You will not be surprised to learn that with a few honorable exceptions, high-profile TV and radio have so far shied away from the recent wave of interest in state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. (Need I point out that Judge Andrew Napolitano has been his usualfearless self, even as others have run away from the topic?) But the idea has begun to trickle out anyway. Jeff Taylor, who describes himself as being more on the left than the right, managed to bring the topic of nullification to a Huffington Post audience. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is speaking at a major nullification rally on October 10. Martha Dean, the GOP candidate for Attorney General in Connecticut, says (see 4:50) she supports legislative efforts to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. There are plenty more examples. State and local political candidates are beginning to discuss the forbidden subject. Everywhere I go around the country I’m hearing that nullification initiatives are going to be pushed seriously in upcoming state legislative sessions. The television hosts who have been AWOL so far can go on pretending this isn’t happening for only so long.

That’s why this weekend is so significant.

The Tenth Amendment Center, in tandem with WeRefuse.com and a bunch of local and national co-sponsors, is launching a tour of major cities beginning tomorrow in Fort Worth, with the aim of forcing state nullification — Thomas Jefferson’s doctrine that states must refuse to allow the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws — into the political discussion by means of a series of high-profile events. I’ll be speaking at some of them myself.

There is a potentially huge audience for this idea.

What has impressed me about the smaller markets where I’ve been featured so far in promotion of my new book on nullification is how enthusiastically the idea has been received. I figured I had an uphill battle ahead of me, promoting an idea which, no matter its distinguished pedigree, lies well outside the so-called mainstream (i.e., neither Wolf Blitzer nor David Gergen supports it). Why, if it’s not mentioned on or endorsed by either MSNBC or the Weekly Standard, are you sure we’re even allowed to think it? Yet host after host has discussed the issue sympathetically and matter-of-factly, treating it as an interesting and promising new possibility.

When Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, spoke at a Tea Party rally on April 15 (part 1, part 2) he at first left the crowd confused. What, he wasn’t interested in lawsuits against the federal government, and he wasn’t so sure elections would fix things, either? Boldin then mentioned the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, to complete silence. By the end, he has made his case so persuasively that the crowd is cheering like crazy. This is what I mean: once people who genuinely want to roll back the federal government hear about the idea, they embrace it. Now it’s just a matter of spreading the word.

When I was on a cable news program in June unrelated to nullification, the cover of my (at that time) not-yet-released book (calledNullification) was flashed on the screen for several seconds. Just flashing it on the screen, without even discussing its contents, was enough to catapult it to the Amazon Top 100 for two days. Now if only I’d had just five minutes to discuss it.

Stories like these are why I think we could be on the verge of something important.

We already know why the guardians of allowable opinion oppose nullification, and it isn’t because they’re actually losing sleep over what South Dakota might do. Even the worst emotional hypochondriac doesn’t seriously believe the biggest dangers of 2010 are coming from Salt Lake City and Boise. There are quite a few vested interests that would like to see the federal gravy train continue undisturbed, and uppity citizens with Jeffersonian ideas appropriately suppressed.

To be sure, it is doubtful that governments can stay limited over the long run; they have no interest in remaining limited and every incentive to expand. At the same time, not all regimes are equally oppressive, and some political structures give the tyrants a tougher go of it than others. Hence our recourse to Jefferson and nullification.

Meanwhile, the conservative establishment offers only pretty speeches and promises. No, scratch that — we don’t even get the pretty speeches anymore, and whether you believe the promises is a test of your IQ. The really cheeky, cutting-edge thinkers go so far as to suggest a balanced-budget amendment, the boilerplate conservative promise of the past 30 years. Even if such a thing were to pass, all such amendments include override clauses that permit three-fifths of Congress to go ahead with an unbalanced budget if sufficiently grave conditions make it seem necessary. Do you get the funny feeling they’d make liberal use of that provision?

Something significant is beginning this weekend. Lots of informed people will make a stand in the name of a doctrine that official Left and Right despise, and which until now has been known only in caricature where it has not been suppressed entirely. The idea is already reaching the general public even in the face of almost complete silence on the part of those who posture as relentless foes of Barack Obama and Washington, D.C. Also worth noting is that Tea Party groups, which the usual suspects are trying to neuter into insignificance, are defying their overlords and participating as co-sponsors.

We are not supposed to do this. We are doing it anyway. Be a part of it.

“They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts,” declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. ¹

It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.

Enough to make him forget.

But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up … an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter … drum roll, please … Stand tall American GI hero! And don’t even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?

“Unhappy the land that has no heroes …
No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.”
– Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

“What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible.”
– William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists … February 15, 2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.

PanAm 103

The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year anniversary of Scotland’s release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who’s the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans and British. Britain’s Foreign Office has declared: “On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi’s release has caused his victims both in the U.K. and the U.S. He was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of al-Megrahi’s release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims’ families.”

John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has “expressed our strong conviction” to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision” to allow Megrahi’s return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug. 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the United States “continues to categorically disagree” with Scotland’s decision to release Megrahi a year ago. “As we have expressed repeatedly to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland.” ² The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have demanded that Megrahi’s medical records be released. The Libyan’s failure to die as promised has upset many people.

But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just read their 2001 “Opinion of the Court”, or read my analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.

As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi’s release — keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. ³ The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine –- General Command).

Why do they hate us?

Passions are flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in New York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would be in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act, fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However — even if one accepts the official government version of 19 Muslims hijacking four airliners — the question remains: Why did they choose the targets they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels why not fly the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball stadiums in the midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected than the Pentagon or the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did they choose symbols of US military might and imperialism? Because it was not a religious act, it was a political act. It was revenge for decades of American political and military abuse in the Middle East. ⁴ It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in response to continuous hateful policies of Washington, there were countless acts of terrorism against American diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US corporations; nothing to do with religion.

Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt from history, that their actions have consequences.

Afghanistan

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they’ll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”. ⁵

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire — “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. ⁶

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Cuba

Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship? Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow’s party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No “free press”? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that’s to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money — secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba — would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?

Is it “free elections” that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal, regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run as individuals.⁷ Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I think he’d probably win; and that’s why it’s not the case. Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous “electoral college” system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the winner. If we really think this system is a good example of democracy why don’t we use it for local and state elections as well?

Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. Many have been beaten by police and mistreated while incarcerated. And remember: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. (This is documented by Cuba in a 1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a committee made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, which of course includes the United States, and which may account for the inaction on the matter.)

Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and engaging in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In recent years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States. Virtually all of Cuba’s “political prisoners” are such dissidents. While others may call Cuba’s security policies dictatorship, I call it self-defense.⁸

The terrorist list

As casually and as routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the mainstream media drops the line into news stories that “Hezbollah [or Hamas, or FARC, etc.] is considered a terrorist group by the United States”, stated as matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in Lebanon. Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways, such as its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And inclusion is scarcely more than a political decision made by the US government. Who is put on or left off the State Department’s terrorist list bears a strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies the group is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro Cuban groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried out literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in Latin America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.

Bosch and Posada are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. ⁹Various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also provided close support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with known connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State Department sit learned men who list Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, along with Syria, Sudan and Iran. ¹⁰ That’s the complete list.

Meanwhile, the five Cubans sent to Miami to monitor the anti-Castro terrorists are in their 12th year in US prisons. The Cuban government made the very foolish error of turning over to the FBI the evidence of terrorist activities gathered by the five Cubans. Instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the five Cubans (sic).

Steroids

“Hall of Shamer: Clemens Indicted” — page one headline in large type about fabled baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. ¹¹ Of all the things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their health, fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out? Doesn’t taking vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over athletes who don’t take them? Should these supplements be banned from sport competition? Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily any more “natural” than steroids, which in fact are very important in our body chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex hormones. Moreover, why not punish those who follow a “healthy diet” because of the advantage this may give them?

Notes

1. Washington Post, August 19, 2010 ^?
2. Associated Press, August 21, 2010 ^?
3. Newsweek, July 13, 1992 ^?
4. See chapter one of Blum’s book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower^?
5. US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232 ^?
6. See Brzezinski’s Wikipedia entry ^?
7. See Anti-Empire Report of September 25, 2006, 3rd item, for more information about the Cuban election process ^?
8. For a detailed discussion of Cuba’s alleged political prisoners see article ‘Cuba and the Number of “Political Prisoners”‘,Huffington Post, August 24th 2010 ^?
9. Rogue State, Chapter 9 ^?
10. See State Department: www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm ^?
11. The Examiner (Washington, DC), August 20, 2010 ^?

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Read the rest at this link.

As promised this evening, I have brought forth a topic that I am a little excited to have some of you folks, who are so entrenched in your beliefs about regulation and government’s necessity in the realm of business, sink your teeth into and debate here at SUFA. I will allow the topic to rest on its own for two days until Tuesday night’s open mic (simply meaning I won’t be posting a new article on Monday night). I have spent the last couple of years debating with folks here and elsewhere that I believe that the market could take care of things better than the government. I don’t actually feel that there is any question as to the validity of that statement. The government hasn’t met a regulation that has worked. Sure some of them make small improvements in some areas, but the problem is that the unintended consequences seem to always negate any good that comes from regulation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world controlled by the Food and Drug Administration. Not only is regulation completely ineffective in that realm, but the unintended consequences are devastating to a society that has the potential to be much farther down the path of better health than the FDA has allowed.

So what I am going to offer here is my vision for the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration. I cannot claim that all of what I will say here is 100% mine. It is the result of reading many different ideas and having many different discussions with people over the years. I wish I could name every person who had a thought that contributed. Some of them are in books (John Stossel, Hayek, and Andrew Napolitano for example), while others I knew only as “that guy I talked to while waiting for the Metro in DC.” Now let me first address the concept that I am espousing here:

I fully understand that we cannot eliminate the FDA tomorrow and think that everything is going to magically transform and the private markets are going to have instant solutions. I also understand that the idea of doing so simply scares the poo out of anyone who still, in their own mind, cannot grasp the concept of a world without government regulation. That means that any proposal that would take this drastic step would be shouted down by the same type of people who sound the alarm that without government intervention the climate will change, Bill Gates will buy the Presidency, and Coca-Cola will go back to putting Cocaine in their soft drinks.

That is why what I offer is a two-step proposal. We will get to the two steps in a bit. Step two is actually quite simple. It is nothing more than eliminating the FDA. But in my opinion we have to do step one first. Before I get to explaining step one, I thought the first relevant thing to do was justify why this is necessary at all. I made the claim above that the FDA is the best example of how unintended consequences negate any good that comes from regulation. I am going to provide a few reasons why I believe this. It will be a sort of justification for the elimination of the FDA in the first place. After all, you don’t go changing things all willy-nilly. There has to be a need for changing things in order for the private market to take action. If a need doesn’t need to be filled, the private market doesn’t fill it. But there is plenty of need to eliminate the FDA.

The Food and Drug Administration was formed in 1906 by Teddy Roosevelt as part of the Food and Drug Act. Many of the regulatory powers associated today with the FDA were granted via the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Currently the FDA is responsible for “protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices, veterinary products, and cosmetics.” The agency was meant to do good. It was formed as it currently exists a result of some public outcry over interstate transportation of food that had been doctored and a 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent. See, even then progressives knew how to take advantage of a crisis.

Over the years the size and scope of the FDA did what every government bureaucracy does: grow out of control. Let’s start with the operating budget which taxpayers would no longer be responsible for. Last year’s operating budget for the FDA was 2.4 Billion dollars. That a nice chunk of change. But that is only a fraction of the actual costs to consumers. Drugs in the United States are some of the highest priced in the world. Financially strapped folks in the US break the law to get the same drugs for less money from foreign companies in Canada and Europe. I would suggest that simply lowering the costs of drugs would be reason enough to eliminate the FDA.

Henry I. Miller, a former FDA official, presented a crushing analysis of the FDA’s regulatory process and procedures. In his early 2001 editorial commentary, Dr. Miller noted that the total time it takes to develop a new drug and get it to market had doubled since the 60?s. He also noted, “Costs are spiraling out of control because the FDA meddles endlessly in clinical trials and keeps raising the bar for approval.” Furthermore, he cited statistics that showed the average number of clinical trials per average drug increased from 30 in the early 1980?s to 68 during the 1994–95 period while the average number of patients in clinical trials for each drug more than tripled! As expected, the average time required for clinical trials for a new drug rose from 85 months in the first half of the 1990?s to 92 months in the last half of the 1990?s. (found here )

Most estimates on the cost of getting drugs to market is roughly $1.3 Billion per drug. Is it any wonder that our drugs in the US cost so much. Add to that the fact that only about one fifth of drugs that enter Phase one testing ever actually make it through clinical trails and go to market (DiMasi and Grabowski, 2007). That means that for every drug that makes it to market, drug companies have spent approximately $6.5 Billion in R&D, the vast majority of which goes to meeting FDA guidelines. Any other questions as to why Canada can offer the same drugs to consumers at roughly a quarter of the cost? Now just think of putting thosecosts back into the pockets of American consumers. It would certainly be better for economic stimulus than the bullshit plan that our government dolts keep trying to ram down our throats. Need any more reason to eliminate the FDA? I didn’t think so. But you know I am going to give you more anyway….

How about the fact that the FDA KILLS PEOPLE. You bet your butt they do. By stripping away the rights and freedoms of dying Americans, the FDA is a death sentence for terminally ill patients with little hope. Allow me to offer an example. Suppose you have cancer and are told that unless a new treatment comes along, you are going to die in 2 years maximum. You try everything that the health industry has to offer. There is a new experimental drug that shows great hope. You are down to a year left. It enters the clinical trial phase. The drug should be approved in 8-12 years. It won’t save your life. You know why? Because despite the fact that you are going to diewithout that drug, the FDA won’t allow you to have it because they want to protect you!

Suppose that new drug is going to cure a disease that kills 20,000 people a year. In ten years the FDA will come out and proudly proclaim that they are approving a drug that will save 20,000 lives a year. No one will even ask them about the 200,000 who died over the last ten years waiting for the FDA to approve a drug that would have saved their lives (and yes I am aware of the case by case “exceptions” that allow a dying patient to take the drug, but why should anyone be able to tell a dying patient that they have to be approved to take it, that they have to wait 6 months for approval, or that they have to be monitored by the FDA? They are DYING). Remember that the FDA doesn’t not care one bit about the lives of the people who may be saved by a new drug. They care only about those who may be possibly hurt by one.

And let us not pretend that the FDA’s processes, which increase the costs of food, drugs, medical devices, and the rest of the stuff they do, actually work. While that doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite of any government agency or regulatory authority, that doesn’t mean we should be accepting it. The FDA routinely fails at the only task for which they supposedly exist. How many food recalls due to sickness have we had in the last couple of years, as in the case of 1800 people sickened by eggs last week? Ten cases? Twenty? What about drug recalls because the interactions that were supposed to be tested for were simply not a part of the ridiculous requirements for FDA approval (Fen-Phen or Vioxx anyone?). I could list examples all day long here, as you all well know. The point is that the world approved by the FDA is not a safe one, despite the massive price we pay to live in that world. Can you imagine accepting a doctor telling you that for $10,000 he will guarantee that the drug you take is safe, only to find that once you pay him he admits that there is a 10% chance the drug isn’t safe? You would demand your money back.

Despite the FDA, the estimates are that somewhere around 750,000 people a year die as a result of medical mistakes. From an article about a groundbreaking book: Since Americans spend so much money on health care, they should be getting a high quality of care, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Of the 783,936 annual deaths due to conventional medical mistakes, about 106,000 are from prescription drugs, according to Death by Medicine. That also is a conservative number. Some experts estimate it should be more like 200,000 because of underreported cases of adverse drug reactions (found here ). These are numbers that dwarf the number of deaths from automobile accidents or any other form of accident combined. Yet the FDA persists, continuing to suffocate the American economy.

I could continue on with all the reasons why the FDA should not be allowed to continue in the United States. But I think that the massive increase in costs, the number of lives lost, and the absolutely ridiculous inability to deliver on their stated promise offers more than enough evidence that the FDA should be eliminated. So we can argue about what I have presented to this point, but I do think you are going to have an awful tough time convincing anyone that the FDA does a great job and is overall a benefit to us as Americans. It isn’t. It has to go. But as I said, many Americans are simply too enamored with government and too bought in to the mistaken ideal that we need government to do this job to simply eliminate it tomorrow. So we need an initial step that will get us from where we are to a place where Americans will be comfortable with eliminating the FDA. That step is simple. It is an easy fix and it doesn’t require anyone in America to give up their beloved FDA protection without a proven alternative in place.

We need to make approval by the FDA on anything….. voluntary.

Allow anyone who wants to bypass the FDA to do so. You can put a required warning on the non-FDA approved stuff so that no one is fooled into thinking otherwise. But make entry into the market easier by not requiring new entrants to submit to the ridiculous and unnecessary protocols of the FDA. Then get out of the way and let the private markets do what they do best. What do the private markets do best, you ask?

They solve problems. Plain and simple. They meet the demands of the consumer in order to turn a profit. And because they are not protected by the federal government like FDA approved companies are, they will work harder to ensure that they produce solutions that are safe and effective. And they will do it at a fraction of the cost that it is being done today. And they will do it in a fraction of the time that it is being done today. Let’s break down how the market will do this.

No matter what the need is in the market, if the government doesn’t restrict entry (such as the FDA does in this case by making it a law that you have FDA approval), the market will provide it ten ways from Tuesday. Multiple companies will enter the market offering multiple different ways of doing things and providing multiple solutions to the medical problems that consumers face. Barring a restriction to entry, as mentioned, the market does this 100% of the time. If there is a market for a product or service, the free market will always, without fail, fill that need. That is a fact that simply is not debatable. Every service or product that is needed to replace the FDA will appear in the free and private market if allowed.

No company wants to put out an inferior product in a world where trial lawyers are vultures looking for multi-million dollar claims against a company that puts out drugs or medical devices. Doing so would be economic suicide for the company. They simply would not survive without government protecting them (and government wouldn’t protect them because government wants you to use the FDA!). So they would be taking every step possible to test and re-test their product so that it will pass muster in a lawsuit. In this way the free market is the regulation needed to keep companies in line. Let’s not forget that there is always the FDA approved products to fall back on if companies fail to meet the standards demanded by the public. With that in place the market will prove that it can self regulate. If it doesn’t, the FDA wins and survives.

The private market would also produce an alternative to FDA approval. We have such a device already for many other industries in services like Consumer Reports. There will be a need for some sort of authority to tell the public what is safe, effective, and trusted. A sort of consumer reports for drugs not approved by the FDA would develop. Where would the people come from? We already have them. Medical experts that testify in trials for or against medical companies and drug companies would do the job. Why? Because the market would exist and the need would be there, and what comes with demand? Money. I would start such a company and offer a one million dollar award no questions asked if it is shown that the advice that my company offered contributed to to a patient death. People would flock to pay for my low cost service because of the money I would save them by directing them to drugs that cost less money because companies are operating without government bureaucracy. The FDA already has fees associated with submitting a drug for review, and they get about $300 Million a year doing so. Apparently the drug companies have no issue paying to have their drugs reviewed. I will charge less than the FDA. And do it better.

My seal of approval would be well known and respected. Malpractice insurance companies would require doctors to use either FDA approved or USWeapon Sealed products. However, doctors and patients would be free to seek an exemption from their insurance company, and the doctor or consumer in cases where there is a new, but not-yet approved or “sealed” drug or device, that might make the difference between life and death. See, that is the true point in all of this. It offers people the option of using their own judgement in decisions around their own health or the health of their patient. The free market would also result in insurance companies having incentive to offer consumers no-fault liability insurance for medical malpractice, including the use of medication and medical devices that have not gotten a USWeapon seal of approval or FDA approval. And consumers would have a strong incentive to purchase such insurance.

You see, making the FDA voluntary gives the free market (and remember we have to let it be a FREE market)the opportunity to prove its worth while still having the FDA around for a backup in the slim chance my idea doesn’t work. But my idea would work. You will all have the ability today and tomorrow to tell me where I am wrong. But I don’t think that I am. Over time the free market side would bury the FDA side. They would do things better, faster, and more efficiently, the way that the market already does. Consumers will learn new habits rather than sitting back and relying on government to protect them. They will, after all, have a significant financial incentive to do so. And after a while, people will realize that we never really needed the government in this business at all. We just needed them to get the hell out of the way of the market.

Or I will be wrong and the progressives will have all the ammunition that they need to have another hundred years of increasing tyranny and costs via regulation. What have they got to lose? Oh, that’s right…… control.

And to wrap this up I want to talk about why we should be pursuing this course of action in the first place. There are the obvious answers: costs, effectiveness, and efficiency. I covered those above. But those are irrelevant, at least in my eyes, when placed against the real reason why we should do this. We should do it because it is the right thing to do. We are a country founded on the ideals of liberty and freedom. As such, there is absolutely no justification for government taking our free will away from us. If I want to try an experimental drug or device, it is my right to do so. I don’t want government protecting me. They do a shitty job of it. I believe that a free market solution could do it better. And I should have every right to use a free market system. I am not advocating an immediate suspension of your right to rely on government. You are more than welcome to waste your money doing so. I will buy your boat when you can’t afford it anymore.

What I am advocating is that government get out of the way and allow Americans to use the freedom and liberty that is ours by birth, not by government grant. The government monopoly on protecting us must end. It simply is not in line with the principles of freedom we were founded on.

So what do you say, US government? Are you up for a little challenge? Get your slow, expensive ass out of the way and let’s see if you can compete with my beloved free market. Winner takes all. Loser folds up shop. I am sure the free market will offer you a great price for those buildings you won’t need when this is all over.

It’s not been easy being green since the revelations of Climategate and mounting evidence that the science behind man’s influence on climate change is far from accurate, let alone settled. No wonder then that many greens chose to vent their frustration at skeptics and blame their ideological opponents for their troubles.

In the past decade, leaders of the global warming movement have won international fame and acclaim, including Nobel prizes and Oscars. They have been feted by celebrities and world leaders alike as a supportive press looked on and wrote glowing tomes about their wisdom and importance. Politicians and businesses were cowed into submission by the mighty green machine and eagerly adorned themselves with a green mantle to appeal to voters and consumers.

Despite this support and for no want of funding, time and again the green agenda stumbled and failed to achieve action. Despite regular and desperate cries of alarm that the conference du jour represented mankind’s ‘last hope’, nothing meaningful happens. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, but few industrialized western nations have come close to meeting their emission reduction targets. Since Kyoto there have been significant failures in Bali, Copenhagen, Bonn and next up is Cancun. There is no reason to suspect that the outcome will be different there.

The green movement is a conglomerate of many disparate causes, but one thing most agree on is that skeptics are to blame for any failure. According to greens, these ‘fringe’ people who oppose the theory that man influences climate are powerful enough to stop the entire world from taking action. In fact, this is just a lazy excuse to absolve themselves of blame for their own incompetence and ineffectiveness.

In the United States, Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress since 2008 with outright majorities, yet the ‘vital’ climate bill failed to pass. Democrats blame Republicans, but had the Democrats had the courage of their political convictions they could have passed any legislation they pleased, just as they did with health care reform. The climate bill failed because Democrats needed the political cover of a bipartisan vote and when they failed to get it, they simply walked away and in the process demonstrated that alarmist talk about global doom if the bill failed was so much hot air.

Al Gore this week blogged about the Koch brothers who have funded right-leaning causes to the tune of $100 million. The inference is that the Koch’s blocked climate change legislation by funding skeptics. Yet Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection have outspent the Koch’s by a factor of 3 to 1. If it was just a question of money, Gore and his followers would have won a long time ago, so why haven’t they?

In large part, Gore must blame his own conspicuous consumption. Ordinary people looked at his mansions, his boat and the globe-trotting in private planes and limos and wondered how he could be so extravagant if there truly were a ‘climate crisis.’ Greens may blame skeptics for pointing out Gore’s hypocrisy, but it was his own decision to not lead by example and leave himself open to criticism.

A common argument against skeptics is that they are ‘flat-earthers’, the people who denied the Earth was round. This is a flawed view; the fact is it is the other way around. Those who believe in mans affect on global temperatures today are the ones who would think the Earth flat, for they are the followers of the popular consensus. It was skeptics that stood against the perceived wisdom of the day to teach the world that the ground they stood on was a sphere, a reminder that skeptics are vital to progress.

The inconvenient truth is that greens have failed to convince the world that man’s activity affects climate. They have tried bullying and emotional blackmail without success. It’s easy to blame those who disagree with them, but the failure to make progress on an issue they claim vital to man’s survival is entirely theirs.

Greens outspent skeptics, they had the ear of the political class, effectively demonized and even silenced opponents and still it was not enough to convince the world that anything was wrong with the weather. It’s hard to think of any movement in history that enjoyed the funding, support and momentum that the greens once had and yet achieved so little.

Now the momentum is gone, shattered by the revelations that climate science is little more than guesswork and bad statistical analysis. Celebrities are moving on to other, more fashionable causes and soon the only people left to rail against skeptics will be the ones with reputations or fortunes so heavily vested in their global warming theory that they can never retreat.

It’s not much of an end for ‘the greatest scam in history‘, but it is the end.

Read the rest at this link.

Post removed at author’s request.

Sometimes editors like to have fun with their writers, like last week when City Paper Managing Editor Chris Haire declared that controversial Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and yours truly are actually the same person.

Haire writes: “You want proof? Well, here goes: As you know, Rauf is the guy behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Not surprisingly, Sean Hannity doesn’t like him. On his Monday afternoon radio show, Hannity played an audiotape of Rauf, one which Sean believes proves just how anti-American the imam is … The funny thing is, the main point that Hannity offers as an example of Rauf’s virulent anti-Americanism is more or less the same point that the City Paper‘s own Jack Hunter has been saying for years now … namely that the United States has killed more innocent Muslims than Al-Qaeda has killed innocent Americans.”

This is true regardless of who says it. Rauf specifically cites “the U.S-led sanction against Iraq [that] led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children” in the 1990s. The number of deaths was confirmed by the United Nations, approved by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who said it was “worth it”), and apparently deemed irrelevant by Hannity. If one uses math instead of emotion, one will easily understand that these deaths are equal to about 167 9/11s. Despite Hannity’s outrage, the imam is absolutely right.

Trying to get Americans to comprehend the weight of the damage their government sometimes causes overseas is comparable to how some wives react upon learning that their husband is a child molester: Many simply shut down, emotionally and morally, refusing to believe the truth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The very thought is so traumatic that they go into denial, preferring to ignore or endure the tragedy rather than let it upset their worldview.

There are other, similar examples of such denial. Many now ask questions about the decades-long sexual abuse allegations against the Catholic Church: Did church leaders not know or did they simply not want to know? Some question whether or not Germans were aware of the death camps during World War II: Did they not know or did they simply not want to know?

A half-million dead children is not an insignificant number, in Iraq or anywhere else. Yet did Americans not know or did they simply not want to know? Separated by an ocean from the situation and captive to a media that barely reported it, for most Americans, it was probably a mix of apathy and ignorance, but the degree to which that ignorance remains willful is worth noting.

Haire adds: “For both Jack and Rauf, this simple stat — that 500,000 innocents died as the result of American actions — is proof that the U.S. has blood on its hands too. But for Hannity, to point out this fact is to commit chicken hawk heresy. It is a challenge to Hannity’s unchallengeable worldview, and as such, it must be wrong.”

Naturally, most Americans want to believe their nation acts in a largely benevolent manner abroad, something conservatives hardly ever believe about their government domestically, and any stark evidence to the contrary is often too heavy to absorb or too hurtful to consider. Pundits like Hannity spend hours keeping their audiences focused on relatively trivial controversies like whether some random mosque should be built next to Ground Zero, but they consider it heresy to consider that overseas, the U.S. puts ground zeros next to mosques all the time.

In an audio clip Hannity features on his website intended to condemn the now-famous imam, Rauf makes a more salient and valuable point than any of his critics: “What complicates the discussion … is that the fact that the West has not been cognizant and has not addressed the issues of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world. It’s a difficult subject to discuss with Western audiences, but it is one that must be pointed out and must be raised.”

Many Americans might dismiss, as Albright did and Hannity does, the death of a half-million children as an unfortunate, yet necessary casualty of war. Funny enough, this is exactly what many in the Islamic world consider 9/11.

Blood is on the hands of both the U.S. and the Muslim world, something that too many Americans still refuse to acknowledge, weigh, or even consider, and now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is being attacked for merely pointing this out.

There will continue to be reasonable arguments on both sides of the Ground Zero mosque controversy, but far more detrimental is the extent to which its central figure has become even more controversial simply for making a perfectly reasonable argument.

A group called Crime in America wrote an opinion editorial for the LA Times on the subject of marijuana. The op-ed, titled Marijuana: People Do Incredibly Stupid Things Under the Influence seems to have been written by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or was at least written on their behalf.

Most of the arguments against marijuana’s legalization are old hack. The title alone gives the general bent of the opinion as a whole. There is little to back up their claims that cannot be refuted with two simple responses:

1. People also do incredibly stupid things under the influence of prescription drugs, alcohol, religion, and a lot of other substances (controlled or uncontrolled) that we have not outlawed today. Why is marijuana somehow different than, say, the religion of Vampirism or wine coolers?
2. The op-ed piece claims that the authors do not wish to jail people for using or holding marijuana. How is that any different than legalizing it? What’s the difference between decriminalization and legalization and why is that fine line so important?

The first point answers itself. Marijuana is no different than any of the large number of other things we have legalized (or never made illegal) in this nation. Our country is built on the ideal of personal liberty. IIt is legal for someone to sit in front of the TV and drink Budweiser to their heart’s content. Yet if that same person sits in front of the TV and hits the bong, they’ve somehow crossed a line that must be enforced.

This makes no sense. No sensible person is going to argue about whether using marijuana in public or doing stupid things is OK. If you smoke a joint or down a couple of shots and then ride your bicycle, nude, through the city park you are in need of some discipline. But what about in your back yard? At the lake while barbecuing? At the bowling alley? It’s legal to drink in those places and the vast majority of those who do so in those locations don’t become a public nuisance. So how is pot somehow different?

The truth is.. it’s not. Only the perception of the sweet leaf versus alcohol or religious fervor or prescription drugs is different.

As for the fine line between decriminalization and legalization, it doesn’t seem to be much of a point. Making something non-criminal is, de facto, making it legal.

The crux of the Office of Drug Control Policy’s opinion hinges on a straw man argument about what “society” can “handle.” It ignores reality, as Washington usually does, and makes a direct attack on the ideal of personal freedom and liberty by pretending to worry about the “consequences” of marijuana should it be legalized.

Consequences as opposed to what? Consequences like the huge number of people jailed in this country for merely owning some plants? The consequences of finally allowing people to do as they wish and only punishing them if they hurt others with their actions? The consequences of lifting a large chunk of the failed War on Drugs and finally conceding that the policies of the Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., etc. were wrong and unjustifiable?

Since most of the “experts” who wrote this opinion editorial were directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy during those named presidents’ tenures in office, they should know the true consequences of the War on (some) Drugs.

Instead, they overlook that and make straw man claims about supposed impacts on society and hint at the Reefer Madness idea that marijuana turns everyone involved with it into drug-crazed lunatics bent on rape, mayhem, and worse.

[source Crime In America]

Obviously, too many people are figuring out the scam. The-bloggers-are-with-Al-Queda meme seems hilarious and dumb now, but this is the set up phase. After the false flag nuke is lit off (or whatever the spectacle will entail), guess where the fingers will point…

See: DoJ Terrorism and Criminal Extremism Terms and Concepts Guide

Via: BBC:

Secrecy surrounding counter-terrorism operations is fuelling mistrust of authorities, a study by independent think tank Demos suggests.

It urges the government and secret services to be more open to stop extremist groups using conspiracy theories to discredit them.

A Demos spokesman said: “Less-secret services could make Britain safer.”

The study calls for greater communication with trusted community leaders and individuals.

The report – entitled the Power of Unreason – says groups use conspiracy theories to recruit and radicalise people to commit acts of violence.

An example of one such theory is that the bombings in New York and London, on 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 respectively, were “inside jobs” carried out by authorities in the US and UK.

Other theories highlighted were that “freemasons control the world economy through manipulation of paper currency”, that the UK government is “consciously seeking to destroy Islam” and that a “conspiracy between the Japanese government, the US, and the Jews existed to gain world domination”.

The study claims such theories are frequently adopted by extremist groups to demonise outsiders, discredit moderates and push them in a more extreme and sometimes violent direction.

The report’s authors made a number of recommendations concerning the counter-terrorism work carried out by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and the government.

The publication of all National Security Council annual reports, including outlining the risks to national security and the current terrorist threat, was among their suggestions aimed at improving transparency.

They also called for increased openness in terrorism trials through reporting court proceedings and transcripts and for the provision of more information about policing around counter-terrorism.

However, the study did acknowledge that there were limits to what the government could do to restore trust and urged society as a whole to do more to counter the conspiracy theorists.

One way in which this could be done is by helping young people to think more critically, it said.

It recommended lessons on conspiracy theories and online sources like blogs, Wikipedia and newspapers for secondary school students that focused on digital literacy and ‘counter knowledge’.

“More needs to be done in schools to teach young people digital literacy, such as being taught to tell the difference between propaganda and honest and accurate reporting,” argues the think tank.

Jamie Bartlett, an extremism expert at Demos, said: “The more open the government is, the harder it is for extremist groups to make stories out of silence.

“Clearly, there are occasions when more transparency is not possible for reasons of national security, the safety of certain individuals, or resource constraints. But the degree to which conspiracy theories make up part of the extremist mind-set and world view suggests it needs to be confronted.”

He said such theories “destroy the trust that exists between the government and communities, which is the basis of effective counter-terrorism work”.

Americans have historically prided themselves in being different from all other nations of the earth. Stemming from our independent lives and station from Great Britain–even while being politically subject to it–the foundation of America rested upon the ideal of independence, individualism, self-determination and freedom. A massive and motivating Secession Movement from Great Britain took only a few years to brew throughout the colonies, given only minor usurpations from their mother country, comparably speaking. The colonies’ sovereignty was deemed established not upon the winning of the war but upon their unilateral declaration: “these united Colonies ARE, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”[1] Once their sovereignty was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, constitutions were formed upon the American ideal of choice, reflection and wisdom, knowing that the Natural Law principles of self-government proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence were the undergirding foundation and were eternal in application to every generation.

Upon these same principles, many in America today believe that similar decisions as made by the founding generation must be made the people of the States. The fruits of the spirit of the federal government have evidenced its machinery intent of subjecting the people of the States to anti-American ideology.

However, masses of people scrounge around trying to find the answer in the system as is. “There must be someone to blame!” they claim. Some angrily point to the federal courts because of their “misinterpretation” of the U.S. Constitution. Some point to Congress for passing laws without having read the U.S. Constitution or with the attitude that if the law is unconstitutional, the courts will set it straight later. Others point to the President–as if he can do anything without the money Congress gives him to wage war, support his bureaucracy, grow his military-industrial complex and spread the wealth of the nation. Thus, every two and four years, the only method of reform that can be thought of is voting in new politicians in federal office. Meanwhile, the people see little importance in putting politicians in the State and local positions who have a true understanding of what federalism, state sovereignty and consent of governed truly mean in theory and application. And the cycle of enslavement continues.

Ironically, many of these same people who claim that the federal government has enslaved the people and destroyed the states throughout many generations and that there is a conspiracy of the highest order and most evil intent shun the thought that the States secede from the union. They reject (unwittingly or not) the notion that the nation is too large to be governed by one central authority; that self-government cannot exist as long as 400 plus million people are lumped into one system of governance; and that true government reform means breaking this empire up into smaller parts. They cannot wrap their minds around the ideal that the American dream demands that the States separate from the form of government that they acknowledge is enslaving them.

As has been observed, the U.S. Constitution is “in reality a version of the British Constitution,”[2]from which the colonies seceded in 1776. The only notable and distinctive element of difference in the U.S. Constitution was the concept of federalism—a federal system of sovereign states exercising their powers independent of the federal government and the federal government exercising its powers independent of the states. But even Great Britain exercised a type of federalism as the colonies were left to govern their internal affairs without interference. Were this not true, resisting the Stamp Act of 1765 would seem quite silly. So, can the experiment of dual sovereignty be considered a success? While most Americans may not recognize the failure of this experiment, the results from our debauched federal government clearly prove the failure. Yet, many Americans still attempt to use the same debauchery to bring freedom to the States which they claim are in slave status. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

What will it take for Americans to realize that the States are naturally and morally justified in separating from the chains and cycle of tyranny? Perhaps more than anyone would care to admit. We obviously have not learned from the example of our founding generation, for they seceded under much less egregious circumstances than our political and social plight today. We cannot even learn from the modern-day examples of other countries. Consider the nation of Sudan, the South of which is undergoing a serious secession effort today. In a recent article entitled Moral Justifications Of Secession For Southern Sudan, the author writes about the moral justification of secession in Sudan, saying,

“In the two wars (1955-1972) and (1983 to 2005), the total number of deaths have been always estimated at between 3 million and 4 million…The prior occupation and annexation of territories of South Sudan by Sudanese Armed Forces, massive human rights violations and discriminatory injustice are seen as severe injustices that can morally justify secession.”

How astutely observant it is for human rights groups and other “free” governments of the world, including the United States federal government, to recognize a moral justification (i.e. natural right) of a people to secede from their existing political connections! I think a monkey could figure this out. So, does it really take the death of millions before the people realize that they should secede! I thought constitutions (and thus unions) were to be formed and remain under the pretext of forethought, consent, wisdom and reason, not upon the force of remaining until the country reaches utter devastation like Sudan.[3]

Amazingly, some Americans are more afraid of reforming the union than they are of the federal government, which they assert have total control over our lives with the intent to do so. Despite this assertion and belief, these people ignore America’s first principle: “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object EVINCES A DESIGN to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their RIGHT, it is their DUTY, TO THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT, and to PROVIDE NEW GUARDS for their future security.”[4] Even Alexander Hamilton admits this necessity under the U.S. Constitution.[5] Yet somehow this observation of social and political nature has been foolishly rejected by many who claim to love freedom and America.

The reality is, the federal government has nothing without the cooperation and consent of the States. This was admitted throughout the federalist papers. Were even a few States to secede from the union, the federal government’s power to do anything in response would be exponentially limited. They have no assets as it is. They have nothing but debt. Their only sustenance is a people who chose to remain bound to their rule. That day is short lived.

The new Secession Movement has nothing but moral justification written all over it—a morality which considers preemptive prevention to be a better remedy. People can argue practicality all they want (just as some did in 1775-1776 in America), but the wave of freedom’s future will demand that your loyalty be revealed. A side must be chosen. Neutrality will not be tolerated, just as in 1776. You need to know: those who advocate secession today are not wackos and nut-jobs, despite the attempts by news commentators such as Chris Matthews, Geraldo and the like to categorize otherwise. Today’s secessionists are reputable and honorable doctors, lawyers, politicians, journalists, scholars, teachers, university professors, economics, insurance agents, deputy sheriffs, military officers, business owners and a myriad of regular Americans.

What people need are leaders who have a vision for the future of freedom in the States of America. These leaders are not found in Washington D.C. They are likely and virtually unknown on a national scale. However, as circumstances worsen, they will rise to the occasion and the opportunity of history will reveal invaluable statesmen, those like the founding fathers. It will be these leaders and those who follow them who will prove that at least some of the States are not like other nations of the world who wait until millions are killed or their lives destroyed before secession is justified. They will use the wisdom given by God to “provide new Guards for their future security” and to “secure these rights [of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness].”[6]

[2] George Pellew, American Statesmen, John Jay, Vol. 9, (Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1899), 69, statement made by Sir Henry Maine.

[3] “[We are called upon to decide whether] societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 1 (emphasis added).

[4] Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence, 1776, (emphasis added).

[5] “If such presumptions [of federal tyranny] can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 26 (emphasis added).

[6] Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Although it’s still summer in North America, it is of course winter in Australia, and the flu season is well under way there. As usual, Australian health authorities have been urging parents there to vaccinate their children against the flu, propagating the mythology that flu vaccines are both safe and effective. But this time around, many Australian parents found out the hard way that they were being lied to.

It didn’t take long to realize the truth after their children start going into convulsionsfollowing the flu vaccine injections. Other children began vomiting or exhibiting dangerously high levels of fever. One child has gone into a coma and may never recover.

As reported in WA Today(http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f…)

“Perth mother of two Bea Flint said her 11-month-old boy Avery had a seizure after receiving the first dose of the two-dose flu vaccination on Saturday. Mrs Flint said that after the 9am vaccination she noticed Avery had a minor temperature about 2pm. At 7.45pm, Avery started whimpering and moaning. When Mrs Flint got to his cot the baby had vomited and was lying on his side having a seizure. ‘He couldn’t cry – his head was hanging down in the car seat and he couldn’t move. I was petrified – it was one of the worst experiences of my life.”

The story goes on to say, “The doctor who treated Avery told Mrs Flint her baby was the fifth child with similar symptoms admitted to the hospital that day.”

In other words, this was no rare event. Vaccinated children suffering severe convulsions were piling up in hospital emergency rooms across the country.

The real kicker, though, is that children started having convulsions two weeks ago but Australian health authorities ignored them, insisting that the vaccine was safe and causing it to be injected in yet more babies. Two weeks later, with dozens more children experiencing convulsions (and who knows how many thousands actually being harmed in less obvious ways), Commonwealth chief health officer Professor Jim Bishop finally announced the vaccination ban.

Remember: Health authorities in Australia, UK, the United States and everywhere else have relentlessly insisted that flu vaccines are perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone. In the U.S., the FDA has given its approval to the very same flu vaccine that’s harming children in Australia, and the CDC has insisted that all children in the USA — regardless of age — should now be injected with this very same flu vaccine.

So now we’ve got a vaccine that Australia has banned but the USA somehow says is safe enough to inject into a six-month-old infant. How many convulsing babies will it take in the U.S. before American parents realize the truth about flu vaccines?

Chemically induced convulsions

As you’re reading this, you may find yourself wonder, “Well, what could cause such convulsions in children?”

The answer is more terrifying than you might think, because it’s not “weakened flu viruses” that vaccine manufacturer claim they put into the vaccines. A weakened flu virus doesn’t send children into convulsions. Only a chemical can do that.

The chemical in question is one that’s routinely added to most vaccines as a way to aggravate the immune system to respond to the presence of the weakened virus. It’s called an “adjuvant” and consists of a highly inflammatory chemical that we now know may damage brain tissues and the nervous system. It is this adjuvant that most likely caused the convulsions in children.

Even in children who don’t experience convulsions, there is speculation that this adjuvant may lead to future Alzheimer’s disease or other neurological disorders. Vaccine manufacturers always attempt to downplay their use of adjuvant chemicals, and few media outlets focus on this important point, but it is the adjuvant that is most likely responsible for sending these Australian children into hospitals with convulsions.

Health authorities defend dangerous vaccine

One thing I’ve noticed about vaccine pushers is that they behave like irrational zealots. No matter how much evidence surfaces about the dangers of vaccines, they continue to mindlessly push them while ignoring the evidence.

A pediatric professor in Australia, Dr Peter Richmond, admitted that researchers were trying to figure out if the entire vaccine was dangerous, or if there was just a bad batch. But even before getting the answer to this question, he goes on to say that everybody over the age of five should go ahead and get injected with this same vaccine!(http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f…)

In other words, he’s so convinced the vaccine is safe — even after dozens of children were obviously harmed by it — that he’s still pushing the same dangerous vaccine onto everybody else!

This is precisely the kind of attitude reflected across the vaccine industry. Reports of children being harmed, or paralyzed, or hospitalized by vaccines are always written off as “coincidence.” The mounting evidence is simply thrown out the window because it conflicts with the pro-vaccine agenda.

Can you imagine the outrage if an herbal product sent fifty kids to the hospital suffering from convulsions? Health authorities across the world would be quick to condemn the product, and they’d confiscate it right off the shelves while shutting down the operations of its manufacturer. But somehow when a vaccine does the same thing, these same health authorities urge people to keep on injecting their children with it!

It makes no sense. But then again, the vaccine industry was never based on rational thinking in the first place. If health authorities were truly rational, they’d be handing out vitamin D supplements to children instead of injecting them with vaccines, because vitamin D has been scientifically proven to provide better protection against the flu than vaccines. (http://www.naturalnews.com/029333_v…)

Of course, to ask health authorities to make rational decisions is sort of like asking politicians to start telling the truth. In the complicated world of profits and politics, rational, honest thinking just doesn’t get any traction. It’s far more profitable to keep lying to the world and raking in billions of dollars each year off dangerous vaccines, even as they continue to harm innocent children.

I often wonder… How many dead children will it take before parents wake up and realize that flu vaccines are dangerous? The answer may surprise you: Even a million dead children won’t change the minds of most parents because they just do whatever they’re told by health authorities, even if it makes no rational sense.

Most parents are so brainwashed by the medical system that they would gladly line up to have their babies injected with chemotherapy if they were told it was somehow necessary.

At some point, the parents whose babies are being harmed or potentially even killed by these vaccines can only blame themselves. They were the ones who brought their babies to be injected with a chemical adjuvant and viral fragments, and they should know better than to trust the government when it comes to health advice. The government, after all, still says that pharmaceutical chemicals are good for you while vitamins, herbs and natural remedies are dangerous. And it’s the government that approved the very vaccines that are right now sending these children to the hospital.

Any parent that trusts the government with the health of their child is setting themselves up for catastrophe. And that catastrophe could very well cost them the life of their child.

Additional sources for this story include:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h…