Golden Dawn Immigrants-Fake NeoNazi’s

All those links were sent to me on Twitter and I am more than glad to post them,I do beleive I will find more on those people due time.No threats allowed according to the WP policy or the HR declaration. So please stay vigilant of what you are going to post :)I checked all blog categories so that the post can get the most views possible. Regards!

“##Spiros Macrozonaris## IMMIGRANT Golden Dawn Deputy leader in Montreal, Canada” :

Facebook profile :

INTERESTING FACEBOOK POST MR. MACROZONARIS, HE CANNOT EVEN WRITE GREEK! BAD NAZI BAD! :

His NON 100% PURE GREEK son’s Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/macrozonaris?ref=ts&fref=ts

1. Greek Immigrant who married a “foreigner” >>>>>French-Canadian Doris Morrissette, they bore a son, Nicolas Macrozonaris (World-Class Sprinter – CANADIAN Olympian 🙂 ..who unfortunately is not 100% Pure Greek…

2. Conversations with Nicolas on Twitter, lead to nothing, he is ‘pretending’ that he has NO knowledge of what Golden Dawn supports and believes YET he states that he does not condone his fathers “actions”

Twitter @Macrozonaris TWEETER CONVERSATIONS with Nicolas –>

###### MUST WATCH #####
Video from CBC Montreal, from week of Oct 12th – INTERVIEW with Spiros Macrozonaris – next to him sits LOOSER Ilias Hondronicolas : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-3rbLI4K78

#Ilias Hondronicolas ———> on PHOTO second guy from the left :

#MORE HONDRONICOLAS:

(FRIENDS WITH ELENI ZAROULIA SHARING HER PHOTOS!)
( MUST SEE )

#MORE PAPAGEORGIOU:

Mutant Avian flu: Expanding global vaccine production

 Allow me to add a personal note here .Right now I am writing I am recovering from the H5N1 flu,so is my family. It’s not a joy ride i can reassure you,i still feel my muscles stiff and my bones about to crack in pieces. BUT we took NO antibiotics,NO VACCINES- this is a is a must-not-do for my family-,nothing.  We had poor luck with all those “lethal” viruses so we got them all,Swine flu in 2009 and again the mutant swine flu last year[2011].WE didn’t die. Of course none of us belongs to the high risk groups. Yet we took a slight taste of pneumonia and other complications like otitis

I can not advise you if you belong to a high risk population group. But if you do not,just take some basic precautions and it will pass. We “survived” of five flu attacks with no harm done . You don’t need any killing Tamiflu or any vaccine that will make you more vulnerable to diseases

A friend of mine,a doctor,he said to me when i asked” you cannot predict a virus when it is bombed with antibiotics,the most possible to happen is to face new,mutant strains,resistant to known drugs”

And when i asked in return,why the Pharma industry doesn’t adapt their antibiotics to the new shown strains,he answered” if they did so,they would never claim a Pandemic“…

the rest is known..

21 June 2012

The H5N1 ‘bird flu’ virus could evolve to spread through the air between ferrets by picking up as few as five mutations, according to a long-awaited study from Ron Fouchier from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands¹. The paper is published today in Science after months of debate about whether the benefits of publishing the research outweighed the risks.

H5N1 can cause lethal infections in humans but it cannot spread effectively from person to person. Fouchier’s paper is the second of two publications describing how the virus could evolve this ability. The first, from Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, involved a hybrid virus with genes from both H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 pandemic² (see ‘Mutant-flu paper published‘). Fouchier’s mutant contains only H5N1 genes.

“Coming after the Kawaoka manuscript, I thought it might be anti-climactic, but it does not fail to deliver,” says Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

There is only one common mutation in the combinations that Fouchier and Kawaoka identified. “It just means that there are multiple ways to skin a cat,” says Robert Webster, a virologist at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

Despite their differences, both sets of mutations confer similar properties on H5N1. Some mutations allow the haemagglutinin (HA) protein on the virus’s surface to stick to the kind of receptors found in the human upper airway. Others stabilize the protein, an unexpected property that now seems to be important for transmission among mammals. “Two very different strategies led to common functional changes,” says Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, who notes that these changes are “not uncommon in field strains already”.

Fouchier now wants to know whether these traits could make any flu virus go airborne, and whether previous pandemics started in this way. “The virus could evolve in a thousand different ways,” he says. “But if we can show that any receptor-binding mutations, or any that change the stability of HA, can yield airborne viruses, the story becomes completely different. We can then do surveillance for mutations that cause the same phenotype.”

Fouchier’s team began by adding three mutations to an H5N1 strain isolated from Indonesia in 2005. Two of these — Q222L and G224S — changed the HA gene such that its protein preferentially sticks to human-type receptors over those found in bird cells. The third — E627K — changed the PB2 gene, which is involved in copying the virus’ genetic material, so that the virus was able to replicate more easily in the cooler environment of mammalian cells.

The team allowed this mutant virus to evolve naturally by passing it from one ferret to the next, injecting it into the animals’ noses and collecting samples daily for four days. After ten rounds, the virus could spread between ferrets housed in separate cages.

These airborne strains spread less effectively than the 2009 H1N1 virus, and are sensitive to current antiviral treatments and potential vaccines. They are lethal if delivered directly to the ferrets’ airways in high doses, but not if the animals catch the infections naturally through the air.

Fouchier’s airborne viruses carried a diverse array of mutations, with just five mutations shared by them all, including the original three that Fouchier had inserted and two more in the HA gene: T156A, which affects receptor binding, and H103Y, which stabilizes the protein. The five mutations might be enough for H5N1 to spread between ferrets, but it may take nine or even more. “Until the changes are introduced in combinations into H5N1 virus, we won’t know the answer,” says Racaniello.

In a related paper published in Science³, Derek Smith from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues has shown that wild H5N1 viruses already have many of the mutations that Fouchier and Kawaoka identified. Some of the viruses are two to four nucleotide substitutions away from the complete sets. However, whether those mutations would allow different strains of H5N1 to spread between ferrets, let alone humans, remains unclear.

Fouchier now wants to work out the number of other individuals who catch the airborne virus for everyone who is infected. This number “needs to be higher than 1 to cause a pandemic”, he says. “We need more quantitative transmission models to start addressing that.”

But Racaniello thinks a different approach would be more effective. “I suggest that we spend research money developing more flu antivirals, and a universal flu vaccine,” he says[Source]

Will Tamiflu save the world from the avian flu?

No one wants to catch the flu! At the very least, it will put you out of commission for a week, and it can also cause  life-threatening infections – pneumonia is the most common, although other bacterial diseases like bronchitis are common too. Most people don’t think about problems with secondary infections after catching the flu, but a deadly form of the flu could be just around the corner.

The H5N1 “avian” flu is highly deadly among birds, and it has occurred in humans. Most people who contract the avian flu have had direct contact with infected birds. Fortunately, H5N1 does not appear to spread from human to human, but what if mutations occur in the virus that allow this to happen?

The 2009 H1N1 “swine” flu reminded us of the potential for flu pandemics that cross over to humans from other animals.

Based on its severity in birds and in the humans who have been infected, an H5N1 pandemic could be far more deadly than the H1N1 pandemic; it could kill a significant percentage of the world’s population! For example, in the 1918 flu pandemic, about 5% of the world’s population died. Based on the virulence of H5N1 in birds, it’s predicted that a higher percentage of humans would die as a result of a H5N1 human pandemic, although this is, of course, conjecture. In support of this conjecture, however, is the fact that 63% of the humans who have been infected with H5N1 have died (Hurt et al.).

Antiviral compounds

Fortunately Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) and a related drug, Relenza (Zanamivir), reduce the severity of the flu if they are given when the flu symptoms initially appear. But will the drugs be effective forever?

Seventy years ago, antibiotics such as penicillin seemed like miracle drugs. But now bacteria are evolving to become resistant to antibiotics, in part because the antibiotics have been overprescribed. Could the same thing occur with antivirals as they become used more frequently? It is a possibility.

Mutations, changes in the genetic code of an organism, occur rapidly in the influenza virus. Most mutations are harmful to the virus, but a few are beneficial (and, therefore, potentially harmful to humans). A mutation could occur in an influenza virus that allows it to resist the effects of Tamiflu and Relenza. Such a virus would then grow much more rapidly than a nonresistant form in the presence of the drugs.

To understand how Tamilflu and Relenza function and how the virus might become resistant to them, we need a little background on the life cycle of the flu virus. When an unsuspecting victim inhales a flu virus, a protein on the surface of the virus called hemagglutinin (the ‘H’ in H1N1, for example) binds to a receptor called sialic acid on the surface of cells in the respiratory tract (see structure of sialic acid in picture above).

Influenza life cycle

The cell takes in the virus, which then replicates inside the host cell. The newly formed viruses leave the cell by budding off the surface. The hemagglutinin on the new viruses can then bind to the sialic acid on the surface of other host cells, thus infecting new cells. For this to occur, however, the viruses need to escape the host cells. Another viral surface protein, neuraminidase (the ‘N’ in H1N1, for example), breaks down the sialic acid receptors so the viruses can escape.

Tamiflu and Relenza are structurally similar to sialic acid and will bind to the neuraminidase, but they cannot be broken down. Therefore, neuraminidase cannot bind to sialic acid on the cell surface when it has Tamiflu or Relenza bound to it. Because they prevent neuraminidase from functioning, the two drugs are collectively referred to as neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs). When NAIs are present, some of the newly produced virus will get stuck to the original host cell and will not be able to infect other cells.  Some viruses will still escape, so NAIs don’t cure the flu but rather reduce its severity.

Are NAI-resistant viral mutants forming? Studies have identified a few flu viruses that are resistant to these drugs. A very dedicated (and patient) group of scientists (Monto et al.) grew up a whopping 2287 samples of flu virus that were collected from all over the world during the first three years (1999-2002) the drugs were prescribed. They grew these samples in the presence of each of the two NAIs. While the vast majority of the viruses were not resistant to the drugs, a few samples were. Resistance was determined by measuring the concentration of the drug needed to inactivate each virus. These results were concerning; however, another team of scientists (Yen et al.) studied two NAI-resistant flu mutants and found that they were not as contagious nor as fit as the non-resistant strains.

Ferrets used in nasal washes

Yen et al. (2005) also showed that the virus didn’t grow as well in vitro, and they measured how well the virus grew in an in vivo model. In those studies, three ferrets were infected with the virus: two with the mutant strains and one with a wild type (not mutated) virus.

After two days, each ferret was put into close contact with two other ferrets. Each day after exposure, the researchers took nasal washes of each ferret and quantified the amount of virus in the wash. (I wonder if there is a neti pot for ferrets.)

Net pot for sinus infection

The washes showed that less virus was produced by the two resistant mutants. In fact, one of the ferrets exposed to a mutant virus was less contagious. Other studies have found this to be the case with the most resistant flu virus mutants. That is, the more resistant the flu virus is to an NAI, the less virulent is the virus.

However, exceptions were found in a further study by Yen et al. in 2006, where they found two mutants that were resistant to the drugs but still grew relatively well, which is more concerning. While these mutants did not appear naturally (they were designed by the lab) they could, in principle, occur in nature.

None of these studies looked at the H5N1 avian flu directly, but because the drug-resistant viruses were found over a wide variety of strains, there is potential for an H5N1 mutant that is resistant to Tamiflu and Relenza. Fortunately the drug-resistant mutants are usually less fit, so an H5N1 NAI-resistant mutant might not be as deadly. It appears that Tamiflu and Relenza would help reduce the impact of an H5N1 pandemic. However, we must monitor the virus for resistant mutants.

References:

Silver, G. (2003) The treatment of influenza with antiviral drugs. Canadian Medical Association Journal 168 (1), 49–57.

Monto, A., McKimm-Breschkin, J., Macken, C., Hampson, A., Hay, A., Klimov, A., Tashiro, M., Webster, R., Aymard, M., Hayden, F., & Zambon, M. (2006). Detection of Influenza Viruses Resistant to Neuraminidase Inhibitors in Global Surveillance during the First 3 Years of Their Use Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 50 (7), 2395-2402 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.01339-05

Yen, H., Herlocher, L., Hoffmann, E., Matrosovich, M., Monto, A., Webster, R., & Govorkova, E. (2005). Neuraminidase Inhibitor-Resistant Influenza Viruses May Differ Substantially in Fitness and Transmissibility Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 49 (10), 4075-4084 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.49.10.4075-4084.2005

Hurt, A., Holien, J., & Barr, I. (2009). In Vitro Generation of Neuraminidase Inhibitor Resistance in A(H5N1) Influenza Viruses Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 53 (10), 4433-4440 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00334-09

Yen, H., Hoffmann, E., Taylor, G., Scholtissek, C., Monto, A., Webster, R., & Govorkova, E. (2006). Importance of Neuraminidase Active-Site Residues to the Neuraminidase Inhibitor Resistance of Influenza Viruses Journal of Virology, 80 (17), 8787-8795 DOI: 10.1128/jvi.00477-06

Bioweapons, Dangerous Vaccines,
And Threats Of A Global Pandemic
By Stephen Lendman
7-7-9

Bioweapons, Dangerous Vaccines,
And Threats Of A Global Pandemic
By Stephen Lendman
7-7-9

Although international law prohibits the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, America has had an active biological warfare program since at least the 1940s. In 1941, it began secret developmental efforts using controversial testing methods. During WW II, mustard gas was tested on about 4000 servicemen. Biological weapons research was also conducted. Human subjects were used as guinea pigs in various other experiments, and numerous illegal practices continued to the present, including secretly releasing toxic biological agents in US cities to test the effects of germ warfare.

The Hague Convention of 1907 banned chemical weapons usage, and the 1928 Geneval Protocol prohibited gas and bacteriological warfare. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) “Prohibit(ed) the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction.” The 1989 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act “implement(ed the) Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction….”

In 2001, the Bush administration rejected the 1972 BWC, took advantage of a loophole allowing “prophylactic, protective or other peaceful uses,” continued a secret Clinton administration bioweapons initiative, and asserted its right to spend multi-billions illegally to develop, test and stockpile “first-strike” chemical and biological weapons that potentially can kill millions.

In his August 14, 2008 article titled, “The Pentagon’s alarming project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine,” F. William Engdahl cited:

“alarming evidence accumulated by serious scientific sources that the US Government is about to or already has ‘weaponized’ Avian Flu. If reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out. Pentagon and NIH experiments with remains in frozen state of the 1918 virus are the height of scientific folly” unless something more nefarious is afoot in collaboration with Big Pharma to produce weaponized viruses and/or dangerous mandatory vaccines that, at the least, can cause serious autoimmune diseases or, as some allege, a Swine Flu or other viral pandemic.

Alarming News about Baxter International

On February 27, 2009, various news agencies including Helen Branswell in the Canadian Press, reported:

Baxter International that “released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed (today) that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.” The WHO said the incident occurred at the company’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria, but claimed “that public health and occupational risk is minimal” thus far. What’s not known, however, “are the circumstances” behind the incident that, according to some, raise suspicions while others call it a willful criminal act. More on that below.

The contaminated product, “a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 (Avian Flu) viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company….Avir Green Hills Biotechnology.” It then “sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.”

The problem was discovered when The Czech Republic company discovered that ferrets innoculated with the product died. “Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.” Public health authorities called it a “serious error” that showed “the H5N1 virus in the product was live.” But Baxter “has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.” Christopher Bona, the company’s global bioscience communications director, did confirm that the material was a “live….experimental virus” made at the Orth-Donau research laboratory.

Security experts expressed alarm that something this serious could happen, calling the co-mingling (or reassortment) of human H3N2 with H5N1 avian viruses a dangerous practice that should never occur because of the potentially devastating effects to human health. “If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people,” who, in turn, could transmit it to enough others to potentially cause a pandemic. So far, nothing this extreme has happened, but a future threat remains.

As Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, Dr. Rima Laibow warns about dangerous, toxic drugs and vaccines. On March 6, 2009, she posted a “Pandemic Flu Emergency Action eAlert on her healthfreedomusa.org web site stating:

“World media (outside America) are reporting that Baxter Pharmaceuticals has admitted that it ‘accidently’ contaminated various vaccine batches with Avian Flu viruses. These batches were shipped to 18 countries. Clearly, either 1. stupidity and incompetence (are to blame) or 2. intentional contamination of flu vaccine lots was at work.”

Many Avian Flu vaccines compete with each other, yet they’re “profitable ONLY if used in huge numbers.” Although “Avian Flu has been slow to be become pandemic by ‘jumping the species barrier’ to humans in large numbers,” might Baxter’s “accident” be a way to do it? If so, Big Pharma will score “One of the biggest wins in history.”

In fact, it already has after the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) reported that Congress (in mid-June) “approved $7.65 billion for battling pandemic influenza, more than three times what the House and Senate had earlier proposed.” Unsurprisingly, it was part of “a $106 billion (Iraq and Afghanistan war) supplemental appropriation bill” to open a new front at home in the form of dangerous vaccines – perhaps to be mandated for everyone.

Laibow sees a “manipulated disaster of unprecedented magnitude precipitated by unprecedented avarice and greed,” and adds that “Baxter International Inc. is no stranger to recalls and lethal contaminations.” Its record includes producing faulty infusion and volumetric pumps, HIV-2 tainted Albumin Buminate 5 percent, faulty dialysis machine tubing and blood-cleaning filters, and various other products that should make everyone leery of its soon-to-be-released Swine Flu vaccine. Along with similar ones from other pharmaceutical companies, these drugs cause serious autoimmune diseases and absolutely should be avoided, even if mandated.

Laibow expresses great alarm in stating:

“Baxter mixed a virus which has a hard time infecting people (H5N1 Avian flu) with one that infects them easily (“Seasonal Flu”) in a medium which can promote mutations of the H5N1 virus into a type which can infect us easily. What will be in the vaccine you are forced/coerced/threatened into allowing into your body? Who knows?”

What is known are our constitutional and Nuremberg Code rights. The Fifth Amendment protects against abusive government authority in stating that “No person shall….be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” The Eight Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” Depriving someone of health is tantamount to the latter as well as life by harming and potentially shortening it.

The Nuremberg Code requires voluntary consent of human subjects without coercion, fraud, deceit, and with full disclosure of known risks. It also affirms that experiments should avoid “all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury,” and should never be conducted if there’s “an a priori reason to believe death or disabling injury will occur” or harm to human health.

The FDA as an Industry Front Group

As stated on its web site, the FDA is mandated to protect human health and well-being.

As an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.”

Run by officials of the industries it “regulates,” it fails on all counts. Byron J. Richards is a clinical nutritionist and founder of Wellness Resources. In his book “Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America,” he discusses FDA complicity with Big Pharma, dangerous drugs worth billions of dollars to the industry, and the serious risks to people who use them. He states:

“The FDA has put into mothballs its federal mandate to protect the public. In order to foster drug sales, the FDA hides important medical data from the public and from doctors, including the risks of heart attacks, suicide, seizures, and serious mental-health debility. Even worse, the FDA has changed sides. They are actively undermining the rights of citizens to claim damages if injured by drugs. And they are seeking to remove safety barriers to drug testing. They are planning to expose many individuals to unproven drugs, a new form of human experiment” that may rise to a higher level if HHS mandates dangerous Swine Flu vaccines for all Americans despite no forensic evidence of an outbreak or even a single proved death attributable to H1N1.

Yet, in advance of what looks to be coming, on June 11, the WHO declared that “The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic (in) decid(ing) to raise (its) influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to (its highest) phase 6” level.

Dr. Laibow advises that everyone has a “right to say “NO!” to vaccinations and other treatments that (they) do not want. The Police Power of the State ENDS at my skin and yours!” If a pandemic erupts, as a longtime natural health practitioner, she advises what she’ll use herself – Nano Silver as well as vitamins, minerals, and herbs like echinacea that boost the immune system, unlike dangerous vaccines that destroy it. For more information, she directs individuals to the web site: <http://www.nutronix.com/naturalsolutions>www.nutronix.com/naturalsolutions.

WHO, CDC, and Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) Fearmongering Misinformation

Besides declaring its highest Level 6 influenza pandemic alert on June 11, the BBC reported on July 3 that WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, warned that the spread of swine flu is “unstoppable” while admitting that most cases are mild and many people recover unaided.

On June 25, Daniel DeNoon in WebMD Health News reported that CDC’s influenza surveillance chief, Dr. Lyn Finelli, said: “Right now, we are estimating over 1 million (Swine Flu) cases in the US” in 2009 affecting about 6% of households in major cities. She, too, admitted that the vast majority of cases have been mild but avoided the fundamental issue – that no forensic evidence attributes a single death globally to Swine Flu and all or most known instances may be ordinary viral influenza or common colds, bad enough to cause fever (at times high) and discomfort, last several days and then pass for most people.

With no proof, Finelli cited 3065 Swine Flu hospitalizations and 127 deaths. In a June 26 telebriefing, Dr. Anne Schachat, CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases director, cited no verifiable forensic documentation in saying:

“The novel H1N1 (Swine Flu) influenza is continuing to spread here in the United States and around the globe. The key point is that this new infectious disease is not going away. In the US, we’re still experiencing a steady increase in the number of reported cases (and they’re just) the tip of the iceberg.” She added that vaccines are being hurriedly produced. No decisions have been made about “which populations” will need them, but “it’s very important for states and communities to begin intensifying their efforts on planning to administer a vaccine should such be necessary in the fall,” especially for “young people including school children, pregnant women, babies, and adults, particularly younger adults with those underlying conditions….” That said, it “doesn’t mean we’ve finalized any vaccine recommendations.”

On June 21, Canada’s National Post published Sharon Kirkey’s Canwest News Service report headlined, “Vaccinate Canadians under 40 and (aboriginal) natives first: experts.” She added that “Under Canada’s official pandemic plan, the entire population would ultimately be immunized against H1N1 swine flu,” but not at once as vaccines will only be available in batches.

Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) “is working on a priority list,” effective for all provinces and territories. Gymnasiums will be used for mass vaccinations of school children, but no final decisions have been made.

In a June 26 news release, PHAC reported that “The Government of Canada today launched a three-year public education campaign to encourage parents to have their children immunized against certain diseases before the age of two. The Honorable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Canadian Paediatric Society” saying that “Immunization is one of the best tools we have to protect the health of our children.”

In fact, all vaccines are dangerous and should be avoided. They contain squalene-based adjuvants that cause a menu of autoimmune diseases in test subjects. In humans they include chronic fatigue, various type rashes, chronic headaches, anemia, aphthous ulcers, seizures, weakness, neuropsychiatric problems, ALS, Raynaud’s phenomenon, and multiple sclerosis, among other illnesses and diseases, some causing death.

It’s why Dr. Laibow says “No insurance company in the world will insure against” their risks. In America, a special fund “has paid out over 2 billion dollars to parents of children killed or maimed by vaccinations.” However, the vast majority of those harmed are never compensated, and US law ‘immunizes’ drug companies from lawsuits.

Laibow adds:

“In fact, vaccines are explicitly acknowledged NOT to protect against diseases they supposedly are designed to prevent (read the Package Inserts for vaccines, available on line and in your doctors’ offices if you doubt that) and often” cause them.

Yet they continue in use because they’re so “immensely, enormously and hideously profitable,” and Big Pharma has enough clout to proliferate products that “in a rational society (should) be banned forever.”

Bioterrorism Criminal Charges Filed

On June 10, Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister filed sweeping criminal charges with the FBI in addition to earlier ones on April 8 with the Vienna State Prosecutor’s Office against Baxter AG, Baxter International and Avir Green Hill Biotechnology AG, “for manufacturing, disseminating, and releasing a biological weapon of mass destruction on Austrian soil between December 2008 and February 2009 with the intention of causing a global bird flu pandemic virus and of intending to profit from that same pandemic in an act that violates laws on international organised crime and genocide.”

Baxter operates Biosafety Level 3 (BLS-3) labs that take strict precautions to assure no possibility of accidental H3N2 and H5N1 co-mingling contamination unless something more nefarious is afoot.

BLS-3 personnel are trained in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents and are supervised by competent scientists with extensive experience with them. In addition, these labs have specially engineered design features for added safety.

On its web site, CDC lists four biosafety levels:

— BLS-1 labs are “suitable for work involving well-characterized agents not known to consistently cause disease in healthy adult humans, and (pose) minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment.”

— BLS-2 labs are “similar to Biosafety Level 1 and (are) suitable for work involving agents of moderate potential hazard to personnel and the environment. It differs from BLS-1 in that (lab personnel) have specific training in handling pathogenic agents,” and are “directed by competent scientists.” In addition, access to the labs are limited, and “extreme precautions are taken with contaminated sharp items….”

— BLS-3 labs work with “indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease as a result of exposure by the inhalation route. Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents.” Labs also have “special engineering and design features,” and follow strict procedures. In addition, protective clothing, equipment, and other extreme precautions are taken.

— BLS-4 labs are for the most highly toxic and dangerous agents – ones “that pose a high individual risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease.” As a result, the strictest possible procedures and precautions are always taken.

By combining human influenza H3N2 with bird flu H5N1 virus in its BLS-3 lab, “Baxter produced a highly dangerous biological weapon with a 63 per cent mortality rate. The H5N1 virus is restricted in its human-to-human transmissibility, especially because it is less airborne.”

“However when….combined with seasonal flu viruses (easily transmitted by air), a new flu virus is created which is unknown to the human immune system and which will have a severe impact on an unprotected population. A deadly virus of this kind could spread around the world in a short time and (potentially) infect millions and even billions of people.”

Baxter (via Avir) “distributed (72 kilos of) contaminated (live bird flu) vaccines using false concealment and a false labels to 16 laboratories in Austria and….other countries at the end of January/beginning of February, potentially infecting at least 36-37 laboratory staff, who (were) treated preventively for bird flu and ordinary flu.” On the same day, 18 Avir employees were as well at Vienna’s Otto Wagner Hospital.

Burgermeister cited a Baxter-Avir 2006 contract with Austria’s Health Ministry for 16 million vaccine doses in case a bird flu pandemic was declared. She maintains that this “laboratory incident shows that national and international authorities are not able to fulfill their obligations to ensure the safety of the Austrian people” and claims that authorities were engaged in a cover-up.

“If a pharmaceutical company can breach laws – and almost trigger a bird flu pandemic, which (potentially could spread worldwide) – without being made accountable for it….then there is, de facto, no rule of law on Austrian territory.”

She also contends that Baxter’s production system, “namely, the use of 1200 liter bioreactors and vero cell technology,” meets “the technical criteria to be classified as a secret dual purpose large-scale bioweapon production facility (able to produce) a huge amount of contaminated vaccine material….rapidly.”

“If (this) material were added to the 1200 liter bioreactors, it would replicate and infect the entire batch of vaccine material in (it). Contaminated material could (then) be distributed among sections of the population using false labels and secretly marked batches (able to) infect millions of people.”

Burgermeister accused high-level Austrian Health and other Ministry officials of knowledge and support of this practice. Otherwise, controls would have been in place to prevent it. In June, she named drug producers Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis, world agencies, including the WHO, UN, and CDC, and high-level officials in Austria, other European countries, and America.

Whether or not there’s enough evidence to substantiate her charges, her case is vital to alert people globally to the potential health threat they face because inadequate controls are in place if the worst occurs.

It highlights the importance of being alert to this and other potential health hazards given lax government regulations and public complicity with powerful corporate interests, that in alliance show a disturbing indifference to public safety and well-being – worse still because dominant print and broadcast media stoke fear by reporting misinformation to convince people to use dangerous drugs and vaccines they should avoid.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Better be safe than sorry. Something nefarious may or may not be afoot, but it’s vital to learn the truth, know the risks, and assert your legal right to refuse all dangerous vaccines and other medications, even if mandated.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre of Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listing.

http://rense.com/general86/bio.htm

Big pharma takes aim at deadly counterfeits

 

By Katie McQue [Source]

GATEWAY TO AFRICA | In Africa the cost of all medications, including generic drugs, exceeds the means of most and many people are faced with a grim choice: purchase counterfeit medications, ingredients unknown, or go without treatment.

With 30% of the total available pharmaceuticals in Uganda believed to be counterfeit, the country, like many others, is struggling to keep control of a business that is both deadly and lucrative.

“A lot of deaths occur. But nobody reports these and nobody is going to investigate,” said Suraj Ali, a partner at the Ugandan legal firm Muwema & Mugerwa.

The situation in Uganda is typical in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and the reasons are economic. In regions of high prevalence of poverty the cost of all medications, including generic drugs, exceeds the means of most. Few people have medical insurance, and they are faced with a grim choice: purchase counterfeit medications – ingredients unknown – or simply go without treatment.

The big pharmaceutical firms are worried. “When you visit a market in Tanzania, you see that they are being sold everywhere,” Ed Wheatley, AstraZeneca’s investigations director for the region, said at June’s Visiongain Pharmaceutical Anti-Counterfeiting conference, in which representatives from major drug makers gathered to deliberate the problem.

This big problem is also a big business – it is widely estimated that counterfeit drugs have an annual turnover of US$75 billion worldwide, with a profit margin of about 70%. This means that the global share of counterfeit medications is 10% of the pharmaceutical market. Around the world 200,000 people die annually due to counterfeits.

Most of the fakes hail from factories in China, India and Pakistan, and counterfeiters are more concerned with matching the packaging than the ingredients of the original. Criminals steal hospital vials with branded labels, print their own hologrammed boxes – even buy tablet-making presses on eBay.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 32.1% of these drugs do not contain any active ingredients; 20.2% have incorrect quantities of active ingredients; 21.4% include wrong ingredients and 8.5% have high levels of impurities or contaminates.

The loss of sales and reputation is significant, as users of the fake drugs may still associate their illness with the genuine article. In some countries, drug makers can also be liable for harm caused by fakes.

In Germany, for example, a company can be called to account if it can be proven that it did not utilise all the possibilities provided by state-of-the-art technology to prevent counterfeiting. In most US states, any part of the manufacturing and sales chain can be liable for damages to the consumer arising from faults in a product’s construction, manufacturing or labelling.

Given this risk it is understandable why pharmaceutical companies are keen to intervene in the African counterfeit market. Some assist local governments with on-the-ground intelligence, leading to raids and prosecutions. This assistance is necessary in countries where awareness is low, resources devoted to the problem are scarce and corruption is high.

“There is a lot of corruption,” Ali said. “A lot of the magistrates are underpaid and they get bribed.

“We have a national drug authority that is supposed to prevent counterfeiting, but it is underfunded,” he added. “There are very few inspectors; they don’t have the equipment to check drugs properly… Things find their way into the country – the borders are very porous.”

 

Gates Foundation Funds Surveillance of Anti-Vaccine Groups

[SOURCE]
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation launched the Grand Challenges in Global Health (GCGH) in partnership with the National Institutes of Health in 2003 which, according to the GCGH website, is aimed at “creating new tools that can radically improve health in the developing world.” So far, 45 grants totaling $458 million were awarded for research projects involving scientists in over 30 countries.

But where has all the money actually gone? Towards developing and implementing water purification and sanitation systems? Or basic nutritional support aimed at optimizing immune function? How about providing shelter and medical facilities for the homeless? Not even close.

For example, a $100K grant was recently disbursed to Seth C. Kalichman, professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, for “Establishing an Anti-Vaccine Surveillance and Alert System,” which intends to “establish an internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analyzing, and counteracting misinformation communication campaigns regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts.”

We can only wonder what organizations might be labeled as “misinformation communication campaigns” considering the fact that Bill Gates, in a Feb. 4th, 2011 interview on CNN with Sanjay Gupta said that “anti-vaccine groups “kill children.”” Here is the full quote:

“So it’s an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn’t have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts — you know, they, they kill children. It’s a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.”

It is quite possible that any dissenting voice not in support of universal vaccination campaigns may be included in this type of “surveillance and alert system” as a potentially endangering the lives of others, i.e. “killing children.” What is so ironic about the situation is that the Gates Foundation supported Polio Global Eradication Initiative may have resulted in over 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced paralysis in Indian children in 2011 alone, and which is twice as deadly as the wild-type polio it claimed to have put an end to officially on Jan. 11 2012. Who here then, is truly concerned about the health of children?

Moreover, it is exceedingly difficult to view Bill & Melinda Gates foundation’s GCGH as a strictly humanitarian foundation considering many of the projects it chooses to fund. Here are a few listed on their website which have already received funding.

Synthetic Lymph Nodes: Steven Meshnick and Carla Hand of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will develop a bio-compatible, biodegradable polymer device that can be placed under the skin to introduce vaccines and antigens to the immune system. The device will attract immune cells and trigger their proliferation as well asact as an adjuvant at the site of injection. If successful, the device could help boost immune response to new and existing vaccines. [see our article on transhumanistic technologies].

Needle Free Vaccination Via Nanoparticle Aerosols: Vaccine delivery systems that target specific areas of the body have the potential to be especially effective against some types of infection. For example, inhaled vaccines may better guard against respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, and those that commonly infect the tissues of the nose and throat, such as diphtheria. Dr. Edwards is leading a multidisciplinary team using materials science technologies combined with infectious disease, device, and toxicology expertise to reformulate tuberculosis and diphtheria vaccines into aerosol sprays that can be inhaled. The team’s ultimate objective is to develop a cell-based BCG vaccine for tuberculosis and a protein antigen CRM 197 vaccine for diphtheria in the form of novel porous nanoparticle aggregate (PNAP) aerosols.

Plant-Produced Synthetic RNA Vaccines: Alison McCormick of Touro University, California in the U.S. will test the ability of a low-cost plant-based synthetic biology method to produce a combined viral protein epitope with an antigen RNA expression system for use in an RNA malaria vaccine. Using plants for this viral transfection system could make RNA vaccine production scalable and cost effective.

Profitable Vaccine Distribution In Emerging Markets: Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi of Epsilon Therapeutics, Inc. in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that selling vaccines through medicine shops in emerging markets can lead to profits for both vaccine developers and the small business owners. Demonstrating profitability may lead pharmaceutical companies to invest greater resources in vaccine development and distribution and develop local partnerships for profitability strategies.

Genetically Programmed Pathogen Sense and Destroy: Saurabh Gupta and Ron Weiss of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposed creating sentinel cells that can detect the presence of a pathogen, report its identity with a biological signal, and secrete molecules to destroy it. This project’s Phase I research demonstrated that commensal bacteria can be engineered to detect and specifically kill the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In Phase II, Gupta and Weiss will engineer the human microbiota to specifically detect and destroy the gut pathogen Shigella flexneri, which is responsible for high mortality rates in children.

Vaccine in a Salt Shaker: A New, Safe, Low-Cost Approach: Shiladitya DasSarma will lead a team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the U.S. to develop an inexpensive, safe, and effective oral vaccine against invasive Salmonella disease using gas-filled bacterial vesicles. The project seeks to produce a salt-encased, shelf-stable vaccine requiring no refrigeration for distribution worldwide.

A Humanized Mouse Model to Evaluate Live Attenuated Vaccine Candidates: To develop new vaccines against some of the world’s biggest killers, including HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, scientists must be able to evaluate promising candidates. Some of the most promising potential vaccines, are made from weakened live versions of the infectious agent. As a result, they cannot be studied in human trials unless researchers can be confident that the weakened vaccines will be safe. Dr. Flavell and his colleagues are working to genetically engineer laboratory mice whose immune systems are similar enough to humans to permit testing of vaccines against diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world.

Alternative Delivery of Human Milk Proteins to Infants: Qiang Chen of Arizona State University in the U.S. proposes to engineer edible plants, such as lettuce and rice, to express beneficial proteins found in human milk. The protein bodies in these plants allow for the stable, high accumulation of these human milk proteins, and the plants can either be eaten directly by infants or formulated into baby food to provide essential nutrients and antibacterial benefits.

Non-Hormonal Female Contraceptive Targeting Egg-Specific Metalloprotease: John Herr of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will research the egg-specific membrane enzyme metalloprotease as a target for a non-hormonal female contraceptive. After determining the nature of the enzyme’s catalytic pocket, a family of peptidomimetic compounds will be tested for their ability to bind to the enzyme and block its key role in egg fertilization.

Bacillus-Fermented Natto as Edible Vaccines for the Developing World: Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium. The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.

Nanotechnology-Based Contraception: David Clapham of Children’s Hospital Boston in the U.S. will develop and test a nanoparticle contraceptive that releases sperm tail inhibitors in response to vaginal pH changes or exposure to prostatic fluid. If successful, the nanoparticles could be incorporated into a vaginal gel to block sperm motility required for fertilization. Circumcision tool For Traditional Ceremonies In Africa: Kathleen Sienko of the University of Michigan in the U.S. has developed a prototype circumcision tool for use in traditional ceremonies in Africa, and seeks to demonstrate the functionality, cultural suitability, and potential for low-cost mass production of the device. Such a tool could increase the circumcision rates leading to lower rates of HIV transmission in the region.

Discovery of Chemosensory Molecules as Novel Contraceptives: John Ngai and Scott Laughlin of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. seek to identify chemical compounds in the female reproductive system that guide sperm cells to the egg. By characterizing these “odorants,” synthetic versions can be produced and administered to disrupt this navigation system thus inhibiting fertilization.

Transgenic Cow Milk Containing Human Antimicrobial Protein: Hironori Matsushima of the University of Toledo in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that adding an antimicrobial peptide to powdered milk products can confer protection against enteric diseases. Research will focus on testing the peptide for its ability to kill pathogens in stomach conditions, and on its ability to maintain integrity through the milk pasteurization and drying processes.

Ultrasound as a Long-Term, Reversible Male Contraceptive: James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will study the ability of therapeutic ultrasound to deplete testicular sperm counts. Characterizing the most beneficial timing and dosage could lead to the development of a low-cost, non-hormonal and reversible method of contraception for men.

You will notice from the examples listed above that all of these funded projects involve the development of proprietary (read: potentially profitable) and as-of-yet unproven technologies, and which will require the transformation and/or alteration of a natural process or substance. Also, many of the grant disbursements have gone towards contraception. This appears to diverge from the GCGH’s mission statement of “improving health in the developing world,” insofar as it is focused on reducing population in the developed world, rather than supporting the health of those already living, in need of help.[read the article]

 

DARPA Continues Human Experiments to Create Military Super Soldiers

 

Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
September 25, 2012

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a $2 billion yearly budget for research into creating a super solider as well as developing a synthetic police force. Working with the human genome, DARPA hopes to manipulate certain gene expressions. In experimentation, DARPA and the military industrial pharmaceutical complex are using natural abilities that are enhanced through genetic engineering.

Some of the medical feats DARPA would like to enhance are the ability of military soldiers to regrow limbs destroyed in battle.

By eliminating empathy, the Department of Defense (DoD) hopes to “enhance” a soldier’s ability to “kill without care or remorse, shows no fear, can fight battle after battle without fatigue and generally behave more like a machine than a man.”

Scientists are researching the construction of soldiers that feel no pain, terror and do not suffer from fatigue as tests on the wiring of the human brain are furthered by Jonathan Moreno, professor of bioethics at Pennsylvania State University. Moreno is working with the DoD in understanding neuroscience. The Pentagon allocated $400 million to this research.

Further study could be passed onto the general public in order to maximize profits as well as enhance the drug’s effectiveness. According to Joel Garreau, professor at Arizona University, DARPA is learning how to genetically modify human fat into pure energy by rewiring the metabolic switch which would create soldiers that require less food. By using gene therapy and combining enhancements to alter the color of the human eye is a blending of mutations that have no basis in the natural world.

In 2011, the British Academy of Medical Sciences published a paper explaining the necessity for “new rules to avoid ethical missteps.” Specifying the injection of human brain cells into animals that may give animals human memories or thought consciousness as the goal should be dealt with differently than a non-modified animal.

Human embryos can strengthen or deteriorate the animal test subject which prompted Senator Sam Brownback to push the Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005. Brownback expressed need for prevention of closed-door experiments that “blur the lines between human and animal, male and female, parent and child, and one individual and another individual.” The ethical aspect could be defined by two mandates of consideration:

1. They could target the hypothetical scientists creating monsters in petri dishes.
2. They could take a close look at the science that’s really happening in labs around the world.

In addition to genetically modifying the human genome, global Elite are obsessed with the merging man and machine, transhumanism and immortality. Basing advancements on scientific research, the 2045 Program will create “a new vision of human development that meets global challenges humanity faces today, realization of the possibility of a radical extension of human life by means of cybernetic technology, as well as the formation of a new culture associated with these technologies.”

The globalists at the 2045 Program assert that humanity “is in need of a new evolutionary strategy” consisting of a balance between the complexity of technological advances and the acceleration of informational processes to expand the “limited, primitive human” into a “highly self-organized” and technologically “higher intelligence”.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published a document entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses in 2000 which frameworks a strategy for American hegemony in the near future, identifying “problem areas” of the world and advising regime change of unfavorable governments so that in the end the nations of the world will be unified under the banner of American democracy.

The revelation of former US President George Bush’s “axis of evil” defined American policy under the guidelines of the PNAC with the identification of Iran, Iraq and North Korea which is literally mentioned in the PNAC as governments that require a regime change.

In the PNAC, the globalists have described the use of scientific enhancement and clinical trials turning the US armed forces into gueinia pigs for the advancement of a super solider.

While Roger Pitman , professor of psychiatry at Harvard University is experimenting with propranolol which is a beta blocker that is believed to erase “terrifying memories”, soldiers are subjected to more research while serving to alleviate the psychological effects of war. Moreno explains: “The problem is: what else are they blocking when they do this? Do we want a generation of veterans who return without guilt?”

Allan Snyder, professor of neuroscience in Australia, has been working to understand how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can effect higher mental processing with the use of magnetic fields to promote unfettered reasoning.

The US Academy of Sciences reported in 2009 that they expected to be successful in using TMS against soldiers to “enhance [their] fighting capabilities.” Moreno reveals that TMS helmets could be used in battlefields to expand a soldier’s technical expertise and become a more proficient marksman and master electronics used in training exercises.

[….]

[source]
I never thought I would be talking about genetically modified people outside of pitching some new science fiction movie to the predictive programming industry called Hollywood. Instead I find the government admitting to secret tests being conducted on soldiers in order to genetically modify their abilities. The agency in charge of this Island of doctor Moreau research just happens to be the same department responsible for making drones and surveillance robots that will be used to gather up dissidents during the coming conflagration.
Human Hunters?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense that receive over 2 billion dollars annually to conduct secret experimentation’s on soldiers and to create an Orwellian programmed robotic police force that will be used domestically as well as abroad. The manipulation of the human genome is perhaps the most disturbing demonstration of human arrogance this century has yet begun to exploit. DARPA has recently released some of the details to the genes they are manipulating and their expected expression and possible application. Here is a list of the current experimentation’s that have been conducted in secrecy on soldiers in the United States military or at least some of the recent confession from the military industrial pharmaceutical complex:

• Do you want a soldier that can run faster than an Olympic Athlete?
• Do you want a soldier that won’t need food or sleep for days?
• Do you want a soldier that can regrow lost limbs?
• Do you want a soldier that can out lift Olympic weightlifters?
• Do you want a soldier that can communicate telepathically?

Genetically Modified Soldiers?

All of these manipulations to the human genome will eventually be pushed into the public sector to cash in on all the money that would be made from pills that will enhance your appearance and abilities. Just imagine how much revenue would be generated by a pill that could convert fat into energy or keep you awake for days on end with no need to worry about exercise or your dietary intake. Professor Joel Garreau of Arizona University confirmed that DARPA was experimenting with turning fat into energy. He recently disclosed this information to thedailymail stating, ‘Finding that metabolic switch would wipe out the £40billion diet industry in a heartbeat’. This is a covert way of saying it could create a monopoly that would destroy all its competitors which is the chosen model for the eugenicists natural selection propagandist. Gene therapy will be hitting the market in the next decade offering enhancements that at first will seem innocuous like changing the color of your eyes but in the end this blending of the human genome will only lead to mutations Mother Nature will create from our own arrogance.

 

Criminal Big Pharma: They Paid Off Your Doc To Poison You

New UK data finds prescription drugs 62,000 times more likely to kill than supplements

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by: Tony Isaacs [source]

 

(NaturalNews) According to data just released by the UK-based Alliance for Natural Health International(ANH-Intl), pharmaceutical drugs are 62,000 times more likely to kill you than supplements. In fact, the data collected by ANH-Intl demonstrates that food supplements are the safest substances regularly consumed by UK citizens even though they are the target of increasingly restrictive European legislation aimed at ‘protecting consumers.’

The newly released data found that pharmaceutical drugs were also 7,750 times more likely to result in death than herbal remedies. Both food supplements and herbal remedies were placed in the ‘supersafe’ category of individual risk – with a less than one in ten million risk of death.

The stark contrast between the safety of supplements and mainstream medicine

By contrast, being admitted to a UK hospital or taking prescription drugs exposes a person to one of the greatest preventable risks in society. Overall, preventable medical injuries in UK hospitals expose patients to the same risk of death as being deployed on military service to Afghanistan – both of which are around 300,000 times greater than the risk of death from taking natural health products.

ANH-Intl executive and scientific director, Dr. Robert Verkerk, PhD, hailed the figures as shedding new light on the question of natural healthcare’s safety. “These figures tell us not only what activities an individual is most or least likely to die from, but also what the relative risks of various activities are to society as a whole. It puts some real perspective on the actual risk of death posed by food supplements and herbal remedies at a time when governments are clamping down because they tell us they’re dangerous.”

Verkerk added, “When compared with the risk of taking food supplements, an individual is around 900 times more likely to die from food poisoning and nearly 300,000 times more likely to die from a preventable medical injury during a spell in a UK hospital. The latter is on a par with the risk of death from active military service in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

According to Dr. Verkerk, the new figures should put pressure on UK and European authorities to reduce regulatory burdens on natural health products. “Governments justify the increasingly elaborate and restrictive new laws affecting natural health products on grounds of public safety,” said Verkerk. “They argue that reducing consumer access to food supplements and herbal remedies, with the consequent negative impacts on small businesses manufacturing, distributing and selling such products, is in society’s interest. But the evidence is simply not there – where are the bodies?”

Among other key points presented in the data were:

* Pharmaceutical drugs pose nearly double the risk of death than motorcycle accidents on UK roads

* While herbal medicines can both be regarded as ‘supersafe,’ preventable medical injuries in UK hospitals are in the ‘Dangerous’ category, with a risk of death greater than 1 in 1,000.

Learn more:

About that bone scan and the meds that follow…

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by: Craig Stellpflug

(NaturalNews) Bone scans can be useful to find out bone density status, but most MD’s use bone scans to sell more bone scans and bone meds. Oh sure, they can tell you that your bones are thin with their technology, but what happens after the diagnosis is a real problem: prescriptions, procedures, worsening bone brittleness and more cancer. If we just assume that we need to be concerned about bone health and treat our bones naturally, there would be no need for bone scans.

The scoop on bone meds

Long-term use of bone meds like Actonel, Boniva, Fosamax and Reclast have been linked to femur fractures. One study found bones on these meds turning brittle at four years. Two studies found an increased risk of fracture at five years on these meds in healthy, active women. These bad drugs are linked to esophageal cancer, necrosis of the jaw, heartburn, abdominal pain, fever, bone and muscle pain, low energy and low levels of calcium in the blood.

The treatment with the drug Infuse for bone growth, causes the overall cancer risk (including pancreatic) to shoot up by more than 250 percent in one year and 500 percent by three years. Infuse also gives about 50 percent of patients the “side effects” of infection, male sterility, pain, bone loss, and unwanted bone growth.

Learn more:

The most damning vaccination study not publically disclosed to date

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by: Paul Fassa

(NaturalNews) There have been reports from epidemiological studies confirming suspicions that those who are vaccinated often don’t do as well with long-term health as those who are vaccination free.Those epidemiological studies (statistical surveys) have shown that bad health is more common among the vaccinated who survive without serious injury than children not vaccinated.But how and why has not come under controlled animal lab studies until Japan’s Kobe Universityanimal lab study of 2009.This study was reported and peer reviewed in the PLOS One Open Journalat the end of 2009, but has not received much if any public attention. It was brought to public’s attention very recently by homoeopathist and health writer Heidi Stevenson’s article on her Gaia Health blog. (Source below)

Japanese study summary

Here’s the conclusion quoted from the Kobe University study’s journal report:

“Systemic autoimmunity appears to be the inevitable consequence of over-stimulating the host’s immune ‘system’ by repeated immunization with antigen, to the levels that surpass system’s self-organize criticality.” (Emphasis added.)

The initial purpose of this independently funded study was to understand how autoimmune diseases develop from autoimmunity. It was not an effort to prove vaccination safety or danger.

The researchers used mice that were bred to avoid autoimmune diseases and injected them with solutions that contain antigens. Antigens generate antibodies to protect against invading disease pathogens. Antibodies can turn against the host if they become self generated, causing autoimmune diseases.

A vaccination injects cultured vaccine antigens of weakened or dead viruses to create an immune response of antibodies to that antigen, supposedly for creating immunity to that particular disease.

It’s not very unusual for cytokine storms (immune system overreactions) to overwhelm one who has been vaccinated. Vaccine adverse reactions have caused injuries of permanent disability, autism spectrum disorders, or death more often than publicly disclosed.

The Kobe researchers injected the mice that were bred to not develop autoimmune diseases repeatedly with antigens, much like vaccinations are administered to infants and children, to study how an immune system could turn on itself to create autoimmune diseases.

They were pushing the mice’s immune systems to see if and when they would no longer bend, but break. They used Staphylococcus entertoxin B (SEB) as their injected antigens.

The study report did not mention including any toxic adjuvants or preservatives such as mercury, aluminum, or formaldehyde used in vaccines. Antigens were used without the toxic additives normally used in vaccinations.

After seven injections the mice recovered each time with their immune systems intact. But after the eighth injection, problems with key immunity cells began arising.

Damaged cells were observed microscopically and showed signs of early autoimmunity. Their immune systems had started to self generate antibodies for autoimmune reactions after repeated antigen inoculations. (Source below)

Learn more:

FDA drug reviewer: ‘one manager threatened my children’

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by: Jon Rappoport

(NaturalNews) In a stunning interview with Truthout’s Martha Rosenberg, former FDA drug reviewer, Ronald Cavanaugh, exposes the FDA as a relentless criminal mafia protecting its client, Big Pharma, with a host of mob strategies.http://truth-out.orgCavanaugh: “…widespread racketeering, including witness tampering and witness retaliation.””I was threatened with prison.””One [FDA] manager threatened my children… I was afraid that I could be killed for talking to Congress and criminal investigators.”Cavanaugh reviewed new drug applications made to the FDA by pharmaceutical companies. He was one of the holdouts at the Agency who insisted that the drugs had to be safe and effective before being released to the public.

But honest appraisal wasn’t part of the FDA culture, and Cavanaugh swam against the tide, until he realized his life and the life of his children was on the line.

What was his secret task at the FDA? “Drug reviewers were clearly told not to question drug companies and that our job was to approve drugs.” In other words, rubber stamp them. Say the drugs were safe and effective when they were not.

Cavanaugh’s revelations are astonishing. He recalls a meeting where a drug-company representative flat-out stated that his company had paid the FDA for a new-drug approval. Paid for it. As in bribe.

He remarks that the drug pyridostigmine, given to US troops to prevent the later effects of nerve gas, “actually increased the lethality” of certain nerve agents.

Cavanaugh recalls being given records of safety data on a drug—and then his bosses told him which sections not to read. Obviously, they knew the drug was dangerous and they knew exactly where, in the reports, that fact would be revealed.

Read the entire landmark interview for yourself and see what the FDA really is. We are not dealing with isolated incidents of cheating and lying. We are not dealing with a few isolated bought-off FDA employees. The situation at the FDA isn’t correctable with a few firings. This is an ongoing criminal enterprise, and any government official, serving in any capacity, who has become aware of it and has not taken action, is an accessory to mass poisoning of the population.

Twelve years ago, the cat was let out of the bag. Dr. Barbara Starfield, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, on July 26, 2000, in a review titled, “Is US health really the best in the world,” exposed the fact that FDA-approved medical drugs kill 106,000 Americans per year.

Learn more

Eli Lilly admits to more than $200 million dollars worth of doctor payoffs

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by: Willow Tohi

(NaturalNews) Prozac. Cialis. Cymbalta. If you have a television or read magazines, you’ve heard of their drugs. Eli Lilly, out of Indiana, makes billions of dollars every year off the sale of their patented chemicals, which are used to suppress the symptoms of disease in the human body. Founded by a chemist in the late 19th century; today the pharmaceutical giant has offices in 18 countries, and its products are sold in 125 countries, with revenues exceeding $20 billion annually.Most of their arsenal is available in other countries for much less money than it is here in the United States, as is the case with most prescription medication. The reason, the pharmaceutical industry claims, is that the health care systems of other countries demands affordable medication, and they need somebody somewhere to foot the research bill, so they can get the next patents lined up before others expire, allowing generic versions of their drugs to become available on the market. That leaves us Americans, with our broken healthcare system, footing the bill of their continued financial success.We’re not only footing the bill, we have to deal with how the pharmaceutical machine warps the medical system. While historically a trade secret, it is standard operating procedure for pharmaceutical giants to pay doctors and other healthcare professionals to promote their drugs. Seducing doctors into becoming mouthpieces for a share of their bottom line is where it begins, but it ends up dictating your options.

A history of questionable ethics

Beginning in 2012, all drug and medical device companies will be required to report their promotional expenditure numbers to the federal government, but several companies started disclosing their information in 2009. According to the disclosed information, last year Eli Lilly paid out more than $200 million in payments to doctors and healthcare providers for promoting their drugs. ProPublica.org’s Dollars for Docs database is tracking 11 other companies’ disclosures as well.

The reason this information has been disclosed in Eli Lilly’s case is because Eli Lilly was involved in a criminal settlement, and was ordered to disclose these payments, since 2009. They agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle criminal and civil allegations of promoting drugs for unapproved uses. An official from the FDA testified in a court of law that Eli Lilly concealed the risks of its schizophrenia drug Zyprexa from U.S. officials, knowing the serious health risks it caused. They defrauded Medicare/Medicaid and blatantly put profit over the concern of the consumer.

The disclosure documents say the payments were for speaking, consulting, and research, as well as travel and meal reimbursement. You can look up the breakdown of the payments; how much was paid into your state, if your doctor was among those paid. The data provides insights into how firms adapt their strategies over time, even though complete analysis has proved challenging. So few companies report their data, and the data that is reported is inconsistent in both content and format. Its unclear exactly how much money is being spent where, and by whom. Needless to say, there will be more on this story in the future.

The transparency of the newly required disclosures has some companies reevaluating the current strategy. Most of the pharmaceutical giants have begun to reduce their promotional expenditures, since they started disclosing the figures. Most of them offer explanations such as, “normal year-to-year fluctuations.” Experts predict physicians will begin backing away from these arrangements as well, as the increased scrutiny of the pharmaceutical sales practices also exposes their names and pay. Some doctors are raking in a quarter of a million dollars, but actually claim they “wouldn’t want the appearance of being influenced by anything the company gave” them. Interesting choice of words, huh? [read more]

 

Barack Obama,the Killer Companies and the Temple of Doom

 

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan [source]

If a volcano kills civilians in Indonesia, it’s news. When the government does the killing, sadly, it’s just business as usual, especially if an American president tacitly endorses the killing, as President Barack Obama just did with his visit to Indonesia.

As the people around Mount Merapi dig out of the ash following a series of eruptions that have left more than 150 dead, a darker cloud now hangs over Indonesia in the form of renewed U.S. support for the country’s notorious Kopassus, the military’s special forces commando group. Journalist Allan Nairn released several secret Kopassus documents as the Obamas landed in Jakarta, showing the level of violent political repression administered by the Kopassus—now, for the first time in more than a decade, with United States support.

Last March, Nairn revealed details of a Kopassus assassination program in the Indonesian province of Aceh. These new Kopassus documents shed remarkable detail on the province of West Papua. As Nairn wrote in his piece accompanying the documents, West Papua is “where tens of thousands of civilians have been murdered and where Kopassus is most active. … When the U.S. restored Kopassus aid last July the rationale was fighting terrorism, but the documents show that Kopassus in fact systematically targets civilians.” In the Kopassus’ own words, the civilians are “much more dangerous than any armed opposition.”

One document names 15 leaders of the Papuan civil society, all “civilians, starting with the head of the Baptist Synod of Papua. The others include evangelical ministers, activists, traditional leaders, legislators, students and intellectuals as well as local establishment figures and the head of the Papua Muslim Youth organization.”

President Obama lived in Indonesia from the ages of 6 through 10, after his mother married an Indonesian man. Obama said in Jakarta this week: “[M]uch has been made of the fact that this marks my return to where I lived as a young boy. … But today, as president, I’m here to focus not on the past, but on the future—the Comprehensive Partnership that we’re building between the United States and Indonesia.” Part of that relationship involves the renewed support of Kopassus, which has been denied since the armed forces burned then-Indonesian-occupied East Timor to the ground in 1999, killing more than 1,400 Timorese.

A series of cell-phone videos have come out of Papua showing torture being inflicted on men there at the hands of what appear to be members of the military. In one video that surfaced just two weeks ago, soldiers burn a man’s genitals with a burning stick, cover his head with a plastic bag to suffocate him, and threaten him with a rifle. Another video shows a Papuan man slowly dying from a gunshot wound as the soldier with the cell-phone camera taunts him, calling him a savage.

I spoke with Suciwati Munir, the widow of the renowned Indonesian human-rights activist Munir Said Thalib, at the Bonn, Germany, reunion of Right Livelihood Award laureates. Her husband, an unflinching critic of the Indonesian military, received the award shortly before his death. In 2004, as he traveled to the Netherlands for a law fellowship, on board the Indonesian national airline Garuda, he was given an upgrade to business class. There, he was served tea laced with arsenic. He was dead before the plane landed. Suciwati has a message for Obama:

“If Obama has a commitment to human rights in the world … he has to pay attention to the human-rights situation in Indonesia. And the first thing that he should ask to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is to resolve the Munir case.” I asked her if she wanted to meet President Obama when he came to Indonesia. She replied: “Maybe yes, because I want to remind him about the human-rights situation in Indonesia. Maybe not, because of his wrong decision, he has perpetuated the impunity in Indonesia.”

This was the third attempt by President Obama to visit Indonesia. His first delay was to allow him to push through health-care reform. The second was canceled in the wake of the BP oil disaster. This time he made it, although the Mount Merapi eruption forced him to leave a few hours early. Speaking from Jakarta, journalist Nairn reflected: “It’s nice to be able to go back to where you grew up, but you shouldn’t bring weapons as a gift. You shouldn’t bring training for the people who are torturing your old neighbors.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

“Three years ago, President Obama cut a secret deal with pharmaceutical company lobbyists to secure the industry’s support for his national health care law. Despite Obama’s promises during his campaign to run a transparent administration, the deal has been shrouded in mystery ever since. But internal emails obtained by House Republicans now provide evidence that a deal was struck and GOP investigators are promising to release more details in the coming weeks.

“What the hell?” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, who is now Obama’s campaign manager, complained to a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in January 15, 2010 email. “This wasn’t part of our deal.”

This reference to “our deal” came two months before the final passage of Obamacare in an email with the subject line, “FW: TAUZIN EMAIL.” At the time, Billy Tauzin was president and CEO of PhRMA.

The email was uncovered as part of investigation into Obama’s closed-door health care negotiations launched by the House Energy and Commerce committee’s oversight panel.

“In the coming weeks the Committee intends to show what the White House agreed to do as part of its deal with the pharmaceutical industry and how the full details of this agreement were kept from both the public and the House of Representatives,” the committee’s Republican members wrote in a memo today.

On June 20, 2009, Obama released a terse 296-word statement announcing a deal between pharmaceutical companies and the Senate that didn’t mention any involvement by the White House.

“The investigation has determined that the White House, primarily through Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle and Messina, with involvement from Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, was actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited,” the committee members wrote. “For example, three days before the June 20 statement, the head of PhRMA promised Messina, ‘we will deliver a final yes to you by morning.’ Meanwhile, Ms. DeParle all but confirmed that half of the Legislative Branch was shut out in an email to a PhRMA representative: ‘I think we should have included the House in the discussions, but maybe we never would have gotten anywhere if we had.’”
[read more]

Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal

“Here comes Siga-Gate.

This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House’s most frequent visitors. They’re the “1 percent” with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations.

Ronald Perelman is the New York City-based leveraged buyout wheeler-dealer who controls Siga Technologies. He has donated nearly $130,000 mostly to Democrats over the past two election cycles alone (history here), and he forked over $50,000 to pay for the president’s lavish inaugural parties. A Siga affiliate (MacAndrews and Forbes) pitched in nearly half a million more in contributions — 65 percent of which went to Democrats — and the firms have spent millions on lobbying.

Perelman’s pharma company makes an experimental antiviral pill used by smallpox patients who received diagnoses too late to be treated with the existing smallpox vaccine. Smallpox experts cast doubt on the need for the drug given ample vaccine stockpiles, the remoteness of a mass attack and questions about its efficacy. But over the objections of federal contract negotiators, competitors and scientists, the Obama administration approved a lucrative $433 million no-bid deal for Siga in May. No other manufacturers were able to compete for the “sole source” procurement, according to the Los Angeles Times.”[read more]

Exxon Makes $104 Million In Profit Per Day So Far In 2012, While Americans Are Stuck With A Higher Gas Bill

By Rebecca Leber on Apr 26, 2012 at 10:08 am

Last year, ExxonMobil, one of the world’s most profitable companies, earned $1,300 in profits per second. As consumers paid record-high springtime gas prices, Exxon posted first quarter profits of $9.45 billion.

This is down slightly from the first quarter of 2011, when Exxon posted $10.65 billion in profits. Exxon benefited from the high price of oil, but analysts expected slightly lower profits due in part to the cheap price of natural gas, which the company is heavily invested in.

A by-the-numbers look shows how Exxon’s executives and Big Oil’s allies are rewarded generously for the company’s billions, while Americans are stuck with rising gas bills:

$9.45 billion profits, or almost $104 million per day in the first three months of the year.

13 percent: The tax rate Exxon paid last year, lower than the average American family.

60 percent of its first quarter earnings, or $5.7 billion, on buying back stock. Became world’s largest dividend payer by increasing dividends 21 percent.

$1,091,000: Political contributions sent to federal politicians for the 2012 election cycle, making it the largest oil and gas spender.

91% of these contributions went to Republicans.

More than $52,000,000: Lobbying for the first three years of the Obama presidency, 50 percent more than in the Bush Administration.

$34.9 million: Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s salary for 2011, a 20 percent raise.

$52,300: Political contributions from Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson in the 2012 cycle, alone.

No. 2: Fortune 500 list of richest companies and for highest-paid CEO.[read more]

 

Company Profile: Exxon and the Ties to the Rockfellers

 

Web site: http://www.exxon.com

Public Company
Incorporated: 1882 as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
Employees: 79,000
Sales: $117.77 billion (1998)
Stock Exchanges: New York Boston Cincinnati Midwest Philadelphia Basel Dusseldorf Frankfurt Geneva Hamburg Paris Zurich
Ticker Symbol: XON
NAIC: 211111 Crude Petroleum & Natural Gas Extraction; 324110 Petroleum Refineries; 324191 Petroleum Lubricating Oil & Grease Manufacturing; 325110 Petrochemical Manufacturing; 447100 Gasoline Stations; 486110 Pipeline Transportation of Crude Oil; 486910 Pipeline Transportation of Refined Petroleum Products; 212110 Coal Mining; 212234 Copper Ore & Nickel Ore Mining; 212299 All Other Metal Ore Mining; 221112 Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation

As the earliest example of the trend toward gigantic size and power, Exxon Corporation and its Standard Oil forebears have earned vast amounts of money in the petroleum business. The brainchild of John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil enjoyed the blessings and handicaps of overwhelming power—on the one hand, an early control of the oil business so complete that even its creators could not deny its monopolistic status; on the other, an unending series of journalistic and legal attacks upon its business ethics, profits, and very existence. Exxon became the object of much resentment during the 1970s for the huge profits it made from the OPEC-induced oil shocks. The uproar over the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill in 1989 put the corporation once more in the position of embattled giant, as the largest U.S. oil company struggled to justify its actions before the public. At the end of the 1990s Exxon stood as the second largest of the world’s integrated petroleum powerhouses—trailing only the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. In addition to its oil and gas exploration, production, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing operations, Exxon was a leading producer and seller of petrochemicals and was involved in electric power generation and the mining of coal, copper, and other minerals. Exxon was also once again making history, through a proposed merger with Mobil Corporation, to create the largest petroleum firm in the world in one of the biggest mergers ever—and to reunite two of the offspring of the Standard Oil behemoth.
Prehistory of Standard Oil

The individual most responsible for the creation of Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, was born in 1839 to a family of modest means living in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. His father, William A. Rockefeller, was a sporadically successful merchant and part-time hawker of medicinal remedies. William Rockefeller moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio, when John D. Rockefeller was in his early teens, and it was there that the young man finished his schooling and began work as a bookkeeper in 1855. From a very young age John D. Rockefeller developed an interest in business. Before getting his first job with the merchant firm of Hewitt & Tuttle, Rockefeller had already demonstrated an innate affinity for business, later honed by a few months at business school.

Rockefeller worked at Hewitt & Tuttle for four years, studying large-scale trading in the United States. In 1859 the 19-year-old Rockefeller set himself up in a similar venture—Clark & Rockefeller, merchants handling the purchase and resale of grain, meat, farm implements, salt, and other basic commodities. Although still very young, Rockefeller had already impressed Maurice Clark and his other business associates as an unusually capable, cautious, and meticulous businessman. He was a reserved, undemonstrative individual, never allowing emotion to cloud his thinking. Bankers found that they could trust John D. Rockefeller, and his associates in the merchant business began looking to him for judgment and leadership.

Clark & Rockefeller’s already healthy business was given a boost by the Civil War economy, and by 1863 the firm’s two partners had put away a substantial amount of capital and were looking for new ventures. The most obvious and exciting candidate was oil. A few years before, the nation’s first oil well had been drilled at Titusville, in western Pennsylvania, and by 1863 Cleveland had become the refining and shipping center for a trail of newly opened oil fields in the so-called Oil Region. Activity in the oil fields, however, was extremely chaotic, a scene of unpredictable wildcatting, and John D. Rockefeller was a man who prized above all else the maintenance of order. He and Clark, therefore, decided to avoid drilling and instead go into the refining of oil, and in 1863 they formed Andrews, Clark & Company with an oil specialist named Samuel Andrews. Rockefeller, never given to publicity, was the “Company.”

With excellent railroad connections as well as the Great Lakes to draw upon for transportation, the city of Cleveland and the firm of Andrews, Clark & Company both did well. The discovery of oil wrought a revolution in U.S. methods of illumination. Kerosene soon replaced animal fat as the source of light across the country, and by 1865 Rockefeller was fully convinced that oil refining would be his life’s work. Unhappy with his Clark-family partners, Rockefeller bought them out for $72,000 in 1865 and created the new firm of Rockefeller & Andrews, already Cleveland’s largest oil refiners. It was a typically bold move by Rockefeller, who although innately conservative and methodical was never afraid to make difficult decisions. He thus found himself, at the age of 25, co-owner of one of the world’s leading oil concerns.

Talent, capital, and good timing combined to bless Rockefeller & Andrews. Cleveland handled the lion’s share of Pennsylvania crude and, as the demand for oil continued to explode, Rockefeller & Andrews soon dominated the Cleveland scene. By 1867, when a young man of exceptional talent named Henry Flagler became a third partner, the firm was already operating the world’s number one oil refinery; there was as yet little oil produced outside the United States. The year before, John Rockefeller’s brother, William Rockefeller, had opened a New York office to encourage the rapidly growing export of kerosene and oil byproducts, and it was not long before foreign sales became an important part of Rockefeller strength. In 1869 the young firm allocated $60,000 for plant improvements—an enormous sum of money for that day.
Creation of the Standard Oil Monopoly: 1870–92

The early years of the oil business were marked by tremendous swings in the production and price of both crude and refined oil. With a flood of newcomers entering the field every day, size and efficiency already had become critically important for survival. As the biggest refiner, Rockefeller was in a better position than anyone to weather the price storms. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler, with whom Rockefeller enjoyed a long and harmonious business relationship, decided to incorporate their firm to raise the capital needed to enlarge the company further. On January 10, 1870, the Standard Oil Company was formed, with the two Rockefellers, Flagler, and Andrews owning the great majority of stock, valued at $1 million. The new company was not only capable of refining approximately ten percent of the entire country’s oil, it also owned a barrel-making plant, dock facilities, a fleet of railroad tank cars, New York warehouses, and forest land for the cutting of lumber used to produce barrel staves. At a time when the term was yet unknown, Standard Oil had become a vertically integrated company.

One of the single advantages of Standard Oil’s size was the leverage it gave the company in railroad negotiations. Most of the oil refined at Standard made its way to New York and the Eastern Seaboard. Because of Standard’s great volume—60 carloads a day by 1869—it was able to win lucrative rebates from the warring railroads. In 1871 the various railroads concocted a plan whereby the nation’s oil refiners and railroads would agree to set and maintain prohibitively high freight rates while awarding large rebates and other special benefits to those refiners who were part of the scheme. The railroads would avoid disastrous price wars while the large refiners forced out of business those smaller companies who refused to join the cartel, known as the South Improvement Company.
Company Perspectives:

Ours is a long-term business, with today’s accomplishments a reflection of well-executed plans set in motion years ago. Likewise, Exxon’s success at building shareholder value in the future is dependent on plans we develop and implement today.

The following strategies have and will continue to guide Exxon as we strive to meet shareholder and customer expectations: identifying and implementing quality investment opportunities at a timely and appropriate pace, while maintaining a selective and disciplined approach; being the most efficient competitor in every aspect of our business; maintaining a high-quality portfolio of productive assets; developing and employing the best technology; ensuring safe, environmentally sound operations; continually improving an already high-quality work force; maintaining a strong financial position and ensuring that financial resources are employed wisely.

The plan was denounced immediately by Oil Region producers and many independent refiners, with near-riots breaking out in the oil fields. After a bitter war of words and a flood of press coverage, the oil refiners and the railroads abandoned their plan and announced the adoption of public, inflexible transport rates. In the meantime, however, Rockefeller and Flagler were already far advanced on a plan to combat the problems of excess capacity and dropping prices in the oil industry. To Rockefeller the remedy was obvious, though unprecedented: the eventual unification of all oil refiners in the United States into a single company. Rockefeller approached the Cleveland refiners and a number of important firms in New York and elsewhere with an offer of Standard Oil stock or cash in exchange for their often-ailing plants. By the end of 1872, all 34 refiners in the area had agreed to sell—some freely and for profit, and some, competitors alleged, under coercion. Because of Standard’s great size and the industry’s overbuilt capacity, Rockefeller and Flagler were in a position to make their competitors irresistible offers. All indications are that Standard regularly paid top dollar for viable companies.

By 1873 Standard Oil was refining more oil—10,000 barrels per day—than any other region of the country, employing 1,600 workers, and netting around $500,000 per year. With great confidence, Rockefeller proceeded to duplicate his Cleveland success throughout the rest of the country. By the end of 1874 he had absorbed the next three largest refiners in the nation, located in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Rockefeller also began moving into the field of distribution with the purchase of several of the new pipelines then being laid across the country. With each new acquisition it became more difficult for Rockefeller’s next target to refuse his cash. Standard interests rapidly grew so large that the threat of monopoly was clear. The years 1875 to 1879 saw Rockefeller push through his plan to its logical conclusion. In 1878, a mere six years after beginning its annexation campaign, Standard Oil controlled $33 million of the country’s $35 million annual refining capacity, as well as a significant proportion of the nation’s pipelines and oil tankers. At the age of 39, Rockefeller was one of the five wealthiest men in the country.

Standard’s involvement in the aborted South Improvement Company, however, had earned it lasting criticism. The company’s subsequent absorption of the refining industry did not mend its image among the few remaining independents and the mass of oil producers who found in Standard a natural target for their wrath when the price of crude dropped precipitously in the late 1870s. Although the causes of producers’ tailing fortunes are unclear, it is evident that given Standard’s extraordinary position in the oil industry it was fated to become the target of dissatisfactions. In 1879 nine Standard Oil officials were indicted by a Pennsylvania grand jury for violating state antimonopoly laws. Although the case was not pursued, it indicated the depth of feeling against Standard Oil, and was only the first in a long line of legal battles waged to curb the company’s power.

In 1882 Rockefeller and his associates reorganized their dominions, creating the first “trust” in U.S. business history. This move overcame state laws restricting the activity of a corporation to its home state. Henceforth the Standard Oil Trust, domiciled in New York City, held “in trust” all assets of the various Standard Oil companies. Of the Standard Oil Trust’s nine trustees, John D. Rockefeller held the largest number of shares. Together the trust’s 30 companies controlled 80 percent of the refineries and 90 percent of the oil pipelines in the United States, constituting the leading industrial organization in the world. The trust’s first year’s combined net earnings were $11.2 million, of which some $7 million was immediately plowed back into the companies for expansion. Almost lost in the flurry of big numbers was the 1882 creation of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, one of the many regional corporations created to handle the trust’s activities in surrounding states. Barely worth mentioning at the time, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, or “Jersey” as it came to be called, would soon become the dominant Standard company and, much later, rename itself Exxon.
Key Dates:

1870:
John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler incorporate the Standard Oil Company.
1878:
Standard controls $33 million of the country’s $35 million annual refining capacity.
1882:
Rockefeller reorganizes Standard Oil into a trust, creating Standard Oil Company of New Jersey as one of many regional corporations controlled by the trust.
1888:
Standard founds its first foreign affiliate, Anglo-American Oil Company, Limited.
1890:
The Sherman Antitrust Act is passed, in large part, in response to Standard’s oil monopoly.
1891:
The trust has secured a quarter of the total oil field production in the United States.
1892:
Lawsuit leads to dissolving of the trust; the renamed Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) becomes main vessel of the Standard holdings.
1899:
Jersey becomes the sole holding company for all of the Standard interests.
1906:
Federal government files suit against Jersey under the Sherman Antitrust Act, charging it with running a monopoly.
1911:
U.S. Supreme Court upholds lower court conviction of the company and orders that it be separated into 34 unrelated companies, one of which continues to be called Standard Oil Company (New Jersey).
1926:
The Esso brand is used for the first time on the company’s refined products.
1946:
A 30 percent interest in Arabian American Oil Company, and its vast Saudi Arabian oil concessions, is acquired.
1954:
Company gains seven percent stake in Iranian oil production consortium.
1972:
Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) changes its name to Exxon Corporation.
1973:
OPEC cuts off oil supplies to the United States.
1980:
Revenues exceed $100 billion because of the rapid increase in oil prices.
1989:
The crash of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound off the port of Valdez, Alaska, releases about 260,000 barrels of crude oil.
1990:
Headquarters are moved from Rockefeller Center in New York City to Irving, Texas.
1994:
A federal jury in an Exxon Valdez civil action finds the company guilty of “recklessness” and orders it to pay $286.8 million in compensatory damages and $5 billion in punitive damages.
1997:
Company appeals the $5 billion punitive damage award; it reports profits of $8.46 billion on revenues of $120.28 billion for the year.
1998:
Company agrees to buy Mobil in one of the largest mergers in U.S. history, which would create the largest oil company in the world, Exxon Mobil Corporation.

The 1880s were a period of exponential growth for Standard. The trust not only maintained its lock on refining and distribution but also seriously entered the field of production. By 1891 the trust had secured a quarter of the country’ s total output, most of it in the new regions of Indiana and Illinois. Standard’s overseas business was also expanding rapidly, and in 1888 it founded its first foreign affiliate, London-based Anglo-American Oil Company, Limited (later known as Esso Petroleum Company, Limited). The overseas trade in kerosene was especially important to Jersey, which derived as much as threefourths of its sales from the export trade. Jersey’s Bayonne, New Jersey refinery was soon the third largest in the Standard family, putting out 10,000 to 12,000 barrels per day by 1886. In addition to producing and refining capacity, Standard also was extending gradually its distribution system from pipelines and bulk wholesalers toward the retailer and eventual end user of kerosene, the private consumer.
Jersey at Head of Standard Oil Empire: 1892–1911

The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in large part in response to Standard’s oil monopoly, laid the groundwork for a second major legal assault against the company, an 1892 Ohio Supreme Court order forbidding the trust to operate Standard of Ohio. As a result, the trust was promptly dissolved, but taking advantage of newly liberalized state law in New Jersey, the Standard directors made Jersey the main vessel of their holdings. Standard Oil Company of New Jersey became Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) at this time. The new Standard Oil structure now consisted of only 20 much-enlarged companies, but effective control of the interests remained in the same few hands as before. Jersey added a number of important manufacturing plants to its already impressive refining capacity and was the leading Standard unit. It was not until 1899, however, that Jersey became the sole holding company for all of the Standard interests. At that time the entire organization’s assets were valued at about $300 million and it employed 35,000 people. John D. Rockefeller continued as nominal president, but the most powerful active member of Jersey’s board was probably John D. Archbold.

Rockefeller had retired from daily participation in Standard Oil in 1896 at the age of 56. Once Standard’s consolidation was complete Rockefeller spent his time reversing the process of accumulation, seeing to it that his staggering fortune—estimated at $900 million in 1913—was redistributed as efficiently as it had been made.

The general public was only dimly aware of Rockefeller’s philanthropy, however. More obvious were the frankly monopolistic policies of the company he had built. With its immense size and complete vertical integration, Standard Oil piled up huge profits ($830 million in the 12 years from 1899 to 1911). In relative terms, however, its domination of the U.S. industry was steadily decreasing. By 1911 its percentage of total refining was down to 66 percent from the 90 percent of a generation before, but in absolute terms Standard Oil had grown to monstrous proportions. Therefore, it was not surprising that in 1905 a U.S. congressman from Kansas launched an investigation of Standard Oil’s role in the falling price of crude in his state. The commissioner of the Bureau of Corporations, James R. Garfield, decided to widen the investigation into a study of the national oil industry—in effect, Standard Oil.

Garfield’s critical report prompted a barrage of state lawsuits against Standard Oil (New Jersey) and, in November 1906, a federal suit was filed charging the company, John D. Rockefeller, and others with running a monopoly. In 1911, after years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s conviction of Standard Oil for monopoly and restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court ordered the separation from Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) of 33 of the major Standard Oil subsidiaries, including those that subsequently kept the Standard name.
Independent Growth into a “Major”: 1911–72

Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) retained an equal number of smaller companies spread around the United States and overseas, representing $285 million of the former Jersey’s net value of $600 million. Notable among the remaining holdings were a group of large refineries, four medium-sized producing companies, and extensive foreign marketing affiliates. Absent were the pipelines needed to move oil from well to refinery, much of the former tanker fleet, and access to a number of important foreign markets, including Great Britain and the Far East.

John D. Archbold, a longtime intimate of the elder Rockefeller and whose Standard service had begun in 1879, remained president of Standard Oil (New Jersey). Archbold’s first problem was to secure sufficient supplies of crude oil for Jersey’s extensive refining and marketing capacity. Jersey’s former subsidiaries were more than happy to continue selling crude to Jersey; the dissolution decree had little immediate effect on the coordinated workings of the former Standard Oil group, but Jersey set about finding its own sources of crude. The company’s first halting steps toward foreign production met with little success; ventures in Romania, Peru, Mexico, and Canada suffered political or geological setbacks and were of no help. In 1919, however, Jersey made a domestic purchase that would prove to be of great long-term value. For $17 million Jersey acquired 50 percent of the Humble Oil & Refining Company of Houston, Texas, a young but rapidly growing network of Texas producers that immediately assumed first place among Jersey’s domestic suppliers. Although only the fifth leading producer in Texas at the time of its purchase, Humble would soon become the dominant drilling company in the United States and eventually was wholly purchased by Jersey. Humble, later known as Exxon Company U.S.A., remained one of the leading U.S. producers of crude oil and natural gas through the end of the century.

Despite initial disappointments in overseas production, Jersey remained a company oriented to foreign markets and supply sources. On the supply side, Jersey secured a number of valuable Latin American producing companies in the 1920s, especially several Venezuelan interests consolidated in 1943 into Creole Petroleum Corporation. By that time Creole was the largest and most profitable crude producer in the Jersey group. In 1946 Creole produced an average of 451,000 barrels per day, far more than the 309,000 by Humble and almost equal to all other Jersey drilling companies combined. Four years later, Creole generated $157 million of the Jersey group’s total net income of $408 million and did so on sales of only $517 million. Also in 1950, Jersey’s British affiliates showed sales of $283 million but a bottom line of about $2 million. In contrast to the industry’s early days, oil profits now lay in the production of crude, and the bulk of Jersey’s crude came from Latin America. The company’s growing Middle Eastern affiliates did not become significant resources until the early 1950s. Jersey’s Far East holdings, from 1933 to 1961 owned jointly with Socony-Vacuum Oil Company—formerly Standard Oil Company of New York and now Mobil Corporation—never provided sizable amounts of crude oil.

In marketing, Jersey’s income showed a similar preponderance of foreign sales. Jersey’s domestic market had been limited by the dissolution decree to a handful of mid-Atlantic states, whereas the company’s overseas affiliates were well entrenched and highly profitable. Jersey’s Canadian affiliate, Imperial Oil Ltd., had a monopolistic hold on that country’s market, while in Latin America and the Caribbean the West India Oil Company performed superbly during the second and third decades of the 20th century. Jersey had also incorporated eight major marketing companies in Europe by 1927, and these, too, sold a significant amount of refined products—most of them under the Esso brand name introduced the previous year (the name was derived from the initials for Standard Oil). Esso became Jersey’s best known and most widely used retail name both at home and abroad.

Jersey’s mix of refined products changed considerably over the years. As the use of kerosene for illumination gave way to electricity and the automobile continued to grow in popularity, Jersey’s sales reflected a shift away from kerosene and toward gasoline. Even as late as 1950, however, gasoline had not yet become the leading seller among Jersey products. That honor went to the group of residual fuel oils used as a substitute for coal to power ships and industrial plants. Distillates used for home heating and diesel engines were also strong performers. Even in 1991, when Exxon distributed its gasoline through a network of 12,000 U.S. and 26,000 international service stations, the earnings of all marketing and refining activities were barely one-third of those derived from the production of crude. In 1950 that proportion was about the same, indicating that regardless of the end products into which oil was refined, it was the production of crude that yielded the big profits.

Indeed, by mid-century the international oil business had become, in large part, a question of controlling crude oil at its source. With Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) and its multinational competitors having built fully vertically integrated organizations, the only leverage remained control of the oil as it came out of the ground. Although it was not yet widely known in the United States, production of crude was shifting rapidly from the United States and Latin America to the Middle East. As early as 1908 oil had been verified in present-day Iran, but it was not until 1928 that Jersey and Socony-Vacuum, prodded by chronic shortages of crude, joined three European companies in forming Iraq Petroleum Company. Also in 1928, Jersey, Shell, and Anglo-Persian secretly agreed to limit each company’s share of world production to their present relative amounts, attempting, by means of this “As Is” agreement, to limit competition and keep prices at comfortably high levels. As with Rockefeller’s similar tactics 50 years before, it was not clear in 1928 that the agreement was illegal, because its participants were located in a number of different countries each with its own set of trade laws. Already in 1928, Jersey and the other oil giants were stretching the very concept of nationality beyond any simple application.

Following World War II, Jersey was again in need of crude to supply the resurgent economies of Europe. Already the world’s largest producer, the company became interested in the vast oil concessions in Saudi Arabia recently won by Texaco and Socal. The latter companies, in need of both capital for expansion and world markets for exploitation, sold 30 percent of the newly formed Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) to Jersey and ten percent to Socony-Vacuum in 1946. Eight years later, after Iran’s nationalization of Anglo-Persian’s holdings was squelched by a combination of CIA assistance and an effective worldwide boycott of Iranian oil by competitors, Jersey was able to take seven percent of the consortium formed to drill in that oil-rich country. With a number of significant tax advantages attached to foreign crude production, Jersey drew an increasing percentage of its oil from its holdings in all three of the major Middle Eastern fields—Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—and helped propel the 20-year postwar economic boom in the West. With oil prices exceptionally low, the United States and Europe busily shifted their economies to complete dependence on the automobile and on oil as the primary industrial fuel.
Exxon, Oil Shocks, and Diversification: 1972–89

Despite the growing strength of newcomers to the international market, such as Getty and Conoco, the big companies continued to exercise decisive control over the world oil supply and thus over the destinies of the Middle East producing countries. Growing nationalism and an increased awareness of the extraordinary power of the large oil companies led to the 1960 formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Later, a series of increasingly bitter confrontations erupted between countries and companies concerned about control over the oil upon which the world had come to depend. The growing power of OPEC and the concomitant nationalization of oil assets by various producing countries prompted Jersey to seek alternative sources of crude. Exploration resulted in discoveries in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea in the late 1960s. The Middle Eastern sources remained paramount, however, and when OPEC cut off oil supplies to the United States in 1973—in response to U.S. sponsorship of Israel—the resulting 400 percent price increase induced a prolonged recession and permanently changed the industrial world’s attitude to oil. Control of oil was, in large part, taken out of the hands of the oil companies, who began exploring new sources of energy and business opportunities in other fields.

For Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which had changed its name to Exxon in 1972, the oil embargo had several major effects. Most obviously it increased corporate sales; the expensive oil allowed Exxon to double its 1972 revenue of $20 billion in only two years and then pushed that figure over the $100 billion mark by 1980. After a year of windfall profits made possible by the sale of inventoried oil bought at much lower prices, Exxon was able to make use of its extensive North Sea and Alaskan holdings to keep profits at a steady level. The company had suffered a strong blow to its confidence, however, and soon was investigating a number of diversification measures that eventually included office equipment, a purchase of Reliance Electric Company (the fifth largest holdings of coal in the United States), and an early 1980s venture into shale oil. With the partial exception of coal, all of these were expensive failures, costing Exxon approximately $6 billion to $7 billion.

By the early 1980s the world oil picture had eased considerably and Exxon felt less urgency about diversification. With the price of oil peaking around 1981 and then tumbling for most of the decade, Exxon’s sales dropped sharply. The company’s confidence rose, however, as OPEC’s grip on the marketplace proved to be weaker than advertised. Having abandoned its forays into other areas, Exxon refocused on the oil and gas business, cutting its assets and workforce substantially to accommodate the drop in revenue without losing profitability. In 1986 the company consolidated its oil and gas operations outside North America, which had been handled by several separate subsidiaries, into a new division called Exxon Company, International, with headquarters in New Jersey. Exxon Company, U.S.A. and Imperial Oil Ltd. continued to handle the company’s oil and gas operations in the United States and Canada, respectively.

Exxon also bought back a sizable number of its own shares to bolster per-share earnings, which reached excellent levels and won the approval of Wall Street. The stock buyback was partially in response to Exxon’s embarrassing failure to invest its excess billions profitably—the company was somewhat at a loss as to what to do with its money. It could not expand further into the oil business without running into antitrust difficulties at home, and investments outside of oil would have had to be mammoth to warrant the time and energy required.
The Exxon Valdez: 1989–98

In 1989 Exxon was no longer the world’s largest company, and soon it would not even be the largest oil group (Royal Dutch/Shell would take over that position in 1990), but with the help of the March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez disaster the company heightened its notoriety. The crash of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound off the port of Valdez, Alaska, released about 260,000 barrels, or 11.2 million gallons, of crude oil. The disaster cost Exxon $1.7 billion in 1989 alone, and the company and its subsidiaries were faced with more than 170 civil and criminal lawsuits brought by state and federal governments and individuals.

By late 1991 Exxon had paid $2.2 billion to clean up Prince William Sound and had reached a tentative settlement of civil and criminal charges that levied a $125 million criminal fine against the oil conglomerate. Fully $100 million of the fine was forgiven and the remaining amount was split between the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund (which received $12 million) and the U.S. Treasury (which received $13 million). Exxon and a subsidiary, Exxon Shipping Co., also were required to pay an additional $1 billion to restore the spill area.

Although the Valdez disaster was a costly public relations nightmare—a nightmare made worse by the company’s slow response to the disaster and by CEO Lawrence G. Rawl’s failure to visit the site in person—Exxon’s financial performance actually improved in the opening years of the last decade in the 20th century. The company enjoyed record profits in 1991, netting $5.6 billion and earning a special place in the Fortune 500. Of the annual list’s top ten companies, Exxon was the only one to post a profit increase over 1990. Business Week’s ranking of companies according to market value also found Exxon at the top of the list.

The company’s performance was especially dramatic when compared with the rest of the fuel industry: as a group the 44 fuel companies covered by Business Week’s survey lost $35 billion in value, or 11 percent, in 1991. That year, Exxon also scrambled to the top of the profits heap, according to Forbes magazine. With a profit increase of 12 percent over 1990, Exxon’s $5.6 billion in net income enabled the company to unseat IBM as the United States’ most profitable company. At 16.5 percent, Exxon’s return on equity was also higher than any other oil company. The company also significantly boosted the value of its stock through its long-term and massive stock buyback program, through which it spent about $15.5 billion to repurchase 518 million shares—or 30 percent of its outstanding shares—between 1983 and 1991.

Like many of its competitors, Exxon was forced to trim expenses to maintain such outstanding profitability. One of the favorite methods was to cut jobs. Citing the globally depressed economy and the need to streamline operations, Exxon eliminated 5,000 employees from its payrolls between 1990 and 1992. With oil prices in a decade-long slide, Exxon also cut spending on exploration from $1.7 billion in 1985 to $900 million in 1992. The company’s exploration budget constituted less than one percent of revenues and played a large part in Exxon’s good financial performance. Meantime, Exxon in 1990 abandoned its fancy headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York City to reestablish its base in the heart of oil territory, in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas. In 1991 the company established a new Houston-based division, Exxon Exploration Company, to handle the company’s exploration operations everywhere in the world except for Canada.

At the end of 1993 Lee R. Raymond took over as CEO from the retiring Rawl. Raymond continued Exxon’s focus on cost-cutting, with the workforce falling to 79,000 employees by 1996, the lowest level since the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. Other savings were wrung out by reengineering production, transportation, and marketing processes. Over a five-year period ending in 1996, Exxon had managed to reduce its operating costs by $1.3 billion annually. The result was increasing levels of profits. In 1996 the company reported net income of $7.51 billion, more than any other company on the Fortune 500. The following year it made $8.46 billion on revenues of $120.28 billion, a seven percent profit margin. The huge profits enabled Exxon in the middle to late 1990s to take some gambles, and it risked tens of billion of dollars on massive new oil and gas fields in Russia, Indonesia, and Africa. In addition, Exxon and Royal Dutch/Shell joined forces in a worldwide petroleum additives joint venture in 1996.

Exxon was unable—some said unwilling—to shake itself free of its Exxon Valdez legacy. Having already spent some $1.1 billion to settle state and federal criminal charges related to the spill, Exxon faced a civil trial in which the plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages amounting to $16.5 billion. The 14,000 plaintiffs in the civil suit included fishermen, Alaskan natives, and others claiming harm from the spill. In June 1994 a federal jury found that the huge oil spill had been caused by “recklessness” on the part of Exxon. Two months later the same jury ruled that the company should pay $286.8 million in compensatory damages; then in August the panel ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. Although Wall Street reacted positively to what could have been much larger damage amounts and Exxon’s huge profits placed it in a position to reach a final settlement and perhaps put the Exxon Valdez nightmare in its past, the company chose to continue to take a hard line. It vowed to exhaust all its legal avenues to having the verdict overturned—including seeking a mistrial and a new trial and filing appeals. In June 1997, in fact, Exxon formally appealed the $5 billion verdict. Exxon seemed to make another PR gaffe in the late 1990s when it attempted to reverse a federal ban on the return to Alaskan waters of the Exxon Valdez, which had by then been renamed the Sea-River Mediterranean. Environmentalists continued to berate the company for its refusal to operate double-hulled tankers, a ship design that may have prevented the oil spill in the first place. In addition, in an unrelated but equally embarrassing development, Exxon in 1997 reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in which it agreed to run advertisements that refuted earlier ads claiming that its high-octane gasoline reduced automobile maintenance costs.
Nearing the Turn of the Century: Exxon Mobil

In December 1998 Exxon agreed to buy Mobil for about $75 billion in what promised to be one of the largest takeovers ever. The megamerger was one of a spate of petroleum industry deals brought about by an oil glut that forced down the price of a barrel of crude by late 1998 to about $11—the cheapest price in history with inflation factored in. Just one year earlier, the price had been about $23. The oil glut was caused by a number of factors, principally the Asian economic crisis and the sharp decline in oil consumption engendered by it, and the virtual collapse of OPEC, which was unable to curb production by its own members. In such an environment, pressure to cut costs was again exerted, and Exxon and Mobil cited projected savings of $2.8 billion per year as a prime factor behind the merger.

Based on 1998 results, the proposed Exxon Mobil Corporation would have combined revenues of $168.8 billion, making it the largest oil company in the world, and $8.1 billion in profits. Raymond would serve as chairman, CEO, and president of the Irving, Texas-based goliath, with the head of Mobil, Lucio A. Noto, acting as vice-chairman. Shareholders of both Exxon and Mobil approved the merger in May 1999. In September of that year the European Commission granted antitrust approval to the deal with the only major stipulation being that Mobil divest its share of a joint venture with BP Amoco p.l.c. in European refining and marketing. Approval from the Federal Trade Commission proved more difficult to come by, as the agency was concerned about major overlap between the two companies’ operations in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. The FTC was likely to force the companies to sell more than 1,000 gas stations in those regions as well as accede to other changes to gain U.S. antitrust approval.
Principal Subsidiaries

Ancon Insurance Company, Inc.; Esso Australia Resources Ltd.; Esso Eastern Inc.; Esso Hong Kong Limited; Esso Malaysia Berhad (65%); Esso Production Malaysia Inc.; Esso Sekiyu Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan); Esso Singapore Private Limited; Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited (87.5%); Exxon Energy Limited (Hong Kong); Exxon Yemen Inc.; General Sekiyu K.K. (Japan; 50.1%); Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc.; Esso Italiana S.p.A. (Italy); Esso Standard (Inter-America) Inc.; Esso Standard Oil S.A. Limited (Bahamas); Exxon Asset Management Company (75.5%); Exxon Capital Holdings Corporation; Exxon Chemical Asset Management Partnership; Exxon Chemical Eastern Inc.; Exxon Chemical HDPE Inc.; Exxon Chemical Interamerica Inc.; Exxon Credit Corporation; Exxon Holding Latin America Limited (Bahamas); Exxon International Holdings, Inc.; Esso Aktiengesellschaft (Germany); Esso Austria Aktiengesellschaft; Esso Exploration and Production Norway AS; Esso Holding Company Holland Inc.; Exxon Chemical Antwerp Ethylene N.V. (Belgium); Esso Nederland B.V. (Netherlands); Exxon Chemical Holland Inc.; Exxon Funding B.V. (Netherlands); Esso Holding Company U.K. Inc.; Esso UK pic; Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited; Esso Petroleum Company, Limited (U.K.); Exxon Chemical Limited (U.K.); Exxon Chemical Olefins Inc.; Esso Norge AS (Norway); Esso Sociedad Anonima Petrolera Argentina; Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise (France; 81.54%); Esso (Switzerland); Exxon Minerals International Inc.; Compania Minera Disputada de Las Condes Limitada (Chile); Exxon Overseas Corporation; Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc.; Exxon Equity Holding Company; Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation; Exxon Financial Services Company Limited (Bahamas); Exxon Ventures Inc.; Exxon Azerbaijan Limited (Bahamas); Mediterranean Standard Oil Co.; Esso Trading Company of Abu Dhabi; Exxon Pipeline Holdings, Inc.; Exxon Pipeline Company; Exxon Rio Holding Inc.; Esso Brasileira de Petroleo Limitada (Brazil); Exxon Sao Paulo Holding Inc.; Exxon Worldwide Trading Company; Imperial Oil Limited (Canada; 69.6%); International Colombia Resources Corporation; SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings, Inc.; SeaRiver Maritime, Inc.; Societe Francaise EXXON CHEMICAL (France; 99.35%); Exxon Chemical France; Exxon Chemical Poly meres SNC (France).
[read more]

 

Using Al-Qaeda in Syria like sending Gitmo inmates to fight – Putin

 

In an RT global exclusive premiere, President Putin gives his first post-inauguration interview, speaking in depth with RT’s Kevin Owen ahead of the APEC summit in Vladivostok.

VIDEO LINK

Touching upon a range of issues, he discusses topics from the Pussy Riot trial to the Julian Assange case, from the upcoming US elections to the situation in Syria.

RT: What I want to talk about first of all is the ongoing at the moment APEC summit. You’ll be going there very shortly – in Vladivostok because it’s the first time that Russia has held it, a prestigious event. But it always begs the question – what’s actually achieved at these events, events like that, like the G8, G20?

Now, though APEC is primarily an economic vessel, there’s a lot of politics involved as well. And of course a lot of the key players including you, including America, a lot of key players disagree on some very key issues. I’m thinking about Syria, I’m thinking about missile defense, I’m thinking about Iran. Is there a danger that the politics may stifle, get in the way of the big economic deals that the very same key players are hoping to sign at this summit or at least talk about signing?

President Putin: That is true. But in fact – and you’ve just said it yourself – APEC was originally conceived as a forum for discussing economic issues. And as this year’s host country, we also intend to focus on economic and socio-economic challenges.

APEC was originally established with the overall objective of liberalizing the global economy. And we intend to make this a key issue on the agenda in Vladivostok.

When I invited our counterparts, five years ago, to meet for this forum particularly in the Russian Federation, my rationale was to acknowledge the importance of this area for Russia, given that two-thirds of Russia’s territory are located in Asia, and yet the bulk of our foreign trade – more than 50 percent – is with Europe, whereas Asia only accounts for 24 percent. Meanwhile, Asia is developing rapidly and intensively. You and I know it, and everybody knows it. Therefore, we are planning to focus primarily on economic challenges, transport, global food security and the task of liberalizing the global economy. It’s a well-known fact that the past year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people affected by starvation, which has grown by 200 million. This means that 1 billion people worldwide are currently suffering from food shortages or famine. I believe this is the kind of issue that will be the focus of attention, along with a number of other challenges that are highly sensitive and significant for millions of people.

As far as Syria and other hot spots are concerned – issues that are currently in the limelight – we will certainly address them in our deliberations at the forum, in bilateral discussions or otherwise. They won’t be overlooked.
Now Russia is full WTO member, APEC summit affects millions of people

RT: Do you think there should be more practical outcomes though? Is it too much of a talking show – events like APEC?

Putin: You know, I attended the G20 meeting in Mexico just recently. As a rule, such meetings are pre-arranged and pre-discussed by our aides and ministers and high-ranking experts, and still there are certain issues that eventually come into focus for the heads of states attending. And in fact, that’s how it was in Mexico. I was very interested to follow discussions and look at conflicting opinions, and I participated in some of those discussions. I think the coming forum will see just as many debates. But it’s only through this kind of meticulous, hard work – year after year and quarter after quarter, if not day-by-day, if you excuse my officialeese – that we can eventually arrive at acceptable solutions to sensitive issues such as, say, liberalizing trade. Because this is an issue that affects millions of people. You know the issues debated within the framework of the World Trade Organization, and the coming APEC summit are so immensely important for us, partly because Russia is now a full member of the WTO. We have also established a Customs Union and a Common Economic Space in the post-Soviet territory jointly with Belarus and Kazakhstan. And dialogue is very important for us, so that we can explain to our partners and help them realize how this kind of association in the post-Soviet area could be beneficial and helpful. Especially since the vehicles I’ve mentioned have been established based on WTO principles.
Concerned by Syrian hostilities, but also by consequences of certain decisions

RT: Ok, thanks for explaining that. We’re going to come back to APEC a little bit later if we may, but you touched on another big subject in headlines, the horrendous events that have been unfolding in Syria over the last 18 months now. Russia’ position has been steadfast all the way along the line. Here you’ve said there should be no foreign intervention and it should be the Syrian people who do the deciding and it should be done through diplomacy. However, that’s a great idea, but day in day out innocent lives are being lost on both sides. Is it time for something more than talking? Should Russia be reassessing its position maybe now?

Putin: How come Russia is the only one who’s expected to revise its stance? Don’t you think our counterparts in negotiations ought to revise theirs as well? Because if we look back at the events in the past few years, we’ll see that quite a few of our counterparts’ initiatives have not played out the way they were intended to.

Take the examples of the numerous countries ridden by escalating internal conflict. The US and its allies went into Afghanistan, and now they’re all thinking about how to get out of there. If there’s anything on the table, it’s the issue of assisting them in withdrawing their troops and hardware from Afghanistan through our transit routes.

Now, are you sure that the situation there will be stable for decades to come? So far, no one is confident about it.

And look at what’s going on in Arab countries. There have been notable developments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, etc. Would you say that order and prosperity have been totally ensured for these nations? And what’s going on in Iraq?

In Libya, there are armed clashes still raging among the country’s various tribes. I won’t even mention the way the country had its regime changed: this is a separate topic. What concerns us, and I want to emphasize this once again, is the current hostilities in Syria. But at the same time, we are just as concerned about the possible consequences of certain decisions, should they be taken.

In our opinion, the most important task today is, ending the violence. We must urge all the warring parties, including the government and the so-called rebels, the armed opposition, to sit down at the negotiating table and decide on a future that would guarantee security for all stakeholders in Syria. Only then should they get down to any practical measures regarding the country’s future governance system. We realize that this country needs a change, but this doesn’t mean that change should come with bloodshed.
We should stop trying to impose unacceptable, dead-end solutions to Syrian crisis

RT: OK, well, given the facts regarding Syria that you see on the table now, what is the next step? What do you realistically think is going to happen next?

Putin: We told our partners we would like to sit down together at the negotiating table in Geneva. And when we did, together we charted a roadmap for further action that would help bring peace to Syria and channel developments down a more constructive path. We received almost unanimous support and shared the talks’ results with the Syrian government. But then the rebels actually refused to recognize those decisions; and many of the negotiating parties have also quietly backed down.

I believe that the first thing to do is to stop shipping arms into the warzone, which is still going on. We should stop trying to impose unacceptable solutions on either side, because it is a dead-end. That’s what we should do. It is that simple.

Luckily, we generally enjoy friendly relations with the Arab world, but we would like to stay away from Islamic sectarian conflict, or interfere in a showdown involving the Sunnis, the Shia, theAlawis and so on. We treat everyone with equal respect. We also get on well with Saudi Arabia and other countries; I have cultivated a warm personal relationship with the custodian of two Islamic shrines. The only underlying motive behind our stance is the desire to create a favorable environment for the situation to develop positively in years to come.

RT: What are your thoughts about the United Nations and the way the United Nations has reacted particularly in Syria. There’s been criticism that it’s failed to deliver a unified front if you like and has become more of a figurehead organization. Do you share that view?

Putin: Quite the contrary, I would say. My take on the issue is the absolute opposite of what you have just said. If the United Nations and the Security Council had indeed turned into a mere rubberstamping tool for any one of the member states, it would have ceased to exist, just like the League of Nations did. But the reality is that the Security Council and the UN are meant to be a tool for compromise. Seeking to achieve it is a long and complex process, but only hard work can yield us fruit.

Using Al-Qaeda to fight in Syria perilous, one may as well give guns to Gitmo inmates

RT: Understood. Mr. President, another question I’d like to ask you – a number of Western and Arab nations have been covertly … with supporting the FSA, the Free Syrian Army – indeed, some of them are doing it openly now. Of course the catch here is that the FSA is suspected of hiring known Al-Qaeda fighters amongst their ranks. So the twist in this tale is that a lot of those countries are actually sponsoring terrorism, if you like, in Syria, countries that have suffered from terrible terrorism themselves. Is that a fair assessment?

Putin: You know, when someone aspires to attain an end they see as optimal, any means will do. As a rule, they will try and do that by hook or by crook – and hardly ever think of the consequences. That was the case during the war in Afghanistan, when the Soviet Union invaded in 1979. At that time, our present partners supported a rebel movement there and basically gave rise to Al Qaeda, which later backfired on the United States itself.

Today some want to use militants from Al Qaeda or some other organizations with equally radical views to accomplish their goals in Syria. This policy is dangerous and very short-sighted. In that case, one should unlock Guantanamo, arm all of its inmates and bring them to Syria to do the fighting – it’s practically the same kind of people. But what we should bear in mind is that one day these people will get back at their former captors. On the other hand, these same people should bear in mind that they will eventually end up in a new prison, very much like the one off the Cuban shore.

I would like to emphasize that this policy is very short-sighted and is fraught with dire consequences.

Too early to say if Arab Spring is a blessing or a curse

RT: I’d like to broaden that a little bit now, a little bit wider from Syria. You touched upon Syria. Syria is in the middle of a civil war, we’re seeing conflicts in Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia. Ok, things are a bit calmer in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, you mentioned it just now. But standing back from it overall, all the troubles that we’ve seen in the Middle East, all the turmoil there – has it been at all for the good or for the bad, where does it put that region now?

Putin: You know, we can discuss this into the small hours and still run out of time. For me, it’s a clear that these events have a historic logic. The leaders of these countries have obviously overlooked the need for change and missed ongoing trends at home and abroad, so they failed to produce the reforms which would have saved the day. All these events simply logically stem from this background. Whether this is a blessing or a curse with many negative implications, is now too early to say. In any case, the lack of a civilized approach, the high level of violence has so far stood in the way of any sustainable political structures which would help solve economic and social problems in societies hit by those events. This is what causes a lot of concern for the future. Because the people in these countries, who have had enough of their previous regimes, clearly expect the new governments to begin with tackling their social and economic problems in a competent way. But with no political stability, these problems cannot be solved.

Russia, US reliable partners and allies for each other

RT: Let’s turn now to the United States, the upcoming election there, which we are all looking forward to very much. Of course now the re-set button with Russia was firmly pushed by Barack Obama over the last 4 years, but its saw its ups and downs, and there’s still that missile defense shield that’s a headache for Russia in the East of Europe. If Obama does win a second term, what’s going to define the next chapter of Russia and America’s relations and is it chapter you can do business with?

Putin: I believe that over the last four years Presidents Obama and Medvedev have made a lot of progress in strengthening Russia-US relations. We have signed the new START treaty. Backed by the US, Russia has become a full-fledged member of the World Trade Organization. There have been more reasons to be optimistic about our bilateral relations: our strengthened cooperation in combating terrorism and organized crime, in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction and others. In other words, we have accumulated quite a lot of positive experience.

But the issue you mentioned – the US missile defense system – is surely one of the key issues on today’s agenda because it involves Russia’s vital interests. Scholars and experts understand that a unilateral solution will not enhance global stability. In essence, the intention is to upset the strategic balance, which is a very dangerous thing to do, as any involved party will always strive to maintain its defensive capabilities, and the entire thing could simply trigger off an arms race. Is it possible to find a solution to the problem, if president Obama is re-elected for a second term? In principle, yes, it is. But this isn’t just about president Obama. For all I know, his desire to work out a solution is quite sincere.

I met him recently on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico where we had a chance to talk. And though we talked mostly about Syria, I had the chance to feel the mood of my counterpart. My feeling is that he is a sincere man and that he sincerely wants to implement positive change. But can he do it, will they let him do it? I mean that there is also the military lobby, and the Department of State, which is quite conservative. By the way it is fairly similar to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. They are run by a number of professional clans who have been working there for decades. The thing is that in order to solve the missile defense issue, we both need to accept as an axiom that ‘yes, we are reliable partners and allies for each other’. Let’s imagine for a second we have the solution – that means that from now on we jointly assess missile threats and control this defense system together. This is a highly sensitive area of national defense. I am not sure that our partners are ready for this kind of cooperation.

RT: Is there anything that Russia can do to try and meet in the middle, to give a better ground?

Putin: We did what we could. We said, let’s do it together. Our partners are so far refusing to go along. What else can we do? We can maintain dialogue. That’s exactly what we will be doing, but naturally, as our American partners proceed with developing their own missile defense we shall have to think of how we can defend ourselves and preserve the strategic balance. By the way, America’s European allies (who also happen to be Russia’s partners) have nothing to do with it. I believe that as a European national, you should understand it. This is a purely American missile defense system, and a strategic one at that, with its European elements pushed to the periphery. You see, Europe, just like Russia, is not allowed to take part in either assessing missile threats or controlling the system. Our original proposal was to develop it as a three-party solution, but our partners have not agreed to it.

Romney effectively aiming US missile shield at Russia already

RT: Ok. So, we think you can work with Barack Obama if he gets in. What about if Mitt Romney gets in? Look, I’ve got some quotes here from just a month or two ago. This is the man that if he makes it to the White House said, “Russia is without question our number one geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world’s worst” and he went on to say “Russia is not a friendly character on the world stage.” Could you work with him, sir?

Putin: Yes, we can. We’ll work with whichever president is elected by the American people. But our effort will only be as efficient as our partners will want it to be.

As for Mr. Romney’s position, we understand that this is to a certain extent motivated by election campaign rhetoric, but I also think that he was obviously wrong, because such behavior on the international arena is the same as using nationalism and segregation as tools of US domestic policy. Its effect on the international arena is the same, when a politician, a person who aspires to lead a nation, especially a great country like the U.S., declares someone to be an enemy a priori. And by the way, this brings something else to mind.

When we talk about the missile defense system, our American partners keep telling us, “This is not directed against you.” But what happens if Mr. Romney, who believes us to be America’s number one foe, is elected as president of the United States? In that case, the missile defence system will definitely be directed against Russia as it is technologically configured exactly for this purpose.

And you also have to think about its strategic character, it’s built not for a year or even a decade, and the chances that a man with Romney’s views could come to power are quite high. So what are we supposed to do to ensure our security?

Magnitsky death used by some to make an enemy of Russia

RT: I’d like to talk about the latest developments in the Magnitsky case for a moment now, both the US and Britain, Britain most recently are working on this list of Russian officials, Russian citizens that they say are responsible for his death. He was a high ranking finance lawyer who died in a Russian jail, I’ll just explain for our viewers. Why is there still such a perception abroad that this wasn’t dealt with here in Russia, that the people responsible hadn’t been dealt with properly. Why does this keep rumbling on?

Putin: You see… there are people who need an enemy, they are looking for an opponent to fight against. Do you know how many people die while in prison in those countries which have condemned Russia? The numbers are huge! Look at the U.S. that came up with the so-called Magnitsky list. As you know, there is no death penalty in Russia while the U.S. still keeps it on the books. Anyone, including women can be executed. At the same time, all civilized societies know that judicial errors can occur in capital punishment cases, even when people plead guilty. It turns out later on that the convict did not commit the crime.

But that’s one thing. More importantly, I think only God has the right to take life away. But I don’t want to go too much into it right now – there’s a lot of philosophy in it. But with that in mind, we could have come up with our own black list, and more than one, of people who use the death penalty in other countries. But we choose not to do it.

As for Mr. Magnitsky, it is certainly a great tragedy that he died in prison. And there certainly must be a thorough investigation. If someone is guilty, they must be punished. But what I want to emphasize is that there is absolutely no political context to this case. It is a tragedy, but it only has to do with crime and legal procedure, not politics. No more than that.

Still, someone’s looking to spoil relations with Russia. They have banned some Russian officials that are allegedly involved in the death of Mr. Magnitsky from entering their country. Of course, I do regret his death and offer my condolences to his family.

But what should Russia do in such cases? Take appropriate steps and similarly list officials of the country that introduces such measures against Russia. Like that…

RT:And to make it perfectly clear, this case won’t be re-examined by Russia?

Putin: Which case? What needs to be re-tried? We must only find out whether someone’s guilty of his death or not. And if someone’s guilty and responsible for the death in some way, that person should be held accountable. That’s it. Again, there is no politics behind it. It’s the job of the law enforcement professionals to look into it.

And of course, the Russian authorities are going to do that. The Prosecutor’s Office is working on it now.

I try to stay as far away from PussyRiot case as possible

RT: Ok and now I’d like to talk about the trial and jailing of Pussy Riot, that punk group band. There’s been much criticism that the sentence handed down was too strong, too much and that the whole case was too big a deal off and that it actually back fired and has brought more people to their cause with the publicity. With hind sight , always a beautiful thing, but with hindsight do you think the case could have been handled differently?

Putin: You’ve been working in Russia for a while now and maybe know some Russian. Could you please translate the name of the band into Russian?

RT: Pussy Riot the punk band,I don’t know what you would call them in Russian Sir, but may be you could tell me!

Putin: Can you translate the first word into Russian? Or maybe it would sound too obscene? Yes, I think you wouldn’t do it because it sounds too obscene, even in English.

RT: I actually thought it was referring to a cat, but I’m getting your point here. Do you think the case was handled wrongly in any way, could some lesson have been learned?

Putin: I know you understand it perfectly well, you don’t need to pretend you don’t get it. It’s just because these people made everyone say their band’s name too many times. It’s obscene – but forget it.

Here’s what I would like to say. I have always felt that punishment should be proportionate to the offence. I am not in a position now and would not like, anyway, to comment on the decision of a Russian court, but I would rather talk about the moral side of the story.

First, in case you never heard of it, a couple of years ago one of the band’s members put up three effigies in one of Moscow’s big supermarkets, with a sign saying that Jews, gays and migrant workers should be driven out of Moscow. I think the authorities should have looked into their activities back then. After that, they staged an orgy in a public place. Of course, people are allowed to do whatever they want to do, as long as it’s legal, but this kind of conduct in a public place should not go unnoticed by the authorities. Then they uploaded the video of that orgy on the internet. You know some fans of group sex say it’s better than one-on-one because, like in any team, you don’t need to hit the ball all the time.

Again, it’s okay if you do what you like privately, but I wouldn’t be that certain about uploading your acts on the internet. It could be the subject of legal assessment, too.

Then they turned up at Yelokhovo Cathedral, here in Moscow, causing unholy mayhem, and went to another cathedral and caused mayhem there, too.

You know, Russians still have painful memories of the early years of Soviet rule, when thousands of Orthodox, Muslim, as well as clergy of other religions were persecuted. Soviet authorities brutally repressed the clergy. Many churches were destroyed. The attacks had a devastating effect on all our traditional religions. And so in general I think the state has to protect the feelings of believers.

I will not comment on whether the verdict is well-grounded and the sentence proportionate to the offence. These girls must have lawyers who defend their interests in court. They have the right to file an appeal and demand a new hearing. But it’s up to them, it’s just a legal issue.

RT: Is it realistic at all they will get some sort of early release?

Putin: I don’t know whether their lawyers have filed an appeal or not. I don’t follow the case that closely. If they appeal, a higher court is empowered to take any decision. To be honest, I try to stay as far away from the case as possible. I know the details but I do not want to get into it.

RT: There’s concern here and abroad that Russia has been suffering a clamp down on the opposition since you returned as President. There’s tighter defamation law, upping the fines for defamation, internet censorship laws brought into protect children. All these introduced under your watch. What’s the balance do you think between a healthy opposition and maintaining law and order? what’s your view?

Putin: So is it true then that other countries don’t have laws that ban child pornography, including online?

RT: Indeed they do.

Putin: So they do? Well, we didn’t, until recently. And if we began to protect our society and our children from these offences…

I just do what I think is right for Russia and Russians

RT: May be it was the timing of the introduction? It may have seemed a bit heavy handed as you came back to power again.

Putin: You know, I try not to think about it. I just do what I think is right for this country and for its people. And that’s how I will work in the future. Of course, I am aware of how my steps resonate globally, but this cannot dictate my policies. Any steps we take are in the interests of the Russian people, and our children need this kind of protection. No-one is going to use this as a tool to restrict the Internet or online freedoms, but we have the right to protect our children.

If we talk of what some call a clamp-down … We should clarify what we’re talking about. If we understand it as a simple requirement that everyone, including the opposition, complies with Russian law, then this requirement will be consistently enforced.

You might also remember the mass riots that shocked the UK some year ago. A lot of people were injured and lot of property damaged. Is it better to let things deteriorate to that state and then spend a year tracking down people and locking them up? I think it’s best not to let things go this far? That’s my first point.

Now to my second point. Let me now get down to the hard facts. You must know that a year ago I backed reform that will see Russian governors elected, and not appointed, as previously, through secret ballot. But I also took the next step. After taking office, I introduced a new bill on elections to the Upper Chamber of the Russian Parliament. These specific steps will pave the way for a more democratic Russia, and it’s true both for its people and its state. There have been other proposals initiated too, including changes in the law-making process.

The State Duma is now considering using public initiatives on major national issues submitted via the Internet as a source of new legislation. If a draft bill is supported by 100,000 web votes, it will then be discussed in the State Duma. Right now we are looking into how to put this idea into practice. There are other major proposals as well. We seek to make our society more advanced and more democratic and we intend to be consistent in following this path.

RT: We started off our talk by talking about the forthcoming APEC summit which you are off to very shortly. When you are there you’ll be meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao. You won’t be meeting Barak Obama because he’s not there, Hilary Clinton will be. Is that a sign of how he regards APEC? We know he’s busy but is it a sign of how he regards it? And is it a sign that China is increasingly becoming a bigger geopolitical and commercial partner for you?

Putin: China is indeed becoming a global economic and political hub. This is part of a global trend, with new centers emerging on the political and economic landscape. This is an obvious fact for everyone; the question is the pace of change. China has taken up this new leading role not only in Russia’s eyes, but also in the eyes of the whole world. What makes us rather special, however, is that Russia and China are neighbors, and our special relations took thousands of years to evolve to where we are now. We have been through times of sunshine which were very beneficial for both countries. We have also been through periods of gloom and conflict. Presently, Russia-China relations are at an unprecedented high, and we share mutual trust both in politically and economically. Over the coming years we are bound to achieve a 100 bln dollar turnover rate. To put this in perspective, currently Europe makes up 51% of Russia’s foreign trade, which amounts to over 200 bln dollars. That will be a serious push forward.

Our American partners told us long ago that Barack Obama will not attend the summit. The reason is the election race in the U.S., we think it’s okay. The U.S. will still be represented at a high level. So, yes, we’ve known that for several months now, and we fully understand the reasons. Anyway, this will be a great summit, with top officials coming from twenty countries – heads of states and governments. Of course, it’s a pity that the U.S. president cannot come this time, but nothing doing. I think if he really had the opportunity, he would not miss it, because it’s a good event for the U.S. to talk not only with us but also with other Asia-Pacific partners.

Anyway, I met Barack Obama earlier, as I said, in Mexico, and had a chance to discuss our bilateral ties and exchange opinions on the major global issues. So we do continue our dialogue.

Fight against corruption complicated, but we carry on

RT:Domestically again I’d like to talk about corruption. It’s a word that comes up time and time again here in Russia. You have talked about it before but most notably the previous president was really putting it at the top of his list of thing to sort out. However when Dmitry Medvedev left office as president he reported modest success at tackling it. How serious a problem do you think corruption is here in Russia in 2012 and what are you going to do about it?

Putin: Corruption is a problem for any country. And by the way you will find it in any country, be it in Europe or in the United States. They have legalized many things. Let’s take the private corporate lobby – what is it, is it corruption or not? It’s legalized and so formally is okay, within the law. But that depends on how you look at it. Therefore I will repeat that this problem is an issue for many countries.

More important is the level and scope of corruption. In our case, they are quite high. But this is typical of transition economies. The reason is that while new economic models are evolving many things are not yet adjusted or aligned, and the state is not always in control. There are also value issues, especially when we move from a socialist mindset and planned economy values to eternal values. This is a complicated process, especially if the new market facilitates rapid wealth acquisition for some particular circles or groups of people. This is something that is perceived painfully and with reprehension. The average person then starts thinking: if it is okay for those people to earn billions in a couple of years, why is it not okay for me to do this or that even if it isn’t exactly in sync with the law and moral values?

All this undermines the very foundation of the campaign against corruption. This is a very difficult process. But undoubtedly this is an essential part of our agenda, and we shall continue our efforts in this area.

RT: There are a big list of causes you have cited where do you begin to go about tackling it, and when is there going to be some sort of sea change, when will it get better if you like?

Putin: What we need to start with is to make our entire society detest the very notion of corruption. Corruption is a two-way process, with two sides to it, the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker, and it often happens that bribe-givers are even more active than the bribe-takers. Therefore it is a matter of supporting moral values; it is also a matter of making our law enforcement agencies more efficient and developing a legal framework that minimizes opportunities for corruption. This is a multi-dimensional task, very sensitive and difficult. And we shall work on every aspect of it.

RT: One of the practical ways you are going about it is the new draft law that prevents government officials from opening bank accounts and holding property abroad. I don’t know what you think about that law, but isn’t it possible for someone to use someone else’s account. How are you going to enforce it?

Putin: Of course you could. This bill has not been passed yet, it’s being reviewed by the State Duma. This naturally implies certain limitations for officials, because current legislation allows any Russian citizen to have a foreign bank account or property. Yet, limitations may be introduced for some officials, especially at a high-level. I don’t see anything extraordinary about this, especially in view of today’s realities. But the State Duma will have to present the rationale for their proposal and develop it into a detailed draft law. Overall, I believe this law has value and would assist the fight against corruption to a certain extent. Of course it will, because those people who are willing to commit themselves to serving their country and their people should be willing to agree to such terms – that if they want to have a bank account, it’ll have to be a Russian bank account, or a Russian branch of a bank. Why not? Many overseas banks have branches in Russia. One can keep their accounts here. Why go to Austria or the United States to open an account? If you connect your fate to this country be so kind as to make public your interests here, including financial interests, do not hide your money anywhere.

Assange case a definite example of double standards

RT: While we’ve got you with us sir.. I’d like to get your thoughts on the ongoing Julian Assange case in Britain, his legal battle with Britain and with a number of other countries as well but equally his attempts to get asylum in Equador which he’s now got and he’s holed-up in the Ecuadorean embassy. What’s your opinion on Britain’s stance, at one point they were talking about revoking the embassies diplomatic immunity so they could actually go in and get him. That sounds a bit odd when you think that Russia has a number of suspects it would like to talk to there, it’s a kind of topsy turvy situation, but they are given safe harbor in Britain.

Putin: This certainly is an unsettling factor in our relations with the UK. I used to tell my previous counterparts and friends in the British government – not those holding office at the moment – that Britain happens to be harboring certain individuals who have blood on their hands, having waged a real war on Russian territory and slaughtered people. I told them, “Just imagine what it would be like if Russia were to harbour militants from, say, the Irish Republican Army – not those negotiating and pursuing a compromise with the government these days (those are perfectly sane and sensible people), but those with a radical agenda.” You know what I was told in response? “But that’s exactly what the Soviet Union used to do, aiding people like that.”

First of all, I’m a former Soviet secret service operative myself. I don’t know whether the USSR used to aid this sort of people or not, simply because I never had anything to do with it. But even if we assume that it did, that was back in the Cold War era. There has been a cardinal change in the settings, the Soviet Union is history, and what we have today is a new Russia. How can we allow ourselves to be dominated by our old phobias and outdated perceptions of international relations and the kind of relations between our nations? Let them go at last.

We are constantly lectured on how independent Britain’s judiciary is. It makes its own decisions, and no one can influence that. What about Julian Assange? They have ruled to have him extradited. What is it if not an evident example of a double standard? I won’t make a definitive statement, but as far as I know, Ecuador has requested guarantees from the Swedish government that Sweden wouldn’t hand over Assange to the United States. No guarantees have so far been provided. At the very least, this suggests that we are looking at a politically motivated trial.

RT: Ok we’ll be following the developments there…We talked about some of the problems Russia faces, one of the long term problems Russia has been facing is the drugs trade, the import of drugs from Afghanistan. It’s increased many fold since NATO went in a decade ago, now the troops are due out in 2014 what then. Does Russia have any hope you can curb this huge drugs problem?

Putin: So far, it is not being solved. We are constantly engaged in dialogue with our partners, including those nations who have troops deployed in Afghanistan. And yet the situation has not improved – instead, it has deteriorated. The amount of drugs produced in Afghanistan has increased by 60 percent in the past year. By the way, I’m not sure about the exact figures, but some 90 percent of heroin peddled in the UK comes from Afghanistan. This is a common challenge and a common threat for us. For Russia, this is a very serious threat to our national security that cannot be overstated. More than 20 percent of the overall drug traffic coming from Afghanistan is marketed inside Russia. That makes up 70 tons of heroin and roughly 56 tons of crude opium as of last year, which is an immense amount, and it definitely qualifies as a threat to our national security.

RT: Could you explain to our viewers what the correlation was, why did this problem increase when NATO troops were there? Was there any connection? Why was that happening?

Putin: There is an apparent link. I won’t bring up any criminal schemes right now, but none of the nations who are currently committing their troops to Afghanistan want to make matters worse for themselves by combatting drugs in Afghanistan, because drugs are Afghanistan’s way of making a living. Nine percent of that country’s GDP comes from drug trafficking. If you want to replace this 9 percent, you’ll have to pay – but no one wants to. And you cannot get anywhere with mere statements about how you are planning to make up for those drug revenues with some other kinds of income. Talk is not enough – what you need is substantive economic policies and financial assistance. Nobody seems willing to provide that, to begin with. And no one wants to complicate matters for themselves by taking on drug trafficking, because if you take away drug revenues from those people, you effectively compel them to starvation, and that means making even more enemies in Afghanistan: if you go after drugs, people will go after you. That’s all there is to it. Drugs are closely related to terrorism and organized crime, but that is something everybody is aware of already. Everyone knows that drug revenues are partly used to finance terrorism. But even this awareness and the realization that Europe is being flooded with Afghan-made drugs are not enough to encourage our partners to seriously tackle this issue. And this is very sad.

Russia better prepared for second wave of global economic crisis

RT: A final thought from you Mr President. While you’ll be talking money and finances at the forthcoming APEC summit that you are going to. Looking at the world economy from where you are generally. Do you think we are heading for a second global slump and if we do is Russia as well prepared to bat it off as it did last time. It did pretty well last time but is it as well prepared this time?

Putin: I believe we are even better prepared because we’ve already experienced the first wave of the crisis, and we have an understanding of what’s to be done about it and how we should do it. And we have the instruments for crisis management. Moreover, I tasked Russia’s previous Cabinet as early as last year with upgrading the already tried and tested instruments, drafting new laws and adjusting our regulations. We requested parliament to assign 200 bln rubles to a government reserve fund – and parliament agreed. Therefore, we are generally equipped for managing a crisis. On top of that, as you know, we have enjoyed fairly strong economic growth, a rate of 4.2 percent, which is highest among the world’s largest economies next to China and India. The euro zone’s average growth rate has been 3.9 percent, while ours was 4.2. By the way, both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are predicting negative growth at minus 0.3 percent for the euro zone next year. This year, we are still counting on positive growth ranging between 4 and 5 percent. That’s precisely why, even if Russia should face economic difficulties, it will have plenty of instruments at hand to deal with the challenge.

We have reinforced our gold and currency reserves, almost bringing them back up to pre-crisis levels. We presently rate third worldwide next to China and Japan with upwards of $500 bln in gold and currency reserves. Parallel to that, the government is rebuilding its own reserves. We have two government reserve funds: the $80-billion National Wealth Fund, and the Reserve Fund with roughly $60 bln, to finance a budget deficit, should we suffer one. But so far, we don’t have a deficit: next year’s budget registers a surplus, slight as it may be. Our unemployment rates are the lowest possible. While unemployment averages 11.2 percent in the euro zone and reaches 25—26 percent in economies such as Spain, topping 70 percent among youth, we maintain an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent, which is even below pre-crisis indices. But this doesn’t make us careless and complacent. We are fully aware that the tricky aspect of the global economy is unpredictability, and you can almost never be sure as to where the greatest challenges and threats will emerge from next. That is why we closely follow everything that’s going on in neighboring economies and our partner economies.

We wish them success, and we are honestly willing to assist them as good partners. Because any kind of economic mishap in the euro zone, for instance, is bound to have painful ramifications for us. The euro zone is our major sales market. Should it shrink, our own production will immediately decrease. Therefore, our interest is in seeing the euro zone survive and our main partner-economies get back on track. We need Europe’s leading economies such as Germany, France and Britain to be in good shape. This is something that we’ll always keep an eye on. And this will be a primary topic for discussion at the Vladivostok APEC Summit.

RT: Well we wish you all the very best. President Vladimir Putin, thank you for talking to RT.

Putin: Thank you very much.

Source: http://rt.com/news/vladimir-putin-exclusive-interview-481/

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How Corrupt Governments Make a Killing on Human Organs

 

By Bruce Watson

In December, the Council of Europe released a report alleging that Hashim Thaçi, the prime minister of Kosovo, is the leader of a criminal ring that smuggles contraband — including human organs — throughout Eastern Europe. While organ-trafficking stories are hardly new, Thaçi’s has a bizarre twist: According to the COE, the prime minister used money generated from human organ sales to cement his political power in Kosovo, and he continues to profit from the traffic, along with many members of his Cabinet.

Thaçi’s ring traces its roots to the Kosovo war of 1998-1999. At that time, NATO forces shelled the region in an attempt to expel Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, whose Serbian forces were committing acts of genocide. At the same time, the Kosovo Liberation Army was fighting against the Serbians on the ground. Thaçi rose to power as leader of the “Drenica Group,” a prominent part of the KLA.

Consolidation Through Coercion

According to the COE report, while Thaçi owed much of his power to his relationship with the U.S. and other Western powers, he also controlled illegal trade throughout the region. In addition to human trafficking and the sex trade, the Drenica Group sold weapons, narcotics, stolen motor vehicles, cigarettes and other contraband, according to the COE.

As it expanded its smuggling operations into Western Europe, the group consolidated power through assassinations, beatings and other forms of coercion. By mid-1999, the Drenica Group was in charge of Kosovo’s construction and fuel industries, and Thaçi had appointed himself prime minister.

At the same time, the COE report asserts, Shaip Muja, a high-level Drenica official, set up a series of detention facilities that were designed to transport captives from the Serbian war front to Tirana, the capital of Albania. In addition to Serbian prisoners of war, the KLA also gathered alleged traitors, including “large numbers of ethnic Albanians, as well as Roma and other minorities.”

A Wartime Atrocity, a Peacetime Business

While most of the detention facilities were repurposed farmhouses, at least one was built for the specific purpose of organ trafficking. Located near Tirana, it included what the report describes as “A state-of-the-art reception centre. . . . It was styled as a makeshift operating clinic, and it was the site at which some of the captives held by the KLA members and affiliates had their kidneys removed against their will.” These kidneys were then sold “to private overseas clinics as part of the international ‘black market’ of organ trafficking for transplantation.” Many of these allegedly went to Istanbul, where they were used by Yusuf Ercin Sonmez, a Turkish doctor.

After the war, the organ extraction program gained a level of respectability through the development of the Medicus clinic, a hospital located near Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Dr. Sonmez, who had been barred from practicing medicine in Turkey’s public health sector, went to work at the clinic, performing transplants for wealthy German, Polish, Canadian and Israeli patients. Donors came from Russia, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Turkey, where they were solicited with promises of huge payoffs.

In 2008, EULEX, the European Union’s legal mission in Kosovo, began an investigation into the clinic for its role in the organ trade. Recently, five doctors were indicted for “trafficking in human organs, organized crime, unlawful exercise of medical activities and abusing official authority.” In addition to claims that Medicus was illegally transplanting organs, it also was accused of cheating its donors: After removing their organs, the clinic allegedly refused to pay the donors, transporting them to the airport before they had fully recovered from their surgeries.

In China, Turning Political Prisoners into Profit

Kosovo isn’t the only country with an extensive, state-sponsored transplantation program. In China, organs are routinely harvested from condemned political prisoners and are often sold to foreigners for prices far below the transplantation costs in other countries. While China’s program doesn’t have Kosovo’s genocidal component, it is still used as a revenue generator and a means of disposing of enemies of the state.

China has been performing organ transplants since the 1960s, but the roots of its organ trade trace back to the early 1980s. As part of its move away from socialism, the country began slashing health care expenditures. In 1980, China covered 36% of health care costs for the country. By 2005, that number had dropped to 17%. Over the same period, the percentage of health care costs covered out-of-pocket by patients almost tripled, from 20% to 59%.

To make up the difference, hospitals began searching for high-profit operations that could shore up their bottom lines. The military, which is permitted to engage in commerce, also was searching for ways to improve its finances. What resulted was a military/medical collaboration: Many of China’s leading transplantation centers were either owned or extensively staffed by the military.

A Prime Source of Healthy Organs

Having developed an extensive transplantation infrastructure, China needed a steady source of organs. It is illegal to transplant organs without a donor’s consent in China, but a 1984 law allowed the state to harvest organs from condemned prisoners who agreed to the operation. In the following decades, China developed an extensive prisoner organ harvest industry, offering low-price transplants to both domestic and international patients. In the face of international condemnation, it has developed a more traditional postmortem organ donation program, but the bulk of China’s transplanted organs still come from condemned prisoners.

While Chinese authorities emphasize that prisoner organ donation is voluntary, there is evidence to suggest otherwise. Dr. Wang Guoqi, a Chinese physician who was closely involved with the organ trade, alleged that it was “rife with corruption” and that prisoners often didn’t give consent for harvesting. Moreover, he also described brutal transplant conditions, including one incident in which he and several fellow doctors harvested organs from a prisoner who was still alive.

There have also been allegations that China’s organ harvesting system is being used as a weapon in its war against Falun Gong, a political and religious group that opposes the Communist government. Falun Gong exhorts its members to refrain from smoking, drinking, premarital sex, homosexuality and drug use, policies that make them prime candidates to be organ donors.

Following mass arrests, many members of Falun Gong refused to identify themselves to captors, fearing that their families would face retribution. Many of these prisoners subsequently “disappeared.” According to a report by David Matas, a human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian parliament, some transplant coordinators have openly admitted that their organs come from Falun Gong prisoners.

State Trade in Human Organs

Like any valuable commodity, the high price of organs has fueled a trade that is often shady and exploitative. Some pundits have argued that the problem could be solved through a program of voluntary organ donation and sale. The libertarian Cato Institute, for example, theorized that if 0.06% of healthy people aged 18 to 65 sold one of their kidneys, there would no longer be a waiting list for the organs.

Outside of China and Kosovo, where the definition of “voluntary donation” is highly questionable, other countries have experimented with organ sales. Some, like India and the Philippines, outlawed the market in legal organ sales after discovering that it was subject to rampant abuse and that many “voluntary donors” were being coerced into selling their organs. Other countries, including Iran, continue to operate legal organ-selling markets, not only allowing citizens to sell organs but flying in donors from other countries such as Jordan.

Unfortunately, the organ donation problem has no clear solution. China’s program is morally repugnant, while those of Iran and India are subject to serious corruption. For that matter, even the U.S. system of organ procurement is susceptible to manipulation by extremely wealthy patients, as Steve Jobs’s 2009 liver transplant demonstrated.

Ultimately, only one thing about this is certain: State-run organ-transplant programs are a prescription for human rights disasters.

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