency communications on risk assessments are deemed "deliberative" and thus confidential;
• The White House Office of Management and Budget would control both the substance and timing of final decisions on chemical risk assessments.

"Under this system, every chemical risk assessment is a special interest scrum," stated New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientists and attorney. "Had this process been in place, the tobacco industry would have stopped EPA from declaring secondhand smoke a lung cancer risk."

These chemical risk assessments are used to develop toxic clean-up criteria, safe drinking water standards, occupational exposure levels and other essential public health protections. In its press announcement, EPA Assistant Administrator George Gray said the changes were intended to make the assessments "more predictable, streamlined, and transparent."

"In the name of transparency, EPA concocted this convoluted system in secret," Bennett added, noting Gray's previous work in an industry-financed institute on this topic. "What a coincidence that this process seems tailor-made to drum up a lot of business for the work Mr. Gray did in the private sector."

PEER points to this revision as one of what will be many more late-in-the-Bush-administration attempts to skew rules, interpretations and policies that could not be changed through normal, publicly-reviewed channels. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has already vowed to hold oversight hearings on this topic.

###

Read the EPA press release

See Senator Barbara Boxer's vow to hold oversight hearings

Look at the new 13-step IRIS process

Scan EPA's FAQ explanation

Review George Gray's background

 

Elite policy and the "Axis of Evil" by Noam Chomsky

Charges against North Korea escalated in September 2007, when Israel bombed an obscure site in northern Syria, an "act of war," as at least one American correspondent recognized (Seymour Hersh). Charges at once surfaced that Israel attacked a nuclear installation being developed with the help of North Korea, an attack compared with Israel's bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981—which, according to available evidence, convinced Saddam Hussein to initiate his nuclear weapons program. The September 2007 charges are dubious. Hersh's tentative conclusion after detailed investigation is that the Israeli actions may have been intended as another threat against Iran—the U.S.-Israel have you in their bombsights. However this may be, there is some important background that should be recalled. 

In 1993 Israel and North Korea were on the verge of an agreement: Israel would recognize North Korea, and in return, North Korea would end any weapons-related involvement in the Middle East. The significance for Israeli security is clear. Clinton ordered the deal terminated, and Israel had no choice but to obey. Ever since its fateful decision in 1971 and the years that followed to reject peace and security in favor of expansion, Israel has been compelled to rely on the U.S. for protection, hence to obey Washington's commands. 

Whether or not there is any truth to current charges about North Korea and Syria, it appears that the threat to the security of Israel and the region could have been avoided by peaceful means, had security been a high priority.

~ more... ~

 

Secret Bush "Finding" Widens War on Iran

ix weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.
 
Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.
 
All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

~ more... ~

 

ICE Plans to Deport All Undocumented by 2012

The raids on worksites, along with the growing number of "fugitive operations teams" that pursue individuals with removal orders and a program that increases local police cooperation in immigration enforcement, are "creating an incredible climate of fear," says Andrea Black, network coordinator of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition of individuals and nearly 100 groups advocating humane reform of the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system. Black and Paromita Shah of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild spoke during Access Washington, a regular conference call with immigration experts and ethnic media reporters convened by New America Media.

The raids form part of "Operation Endgame," ICE's strategic plan for "removing all removable aliens" by 2012. They come after years of increased emphasis on enforcement of federal immigration law, according to Black. "There has been a huge ramping up of resources to make this happen."

 

[ ... ]

ICE plans to grow. It currently has 75 "fugitive operations teams," and budget approval for another 29. It is requesting a budget increase of 95 million for FY 2009, which includes 1,000 additional detention beds. But its mission remains the same. The "golden measure" of ICE's success, according to a 2003 statement by Anthony S. Tangeman, director of the Office of Detention and Deportation, is the removal all "aliens."

 

~ more... ~

 

'Big city payout, few convictions in other NYPD cases before Bell'

Their eight-week trial ended in an acquittal, but the detectives at the center of the Sean Bell shooting aren't off the hook yet.

Detectives Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Gescard Isnora are still vulnerable to federal charges, disciplinary action from the NYPD and civil suits.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Sean Bell's parents and his fiancée have no intention of allowing interest in the case to fizzle. Sharpton Saturday called the criminal acquittal a "comma" in the story of Bell. "We are going to bring the period and the exclamation point," Sharpton said.

Here's a look at several other notorious cases involving city cops and their divergent outcomes:

ANTHONY BAEZ

Officer Francis Livoti placed Baez, who was asthmatic, in a fatal choke hold in 1994 after a football tossed by the 29-year-old hit the cop's police car.
Criminal charges: Livoti was charged with criminally negligent homicide, but was acquitted at trial.

Federal charges: Federal prosecutors indicted Livoti on civil rights charges. He was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to 7½ years in prison
NYPD: During a departmental hearing, Livoti was found guilty of violating guidelines by using an illegal choke hold to subdue Baez. He was fired.

Civil payout: The city settled the Baez family's wrongful death suit for $3 million.

ABNER LOUIMA

The Haitian immigrant was sodomized with a stick in the bathroom of the 70th Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn in 1997.

Criminal charges: The Brooklyn district attorney's office turned the case over to the federal government, which could impose stiffer sentences.

Federal charges: Officer Justin Volpe pleaded guilty to charges of sexually brutalizing Louima. Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Officer Charles Schwarz was convicted of perjury and served five years in prison. Officers Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice, but their sentences were overturned on appeal. Sgt. Michael Bellomo was acquitted.

NYPD: Volpe, Schwarz, Bruder and Wiese were fired. Bruder and Wiese unsuccessfully sued to get their jobs back. Bellomo is still a cop.

Civil payout: The city and police union settled with Louima for $8.75 million.

TIMOTHY STANSBURY

In 2004, Housing Officer Richard Neri fatally shot 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury as he walked across the roof of a Brooklyn housing project.

Criminal charges: A grand jury declined to indict Neri, who claimed he fired accidentally.

Federal charges: Federal prosecutors decided not to bring civil rights charges.

NYPD: Neri was suspended for 30 days after a departmental trial. He was assigned to a desk job.

Civil payout: The city settled a wrongful death suit for $2 million.

AMADOU DIALLO

In 1999, Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, was shot dead by four cops who fired 41 bullets at him in the Bronx.

Criminal charges: Officers Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss were acquitted of murder charges by an upstate jury in 2000.

Federal charges: The Justice Department decided not to file civil rights charges.

NYPD: An internal investigation found the officers had not violated any guidelines. They were all put on desk duty. Carroll retired from the NYPD. Murphy and McMellon became firefighters. Boss is still a cop. He has sued without success to get his gun back and return to active duty.

Civil payout: The city paid the Diallo family $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.

 

~ source: NYDailyNews ~

 

'We will close this city down, Sharpton says'

Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.

"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."

Sharpton was joined by the parents and sister of 23-year-old Sean Bell and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club.

Also sitting behind Sharpton as he spoke was Nicole Paultre Bell, who took her fiance's name after his death.

~ more... ~

'Behind is the world we have lost, ahead the world we are making'

From: The Bridge at the Edge of the World

 

The remarkable charts that introduce this book reveal the story of humanity's impact on the natural earth. The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is crashing against the earth -- the Great Collision. And like the crash of an asteroid, the damage is enormous. For all the material blessings economic progress has provided, for all the disease and destitution avoided, for all the glories that shine in the best of our civilization, the costs to the natural world, the costs to the glories of nature, have been huge and must be counted in the balance as tragic loss.

Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About half the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in sixty-five million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.

Human impacts are now large relative to natural systems. The earth's stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before the change was discovered. Human activities have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third and have started in earnest the dangerous process of warming the planet and disrupting climate. Everywhere earth's ice fields are melting. Industrial processes are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at a rate equal to nature's; one result is the development of more than two hundred dead zones in the oceans due to overfertilization. Human actions already consume or destroy each year about 40 percent of nature's photosynthetic output, leaving too little for other species. Freshwater withdrawals doubled globally between 1960 and 2000, and are now over half of accessible runoff. The following rivers no longer reach the oceans in the dry season: the Colorado, Yellow, Ganges, and Nile, among others.

 

[ ... ]

 

Economic historian Angus Maddison reports that in the year 1000 there were only about 270 million people on earth -- fewer than today's U.S. population. Global economic output was only about $120 billion. Eight hundred years later, the man-made world was still small. By 1820, populations had risen to about a billion people with an output of only $690 billion. Over this eight hundred years, per capita income increased by only a couple of hundred dollars a year. But shortly thereafter the take-off began. By 2000, populations had swelled by an additional five billion, and, astoundingly, economic output had grown to exceed forty trillion dollars.[19] The acceleration continues. The size of the world economy doubled since 1960, and then doubled again.

World economic activity is projected to quadruple again by midcentury.