Unplug The Signal

Fluoride Resource

Red Baron — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:31:00 GMT

90% of this comes from China

I'm writing in this forum to inform everyone about the mass fluoridation of our water and the willful ignorance of people in excepting mass medication which is poisoning us.

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Resources for inspiration and concern:

Health Professionals Call for End to Water Fluoridation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yblka13FfCA

Team 5 Investigates Fluoride Fears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRWvcvPo3o

Doctor Exposes Fluoride as Poison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP7IPDfC3yg

Congress hears from EPA - Fluoride Poisoning - STOP ADDING IT TO WATER SUPPLY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c72mZbOsOq0

Dr. Phyllis Mullenix on the toxic effects of Fluoride
http://unplugthesignal.com/2008/12/11/dr-phyllis-mullenix-on-the-toxic-effects-of-fluoride.aspx

Fluoride water 'causes cancer'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jun/12/medicineandhealth.genderissues

The Fluoride Fraud
mediaroots.org/the-fluoride-facts.php />

Australian Government To Pass Fluoride Bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5tILUNbPLo

Possible Link that FLUORIDE Drinking Water & BONE CANCER
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHuk5KsiPCg

Fluoride in DRINKING WATER and a possible link that can cause BONE CANCER in BOYS. Report from HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL. Accusing Dr. Douglas covering up an important thesis.

Fluoride, Aspartame and Agenda 21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd_Mg0xCvcM

Scientific Study Finds Fluoride Horror Stories Factual
http://pupaganda.com/2008/01/15/scientific-study-finds-fluoride-horror-s...
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The FDA is doing a great job! Look they are now fluoridating water for babies (To protect their teeth?) Even when dentist now advise not to give fluoridated water to infants under 12 months..........

Dental Experts Say Too Much Fluoride Is Bad For Babies
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvEwiX4YyXg&feature=related

POISONING YOUR KIDS/BABIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vAS2114NrQ
More and more studies are showing that ingesting fluoride has absolutely no bearing on preventing tooth decay. And now the American Dental Association is advising that parents NOT give fluoridated water to babies - BECAUSE IT CAN CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE!

Contrary to what your dentist might tell you, you don't need fluoride to have healthy teeth

Articles of Interest - Fluoride Exposure During Infancy:

New Fluoride Warning for Infants - Mothering Magazine, November 2006
Vermont Health Dept Issues Fluoridation Warning - Brattleboro Reformer, December 19, 2006
Dental Experts: Too Much Fluoride Is Bad For Babies - WCVB TV, January 3, 2007
Parents Warned Against Fluoride in water - WKRN, November 25, 2006
Fluoride And Babies Don't Mix, Says ADA - WTVF, Novvember 24, 2006
ADA offers interim guidance on infant formula and fluoride - American Dental Association, November 9, 2006
Government Data Finds Babies Over-Exposed to Fluoride in Most Major U.S. Cities - Environmental Working Group, March 22, 2006
Suppression by medical journals of a warning about overdosing formula-fed infants with fluoride (pdf file) - Accountability in Research, 1997
Formula-fed infants receiving high fluoride burden - FAN Science Watch, August 27, 2004
Fluoridated Water & Infant Formula - FAN Science Watch, May 7, 2004

The Fluoride Deception 1 of 3

The Fluoride Deception 2 of 3

The Fluoride Deception 3 of 3

For the uninformed: The Fluoride in your water supply is not a natural ingredient...... Where would you ever get that assumption?

The fluoride added to 90% of drinking water is hydrofluoric acid which is a compound of fluorine that is a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Such fluoride is manmade. In this form, fluoride has no nutrient value whatsoever. It is one of the most caustic of industrial chemicals. Fluoride is the active toxin in rat poisons and cockroach powder.

Fluoride is not just "one of forty chemicals used to treat water". It is the only chemical added to public drinking water to treat individuals, rather than the water. It is mass medication.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that fluoride is not a mineral nutrient; it is a prescription drug. Every prescription drug has side-effects, including fluoride. Fluoride has never received FDA approval and does not meet the legal requirements of safety and effectiveness necessary for such approval. Once this drug is put in the water there is no control over individual dosage.

Why is this industrial waste product poured into city water supplies? Whos behind it and what are the long-term physical effects to you?
Fluoride in Water: Study Says Don't!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UYYeVXsA3U

Fluoride Action Network

http://www.fluoridealert.org/

10 Facts about Fluoride
Fluoride Action Network | Printer-Friendly Version

1) 97% of western Europe has chosen fluoride-free water . This includes: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, and Switzerland. (While some European countries add fluoride to salt, the majority do not.) Thus, rather than mandating fluoride treatment for the whole population, western Europe allows individuals the right to choose, or refuse, fluoride.

2) Fluoride is the only chemical added to drinking water for the purpose of medication (to prevent tooth decay). All other treatment chemicals are added to treat the water (to improve the water's quality and safety - which fluoride does not do). This is one of the reasons why most of Europe has rejected fluoridation. For instance:

In Germany, "The argumentation of the Federal Ministry of Health against a general permission of fluoridation of drinking water is the problematic nature of compulsion medication."

In Belgium, it is "the fundamental position of the drinking water sector that it is not its task to deliver medicinal treatment to people. This is the sole responsibility of health services."

In Luxembourg, "In our views, drinking water isn't the suitable way for medicinal treatment and that people needing an addition of fluoride can decide by their own to use the most appropriate way."

3) Contrary to previous belief, fluoride has minimal benefit when swallowed. When water fluoridation began in the 1940s and '50s, dentists believed that fluoride needed to be swallowed in order to be most effective. This belief, however, has now been discredited by an extensive body of modern research (1).

According to the Centers for Disease Control, fluoride's "predominant effect is posteruptive and topical" (2). In other words, any benefits that accrue from the use of fluoride, come from the direct application of fluoride to the outside of teeth (after they have erupted into the mouth) and not from ingestion. There is no need, therefore, to expose all other tissues to fluoride by swallowing it.

4) Fluoridated water is no longer recommended for babies. In November of 2006, the American Dental Association (ADA) advised that parents should avoid giving babies fluoridated water (3). Other dental researchers have made similar recommendations over the past decade (4).

Babies exposed to fluoride are at high risk of developing dental fluorosis - a permanent tooth defect caused by fluoride damaging the cells which form the teeth (5). Other tissues in the body may also be affected by early-life exposures to fluoride. According to a recent review published in the medical journal The Lancet, fluoride may damage the developing brain, causing learning deficits and other problems (6).

5) There are better ways of delivering fluoride than adding it to water. By adding fluoride to everyone's tap water, many infants and other at-risk populations will be put in harm's way. This is not only wrong, it is unnecessary. As western Europe has demonstrated, there are many equally effective and less-intrusive ways of delivering fluoride to people who actually want it. For example:

A) Topical fluoride products such as toothpaste and mouthrinses (which come with explicit instructions not to swallow) are readily available at all grocery stores and pharmacies. Thus, for those individuals who wish to use fluoride, it is very easy to find and very inexpensive to buy.

If there is concern that some people in the community cannot afford to purchase fluoride toothpaste (a family-size tube of toothpaste costs as little as $2 to $3), the money saved by not fluoridating the water can be spent subsidizing topical fluoride products (or non-fluoride alternatives) for those families in need.

C) The vast majority of fluoride added to water supplies is wasted, since over 99% of tap water is not actually consumed by a human being. It is used instead to wash cars, water the lawn, wash dishes, flush toilets, etc.

6) Ingestion of fluoride has little benefit, but many risks. Whereas fluoride's benefits come from topical contact with teeth, its risks to health (which involve many more tissues than the teeth) result from being swallowed.

Adverse effects from fluoride ingestion have been associated with doses atttainable by people living in fluoridated areas. For example:

a) Risk to the brain. According to the National Research Council (NRC), fluoride can damage the brain. Animal studies conducted in the 1990s by EPA scientists found dementia-like effects at the same concentration (1 ppm) used to fluoridate water, while human studies have found adverse effects on IQ at levels as low as 0.9 ppm among children with nutrient deficiencies, and 1.8 ppm among children with adequate nutrient intake. (7-10)

b) Risk to the thyroid gland. According to the NRC, fluoride is an “endocrine disrupter.” Most notably, the NRC has warned that doses of fluoride (0.01-0.03 mg/kg/day) achievable by drinking fluoridated water, may reduce the function of the thyroid among individuals with low-iodine intake. Reduction of thyroid activity can lead to loss of mental acuity, depression and weight gain (11)

c) Risk to bones. According to the NRC, fluoride can diminish bone strength and increase the risk for bone fracture. While the NRC was unable to determine what level of fluoride is safe for bones, it noted that the best available information suggests that fracture risk may be increased at levels as low 1.5 ppm, which is only slightly higher than the concentration (0.7-1.2 ppm) added to water for fluoridation. (12)

d) Risk for bone cancer. Animal and human studies – including a recent study from a team of Harvard scientists – have found a connection between fluoride and a serious form of bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in males under the age of 20. The connection between fluoride and osteosarcoma has been described by the National Toxicology Program as "biologically plausible." Up to half of adolescents who develop osteosarcoma die within a few years of diagnosis. (13-16)

e) Risk to kidney patients. People with kidney disease have a heightened susceptibility to fluoride toxicity. The heightened risk stems from an impaired ability to excrete fluoride from the body. As a result, toxic levels of fluoride can accumulate in the bones, intensify the toxicity of aluminum build-up, and cause or exacerbate a painful bone disease known as renal osteodystrophy. (17-19)

7) The industrial chemicals used to fluoridate water may present unique health risks not found with naturally-occurring fluoride complexes . The chemicals - fluorosilicic acid, sodium silicofluoride, and sodium fluoride - used to fluoridate drinking water are industrial waste products from the phosphate fertilizer industry. Of these chemicals, fluorosilicic acid (FSA) is the most widely used. FSA is a corrosive acid which has been linked to higher blood lead levels in children. A recent study from the University of North Carolina found that FSA can - in combination with chlorinated compounds - leach lead from brass joints in water pipes, while a recent study from the University of Maryland suggests that the effect of fluoridation chemicals on blood lead levels may be greatest in houses built prior to 1946. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems in children. (20-23)

8) Water fluoridation’s benefits to teeth have been exaggerated. Even proponents of water fluoridation admit that it is not as effective as it was once claimed to be. While proponents still believe in its effectiveness, a growing number of studies strongly question this assessment. (24-46) According to a systematic review published by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, "The magnitude of [fluoridation's] effect is not large in absolute terms, is often not statistically significant and may not be of clinical significance." (36)

a) No difference exists in tooth decay between fluoridated & unfluoridated countries. While water fluoridation is often credited with causing the reduction in tooth decay that has occurred in the US over the past 50 years, the same reductions in tooth decay have occurred in all western countries, most of which have never added fluoride to their water. The vast majority of western Europe has rejected water fluoridation. Yet, according to comprehensive data from the World Health Organization, their tooth decay rates are just as low, and, in fact, often lower than the tooth decay rates in the US. (25, 35, 44)

b) Cavities do not increase when fluoridation stops. In contrast to earlier findings, five studies published since 2000 have reported no increase in tooth decay in communities which have ended fluoridation. (37-41)

c) Fluoridation does not prevent oral health crises in low-income areas. While some allege that fluoridation is especially effective for low-income communities, there is very little evidence to support this claim. According to a recent systematic review from the British government, "The evidence about [fluoridation] reducing inequalities in dental health was of poor quality, contradictory and unreliable." (45) In the United States, severe dental crises are occurring in low-income areas irrespective of whether the community has fluoride added to its water supply. (46) In addition, several studies have confirmed that the incidence of severe tooth decay in children (“baby bottle tooth decay”) is not significantly different in fluoridated vs unfluoridated areas. (27,32,42) Thus, despite some emotionally-based claims to the contrary, water fluoridation does not prevent the oral health problems related to poverty and lack of dental-care access.

9) Fluoridation poses added burden and risk to low-income communities. Rather than being particularly beneficial to low-income communities, fluoridation is particularly burdensome and harmful. For example:

a) Low-income families are least able to avoid fluoridated water. Due to the high costs of buying bottled water or expensive water filters, low-income households will be least able to avoid fluoride once it's added to the water. As a result, low-income families will be least capable of following ADA’s recommendation that infants should not receive fluoridated water. This may explain why African American children have been found to suffer the highest rates of disfiguring dental fluorosis in the US. (47)

b) Low-income families at greater risk of fluoride toxicity. In addition, it is now well established that individuals with inadequate nutrient intake have a significantly increased susceptibility to fluoride’s toxic effects. (48-51) Since nutrient deficiencies are most common in low-income communities, and since diseases known to increase susceptibility to fluoride are most prevalent in low-income areas (e.g. end-stage renal failure), it is likely that low-income communities will be at greatest risk from suffering adverse effects associated with fluoride exposure. According to Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, a member of the National Research Council's review of fluoride toxicity: “I would expect low-income communities to be more vulnerable to at least some of the effects of drinking fluoridated water." (51)

10) Due to other sources, many people are being over-exposed to fluoride . Unlike when water fluoridation first began, Americans are now receiving fluoride from many other sources* besides the water supply. As a result many people are now exceeding the recommended daily intake, putting them at elevated risk of suffering toxic effects. For example, many children ingest more fluoride from toothpaste alone than is considered “optimal” for a full day’s worth of ingestion. According to the Journal of Public Health Dentistry:

"Virtually all authors have noted that some children could ingest more fluoride from [toothpaste] alone than is recommended as a total daily fluoride ingestion." (52)

Because of the increase in fluoride exposure from all sources combined, the rate of dental fluorosis (a visible indicator of over-exposure to fluoride during childhood) has increased significantly over the past 50 years. Whereas dental fluorosis used to impact less than 10% of children in the 1940s, the latest national survey found that it now affects over 30% of children. (47, 53)

* Sources of fluoride include: fluoride dental products, fluoride pesticides, fluorinated pharmaceuticals, processed foods made with fluoridated water, and tea.

New DVD Now ONLINE!

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=7547385139152764985&hl=en&fs=true

NEW DVD: Professional Perspectives on Water Fluoridation

Featuring a Nobel Laureate in Medicine, three scientists from the National Research Council's landmark review on fluoride, as well as dentists, medical doctors, and leading researchers in the field, this professionally-produced 28-minute DVD presents a powerful indictment of the fluoridation program. The DVD also includes four special features including Dr. Bill Osmunson's acclaimed statement on fluoride. A great resource for anyone involved in the issue. To order the DVD, click here.

The Fluoride Fraud

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:16:00 GMT

July 24, 2010

When was the last time you stopped to think about the one thing you can’t live without? I don’t mean the Internet - I’m talking about water. Without clean drinking water, life could not go on. This is why it’s so important that we know what is in our water. For the past sixty-five years, city governments nationwide have been adding a controversial substance called fluoride to municipal water supplies.

You probably recognize the word fluoride from the back of your toothpaste tube or from your visits to the dentist. But the fluoride added to our water is not the same as that in our toothpaste. The chemical added to our water is a fluorine compound called hexafluorosilicic acid that is generated as a by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.

Phosphates are minerals that are used to make fertilizer, and phosphate mining industry is a giant moneymaker. Fluoride is created by the production of fertilizer as well as in the manufacturing of steel, aluminum, glass, and cement. Previously, the lack of government regulation allowed gaseous fluoride to move through factory smokestacks and straight into our atmosphere. Now, environmental regulations require giant filtration systems called "scrubbers" atop the stacks to keep these toxic chemicals from escaping into the air. Fluorosilicic acid is then extracted from these scrubbers and condensed to a water-based solution which is packaged unrefined and sold to city governments for the purpose of water fluoridation.

By selling the fluoride byproducts for this purpose, companies avoid the huge cost of disposing of these chemicals in the environment safely, and according to regulation. Back in the 1930’s, a band of industrial corporations - including Monsanto, U.S. Steel, Union Carbide, and Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), the leading producer of aluminum - had been cheaply disposing of their fluoride byproducts into the environment for years. This changed when their toxic waste became the target of negative press in the local news. A 1933 toxicology report by the USDA had warned of fluoride’s toxicity, singling out the aluminum industry as the biggest culprit.

The new potential of legal liability due to the exposure of workers and communities to industrial fluoride scared these corporations. Knowing that disposing of industrial fluoride waste safely was expensive, ALCOA employed biochemist Gerald Cox in 1936, to argue for fluoride’s dental benefits through experimentation on rats. Cox, neither a doctor nor a dentist, concluded that fluoride strengthened and protected teeth against decay and began to tour the country promoting water fluoridation on behalf of his employers. Interestingly, Cox’s findings ran contrary to the position originally held by the American Dental Association (ADA) on water fluoridation.

In 1944, the Journal of the American Dental Association published the following statement:

“We do know that the use of drinking water containing as little as 1.2 to 3.0 parts per million of fluoride will cause such developmental disturbances as osteosclerosis, spondylosis, and osteopetrosis, and we cannot afford to run the risk of producing such serious systemic disturbances…”

In spite of this warning by the ADA, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first community to fluoridate its drinking water the very next year.

In 1947 Oscar R. Ewing, a paid attorney for ALCOA, was picked to head the Federal Security Agency. In this position he oversaw the Public Health Service or PHS (which is now the Department of Health and Human Services). This enabled him to change the Code of Federal Regulations, and place all control of drinking water fluoridation in the hands of his own department. Making clear his lingering ties to the aluminum industry and their expensive toxic waste, Ewing made fluoridation promotion one of the first official policies of the PHS. Over the next three years, 87 additional American cities began fluoridating their water.

The study that is often referred to in fluoride’s defense was conducted by the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) of the United States Public Health Service (PHS). It sought to determine whether there was a relationship between fluoridation and tooth decay. Released in 1988, the multi-million dollar nationwide survey examined 39,000 U.S. school children aged 5-17 from 84 different fluoridated and non-fluoridated geographical areas.

Surprisingly, the study uncovered a declining trend in tooth decay rates in both fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, mostly due to overall better hygiene. The overriding conclusion from the extensive study was that there is no relationship between tooth decay and fluoride ingestion. Despite this consensus, this study is still commonly cited to link lowered decay rates in fluoridated areas. A seldom-reported fact is that the same trend was found in non-fluoridated areas too.

Fluoride overexposure can bring serious health risks. The most common affliction due to overconsumption is called fluorosis, a condition characterized by a discoloration of teeth or changes in bone density. An excess of fluoride eats away at the enamel of your teeth, causing craters and surface discoloration. Dental fluorosis is the first clear and obvious sign that your body is being poisoned by too much fluoride, and cases can range from mild to severe. This occurs because only 50% of all fluoride taken in by the body is excreted. The remaining fluoride is disseminated throughout the body, accumulating in our bones, pineal gland and other tissues. In Karnataka, India, an excess of fluoride has turned the ground water into a slow poison, crippling at least 10,000 people.

The Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Dr D Nagaraj, says that "due to fluoride concentration in water, many people in districts [in Karnataka, India] like Dharwad and Tumkur have spinal cord diseases. These are progressive diseases, after decades of consumption. People are battling with permanent disabilities."

Alarmingly, a 1991 study by the U.S. Public Health Service found that the rates of osteosarcoma, a deadly type of bone cancer, were significantly higher in fluoridated communities than in non-fluoridated communities. The Harvard School of Dental Medicine found the same link in study done ten years later. Additional studies have associated fluoride ingestion with other serious health problems, including chromosomal damage, morphological changes to their kidneys and brain, hypo activity (or inactivity), damage to the thyroid gland, skeletal fluorosis, osteoporosis, liver cancer, and fertility problems.

The most distressing findings come from 18 human studies done in China, India, Iran and Mexico that show a substantial lowering of IQ in fluoridated areas. The ingestion of fluoride has been shown to increase the gastrointestinal absorption of aluminum by over 600%, and the absorption of heavy metals like aluminum is speculated to have a direct correlation to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological brain disorders. Although a direct correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and fluoride ingestion is inconclusive, it is interesting to note that the rate of Alzheimer’s is twice as high in America than in Europe, where many countries have banned fluoridation.

Many countries around the world are skeptical of the benefits of adding fluoride to drinking water. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and China have all ruled out water fluoridation as a safe and fair practice.

If you want to find out whether you’re drinking fluoridated water, the first thing you can do is access your city’s fluoridation status on the Center for Disease Control’s website in its oral health section.

If your water is fluoridated, it’s not a lost cause. You can speak out in your community or at city council meetings to let your local representatives know your concerns. To remove fluoride from your water you have a couple of options. You can equip your home with water filtration systems like those at Equinox or Burkey. Filters like Pur and Brita do not remove fluoride. If you buy bottled drinking water, reverse osmosis and distillation remove almost all fluoride.

If your city is planning to fluoridate you can stop it! Activists in Pennsylvania have successfully fought off fluoridation legislation since 1987 and they’re at it again. There is still a chance to put a halt to the fluoridation process in your own city.

Whether or not you support water fluoridation, the real issue here is having a choice. No chemical, no matter what its supposed benefits are, should be forced upon the public without their consent. Having access to clean water should be a fundamental right for every human being.

"Water is the lifeblood of our bodies, our economy, our nation and our well-being." -Stephen Johnson

***NOTE

After numerous attempts to get data from city officials proving the benefits of mass fluoridation, I kept getting referred back to either the respective city’s water website or other government controlled sites. I also attempted to get in contact with Ellie Nadler, the head of San Diego’s Coalition for Fluoridation, but couldn’t find any legitimate website or group presence for that matter. Ellie backed out of any interviews and refused to give a statement.

Written by Abby Martin

Interview I conducted with David C. Kennedy, DDS, and former head of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology.

Additional Resources-

Tooth Decay Trends in Fluoridated and Non Fluoridated Areas

EPA Union Calls for Moratorium on Fluoridation

600 pros urge Congress to Stop Fluoridation

Scientific Consensus Statement on Environmental Agents Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Chapter 4.3.2 (pg. 14)

ADA Positions and Statements Interim Guidance on Fluoride Intake for Infants and Young Children

Dr. Kennedy, DDT Speaks out Against Fluoride

Fluoride Information Network

The Fluoride Risk

Citizens Uniting Against Fluoride

Bisphenol A (BPA) Contaminating Our Food

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:23:00 GMT

Bisphenol A is found in most plastic food containers today. Not only is it found in plastic containers, but also in the lining of most cans. BPA is essentially a synthetic estrogen that enters the body when one consumes food or beverages out of plastic or plastic-lined containers. This is not only harmful to the male reproductive system, but has been found to also stimulate breast cancer growth in women. Knowing this, it should be of no surprise that the sperm count of the average Western male is on a steady decline as many males are becoming more and more feminine. What most people don't know is that Bisphenol A was actually considered as the form of estrogen to be used in estrogen pills going back to the 1930s.

Hummer Burial Propaganda

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:13:00 GMT

The Heidelberg Project
http://www.heidelberg.org/
CodePink witchcaft
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,3...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,3...
Hummer 3000 jobs
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTR...
Are Babies Bad for the Environment
http://www.scientificamerican.com/pod...
Less Meat to save the planet
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/eart...
The First Global Revolution
http://www.amazon.com/First-Global-Re...

Dental Experts Say Too Much Fluoride Is Bad For Babies

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:01:00 GMT

Fluoride ....Now the bag says it's safe right?

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:44:00 GMT

Dentist David Kennedy on Fluoride

Red Baron — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:41:00 GMT

This is an interview I conducted with David C. Kennedy, DDS, and former head of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology. For more information about the history of fluoridation and its health effects check out this article- http://mediaroots.org/the-fluoride-fa...

Shrimp on Prozac are killing themselves

Red Baron — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:17:00 GMT

Friday, Jul 23, 2010 12:32 ET

Shrimp on Prozac are killing themselves

A study shows that drug traces in our waste can affect marine life behavior, but can crustaceans have feelings?

By Francis Lam

iStockphoto/Salon

I have friends who are always talking about happy pigs and happy chickens — left to roam freely, eating real food instead of weird commercial food pellets, given the occasional backrub. But pity the poor shrimp! No one is raising happy shrimp ... on purpose anyway. But all the Prozac we've been taking may be doing the work for us, and marine biologists at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. have found that enough of the drug passes through our bodies directly into the wastewater to seriously change the behavior of shrimp who swim in it: They're killing themselves. But do shrimp even have emotions?

Shrimp are a shy and retiring lot, living in shadows and dark crevices to hide from predators (and nurse their psychic scars?). But when they're swimming in concentrations of Prozac (or, more specifically, the chemical fluoxetine) as those found in the water around some urban areas, they become five times as likely to swim toward light, making them easy prey. And sadly, pollutants from urban runoff are in highest concentration in river estuaries and right near the coast ... which is where shrimp tend to live. Aside from the tragic irony, if shrimp populations start to collapse, it could have a serious effect on the established balance of the food chain. And most wastewater treatment plants aren't geared toward removing residual drugs from the water. (A few years ago, scientists found fish changing sexes because of contraceptives and other chemicals in runoff.)

But ecological crisis notwithstanding, is it possible that shrimp could actually become suicidal? Or even more goofily, be so blissfully joyful that they become reckless? Dr. Alex Ford — who conducted the study — pointed me toward other studies that show other fish swim lazily near the surface of the water when surrounded by traces of antidepressants. Are they losing all their anxiety and just happy to hang out and do the backstoke? I'd be happy for those fish, freed from their torturous survivalist chains, but look: In the words of the deeply unhappy Kurt Cobain, just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you.

Ford was clear to point out that, no, these shrimp are technically not suicidal, nor are they so overjoyed they're looking for the light. "Probably best not using the term 'anxiety,' as this suggests fish have conscious thought and would be anthropomorphic," he wrote to me in an e-mail. Shrimp don't really have "brains," as we understand them; their nervous systems are simply too simple. It's just that, for whatever reason, the hormone serotonin — which fluoxetine bumps up — happens to help control feelings of happiness in people, and in shrimp controls the instinct to swim toward or away from light. Don't read too much into it. Shrimp are not people, too.

But, Ford also shared another fascinating thing — he was inspired to do this study because of previous work on parasites that control serotonin levels in their host shrimp: "These parasites have evolved to do this as they require to be in their final host (fish, birds or marine mammals depending on parasite species) to reproduce and complete their life-cycle. Therefore, they increase the chances of the shrimp being eaten by making them swim out in the open." OK, so the world is a little less freaky knowing that shrimp don't get happy, sad or suicidal. But how about a world in which there are brain-controlling parasites?!

Francis Lam is a Senior Writer at Salon. Email him at flam (at) salon (dot) com, and follow him on Twitter: @francis_lam. More Francis Lam

Fluoride & Aspartame

Red Baron — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:53:00 GMT

Fluoride & Aspartame

According to the handbook, Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, fluoride is more poisonous than lead and just slightly less poisonous than arsenic. It is a cumulative poison that accumulates in bone over the years. According to the Physicians Desk Reference, "in hypersensitive individuals, fluorides occasionally cause skin eruptions such as atopic dermatitis, eczema, or urticaria. Gastric distress, headache, and weakness have also been reported. These hypersensitive reactions usually disappear promptly after discontinuation of the fluoride."

From 1990 to 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association published three separate articles linking increased hip fracture rates to fluoride in the water. In the March 22, 1990 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Mayo Clinic researchers reported that fluoride treatment of osteoporosis increased hip fracture rate and bone fragility.

A study by Procter and Gamble showed that as little as half the amount of fluoride used to fluoridate public water supplies resulted in a sizable and significant increase in genetic damage. Epidemiology research in the mid-1970's by the late Dr. Dean Burk, head of the cytochemistry division of the National Cancer Institute, indicated that 10,000 or more fluoridation-linked cancer deaths occur yearly in the United States. In 1989, the ability of fluoride to transform normal cells into cancer cells was confirmed by Argonne National Laboratories. Results released in 1989 of studies carried out at the prestigious Batelle Research Institute showed that fluoride was linked to a rare form of liver cancer in mice, oral tumors and cancers in rats, and bone cancer in male rats. Since 1991, the New Jersey Department of Health found that the incidence of osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, was far higher in young men exposed to fluoridated water as compared to those who were not.

In addition to the well documented toxic effects of fluoride, fluoride even at dosages of 1 part per million, found in artificially fluoridated water, can inhibit enzyme systems, damage the immune system, contribute to calcification of soft tissues, worsen arthritis and, of course, cause dental fluorosis in children. These are unsightly white, yellow or brown spots that are found in teeth exposed to fluoride during childhood. In 1993, the Subcommittee on Health Effects of Ingested Fluoride of the National Research Council admitted that 8% to 51% and sometimes up to 80% of the children living in fluoridated areas have dental fluorosis. Malnourished people, particularly children, usually targeted for fluoridation, are at greater risks to experience fluoride's harmful effects.

Surprisingly, the most recent studies do not even show that water fluoridation is effective in reducing tooth decay. In the largest U.S. study of fluoridation and tooth decay, United States Public Health Service dental records of over 39,000 school children, ages 5-17, from 84 areas around the United States showed that the number of decayed, missing, and filled teeth per child was virtually the same in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. Dr. John Colquhoun, former Chief Dental Officer of the Department of Health for Auckland, New Zealand, investigated tooth decay statistics from about 60,000 12 to 13 year old children and showed that fluoridation had no significant effect on tooth decay rate.

Wal-Mart Radio Tags to Track Clothing

Red Baron — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:42:00 GMT

By MIGUELBUSTILLO
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383213061198090.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
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Marc F. Henning for The Wall Street Journal

Apparel supervisor Sonia Barrett uses a handheld scanner to read EPC labels on men's denim jeans on July 19, while checking inventory at the Walmart Supercenter Store No. 1 in Rogers, Ark.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to roll out sophisticated electronic ID tags to track individual pairs of jeans and underwear, the first step in a system that advocates say better controls inventory but some critics say raises privacy concerns.

Starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on individual garments that can be read by a hand-held scanner. Wal-Mart workers will be able to quickly learn, for instance, which size of Wrangler jeans is missing, with the aim of ensuring shelves are optimally stocked and inventory tightly watched. If successful, the radio-frequency ID tags will be rolled out on other products at Wal-Mart's more than 3,750 U.S. stores.

"This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds is something that we feel can really transform our business," said Raul Vazquez, the executive in charge of Wal-Mart stores in the western U.S.

Before now, retailers including Wal-Mart have primarily used RFID tags, which store unique numerical identification codes that can be scanned from a distance, to track pallets of merchandise traveling through their supply chains.

Wal-Mart's broad adoption would be the largest in the world, and proponents predict it would lead other retailers to start using the electronic product codes, which remain costly. Wal-Mart has climbed to the top of the retailing world by continuously squeezing costs out of its operations and then passing on the savings to shoppers at the checkout counter. Its methods are widely adopted by its suppliers and in turn become standard practice at other retail chains.

But the company's latest attempt to use its influence—executives call it the start of a "next-generation Wal-Mart"—has privacy advocates raising questions.

While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can't be turned off, and they are trackable. Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.

They also worry that retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge. Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver's licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers, to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers. Some privacy advocates contend that retailers could theoretically scan people with such licenses as they make purchases, combine the info with their credit card data, and then know the person's identity the next time they stepped into the store.

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"There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption," said Katherine Albrecht, founder of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering and author of a book called "Spychips" that argues against RFID technology. "The inventory guys may be in the dark about this, but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors."

Smart-tag experts dismiss Big Brother concerns as breathless conjecture, but activists have pressured companies. Ms. Albrecht and others launched a boycott of Benetton Group SpA last decade after an RFID maker announced it was planning to supply the company with 15 million RFID chips.

Benetton later clarified that it was just evaluating the technology and never embedded a single sensor in clothing.

Wal-Mart is demanding that suppliers add the tags to removable labels or packaging instead of embedding them in clothes, to minimize fears that they could be used to track people's movements. It also is posting signs informing customers about the tags.

"Concerns about privacy are valid, but in this instance, the benefits far outweigh any concerns," says Sanjay Sarma, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The tags don't have any personal information. They are essentially barcodes with serial numbers attached. And you can easily remove them."

In Europe some retailers put the smart labels on hang tags, which are then removed at checkout. That still provides the inventory-control benefit of RFID, but it takes away other important potential uses that retailers and suppliers like, such as being able to track the item all the way back to the point of manufacture in case of a recall, or making sure it isn't counterfeit.

Wal-Mart won't say how much it expects to benefit from the endeavor. But a similar pilot program at American Apparel Inc. in 2007 found that stores with the technology saw sales rise 14.3% compared to stores without the technology, according to Avery Dennison Corp., a maker of RFID equipment.

And while the tags wouldn't replace bulkier shoplifting sensors, Wal-Mart expects they'll cut down on employee theft because it will be easier to see if something's gone missing from the back room.

Several other U.S. retailers, including J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale's, have begun experimenting with smart ID tags on clothing to better ensure shelves remain stocked with sizes and colors customers want, and numerous European retailers, notably Germany's Metro AG, have already embraced the technology.

Robert Carpenter, chief executive of GS1 U.S., a nonprofit group that helped develop universal product-code standards four decades ago and is now doing the same for electronic product codes, said the sensors have dropped to as little as seven to 10 cents from 50 cents just a few years ago. He predicts that Wal-Mart's "tipping point" will drive prices lower.

"There are definitely costs. Some labels had to be modified," said Mark Gatehouse, director of replenishment for Wrangler jeans maker VF Corp., adding that while Wal-Mart is subsidizing the costs of the actual sensors, suppliers have had to invest in new equipment. "But we view this as an investment in where things are going. Everyone is watching closely because no one wants to be at a competitive disadvantage, and this could really lift sales."

Wal-Mart won't disclose what it's spending on the effort, but it confirms that it is subsidizing some of the costs for suppliers.

Proponents, meanwhile, have high hopes for expanded use in the future. Beyond more-efficient recalls and loss prevention, RFID tags could get rid of checkout lines.

"We are going to see contactless checkouts with mobile phones or kiosks, and we will see new ways to interact, such as being able to find out whether other sizes and colors are available while trying something on in a dressing room," said Bill Hardgrave, head of the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, which is funded in part by Wal-Mart. "That is where the magic is going to happen. But that's all years away."

Write to Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com

Daily Beast-Millionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Red Baron — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:37:00 GMT

Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

by Conchita Sarnoff Info

Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein became a free man Wednesday, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term. She reports:

• Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation.

• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.

• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.

• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.

• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”

Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.

Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis

But the question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them—to escape equal justice?

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims’ civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein was minimized by the State Attorney’s Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that Reiter became estranged from several colleagues. At the time, Reiter, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein’s plea agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered “yes.”

In March 2005, Reiter’s department, acting on a complaint from the Florida parents of a 14-year-old girl, launched an investigation that would eventually uncover a pattern of predatory behavior stretching back years and spanning several continents, knowingly enabled by Epstein’s associates and employees. Two or three times a day, whenever Epstein was in Palm Beach, a teenage girl would be brought to the mansion on El Brillo Way. (“The younger the better,” he instructed Haley Robson, a local teenager who was paid to bring other girls to the house, and who declared, on a police tape, that she was “like a Heidi Fleiss,” the infamous California madam.) Advised that she would be giving a “massage,” the girl was then pressured to remove her clothes, submit to fondling and a large vibrator, and sometimes lured into more invasive sexual contact. Each girl was paid $200 or more, depending on how far things went, by house manager Alfredo Rodriguez, who was instructed always to have $2,000 cash on hand.

The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent; the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16. And that was just at one of Epstein’s many homes around the world—he also owns property in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean. Subsequent investigation by the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting Nadia Marcinkova, whom Epstein referred to as his “Yugoslavian sex slave” because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, Marcinkova became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with underage girls.

Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation, and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off. Instead, local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein’s planes—plus the use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.)

So when State Attorney Barry Krischer, who also ran Florida’s Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein, saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief Reiter wrote the attorney a letter complaining of the state’s “highly unusual” conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. He did not, and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was returned, Reiter was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation.

The details that eventually emerged were often shocking and occasionally bizarre. For Epstein’s birthday one year, according to allegations in a civil suit, he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein’s sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein’s. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around the time he started the agency.

The non-prosecution agreement executed between Epstein and the Department of Justice states that Epstein and four members of his staff were investigated for “knowingly, in affecting interstate and foreign commerce, recruiting enticing and obtaining by any means a person, knowing that person has not yet obtained the age of 18 years and would be caused to engage in commercial sex act”—that is, child sex trafficking. Yet the agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to only two lower-level state crimes, soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor child for prostitution.

Although the police investigation was officially closed, Chief Reiter tried to stay abreast of the federal case against Epstein. He was particularly concerned that Epstein be registered as a sex offender, which was part of the final deal, and that a fund be set up to compensate his victims—which was not, although Epstein agreed to bankroll their civil lawsuits. Attorney Dershowitz says Epstein’s agreement to pay attorney fees for the victims and agree to civil damage claims—without admitting guilt—amounted to “extortion under threat of criminal prosecution.”

But exactly which crimes did the Department of Justice threaten to prosecute? The Daily Beast has learned that there were several earlier versions of the U.S Attorney’s charges, including a 53-page indictment that, had he been convicted, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. Brad Edwards, attorney for seven of the victims, confirms the existence of an earlier draft of the non-prosecution agreement, officially under seal, in which it appears that Epstein “committed, at some point, to a 10-year federal sentence.” But in the end Epstein’s legal team refused that deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that’s where the question of whether the case was “winnable” before a jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney’s Office, which shared the state attorney’s view that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk.

For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers, whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton’s relationship with an intern, would play rough. When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report, Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey. Dershowitz denies all of that. According to Reiter, both he and Recarey also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein’s employ. In one reported instance, the private investigator claimed to be a police officer, and Reiter considered filing witness-tampering charges.

The credibility of the victims was also an issue; they had never complained of their treatment by Epstein until they were contacted by police, and they may have voluntarily returned to the Palm Beach mansion several times. Many of the girls came from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes, and they were susceptible to Epstein’s cash, intimidation, and charm. Those who were 16 when they went to El Brillo Way would have been in their 20s by the time they took the stand, and Epstein’s investigators had dredged up every instance of bad behavior in their pasts. According to an exchange in the Reiter deposition, a few of the victims had worked in West Palm Beach at massage parlors known as “jack shacks.” Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein’s lawyers.

The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 commits a felony of the second degree. The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not relevant; ignorance of her age is no defense. She needn’t resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of “consent.” For a child under 16, even lewd behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein’s crack legal team, who repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states.

But that doesn’t quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain regardless of a girl’s attitude or character. Epstein’s final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and attorneys. A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor’s degree, Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy. He has made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 million to Harvard University.

Moreover, many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein’s private jets, for which the pilot logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as underage girls. A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players, just as both Gov. Richardson and Bill Clinton’s wife were running for president. Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.” But that may have been an impossible mandate, given the players involved.

Instead, said attorney Brad Edwards, “Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life…he was jailed for only a few months.” And this week he walks through his door a free man.

Conchita Sarnoff has developed multimedia communication programs for Fortune 500 companies and has produced three current events debate television programs, The Americas Forum, From Beirut to Kabul, and a segment for The Oppenheimer Report. She is a contributor to The Huffington Post. She is writing a book about child trafficking in America.

Blinding laser beam newest police tool

Red Baron — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:33:00 GMT

by LINDA BYRON / KING 5 News

KING5.com

Posted on July 21, 2010 at 5:26 PM

Updated Thursday, Jul 22 at 8:05 AM

LAKEWOOD, Wash. - Cops and guns - they've been a combination throughout the history of law enforcement.

"You don’t want to take someone's life unless you absolutely have to," said Officer Tom Arnold of the Lakewood Police Department.

But with deadly force used only as a last resort, police are constantly testing less-than-lethal weapons that can be used to stop perpetrators without putting officers at risk. Over the years, this has included everything from tasers and pepper spray to bean bag guns and net guns, which recall visions of Spiderman when they are launched.

One of the newest and most unusual less-than-lethal weapons to hit the market is the "Dazer Laser." It’s a powerful laser gun that can temporarily blind and disorient a suspect with a large modulating pool of green light.

"If you can impair their vision where they can’t effectively target or locate you, you're controlling them, you have those couple seconds you need, which in law enforcement is a year," said Ryan Battis, who demonstrates the weapons to police departments for Laser Energetics, Inc. of New Jersey.

The Dazer Laser is being pitched to police across the Northwest as a safe alternative to tasers, which can cause burns, or pepper spray, which has to be deployed at close range.

Officer Arnold likes the idea of carrying a laser because it would be easy to deploy and require minimal training.

"It's not hard to aim a light at somebody. We all carry flashlights, we all know what lasers are," Arnold said.

The promoters claim the lasers are effective day or night, and are designed to be effective anywhere from 3 feet to a mile-and-a-half away from a suspect - without causing eye damage.

The first one thousand Dazer Lasers will be rolling off assembly lines in Charlotte, North Carolina within 30 days. The manufacturer says police, SWAT teams, prisons and military units in the U.S. and across the globe are ready to deploy them.

Unlike tasers, the Dazer Laser is not being sold to the public. They require a security code to activate and can be programmed to turn off after a set period of time to prevent abuse if they fall into the wrong hands.

Our City. Our Pets. Our Right! RFID Documentary Short

Red Baron — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:31:00 GMT

Fluoride and The Pineal Gland

Red Baron — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:49:00 GMT

Studies are finding toxic chemicals in the cord blood of babies

Red Baron — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:13:00 GMT

T-Ray Tech Spots Bombs, Drugs from a Mile Away

Red Baron — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:33:00 GMT

Scientists have replicated Superman's X-ray vision to see through clothing or packages in order to spot security threats.

California's Latest Revolt: Against Smart Electric Meters

Red Baron — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:31:00 GMT

By ALEX SALKEVER Posted 9:00 AM 07/19/10

Sometime in April, Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG) put a brand new "smart meter" on the home I rent in Marin County, Calif. We were never notified or asked if we wanted one. The installer just came one day while we were out, and it was a done deal. As a confirmed environmentalist, I thought this should have been a good thing. Smart meters will, in theory, play a key role in managing energy consumption by households like mine.

The devices are wireless, so they eliminate the need for meter readers and save companies like PG&E money while reducing the carbon footprint and pollution resulting from running fleets of trucks to tally power usage at millions of homes. Smart meters also can show a homeowner patterns about energy usage and even notify them about energy usage anomalies or spikes in power demand.

Smart meters will ultimately allow for more dynamic pricing in electrical power and for communities like Southern Marin, where I live, to make a choice to reduce power on days when the grid is near capacity due to a heat wave, while it remains reliably cool in my neck of the woods.

Dangerous Side Effects?

All of these goals seem laudable and logical. Yet there is a brewing smart meter revolt across the Golden State. Last week, the Marin Realtors Association called for a halt to all new smart meter installations in Marin County. Their rationale? They feared the smart meters would increase the levels of electromagnetic radiation around homes. This would give buyers pause and reduce real estate values in the already depressed (by historical standards) market. The former hippie enclave of Fairfax, located in Marin, has passed an ordinance to ban smart meters.

This revolt, however, is hardly the exclusive province of the NPR set or the real-estate mafia. In several counties in the politically conservative Central Valley, thousands of homeowners have claimed that the new smart meters caused rapid spikes in their electrical bills, even though their power consumption remained relatively constant. (The utilities blamed those spikes on fast increases in the cost of power during particularly toasty periods.)

Other homeowners have said they don't want another source of radiation (meaning, radio waves) near their homes, considering the steady increase of all manner of electromagnetic-emitting devices from WiFi routers to cordless phones to garage-door openers. These are often the same homeowners who react suspiciously to new cell phone towers in their neighborhoods, a topic that has become increasingly contentious. Even though engineers generally say there's no risk, at least a handful of influential doctors have chosen to reserve judgment on the topic.

Privacy Invasion?

Running underneath many of the objections is uneasiness with the "Big Brother" aspect of smart meters. Do we really want the utility company to know when we're home, when we're washing or drying our clothes, whether we're taking too many showers (or not) or probing for other "energy saving" insights that could eventually come from smart meter technology as it heads toward a logical conclusion of monitoring every electrical outlet in a home?

This has resulted in some surprisingly strong reactions from homeowners. Some have put locks over their electrical meters to prevent the switch. Others call the smart meter push an invasion of privacy and "Un-American."

The California Smart Meter Revolt hasn't slowed the rapid development of smart-meter technology, with dozens of companies bringing to market smart-meter systems that provide more granular detail and instant-message reminders, or consoles showing real-time energy usage to homeowners. Those include stock market titans such as General Electric (GE) and Cisco Systems (CSCO).

But Next Time, Please Ask

Smart meters will eventually prevail. But visceral reaction against these gadgets, particularly by the Prius-driving, tree-hugging set of Southern Marin County -- arguably one of the more liberal parts of California, if not the country -- certainly hints at the high barriers smart meter makers face in gaining acceptance and overcoming a wall of suspicion and fears of invasions of privacy.

As for me, I didn't make much of a stink about the new meter. These things are, after all, good for the environment. Glitches are to be expected. I realize most of my privacy is already gone. But anytime a big company comes and installs a wireless device that measures what's going on inside my home without notifying me or explaining what is happening, that's a different issue. And in this case it's enough to make me want to tear the thing out and toss it on the trash heap.

Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement

Red Baron — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:29:00 GMT

By LAUREN ETTER

Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

A road crew in Jamestown, N.D., where road repair means reclaiming the original asphalt and processing it to resemble gravel.

SPIRITWOOD, N.D.—A hulking yellow machine inched along Old Highway 10 here recently in a summer scene that seemed as normal as the nearby corn swaying in the breeze. But instead of laying a blanket of steaming blacktop, the machine was grinding the asphalt road into bits.

"When [counties] had lots of money, they paved a lot of the roads and tried to make life easier for the people who lived out here," said Stutsman County Highway Superintendant Mike Zimmerman, sifting the dusty black rubble through his fingers. "Now, it's catching up to them."

Outside this speck of a town, pop. 78, a 10-mile stretch of road had deteriorated to the point that residents reported seeing ducks floating in potholes, Mr. Zimmerman said. As the road wore out, the cost of repaving became too great. Last year, the county spent $400,000 on an RM300 Caterpillar rotary mixer to grind the road up, making it look more like the old homesteader trail it once was.

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.

Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.

"A lot of these roads have just deteriorated to the point that they have no other choice than to turn them back to gravel," says Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation at Michigan State University. Still, "we're leaving an awful legacy for future generations."

Some experts caution that gravel roads can be costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed. A gravel road "is not a free road," says Purdue University's John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled "Back to the Stone Age."

Paving grew in popularity in the early 20th century as more cars hit streets and spread when the federal government built the Interstate Highway System.

Over the years, many of the two-lane arteries that connect country roads with metro areas have deteriorated under rising traffic and the growing weight of farm combines, logging trucks and other heavy equipment.

Frederick Wachtel, county engineer in Coshocton County, Ohio, says his budget, largely driven by fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, was off 5% last year, the first decline in nearly 20 years. He is now letting some of his roads return to nature.

In Spiritwood one day recently, a soft breeze carried the scents of cow manure and hot asphalt over the tall broom grass. The giant Caterpillar chugged along at a speed of 2.4 feet per minute and pulverized Old Highway 10 into a black dust with chunks of rock and pavement. A piece of equipment following behind rolled the surface flat.

The machines rumbled along a path carved by homesteaders' covered wagons in the 1800s. Over time, grain elevators and railroad depots sprung up along the route, which became known as the Old Red Trail. Later, the road was paved and renamed Highway 10.

After Interstate 94 was built alongside the road in the 1950s, it became Old Highway 10. Traffic volumes gradually dropped until Old 10 became a lazy backcountry road dotted with abandoned farmsteads. In the 1960s the state gave Old 10 to the counties it ran through, leaving them to pay for upkeep. North Dakota's Stutsman County got a 30-mile stretch.

The gift became a burden. The Stutsman highway department, which gets the bulk of its funds from local property taxes, state fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, let the road fall into disrepair as it juggled other projects. Every year without major maintenance, the road became more expensive to fix.

Judy Graves of Ypsilanti, N.D., voted against the measure to raise taxes for roads. But she says she and others nonetheless wrote to Gov. John Hoeven and asked him to stop Old 10 from being ground up because it still carries traffic to a Cargill Inc. malting plant. She says the county has mismanaged its finances and badly neglected roads.

"Our expenses outweigh the income," says Mr. Zimmerman, who has been with the county highway department for nearly 30 years. He says the county will pay about $2,600 per mile annually for the newly ground-up road, as against about $75,000 per mile to reconstruct it.

Gayne Gasal, who lives along the redone stretch of road, says it has turned out "better than we all thought." But Sportsman's Bar owner Hilda Kuntz worries that the classic cars and bikers that roll through town in the summer will stay away.

"It's going to kill my business," she said.

Write to Lauren Etter at lauren.etter@wsj.com

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Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

Project supervisor Jerry Brickner checked a county road recently converted to gravel in Jamestown, N.D.

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Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.

UK Launches Next Part of Scheduled Agenda--"The Big Society" for Communitarianism--NGO Leaders Pre-selected and (Trained) Ready to Go.

Red Baron — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:25:00 GMT

David Cameron launches his Big Society

Local communities will get the power and money to run bus services, set up broadband internet networks and take over neighbourhood recycling schemes under a mass transfer of power from the state to the people, David Cameron will announce today.

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM BST 18 Jul 2010

Link to video

In his first major speech on the theme of the “Big Society” since winning the election, the Prime Minister will announce the “biggest redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street”.

Mr Cameron - who is keen to present his administration as offering optimistics new policies that are not just about cuts - will say that the “liberation” of volunteers and activists to help their own communities is the vision which drives his premiership.

As part of his drive to roll back the reach of the public sector, the Prime Minister will attack the previous Labour government for turning state employees into “disillusioned, weary puppets” and communities into “dull, soulless clones”.

He will announce that four areas in diverse parts of the country have been chosen to form a “vanguard” in realising his dream of “people power” in which individuals rather than the state come together voluntarily to solve their problems.

The four – the greater London borough of Sutton and Cheam, the leafy Berkshire council of Windsor and Maidenhead, rural Eden Valley in Penrith, Cumbria, and the metropolitan city of Liverpool - were chosen after they petitioned Downing Street to start their own projects.

They will be the first to be invited to submit applications to the Big Society Bank, a fund which will allocate the proceeds of dormant bank accounts worth hundreds of millions of pounds to help set up volunteer schemes to improve communities.

In a speech in Liverpool – where local people have asked to act as volunteers at a museum in order to extend its opening hours – Mr Cameron will set out how his grand vision of a Big Society would create communities with “oomph”.

Stressing how much concept means to him on a personal level, he will say: “There are the things you do because it’s your duty … But there are the things you do because it’s your passion,” he will say.

“The things that fire you up in the morning, that drive you, that you truly believe will make a real difference to the country you love. And my great passion is creating the Big Society.”

During the election campaign, Mr Cameron faced accusations, including from senior figures from within his own party, that the Big Society concept was too vague and intangible to attract voters. Polls showed that two out of three voters had not even heard of it.

But Mr Cameron hopes that putting flesh on the bones of his vision will persuade critics that it can be shared by millions of ordinary Britons who care about their community and are tired of having so many aspects of their life dictated from the centre.

He will say: “The Big Society is about a huge culture change, where people, in their everyday lives, in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their workplace, don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.

“We need to create communities with oomph – neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.”

The four pioneer communities will be helped by dedicated civil servants who will give expert advice if they encounter legal problems or bureaucratic obstacles.

Officials will also identify local residents with a particular aptitude for taking part in Big Society projects – they will then receive training to become community organisers, motivating their neighbours to take part in action schemes.

They will also be able to draw on the Big Society Bank, which, Mr Cameron promised, would use “every penny of dormant bank and building society account money” to help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups.

Accounts left untouched for at least 15 years will be channelled to good causes. Over time, Mr Cameron said, the Bank would provide “hundreds of millions of pounds” to Big Society projects, with money starting to be distributed from April.

The four vanguard communities have asked for help to set up a variety of different schemes.

Windsor and Maidenhead has already experimented with a project under which local residents were rewarded with financial incentives to improve recycling rates.

Phil Redmond, the television executive who created Brookside, Channel 4’s long-running soap opera set up in Liverpool, is behind the scheme for volunteers to staff a local museum outside of office hours.

There are also plans for council budgets to be given directly to the residents’ groups of individual streets to decide how to spend the cash.

Local transport services, including bus and tram groups, could be commissioned by the communities themselves, who would be able to set timetables and improve reliability rates.

One group has asked for the power to buy out local “assets,” including a rural pub.

Another project involves bringing internet broadband to a local community.

Mr Cameron will say: “They’ve all got one thing in common: a firm commitment from this Government to help them realise their dreams.

“If there’s a problem or obstacle or bureaucratic log-jam, they will be there, on hand, to help break them down and get things moving.

“As these four areas move ahead with their plans, yes, there will be problems – financial problems, legal problems, bureaucratic problems.

“Yes, there will be objections – local objections, objections from vested interests. But you know what? We’re happy about that.

“This process is all about learning. It’s about pushing power down and seeing what happens.

“It’s about unearthing the problems as they come up on the ground and seeing how we can get round them.

“It’s about holding our hands up saying we haven’t got all the answers – let’s work them out, together.”

However, Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, claimed that the Big Society was a means of enabling the Government to cut vital public services.

He said: “Cameron’s government is cynically attempting to dignify its cuts agenda by dressing up the withdrawal of support with the language of reinvigorating civic society.”

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UK Launches Next Part of Scheduled Agenda--"The Big Society" for Communitarianism--NGO Leaders Pre-selected and (Trained) Ready to Go.

David Cameron launches his Big Society

Local communities will get the power and money to run bus services, set up broadband internet networks and take over neighbourhood recycling schemes under a mass transfer of power from the state to the people, David Cameron will announce today.

By MIGUELBUSTILLO
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383213061198090.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
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