NIDAN - Public Health Emergency Broadcast

Health Freedom vs. Politics

Theo Chalmers interviews Dounne Alexander MBE and Dr Robert Verkerk.

BP Oil Spill

Countdown Dr.Riki Ott alleges BP engaged in massive cover-up to hide Gulf Disaster damage


EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup



Dahr Jamail on "BP's Scheme to Swindle the "Small People"


Oil Hidden Under Surface


Poison Spreads: Gulf air turns toxic after oil spill 'relief effort'


BP Using Oil Dispersant to Cover Tracks? - Julia Whitty


Raining Oil


Antonia Juhasz: BP’s "Missing Oil" Washes up in St. Mary’s Parish, LA


Ocean currents likely to carry oil to Atlantic


"hundreds of thousands of dead fish" washing up on MA, NJ & VA shores


Dead jellyfish washing up on the shore of Long Beach, Mississippi

War with Iran

Chossudovsky: US will start World War 3 by attacking Iran - February 19 2010


Ron Paul: Iran Sanctions = Act of War - April 23, 2010


Delegates Walk Out - May 03 2010


US walkout on speech by Ahmadinejad 'shows West biased against Iran' - May 03 2010


UN set to vote on Iran sanctions - June 08 2010


'Iranian scientist's wife maintains he was kidnapped' - June 08 2010


The CIA abducted an Iranian nuclear scientist? - June 08 2010


Iranianan Scientist Returns Home! AlJazeera Reports! - July 15 2010


'Iran report nothing to do with IAEA: Obama needs Israeli lobby's money'

Wikileaks Afghanistan 90.000+ Database Leak

The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War


Guardian Editor on Coverage of Afghan War Logs: European Audience "Troubled More...by the Toll this War is Taking on Innocent People"




Julian Assange Responds to Increasing US Government Attacks on WikiLeaks

Toronto G20

NIDAN - Codex Alimentarius

Transcription:

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is an inter-governmental body, that sets guidelines and standards to ensure fair trade practices and consumer protection, in relation to the global trade of food.

Codex Alimentarius does not represent any law. It is however, the guidelines, standards and recommendations instigated by the inter-governmental organisation of Codex to which countries can adapt their laws. That means removing barriers to trade. The reality is that most countries find they have no option but to harmonise their laws to Codex, as they are unable to face the sanctions imposed on them by the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body.

The World Trade Organization is therefore the policeman, that ensures these rules are abided by. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether these rules are good for the people, and whether they are good for the environment.

Codex covers almost all areas of the food supply, ranging from cereals, cocoa, dairy, meat, meat hygiene, sugars, fresh fruit and vegetables to more controversial issues such as food labelling, food additives, contaminants in food, pesticide residues and genetically modified organisms.

Codex Alimentarius aims to tell us what is safe, but in the process often uses criteria that are manipulated to support the interests of the world's largest corporations.

Government delegations that sit in the committees and task forces of Codex are not democratically elected representatives; they are bureaucrats. While the bureaucrats in the country delegations of Codex are theoretically responsive to concerns of members of the public, the practical reality is that the primary steer comes from major corporations.

Behind the commission's country delegates, which typically comprise between three and five members, are the international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). Depending on the meeting, these might include large consumer groups such as Consumers International, but they tend to be dominated by industry interests. That tends to mean the various international associations representing the food, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Decision-making in committee meetings is by so-called consensus among governments. INGOs are not allowed to vote, but they can certainly interject during meetings and can therefore influence decisions.

The system has few winners, the main ones being the transnational corporations, being directly involved in the global production and trade of food, and the pharmaceutical industry that profits from the increasing chronic disease burden that results.

The nutritional content and quality of foods is a low priority. Food hygiene is a high priority, but methods for managing it, such as the use of irradiation or large quantities of preservatives, deplete the integrity and quality of the food. The increasing use of GMOs, which are endorsed by Codex, is a huge problem both in terms of the effects on human health, and the environment.

It's extremely difficult to influence Codex. It's even harder if you're in Europe, as European Member States don't just act individually, they are also spoken for by the European Commission, which acts on behalf of the EU trading bloc. So even if you get the ear of the bureaucrats within your Member State delegation, this delegation is just one of 27 in the EU, that is largely represented by a single European Commission bureaucrat.

The difficulty in influencing Codex is likely to be the result of deliberately engineered decision-making process, that prevents individuals capacity to exert their democratic right.

GM foods, contaminants, additives, pesticide residues and other synthetic chemicals that many of us regard as intrinsically harmful, are pushed for all they're worth, being deemed safe at those concentrations typically used in processed foods. On the other hand, those things we consider intrinsically beneficial, such as vitamins and minerals, are given a very tough ride.

The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA, is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America.

If the North American Free Trade Agreement proceeds, this will likely ensure that policies affecting natural health (including GM, food additives, pesticide residues and all the other things that Codex deals with) will be aligned to the existing European system. This is why we see a transition away from Europe's traditional anti-GM stance towards a pro-GM stance, massively opposed by the European public.

One of the key requisites in having influence is to ensure that complaints about Codex are both accurate, and can be substantiated. There are many examples to show that misinformation on Codex has acted as a smoke screen to conceal genuine complaints, and this enables politicians and bureaucrats to have a reason to reject people's concerns.

Some of the misinformation on Codex appears to be deliberately disseminated, while other parts are unwitting reproductions of the misinformation by concerned, yet naive, individuals.

Inform yourself about Codex using reliable sources. Inaccurate information or disinformation can be more damaging to the cause than no information.

When it comes to being poisoned by pollutants or chemicals in the food, or having the fundamental rights and freedoms restricted by losing access to natural foods and nutrients, it is not Codex itself that provides the legal instrument that impacts the people; it is the national and regional laws of countries. This distancing of Codex from the law allows it to escape direct responsibility, but also makes its operation very insiduous.

The development of the global food trade in the last 30 years is neither good for our health, nor is it good for the environment. The increasing control of the food supply by a small number of governments, and an even smaller number of corporations, is counter to the needs and requirements of the majority of the population of the world. We must reverse the trend towards the global control of the food supply, and the dumbing down of natural medicines based on faulty, manipulated science.

NIDAN - The Economy Lie - Part 1 - Derivatives

Transcription:

The financial crisis which struck the United States and the world in September and October 2008, was in fact a world derivatives panic. This panic marked the first phase of a world economic depression caused by derivatives speculation. The second phase of this depression can also be attributed in large part to derivatives, since derivatives are the main tool being used in the speculative attacks on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and other nations, building up towards a chaotic collapse of the euro.

Derivatives can be defined as any financial paper which is based on other financial paper. In other words, they are financial instruments whose value depends upon, or is derived from the value of other financial instruments. Any kind of securitization results in the creation of derivatives. If individual mortgages are wrapped up and packaged together as a mortgage-backed security, that is a derivative. Any asset-backed security, be it based on car loans, credit card debt, or anything else, also qualifies as a derivative.

Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like "toxic assets," "exotic instruments," and – most notably – "troubled assets".

The reactionary legend is that the crisis was caused by poor people, taking out subprime mortgages and then defaulting, bringing down the entire Anglo-American banking system and triggering the bailouts. Either that, or too much government spending was to blame. The truth is that the $1.5 trillion in subprime mortgages were dwarfed, by the $15 trillion US residential real estate market, to say nothing of the 1.5 thousand trillion dollars world derivatives bubble.

The subprime mortgage was bad. But the collapse of subprime would not have had anything like its actual destructive effect on the US economy, if it had not been compounded by the mass of synthetic derivatives, that were piled on top of subprime.

Thanks to the Wall Street banks, and their derivatives, the financial panic of 2008 has turned into a world economic depression of unimaginable proportions.

The unemployed and underemployed in the US alone are surely in excess of 20 million. Five to six million home foreclosures are already done or in the pipeline, throwing tens of millions of Americans out of their homes. World trade has been seriously impacted. The budgets of California, New York, Illinois, and many other states are in crisis, with massive layoffs of teachers and other state employees. An entire generation is being destroyed.

The speculative attack on Greece and the euro represents the leading edge of the second wave of the depression, which is now arriving in much the same way that the second wave of the 1930s depression was unleashed by the Vienna Kreditanstalt bankruptcy in May of 1931, about 79 years ago and just a year and a half into that depression.

All kinds of derivatives, be they exchange traded or over-the-counter, were strictly banned and outlawed in the United States between 1936 and 1982 thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the wake of several attempts by predatory speculators to manipulate the prices of wheat and corn, during the First Great Depression, the Commodities Exchange Act of 1936 outlawed the selling of options on agricultural products. This law had the effect of blocking most derivative speculation. The very existence of derivatives today and their resulting ability to bring on a new world depression, are thus directly attributable to the dismantling of that law.

It is time to shut down the derivatives rackets. The Wall Street investment houses serve no useful social purpose whatsoever. They exist solely for the purpose of pursuing speculative profits through a process of looting and pillaging the rest of the economy.

We must also address the catastrophic effects, and obvious illegality of credit default swaps.

Credit default swaps represent bets on whether a given asset or company will go bankrupt or not. As such, they can be used as insurance against such an eventuality, or else they can be used to make money on the insolvency. CDS are therefore a form of insurance, but they are issued by counterparties who have not registered as insurance companies, and who have not met the legal and capital requirements which are necessary to function as an insurance company. It ought therefore to be clear that CDS have been totally illegal all along, and have flourished only because of an outrageous failure by state insurance regulators to enforce applicable laws against the privileged class of financiers.

Unless credit default swaps are banned now, they will be increasingly used for speculative attacks against the bonded debt of American states like California, New York, Illinois, and all the others. Before long, credit default swaps will be used by international speculators to attack the value and integrity of United States Treasury securities, threatening the country with the calamity of national bankruptcy. If the United States fails to shut down credit default swaps with timely legislation now, they will be used to help destroy the United States and human civilization in general.

NIDAN - The Cancer Lie - Part 4 - Mammography

Transcription:

Promotions of the American Cancer Society continue to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. All those pink ribbons have given women an inflated fear of the disease, and unrealistic expectations about the benefits of mammograms. Mammograms also lead some women to undergo unnecessary treatments for tumors that are not life-threatening.


Mammograms have about a 70 percent failure rate, which means that many women undergo invasive biopsies needlessly. Experts from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in the U.K., have estimated that about 7,000 British women are improperly diagnosed for breast cancer each year because of mammography.


Aside from unneeded treatments that may result from improper diagnoses, women screened for breast cancer using mammography undergo tremendous exposure to ionizing radiation every time they are screened. Exposure to this radiation is often implicated in causing the very malignant cancers that are meant to be detected. Continual exposure to excessive levels of radiation due to receiving annual mammograms greatly increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.


A study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, concludes the low-dose radiation from annual mammography screening significantly increases breast cancer risk in women with a genetic or familial predisposition to breast cancer.


The study determined that low-dose mammography radiation increased the risk of developing breast cancer by 150 percent. Women under 20 who have had at least five mammograms, are 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer, than high-risk women who have never undergone low-dose mammography screenings.


A 2005 study concluded that a push in Denmark to screen large numbers of women for breast cancer with mammography had reduced breast cancer deaths by 25 percent. Scientists from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen and the Folkehelseinstituttet in Oslo, have re-examined this pro-mammogram study, along with additional data, and come up with an entirely different conclusion.


First, they found that the scientific validity of the 2005 study doesn't hold up, because the research was deeply flawed. The new report shows there's no evidence mammography itself was the reason behind any reduction in breast cancer deaths. In fact, deaths from breast cancer were lower, in areas where women didn't undergo those screening tests.


The results showed that breast cancer deaths declined by 1% in the areas where regular mammography was frequently used. However, breast cancer rates went down 2% per year, in women of the same age living in non-screened areas.


American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine, found breast cancer rates increased significantly in four Norwegian counties, after women there began getting mammograms every two years. The researchers were surprised to find that the incidence of invasive breast cancer was 22 percent higher in the group regularly screened with mammography. The researchers say they can't blame the increased incidence of breast cancer on more cases being found, because the cancer rates among regularly screened women remained higher, than women who only received mammograms once after six years. The scientists conclude that this indicates that some of the cancers detected by mammography, would have spontaneously regressed, if they had never been discovered on a mammogram and treated. Simply put, it appears that some invasive breast cancers simply go away on their own, healed by the body's own immune system.


By attending screening with mammography, some women will avoid dying from breast cancer or receive less aggressive treatment. But many more women will be over-diagnosed, receive needless treatment, have a false-positive result, or live more years as a patient with breast cancer. One thing is for sure; the cancer industry continues to insist that mammography screening is safe and effective at preventing breast cancer deaths, despite evidence that indicates otherwise.


In virtually all of its important actions, the American Cancer Society has been strongly linked with the mammography industry, ignoring the development of viable alternatives. Five radiologists have served as American Cancer Society presidents, and in its every move, the agency reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker.


DuPont was also a substantial backer of the American Cancer Society's Breast Health Awareness Program. They sponsored television shows and other media productions touting mammography. They produced advertising, promotional, and information literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organizations, and doctors. They produced educational films, and of course, lobbied Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services.


DuPont supplies much of the film used in mammography machines. Both DuPont and GE aggressively promote mammography screening of women in their 40s, despite the risk of its contributing to breast cancer in that age group.


Conspicuously absent from the public relations campaigns, is any information on environmental and other avoidable causes of breast cancer. This is no accident. DuPont is in big regulatory trouble at E.P.A., and that could mean big economic trouble for the company. Perfluorooctanoic acid, P.F.O.A., also known as C8, and perfluorooctanoate, is a toxicant and carcinogen. Studies have associated it with infertility, birth defects and cancer, including breast cancer. The link between P.F.O.A. exposure and breast cancer is supported by the fact that P.F.O.A. is an endocrine disruptor, and a known mammary toxicant with transgenerational effects. DuPont has been using P.F.O.A. in the manufacturing of fluoropolymers since 1951. The company has repeatedly made claims that exposures to P.F.O.A., or C8, do not present a human health risk. This public relations spin is clearly out of step with recent conclusions drawn by the U.S. E.P.A., with data published in peer-reviewed journals, and with data embedded in 50,000 pages of industry-sponsored studies submitted to them.


The pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca, is a multimillion-dollar donor to the A.C.S.. AstraZeneca influences every leaflet, poster, and commercial product produced by the A.C.S. Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. It's no wonder these publications focus almost exclusively on mammography, while ignoring carcinogenic industrial chemicals, and their relation to breast cancer. When it founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985, AstraZeneca (formerly known as Zeneca before it merged with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra) was owned by Imperial Chemical Industries. Imperial Chemical Industries is one of the world's largest manufacturers of petrochemical and chlorinated organic products, including the plastic ingredient, vinyl chloride, which has been directly linked to breast cancer.


AstraZeneca is also the sole manufacturer of Tamoxifen, the world's top-selling anticancer and breast cancer prevention drug, with about $1 billion in annual sales. The five-year clinical trial claimed that Tamoxifen reduced breast cancer risks by 30 percent. The risks of this toxic drug, including potentially fatal uterine cancer and blood clots, were noted but trivialized. As the trials progressed, it became clear that the risk of serious complications outweighed professed benefits. Women have still not been informed about delayed risks of liver cancer.


National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a masterful public relations coup for AstraZeneca, providing the company with valuable good will, from millions of American women.


The American Cancer Society's strategies remain based on two myths: that there has been dramatic progress in the treatment and cure of cancer, and that any increase in the incidence and mortality of cancer, is due to aging of the population, and smoking, while denying any significant role for involuntary exposures to industrial carcinogens. As the world's largest nonreligious "charity," with powerful allies in the private and public sectors, A.C.S. policies and priorities remain unchanged. Despite periodic protests, threats of boycotts, and questions on its finances, the Society leadership responds with powerful public relations campaigns, reflecting denial and manipulated information.


The nonprofit status of the Society is in sharp conflict with its high overhead and expenses, excessive reserves of assets and contributions to political parties. All attempts to reform the Society over the past two decades have failed. A national economic boycott of the Society is long overdue.

NIDAN - DuPont - Part 2 - National Priority List

Transcription:

DuPont was rated as the number one worst polluter on the Political Economy Research Institute's Toxic 100 index. The company has contributed to over 20 superfund sites, which are identified as the nation's worst toxic waste sites. Sites that put people most at risk are placed on the National Priority List. Two of DuPont's sites have made the list. In addition, DuPont has numerous other contaminated sites that require clean-up and remediation.

Some of the chemicals used in pesticides produced and marketed by DuPont have been linked to brain damage and disruption of the hormone system. The company has also faced a string of lawsuits in recent years, brought by parents whose children were born without eyes. These defects are alleged to have occurred, due to the children's mothers being exposed to the fungicide Benlate, whilst pregnant.

DuPont is a major producer of formaldehyde. This chemical is a known carcinogen and is also implicated in other health problems such as respiratory illness. Despite this, DuPont has vigorously fought efforts to get the chemical banned, using spurious science and disinformation. It is one of the companies that provided funding for the Formaldehyde Institute, a corporate front group set up to defend the chemical.

DuPont and other chemical companies have been accused of trying to suppress evidence regarding the severe toxicity of dioxins, hardly surprising given the quantities of these carcinogens they churn out every year. Recently, residents in Mississippi, threatened a $3 billion lawsuit against DuPont, claiming damage from dioxin pollution.

A now-closed DuPont owned factory has contaminated the soil and groundwater surrounding a neighborhood in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

Dupont dumped toxic chemicals in the Pompton Lakes community for almost 100 years, causing massive damage not only to the resident's health, but to natural resources.

Tests of soil under 37 homes and apartment buildings scattered above the plume of contamination in the groundwater, found vapors above acceptable levels in more than 9 of 10 cases, indicating that vapors were likely seeping into basements.

A cancer report, by the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services, which covered the period 1979-2006, found elevated rates of two types of cancer: kidney cancer in women and non-Hodgkin lymphona in men.

About 500 concerned and rightfully angry residents turned out at a public meeting in December 2009, to demand that their community be cleaned up, that multi-billion dollar corporate polluter DuPont be held accountable, and that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection be fired for their incompetent years of failure to enforce cleanup by DuPont.

DuPont has admitted the plant's wastewater treatment was improperly handled, and that the company was responsible for chemically contaminating the water and soil underneath hundreds of homes. Now, a disproportionately high number of people in the area are developing and dying from cancer.

One resident, Tom(?) Carroll commented, "My wife died of lung cancer in June, my stepson died of throat cancer, my neighbor across the street has it, everybody is dying around here. I've never seen anyplace like this." Eight months ago, Carroll had a cancerous kidney removed.

Carroll used to work at the plant and now says, "It was a great job when we had it, but we didn't know the ramifications would be this." The table next to him holds no less than 11 different types of medication.

Another resident, Joe Intintola Jr., shares, "It's in my colon, they want to remove half of it, I've got a pre-cancerous mass in my stomach, a mass in my chest. If I had known about this I would never have moved here."

Unfortunately and understandable, residents are having trouble selling their homes. And that leaves many of them surrounded by the contamination, and stuck breathing the toxic fumes each day.

NIDAN - DuPont - Part 1 - History

Transcription:

DuPont is the third-largest chemical maker in the U.S., behind only Dow and Exxon Mobil Chemicals. In addition to chemicals, Dupont produces genetically modified seeds, synthetic fibres, coatings, electronics and security devices. DuPont's revenues totalled over $26.6 billion in 2005.

There is hardly a single chemical toxin in which DuPont has not played a major role in developing. The company pioneered the production of sulphur dioxide, leaded petrol, CFC's, and recently deep well injection of hazardous waste. The company then used dubious science, political manipulation and cover up, to avoid restrictions on their use. During its 200 years of existence, DuPont has committed a staggering amount of corporate crimes.

In the 1920s, DuPont and General Motors developed Tetraethyl Lead, or ethyl, to help car engines run more smoothly. The product has been labelled by the World Health Organisation as "the mistake of the 20th Century." The lead ingredient of leaded petrol, TEL, is said to account for 80-90% of all environmental lead contamination, and is known to retard the mental development of children, cause hypertension in adults and impair coordination. Leaded gasoline has irrevocably damaged the intelligence of two generations of American children, and is responsible for 50,000 deaths a year by heart attack and stroke.

The chemical was discovered to be dangerous to human health quite early on. In 1924, reports broke out that 80 percent of workers involved in the production of TEL, at DuPont and Standard Oil plants had been killed or severely poisoned. When TEL was pulled off the market, DuPont ran a series of advertisements in Life magazine, and managed to reverse the decision after a hearing, in which it called TEL "An Apparent Gift of God."

To entrench its market position, DuPont introduced a new car engine, that ran only on leaded petrol. The product was finally banned half a century later, after scientists conclusively proved its detrimental effects. In December 1988, the US Department of Justice sought to collect $9.2 million from DuPont, for illegally blending excessively high levels of lead, into gasoline between 1983-1985.

Once banned in the US in the 1980s, DuPont exported TEL to other countries where it was not banned. With Pemex, the Mexican Oil Company, it exported TEL to Latin America. DuPont finally sold its 40% shares in the production plant in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico in 1992. According to the Council on Economic Priorities 1993 report on DuPont, the company has "aggressively promoted the use of leaded gasoline."

In 1990, it was revealed that a former DuPont landfill site, in Newport, New Castle County, Delaware had contaminated the groundwater, both on and off the site, with heavy metals. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the pollution potentially threatened the water supply of 131,000 people.

In March 1991, the area around DuPont's Quimica Fluor plant, in Matamoros, Mexico, was judged so toxic, that the Mexican President ordered 30,000 people to give up their homes in order to create a two mile buffer zone around the site.

In 1996, DuPont's proposal to dispose of 85 tons of toxic pollutants a year, into the Guadalupe River in Texas, prompted a local shrimper, Diane Wilson, to go on hunger strike for 31 days. The proposal related to a DuPont facility, which already disposed of 20 million gallons of wastewater a day, mainly through seven underground injection wells. Independent research has demonstrated that virtually any petrochemical plant can go to zero water discharge, with an additional capital investment of about 2 percent.

In 1998, DuPont was ordered by the US Environmental Protection Agency to carry out a $65 million clean up of its Necco Park landfill site, near Niagara Falls. This was necessary due to concerns regarding hazardous liquid seepage from the site.

In 1999, DuPont was listed by the US Public Interest Research Groups as one of the ‘Dirty Five’, the five biggest polluters in the U.S., that together spent $6,523,677 over the period 1991-1998, in lobbying Congress, the House of Representatives and Super fund-related committees, in order to prevent stricter legislation.

NIDAN - Water Fluoridation

Transcription:

Fluoride, the ionic form of the element fluorine, has been added to community drinking water supplies since the 1940s to help prevent tooth decay. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about 184 million Americans, nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population, drink fluoridated water.

Fluoride is a potent chemical that on contact kills microbes on the teeth, reducing the incidence of cavities. But a substantial and growing body of peer-reviewed science strongly suggests that ingesting fluoride in tap water does not provide the same dental benefits, and may present serious health risks.

There are two basic types of fluoride. Calcium fluoride appears naturally in underground water sources and even seawater. Enough of it can cause skeletal or dental fluorosis, which weakens bone and dental matter. But it is not nearly as toxic, nor does it negatively affect so many other health issues as sodium fluoride, which is added to many water supplies.

Sodium Fluoride is an extremely toxic substance, and a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, and phosphate fertilizer industries. This fluoride has an amazing capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials. The sodium fluoride obtained from industrial waste and added to water supplies is also already contaminated with lead, aluminum, and cadmium.

It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, possibly leading to cancer, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and carries aluminum across the blood brain barrier. The latter is recognized as a source of the lower IQ's and Alzheimer's effects of fluoride.

To the extent fluoride works to reduce tooth decay, it works from the outside of the tooth, not from inside the body. It makes no sense to drink it, and expose the rest of the body to the long term risks of fluoride ingestion. The industrial grade waste products used to fluoridate America's drinking water supplies have never received FDA approval for human ingestion. It is no longer acceptable to simply rely on endorsements from agencies that continue to ignore the large body of scientific evidence on this matter.

Fluoride is a cumulative poison. On average, only 50% of the fluoride we ingest each day is excreted through the kidneys. The remainder accumulates in our bones, pineal gland, and other tissues.

Children are now being overdosed with fluoride, even in non-fluoridated areas, from water, swallowed toothpaste, foods and beverages processed with fluoridated water, and other sources. In 2007, research teams from Brazil, China, India, Italy, Mexico, and the United States conducted important new analyses, investigating fluoride's impact on childhood IQ.

According to the authors:

"We found that exposure to fluoride in urine was associated with reduced Performance, Verbal, and Full IQ scores before and after adjusting for confounders. The same pattern was observed for models with fluoride in water as the exposure variable. The individual effect of fluoride in urine indicated that for each milligram increase of fluoride in urine, a decrease of 1.7 points in Full IQ might be expected.

It is urgent that public health measures to reduce exposure levels be implemented. Millions of people around the world are exposed to these pollutants, and are therefore potentially at risk for negative impact on intelligence. The risk is particularly acute for children, whose brains are particularly sensitive to environmental toxins."

Rats fed for one year, with 1 ppm fluoride in their water, using either sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride, had morphological changes to their kidneys and brains, an increased uptake of aluminum in the brain, and the formation of beta amyloid deposits, which are characteristic of Alzheimers disease. Rats dosed before birth demonstrated hyperactive behavior. Those dosed after birth, demonstrated under activity, or, so called "couch potato syndrome".

Fluoride administered to animals at high doses, damages the male reproductive system. It damages sperm, and increases the rate of infertility in a number of different species. While studies conducted at the FDA have failed to find reproductive effects in rats, an epidemiological study from the US, has found increased rates of infertility, among couples living in areas with 3 or more ppm fluoride in the water, and 2 studies have found a reduced level of circulating testosterone, in males living in high fluoride areas.

Fluoride is very biologically active even at low concentrations. It interferes with hydrogen bonding and inhibits numerous enzymes. Fluoride has been shown to be mutagenic, cause chromosome damage and interfere with the enzymes involved with DNA repair in a variety of cell and tissue studies.

Many scientists, doctors and dentists who have spoken out publicly on this issue have been subjected to censorship and intimidation. Most recently, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was fired from her position as Chair of Toxicology at Forsythe Dental Center for publishing her findings on fluoride and the brain. Dr. William Marcus was fired from the EPA for questioning the government's handling of the NTP's fluoride-cancer study.

Tactics like this would not be necessary if those promoting fluoridation were on secure scientific ground.Unfortunately, because government officials have put so much of their credibility on the line defending fluoridation, and because of the huge liabilities waiting for them, it will be very difficult for them to speak honestly and openly about the issue. But they must, not only to protect millions of people from unnecessary harm, but to protect the notion that, at its core, public health policy must be based on sound science, not political self-interest.

NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 2 - Toxic Investments

Transcription:

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization, and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Chevron Corporation and Total of France, the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

This has led to respiratory problems, and other afflictions among the local population. Since the foundation spends billions of dollars to improve the health of Africans, that investment strategy would seem to conflict with its mission.

Hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, asthma, and blurred vision in children. Many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer.

The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha, find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. In developed nations, they would trap the gas and either re-inject it into the ground or capture it for sale. In Nigeria, where there isn’t a well-established market for natural gas, they just burn it off and get the oil out.

The fumes and the soot are so pervasive that farmers go several kilometers away from the oil plant in order to plant their crops, because otherwise they're covered with pollution, and therefore, they can't sell them in the marketplace.

The pollution from these plants, which is so pervasive throughout the countryside, not only causes respiratory problems, but also has the effect, according to health authorities in Nigeria, that these pollutants actually reduce immunity and make the children that are being vaccinated more susceptible to diseases like polio and measles than they otherwise would be.

Many of the parents of children in this area are reluctant to vaccinate children who are suffering from respiratory ailments. They feel that the vaccinations may further weaken their children.

Oil workers, and soldiers protecting them, are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria. These are two problems the foundation is fighting.

An oil spill clogging rivers is a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases.

The bright, sooty gas flares, which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium, lower immunity, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles, the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate them against.

A study published 2006 found serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies in which the Gates Foundation was invested.

By using their resources and prestige, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could through their proxy and shareholder status make some real difference in corporate behavior.

For the environmental group Greenpeace, owning BP shares was a way to promote change from within. It helped sponsor a shareholders' resolution demanding BP to stop any activity to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

But a statement, posted on The Gates Foundation website, made clear that the foundation wasn't planning the type of changes some critics were calling for.

The statement said that evaluating one company over another based on social criteria would be too difficult, and the foundation would not embrace alternatives such as shareholder activism.

NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 1 - AGRA

Transcription:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.

The Foundation has embarked on a multibillion-dollar effort to transform African agriculture. It helped to set up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AG RA, in 2006, and since then has spent $1.3 billion on agricultural development grants.

The money is to pay for more research into hybrid seeds. The genetically engineered corn varieties would allow poor farmers increase their yields with less fertilizer.

But while it's true that African soil fertility is poor, there's a problem: the conventional wisdom is wrong. Food output per person is as high as it has ever been, suggesting that hunger isn't a problem of production so much as one of distribution.

And there's another problem. The genetically engineered seed can only be used once and that is all. This means that at the end of the season, farmers have to buy new seeds. The threat of hybrid seeds is not only that it is inorganic, but those promoting it are also advocating the use of other chemical inputs. This is a form of agriculture that is very expensive for farmers. Certain forms of traditional seeds will become scarce, threatening the biodiversity of the country and the region as well as the financial viability of farming for the rural poor.

In a number of grants, one corporation appears repeatedly--Monsanto. To some extent, this simply reflects Monsanto's domination of industrial agricultural research. There are, however, notable synergies between Gates and Monsanto: both are corporate titans that have made millions through technology, in particular through the aggressive defense of proprietary intellectual property. Both organizations are suffused by a culture of expertise, and there's some overlap between them. Robert Horsch, a former senior vice president at Monsanto, is, for instance, now interim director of Gates's agricultural development program and head of the science and technology team.

Monsanto and Gates both embrace a model of agriculture that sees farmers suffering a deficit of knowledge--in which seeds, like little tiny beads of software, can be programmed to transmit that knowledge for commercial purposes.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development found that a focus on small-scale sustainable agriculture, locally adapted seed and ecological farming better address the complexities of climate change, hunger, poverty and productive demands on agriculture in the developing world. That report, the most comprehensive scientific assessment of world agriculture to date, recommended development strategies that are in large part the opposite of those backed by the Gates Foundation.

Wouldn’t it be simpler, and cheaper, to just spend some foundation money on getting locally adapted seeds into local farmers hands?

The Gates Foundation acknowledges the relevance of the reports insights. But it continues to invest heavily in biotech solutions to the problem of hunger, while african farmers advocating their own solutions to the food crisis are being marginalized.

Rarely in the history of philanthropy has one foundation, or more correctly, one man, had this kind of power.

The director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria, suggests that if the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations wish to extend the hand of fellowship to the African continent, they should move away from strategies that favor monoculture, strategies that leads to land grabs, strategies that tie local farmers to the shop doors of biotech seed monopolies.

But the Gates Foundation isn't a victim of poor reasoning. It actively promotes an agenda that supports some of the most powerful corporations on earth.

Africa's Green Revolution is, in other words, just another way of doing business as usual.