Duty to Warn

A previously little-known law firm called Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama, has recently been exposed as one of the world's major creators of 'shell companies', that is, corporate structures that can be used to hide the ownership of assets. This can be done legally but shell companies of this nature are widely used for illegal purposes such as tax evasion and money laundering of proceeds from criminal activity. See 'Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption: The Panama Papers' https://www.transcend.org/tms/2016/04/giant-leak-of-offshore-financial-records-exposes-global-array-of-crime-and-corruption-the-panama-papers/

Yesterday, on April 11, 2016, constituents of Minnesota US Congressperson Rick Nolan were informed of a 2015 House Resolution (HR 14) that 41 House Congresspersons signed onto (26 Democrat/15 Republicans). Among the co-sponsors were 3 Minnesotan DFLers Rick Nolan, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz. A nearly identical resolution had been introduced in the US Senate on June 2, 2015. Neither of Minnesota’s Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, signed onto that one.

Nolan’s letter concluded: “The time for secrecy is over.The American people and the families of the victims of 9-11 deserve the truth.”

Here is the essence of the resolution:

House Resolution 14, in the US House of Representatives, January 6, 2015:

Resolved, that

(1) the President should declassify the 28-page section of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001; and

With the recent release of Hillary Clinton’s emails by Wikileaks, the public now knows exactly how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went from a collective defense organization to the new Barbary Coast Pirates of imperialism.

During the 2011 Libyan uprising, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 which called for a ceasefire and authorized military action to protect civilian lives. A coalition formed, centered around NATO with the March 17, 2011 passing of the Resolution. Its purpose -- a so-called "no-fly zone" over Libya.

The irony that the U.S.-dominated NATO military organization would be concerned with "protecting" Arab civilians is all too obvious since the United States is the nation most responsible for killing Arab civilians.

You shouldn’t play with guns, unless you do it the way “Jim” apparently did.

His gun play — a (seemingly) satirical petition at change.org — has enveloped the looming Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer in awkward surrealism and forced the three Republican presidential candidates to duck for cover from their own words.

The petition, posted by Hyperationalist, who later identified himself to certain curious reporters as a proponent of gun sanity named Jim, demanded that the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention will be held, lift its ban on guns in the building and that the Republican National Committee explain “how a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights” was chosen for the convention.

“What I’m not trying to do is just pass legislation. I’m trying to change the face of American politics.”

Pull these words out of the context of “the news” and let them pulse like the heartbeat of the future.

The words are those of Bernie Sanders, of course — engaged last week in a confrontational interview with Chris Matthews. Free college tuition? Matthews loosed his skepticism on the presidential candidate, who pushed back:

“You and I look at the world differently. You look at it inside the Beltway. I’m not an inside the Beltway person.”

“But the people that vote on taxes are inside the Beltway,” Matthews retorted.

It’s Monday night at Dempsey’s, a perennial Democratic Party meet-up spot in downtown Columbus. The Ohio presidential primary is five weeks away. Powerful members of the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee are meeting to plot strategy against an unprecedented grassroots attack upon the Party’s ward leaders. The ward leaders are the ones responsible for the official Party candidate endorsements.

Even more unfathomable than a populist revolt among local Dems is what’s going on in the back room at Dempsey’s. The room is packed with political supporters of a 74-year-old self-proclaimed “democratic Socialist” – an independent Senator from Vermont running for president. Many are doing electoral major party politics for the first time and were unaware of the local powerbrokers they just squeezed past. The folks in the back room all have one thing in common – they’re feeling the Bern.

Scaring People Out of Their Wits Over Pseudo-Pandemics (Swine Flu, Avian Flu, SARS, Ebola and now Zika)

“Why Aren’t Public Health Organizations Like CIDRAP Warning Pregnant Women to Abstain from Aluminum or Mercury-containing Vaccines?”

A few days ago, I emailed out what I consider overwhelming evidence that debunks the Zika Virus/Microcephaly thesis (that is fast becoming “conventional wisdom”) that we have all been bombarded with over the past month. The email was in the form of an open letter, with documentation, primarily addressed to one of the leading thought leaders in epidemiology in America over the past generation, Dr Michael Osterholm.

Dr Osterholm has been a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has undoubtedly done valuable work in the epidemiology of infectious diseases over the years.

Myth # 1:

“The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) tests all new psychiatric drugs”

False. Actually the FDA only reviews studies that were designed, administered, secretly performed and paid for by the multinational profit-driven drug companies. The studies are frequently farmed out by the pharmaceutical companies by well-paid research firms, in whose interest it is to find positive results for their corporate employers. Unsurprisingly, such research policies virtually guarantee fraudulent results.

Myth # 2:

When I want to believe that America is a democracy — indeed, to feel so deeply this is so that my soul trembles — I turn to Martin Luther King, who gave his life for it.

He cried out for something so much more than a process: a game of winners and losers. He reached for humanity’s deepest yearning, for the connectedness of all people, for the transcendence of hatred and the demonization of “the other.” He spoke — half a century ago — the words that those in power couldn’t bear to hear, because his truths cut too deep and disrupted too much business as usual.

But what else is a democracy than that?

“Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. . . .”

Uh oh. This ain’t politics as usual. This is King standing in the oval office, staring directly into the eyes of LBJ, declaring that civil rights legislation isn’t a political favor but merely the beginning of a nation’s moral atonement.

“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.”

Here is a condensed version of President Obama's speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night, unofficially translated into plain English:

I kind of realize we can’t kill our way out of this conflict with ISIL, but in the short term hopefully we can kill our way out of the danger of a Republican victory in the presidential race next year.

As a practical matter, the current hysteria needs guidance, not a sense of proportion along the lines of what the New York Times just mentioned in passing: “The death toll from jihadist terrorism on American soil since the Sept. 11 attacks -- 45 people -- is about the same as the 48 killed in terrorist attacks motivated by white supremacist and other right-wing extremist ideologies.... And both tolls are tiny compared with the tally of conventional murders, more than 200,000 over the same period.”

While I’m urging some gun control, that certainly doesn’t apply to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs and their underlings have passed all the background checks they need by virtue of getting to put on a uniform of the United States Armed Forces.