Say goodbye to full-time jobs with benefits

Chris Isidore
CNNMoney
June 4, 2010

Jobs may be coming back, but they aren’t the same ones workers were used to.



Many of the jobs employers are adding are temporary or contract positions, rather than traditional full-time jobs with benefits. With unemployment remaining near 10%, employers have their pick of workers willing to accept less secure positions.

In 2005, the government estimated that 31% of U.S. workers were already so-called contingent workers. Experts say that number could increase to 40% or more in the next 10 years.

Read entire article:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/01/news/economy/contract_jobs/index.htm

Obama administration backs Vatican in pedophile case

AFP
May 26, 2010

The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed the Vatican’s claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States.

The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Vatican of an appellate court ruling that lifted its immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest from Oregon.

In a filing on Friday, the solicitor general’s office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960s by the Oregon priest.

The unnamed plaintiff, who cited the Holy See and several other parties as defendants, argued the Vatican should be held responsible for transferring the priest to Oregon and letting him serve there despite previous accusations he had abused children in Chicago and in Ireland.

Obama’s Health Care Rationing Czar

Karen De Coster
The LRC Blog
May 25, 2010

There is an interesting article in CNSNews about Obama’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, who reveals his passion for central planning and all things socialized.The article links to a June 2009 interview with Berwick in Biotechnology Healthcare. Some snippets from the article:

In a June 2009 interview in Biotechnology Healthcare, Berwick was asked: “Critics of CER (Comparative Effectiveness Research) have said that it will lead to rationing of health care.”

He answered: “We can make a sensible social decision and say, ‘Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit [new drug or medical intervention] is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.’ We make those decisions all the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

In the same interview, he also said, “The social budget is limited—we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t.”

Berwick also talked about his romantic view of Britain’s socialized health care system on page 213 of a report he wrote entitled, “A Transatlantic Review of the NHS at 60,” published on July 26, 2008.

“Cynics beware: I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it,” Berwick wrote. “All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.”

Lastly, in the 2008 report, Berwick wrote, “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must — must — redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate.” Here is the 2008 speech where Berwick talks about the “darkness of private enterprise” and lauds a politically accountable system. He adds that “excellent health care is, by definition, redistributional.” Hat tip to Mark Fee for the article.

The Constitution Applies to Terrorists

Connor Boyack
LewRockwell.com
May 24, 2010

Yes, you read that right. The Constitution applies to terrorists. It also applies to stay-at-home moms, illegal immigrants, truck drivers, anti-government radicals, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Put differently, the Constitution does not apply only to citizens of the United States. It seems that protectionist collectivists treat this document like a two-year-old treats his favorite toy – unwilling to share, and incorrectly believing that it is his and his alone. This fallacy has become so propagated throughout the country’s general political mindset that a barbaric jingoism has resulted, leading people to automatically support the denial of constitutional protections of freedom for anybody who is a “terrorist.”

But who is a terrorist?

The picture that first comes to mind is the “insurgent” fighting against our military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other countries of the Middle East in which our military is increasingly becoming engaged. Some examples of such “terrorists” might be: the vengeful man whose innocent brother was killed by an unmanned drone over the border of Pakistan; the adrenaline-fueled teenager taking on the militarized Goliath occupying his hometown; the man in the wrong place at the wrong time, picked up by a bounty hunter and sold to the American government with a fictional story created about his involvement in terrorist activities; and the list could continue, portraying stories far different than the standard “radical jihadist” that dominates our media’s narrative.

Things hit closer to home when the suspected terrorists have white skin. Take, for example, the Missouri Information Analysis Center report which labeled as terrorists supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, and anybody sporting paraphernalia associated with the Constitution Party, Campaign for Liberty, or the Libertarian Party.

The absurdity continues – the government has also considered defenders of the Constitution, home-schoolers, peaceful protestors, and a host of patriotic organizations and individuals as terrorists. Do these “domestic rightwing terrorists” not merit constitutional safeguards of their liberty?

In other words, with a “terrorist” being any individual – U.S. citizen or not – upon whom the government arbitrarily imposes that label, why would anybody not consider the Constitution as applying to that individual? Some may take issue with this generality and instead specify the argument as only being relevant to non-citizens. But do these folks even understand what the Constitution is?

The Constitution is a document that created the federal government, and in so doing, specified powers granted to and denied that entity. It does not apply to a person or group of people, but rather to the government itself. In saying above that the Constitution applies to terrorists, truck drivers, etc., the idea is conveyed that the Constitution applies to all people who have any dealings with the federal government.

The cotton picker in Uzbekistan couldn’t care less about the U.S. Constitution, and taken literally, it does not really apply to him. But say this person vacationed in Pittsburgh, or say he visited the local American embassy. Having any interaction with agents of the federal government makes the Constitution relevant to him, since that governing document applies to the federal government and those who comprise it. Whether the person be a cotton picker, an “insurgent,” or anybody else, the federal government is bound by the constraints of the Constitution, and in attempting to administer legal punishment to another person, must give due process and protect other basic human rights – rights which the Declaration of Independence makes clear are given by the Creator to every individual.

Were this not the case, the government could extinguish the life of any non-citizen it wanted, at any time, for any reason – or for no reason at all. For if the guarantees enshrined in the Constitution apply only to U.S. citizens, what prevents the government from denying these rights to any non-citizen? The constitutional restraints are not specific to an individual who happens to be a citizen, thus (allegedly) preventing the federal government from denying them their rights, but rather are shackles of self-restraint placed around the appendages of the government itself, regardless of who the government deals with. Under the Constitution, all are recognized as enjoying basic rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the government must follow an established process if it wishes to deny these rights to any individual, whatever his or her nationality.

Americans must resist the tendency to be so selfish with our supposed freedoms. We either believe that our rights came from our Creator – and thus exist for all His children – or we don’t. We either believe that the federal government has power to deal as it pleases with any non-citizen, or we don’t. And we either view so-called “terrorists” as human beings entitled, insofar as is possible, to due process when dealing with our government, or we don’t. The alternative is an alarming one, for tomorrow you and I might ourselves be branded with this dubious distinction, finding ourselves the subject of scorn and derision, reduced to a discardable humanoid whose very existence is at the mercy of another person.

This is not the America I grew up in, nor the one I want to pass on to my children. How about you?

Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill

John Byrne
Raw Story
June 2, 2010

Firm’s stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment

The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman’s holdings — meaning that Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.

Obama to use Gulf oil spill for energy agenda push

CNN
June 2, 2010

President Barack Obama will use the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico to advance his alternative energy agenda Wednesday, according to excerpts of a speech the president is set to deliver at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University.

“The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error — or corporations taking dangerous short-cuts that compromised safety,” Obama says in the excerpts. “But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth — risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes. Just like we have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and grandchildren.”

Obama’s emphasis on energy issues is expected to be part of a broader focus in the president’s speech on the state of the economy. Administration officials pledged to focus strongly on job creation earlier in the year but have since been forced to grapple with a host of unexpected challenges, including the oil spill.

72% of Guantanamo detainees innocent

Glenn Greenwald
Salon
May 31, 2010


The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports that, this week, yet another federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release yet another Guantanamo detainee on the ground that there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention. The latest detainee to win his habeas hearing, Mohammed Hassen, is a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years, since he was 19 years old. He has “long claimed he was captured in Pakistan studying the Quran and had no ties to al Qaida,” and that “he had been unjustly rounded up in a March 2002 dragnet by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad that targeted Arabs.” Hassen is now the third consecutive detainee ordered freed who was rounded up in that same raid. The Obama DOJ opposed his petition even though the Bush administration had cleared him for release in 2007. He has now spent roughly 30% of his life in a cage at Guantanamo.

What’s most significant about this is that Hassen is now the 36th detainee who has won his habeas hearing since the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled they have the right to such hearings — out of 50 whose petitions have been heard. In other words, 72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process (which is what a habeas hearing is) — after years of being in a cage without charges — have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained. These are people who are part of what the U.S. Government continues to insist are “the worst of the worst” who remain, and whose release is being vehemently contested by the Obama DOJ.

Warning Signs Of Full Spectrum Collapse Are Everywhere

Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press
May 31, 2010

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and many other European nations has, at least for the moment, open a gap in the wash of financial disinformation that has prevailed in the mainstream media for the past year. The average American is now more aware of the terrible costs of living in an artificially driven and widely manipulated “global economy”, and has also been exposed (at least for the moment) to the very real frailties in our own markets, which have been hidden or downplayed by the government as well as disingenuous establishment economists. Events in the EU, however, are only a glimpse of the greater and more imminent threats we face in the near future. In this article we will look at some of the latest and most disturbing moves by governments and financial institutions, as well as tell-tale signs in our own local cities, which signal that a full-spectrum collapse of world markets and possibly our own currency is not only in progress, but nearing completion.

World Market Signals

All eyes have been focused on the Greek situation for the past month, but we cannot let this one storm of the financial crisis distract us from the other threats that lie just beyond the horizon. There are many far more pressing concerns than insolvency in Southern Europe, though we’ve been drowning in “Greek Contagion” rhetoric 24/7 and it is difficult to think of much else. The idea that instability in Greece is somehow responsible for instability in the rest of the EU is simply unfounded. Most nations in the EU were on the verge of bankruptcy long before the sovereign debt crisis in Greece began. Spain, for instance, has just lost its AAA credit grade with Fitch Ratings due to its massive deficits:

Schama: Are the Guillotines Being Sharpened?

Posted by sakerfa on May 24, 2010

(NakedCapitalism) – Simon Schama tonight warns in the Financial Times that revolutionary rage is close to the boiling point in Europe and the US :

Historians will tell you there is often a time-lag between the onset of economic disaster and the accumulation of social fury. In act one, the shock of a crisis initially triggers fearful disorientation; the rush for political saviours; instinctive responses of self-protection, but not the organised mobilisation of outrage…
Act two is trickier. Objectively, economic conditions might be improving, but perceptions are everything and a breathing space gives room for a dangerously alienated public to take stock of the brutal interruption of their rising expectations. What happened to the march of income, the acquisition of property, the truism that the next generation will live better than the last? The full impact of the overthrow of these assumptions sinks in and engenders a sense of grievance that “Someone Else” must have engineered the common misfortune….At the very least, the survival of a crisis demands ensuring that the fiscal pain is equitably distributed. In the France of 1789, the erstwhile nobility became regular citizens, ended their exemption from the land tax, made a show of abolishing their own privileges, turned in jewellery for the public treasury; while the clergy’s immense estates were auctioned for La Nation. It is too much to expect a bonfire of the bling but in 2010 a pragmatic steward of the nation’s economy needs to beware relying unduly on regressive indirect taxes, especially if levied to impress a bond market with which regular folk feel little connection. At the very least, any emergency budget needs to take stock of this raw sense of popular victimisation and deliver a convincing story about the sharing of burdens. To do otherwise is to guarantee that a bad situation gets very ugly, very fast.

Schama knows this terrain cold; his chronicle of the French Revolution, Citizens, made clear what a bloody affair it was. Even so, his account in the Financial Times in some key respects understates the degree of dislocation suffered by many in advanced economies. Schama depicts the crisis-induced change as merely the end of rising expectations, but the shock is deeper than that.

Severe financial crises result in a permanent decline in the standard of living. For some citizens, that has come through contracts being reneged, in particular, pension cuts. Other people see their savings in tatters and have no realistic prospect for being able to fund their retirement. And for many of these individuals, the odds of finding continuing, reasonably paid work are low. Even before unemployment soared, people over 40 face poor job prospects. The idea that the middle aged cohort can earn back losses to their nest eggs is wishful thinking. And the young are not much better off. New graduates also face a hostile job market. Worse, students often went into debt to finance their education, believing the mantra that it was an investment.

And many of the societies suffering these financial shocks have already suffered a great deal of erosion of their underlying support structures. Even before the crisis, in the US and other advanced economies, social bonds have eroded in a remarkably short period of time, roughly a generation and a half. Job tenures are short; employees and employers have little loyalty to each other. Ties to communities are weak. Many families have two working parents, so career and parenting demands leave little time to participate in local organizations. Advanced technology frequently offers an easier leisure outlet than trying to coordinate schedules with time (or financially) stressed friends. But marriage and families are also not the haven they once were, given high divorce rates.

One oft unrecognized factor is that alienation and social stress are directly related to income inequality. This is hardly a new finding, but it seldom gets media coverage in the plutocratic US. And it has concrete, measurable costs. As Michael Prowse explained in the Financial Times:

…..if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and health largely disintegrates. Rich Americans, for instance, are healthier on average than poor Americans, as measured by life expectancy. But, although the US is a much richer country than, say, Greece, Americans on average have a lower life expectancy than Greeks. More income, it seems, gives you a health advantage with respect to your fellow citizens, but not with respect to people living in other countries….

Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel ‘in control’ in their work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts. Economically unequal societies tend to do poorly in all three respects: they tend to be characterised by big status differences, by big differences in people’s sense of control and by low levels of civic participation….

Unequal societies, in other words, will remain unhealthy societies – and also unhappy societies – no matter how wealthy they become. Their advocates – those who see no reason whatever to curb ever-widening income differentials – have a lot of explaining to do.

Yves here. If you look at broader indicators of social well being, you see the same finding: greater income inequality is associated with worse outcomes. From a presentation by Kate Pickett, Senior lecturer at the University of York and author of The Spirit Level, at the INET conference in April:



Note in particular where Japan sits on the chart. Some readers have argued that the US has little to fear from deflation and a protracted period of near-zero growth, since Japan is orderly and prosperous-looking, despite its relative decline. But Japan was and is the most socially equal major economy, and during its crisis, it observed the Schama prescription of sharing the pain. The US, the UK, and to a lesser degree, Europe, have done the exact reverse, with both the bank rescues and austerity measures effectively a transfer from ordinary citizens to financiers.

As James Lardner pointed out in the New York Review of Books in June 2007, even before the wheels started coming off the economy, the social contract in the US was pretty frayed, but a concerted propaganda campaign PR effort promoted the fiction that it was the best of all possible worlds:

To gain their political ends, the robber barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age were content with corrupting officials and buying elections. Their modern counterparts have taken things a big step further, erecting a loose network of think tanks, corporate spokespeople, and friendly press commentators to shape the way Americans think about the economy…. the new communications apparatus wants us to believe that our economic wellbeing depends almost entirely on the so-called free market—a euphemism for letting the private sector set its own rules. The success of this great effort can be measured in the remarkable fact that, despite the corporate scandals and the social damage that these authors explore; despite three decades of deregulation and privatization and tax-and-benefit-slashing with, as the clearest single result, the relentless rise of economic inequality to levels so extreme that since 2001 “the economy” has racked up five straight years of impressive growth without producing any measurable income gains for most Americans—even now, discussions of solutions or alternatives can be stopped almost dead in their tracks by mention of the word government.

Yves here. Having weakened faith in government and made considerable progress towards creating a social Darwinist paradise of isolated individuals pitted against each other, the oligarchs may be about to harvest a whirlwind.

Source: Naked Capitalism

The Gun is Civilization

by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Posted by sakerfa on May 28, 2010

(SHTFPlan) – Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

By Maj. L. Caudill USM C (Ret)

The greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.

Remember only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

Source: SHTFPlan

Poisoned Water

Posted by sakerfa on May 30, 2010

(SOTT) – Arthur Miller wrote, “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are living through such a time. The information age is dissolving many of the lies of corporate capitalism. The rapid exchange of knowledge on the Internet has made the excesses of globalization transparent. It’s high time for pointing out the pink elephants and debunking the myths of the system. So here’s some more dirt under the fingernails of the American Empire: fluoride. For half a century in North America the commonly held belief has been that fluoride is good for our teeth. This is a PR lie concocted by the most infamous “mad man” of Madison Avenue, Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud. The truth is that fluoride is poison. Yet on account of the longevity of the lie, to this day there is poison in our toothpaste and in our drinking water.
In most of North America, if you turn on the faucet in the kitchen or the bathroom, the water that pours out will be laced with hydrofluorosilicic acid. It’s designated a Class 2 poison by the EPA, an acute toxin worse than lead and almost as bad as arsenic. According to the National Cancer Institute it’s a known carcinogen. Hydrofluorosilicic acid is a byproduct of the Florida phosphate fertilizer industry. It comes straight from the stacks of industrial plants. It’s illegal to dump it into freshwater lakes and rivers because it’s toxic to life. Yet it’s being trucked in oil tankers all over the United States and Canada to be sold to municipalities that pump it into our tap water. Yet enough scientific evidence has mounted against fluoride that three U.S. judges have ruled in federal court that fluoridation represents an “unreasonable risk” to the public, and the public is beginning to get wind of the danger.

In 2006 the National Research Council published the most comprehensive review to date of the scientific studies into the issue entitled “Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of the EPA’s Standards.” The review panel found that hydrofluorosilicic acid has been linked with preventable diseases like arthritis, diabetes, osteosarcoma, Alzheimer’s, Down’s syndrome, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, and hypocalcemia. The weight of evidence suggests that fluoride causes damage throughout the human organism: cells, skins, bones, joints, ligaments, kidneys, liver, lungs, and intestines. Fluoride is shown to depress the thyroid gland, impairs kidney function, and calcify the pineal gland. Fluoride crosses the blood-brain barrier intact and causes neurological damage that lowers IQ. Fluoride is especially dangerous to the brain because it combines with aluminum which is known to cause Alzheimer’s and dementia. Fluoride also damages the DNA by causing cells to mutate, which is one of the triggers of cancer.

The official line that we’re told is that fluoride prevents tooth decay. Yet fluoride is known to do just the opposite. Fluoride causes dental fluorosis, a condition that makes teeth hard and brittle with discoloration, chipping and pitting of the enamel. It’s estimated by the Centers for Disease Control that one-third of the children in the United States have dental fluorosis. In Canada the numbers are lower due to less fluoride in the water: Health Canada estimates between 12 and 14 percent incidence of fluorosis. Furthermore new studies show that the supposed benefits of fluoridation are nonexistent. The National Institute of Dental Research conducted the largest study to date on fluoride’s effects on teeth with over 39,000 children ages 5 to 17 and found no significant differences between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities. Another study in New York State found that the only significant difference is that fluoridated Newburgh, New York, has twice the dental fluorosis of non-fluoridated Kingston, New York.

The American Dental Association has warned that parents should make up baby formula with non-fluoridated water because of the damage that fluoride can do to the developing teeth of infants. The EPA has withdrawn its support of fluoridation, after the EPA’s headquarters filed a successful grievance against the agency asking for clean drinking water because fluoride is toxic. The National Kidney Federation has also asked to have its name removed from the list of fluoridation, and furthermore warned that kidney patients should be warned about the dangers of fluoride ingestion. The National Cancer Institute has estimated that one-tenth of the quarter-million cancer deaths per year in the U.S. are linked to water fluoridation.

A growing number of scientists are learning the truth about fluoride. Dr. Paul Connett of St. Lawrence University and executive director of the Fluoride Action Network explains his own experience: “I have been researching the scientific literature on fluoride since 1996. I approached this issue with an open mind. If I had any bias when I set out it was that those who were opposed to fluoridation were ‘crackpots.’ However, the more I read the more concerned I became over the dangers posed by fluoride and by the very poor science underpinning political decisions that allow such a toxic substance to be put into our drinking water.”

Yet for some doctors speaking the truth has not come without a price. The best example may be Dr. Phyllis Mullinex, who used to be a leading researcher with the Forsyth Dental Institute. She created an innovative computer pattern recognition software to study the neurotoxicity of chemicals. Then she was asked to study fluoride. At first she balked that it was a waste of time. Like most doctors, she believed that fluoride as safe and harmless because it was in toothpaste and drinking water. Yet the software revealed that fluoride even in small doses causes effects similar to hyperactivity and Attention Deficit Disorder. The results were congruent with numerous studies in China that show that fluoride lowers the IQ of children. When Dr. Mullinex published these surprising results, she was promptly fired from Forsyth and since then has not been able to find a position or receive research grants.

Another fluoride expert is Dr. Hardy Limeback, the Head of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto and former president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research. He was on the panel of the National Research Council that published the scientific indictment of fluoride. Like many practicing dentists, Dr. Limeback used to promote fluoride, but when he learned the truth he recanted his earlier position and apologized for misleading the public. Since then he’s been a leading opponent of fluoridation. Yet his integrity has also cost him professionally. Since changing his position Dr. Limeback also has not received any research grants.

There are many examples but all exemplify the pattern: scientists and doctors who have the integrity to speak the truth against fluoridation are marginalized by the corporate medical establishment. Yet the weight of evidence certainly suggests that those who support fluoridation are in violation of the most fundamental principle of the medical profession, the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm.

National Cancer Institute co-founder Dr. Dean Burke has said: “We estimate that since fluoridation was introduced into the U.S., there have been almost as many excess deaths associated with fluoridation as the sum total of all American military deaths since the founding of the USA 1776. Now that’s an awful burden for pro-fluoridationists to bear if they can come to see that they have been responsible for this. The underlying clandestine force behind water fluoridation is a need by various industries to get rid of various toxic fluoride byproducts, about as tough to get rid of as radioactive waste. The dentists are by and large pawns.”

So the fact is that we’re being poisoned. Fluoride is put into our drinking water quite deliberately, and despite the laws that uphold fluoridation, it’s clearly a moral crime of negligence at the very least, a crime that harms the health of millions of people. One question that arises is why it’s happening: out of ignorance or greed or both? In ancient Rome when politicians were assassinated people asked themselves: cui bono? Who benefits? It’s doubtful that city councilors have much to gain from fluoridation, although politicians receive contributions from lobbyists. It’s doubtful that dentists who promote fluoridation are informed about the dangers involved, although it must be said that the profits of dentists are 17 percent higher in areas where water is fluoridated. Yet it’s clear that the lion’s share of the profits in the fluoride racket go to corporations. For the chemical corporations fluoridation is a double win: they receive a big handout of taxpayers’ dollars and they get rid of toxic waste. And whereas politicians and dentists can claim ignorance with justice and may be forgiven because they not what they do, the same cannot be claimed by corporations.

The truth is that fluoride has a long shady history as a toxic chemical that goes all the way back to the Manhattan Project. Declassified documents show that scientists like the Manhattan Project’s chief toxicologist Harold Hodge were ordered to cover up the dangers of toxins like fluoride in order to prevent lawsuits against the Pentagon and military contractors. Later Harold Hodge was a leading promoter of fluoride and appeared in education films in a white smock spelling out on a blackboard that fluoride is both safe and effective in preventing tooth cavities. The research to support such claims came from scientists like Gerald Cox of the Mellon Institute, who also argued on behalf of asbestos, and Robert Kehoe of the Ketting Laboratory, who also defended lead. Such “science for hire” was financed by corporations, and the skewed findings were used as ammunition for the Fluorine Lawyers Committee of litigators who defended the industry in lawsuits. Dr. Leonard Weinstein of Cornell University said in 1983: “Certainly there has been more litigation on alleged damage to agriculture by fluoride than all other pollutants combined.”

In fact, fluoride was involved in the worst air pollution accident in American history. Fluoride gas was found to be the cause of 19 deaths and thousands of injuries near a U.S. Steel plant in Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948. It was this accident that instigated the first environmental movement. So the historical record shows that corporations are well aware of the dangers of fluoride though it’s continued to be sold to the public.

So why does water fluoridation continue? If fluoride is a clear and present danger to the public, why don’t the health authorities put an end to this irrational and irresponsible practice? The simple truth is that the government regulatory bureaucracies have been captured by the dental lobby on behalf of the industry that produces, sells and profits from fluoride.

For example, Canada’s Chief Dental Officer is Peter Cooney, a fervent supporter of fluoridation. Cooney also holds a position with the World Dental Federation, which is an international trade association funded by corporations that profit from fluoride like Colgate, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, etc. So it’s no surprise that Cooney was appointed to the panel when Health Canada put together a panel of experts to study the issue of fluoridation.

According to Paul Connect, “The report is sloppy, superficial, selective, biased and clearly designed to protect the fluoridation program at all costs. In short, it should embarrass any Canadian who believes that Health Canada’s policies are based on sound science and bound by scientific integrity. These are harsh words and I don’t use them lightly. But it is very clear that this whole ‘product’ was a fix from the very beginning.”

Basically, once again in the instance of water fluoridation the public has been swindled and defrauded by yet another “iron triangle” of collusion between corporations, politicians and regulators. That’s what “establishment” means. It’s a network of connections and a system of corruption that subverts democracy and sells out the integrity of public office. The quid pro quo goes like this: corporations make political contributions in exchange for the political appointments of corporate lackeys to key positions in regulatory bureaucracies where they won’t interfere with the rackets. So after they do a stint in so-called public service they’ll be rewarded with plush gigs in the exact same corporations they were supposed to regulate.

The iron triangle is a characteristic staple of the capitalist system. It’s the same on Wall Street where executives from Citibank and Goldman Sachs are appointed to key positions to regulate the financial sector. It’s the same with the military-industry complex where Pentagon generals who promote military spending are rewarded with jobs with the military contractors. The latest example relevant to fluoride: Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and a die-hard fluoridationist, has just been rewarded with a job as head of the vaccines division at Merck Pharmaceuticals, where she can be trusted not to blow the whistle on toxic chemicals in the drugs.

With lead, with asbestos, with DDT, and now with fluoride, we have seen time and again how corporations are perfectly willing to put out a dangerous product that harms the health of countless people, and how our elected representatives and politically appointed bureaucrats fail to take action until it’s too late or not at all. The reason is corporations call the tune and governments dance the jig.

In the past century we have seen epidemics of preventable diseases like arthritis, diabetes and cancer. When we stop to think, we understand that the true cause is the pollution by toxic chemicals of our air, food and water. We know that fluoride in the water is one of the causes of these diseases. The damage cannot be undone, but if we wish to begin to heal our society, if we want to cleanse the public body of the poisons we consume, then we must begin by facing the truth. Fluoride is more than just a health care issue. It’s about more than mass medication without informed consent. Fluoride is a metaphor for what’s wrong with how the system works. Water fluoridation is a racket being perpetrated upon the people. It’s a scheme that costs the public hundreds of millions for the fluoride itself plus incalculable millions in health care costs. It’s yet another case of public finance of private profit, a business model that simply would not be viable without government subsidy, which is a truism of the whole capitalism system. Fluoride demonstrates once again how big business is able to control public opinion with bullshit and twist politics around its little finger like a mobster’s pinky ring. Fluoride has been one of the myths of our culture for fifty years, and as the lie unravels around a moral crime, we find the fingerprints of unscrupulous corporations out for profit with no regard for the planet and no respect for life. Until we can face up to this reality, and speak out against the status quo, we continue to live with poisoned water and everything it represents.

Further reading

SOTT Focus: Fluorine Compounds Make you Stupid – Why is the Government not merely allowing, but promoting them?

Video: History of the Fluoride Deception

Small Amounts Fluoride Destroy The Will To Resist

Fluoride Accumulates in Pineal Gland

High fluoride in drinking water is associated with poor performance on intelligence tests

No Fluoride for Infants, Say Dentists – NRC reveals fluoridation’s adverse effects to the thyroid gland, diabetics, kidney patients

Exposure to fluoride induces early puberty

Fluoride Causes Premature Births, Brain Degradation, Bone Loss, Cancer and Hormone Disruption

Fluoride/Cancer Link is Plausible

Fluoridated water in tap water and bottled water unsafe for infants, children, adults, and elderly

Source: SOTT