Tag Archives: Canada

Fukushima Reactor radiation reached Europe and the MSM never said a word

 

Cover up of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Fallout Forecasts Exposed!

Source

I previously reported on the steady concentrated stream of Nuclear radioactive fallout heading toward the US and Canada. In that post I pointed out that several censored radiation forecasts have been found but were never released to the public.

We now have for the first time a side by side comparison of two radiation fallout forecasts. On the left is the censored version released to the public downplaying the levels of radiation spreading around the world. On the right is the same uncensored forecast.

Left: Censored Fallout Forecast Released To Public — Right: Uncensored Forecast Hidden From Public

If you have doubt that the censored version is the real forecast then consider this: Notice the censored version doesn’t show radiation hitting Europe.

Now checkout this article from the Independent reporting that the nuclear fallout has hit Europe.

Reactor radiation reaches Europe

AP Wednesday, 23 March 2011

A plume from the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex carrying trace amounts of radioactive iodine has been detected in Iceland, the country’s Radiation Safety Authority said.

However, it added, the concentration was “less than a millionth” of what was found in European countries in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that spewed radiation over a large distance.

Recollections of the accident’s aftermath continue to haunt many in European, putting them on edge as they watch the Japanese nuclear crisis unfold.

“We thus conclude that there is no reason to worry about radioactivity levels in Iceland, nor anywhere in Europe, resulting from the nuclear accident in Japan,” said Sigurdur Emil Palsson, head of emergency planning.

Elsewhere, French authorities said very weakly contaminated air is expected to reach France today while Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection said if and when radiation arrived it would be in marginal amounts that would pose neither a risk to humans or the environment.

“The measurements will also be much lower that those after the Chernobyl disaster,” it said.

[…]

Source: The Independent

here are the “public” forecasts… which show “low” levels of Cesium-137 …

http://transport.nilu.no/products/fukushima?searchterm=fuk

however…

This site was sent to me, and it clearly shows the hidden (not shown to public) forecasts! In these shots, we see VERY high levels of Cesium-137 making its way across the pacific to the USA and Canada.

http://squid.nilu.no/~burkhart/sharing/MOVIES/?C=M;O=D

http://squid.nilu.no/~burkhart/sharing/

—————-

http://eurdeppub.jrc.it/eurdeppub/home.aspx#

http://www.csn.es/index.php?option=com_maps&view=mappoints&Itemid=32

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/

http://www.rivm.nl/milieuportaal/dossier/meetnetten/radioactiviteit/resultaten/

http://www.radiationnetwork.com/

http://www.blackcatsystems.com/RadMap/map.html

http://www.epa.gov (click on radiation update)

http://www.irsn.fr/EN/Pages/home.aspx

http://www.nucleartourist.com/

http://www.stuk.fi/index_en.html

http://www.mext.go.jp/english/radioactivity_level/detail/1303962.htm

http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/index.html

http://www.rivm.nl/milieuportaal/dossier/meetnetten/radioactiviteit/resultaten/

http://www.yle.fi/tekstitv/html/P867_02.html

http://www.mapion.co.jp/topics/genpatu/

http://strahlenbelastung.wo-wann-wer.de/

dutch radiation monitoring:

http://www.rivm.nl/milieuportaal/dossier/meetnetten/radioactiviteit/resultaten/

swiss radiation monitoring:

https://www.naz.ch/en/aktuell/zeitverlaeufe.html

Finland radiation monitoring:

http://www.yle.fi/tekstitv/html/P160_01.html

http://www.yle.fi/tekstitv/html/P867_02.html

French radiation monitoring: (thanks to youtube user: RehKurts ! )

http://sws.irsn.fr/sws/mesure/index

http://www.irsn.fr/FR/Documents/france.htm

jet stream forecasting:

http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.0.html

http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/tropicalwx/satpix/nwpac_ir4_loop.php

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250

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Connection between Chemtrails, Morgellons, and GMO

by Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Ph.D.
optimal@earthlink.net

I have seen them and been aware of them since 1997. From the mountains of Malibu, California, at 8:00 am on Friday, November 18, 2005, I watched jets in the skies over Ventura and Los Angles Counties streaking the skies with chemtrails. They have occurred almost everyday since. Some days as many as 80 patterns existed, going from the ocean to 40 miles inland. The chemtrails drifted from as far as Oxnard and fall on all Los Angeles County inhabitants. Chemtrails are frequently sprayed directly over all areas of Los Angeles County. They are being reported in most areas of the USA. Nearly daily since Friday, November 18, 2005, chemtrails streaked the skies at Venice Beach, drifting inland over Los Angeles residents.

When we see a cloudy tail following a jet streaking the sky and that tail dissolves within minutes, that is a contrail. Contrails form above 33,000 feet when hot engine exhaust momentarily condenses ice crystals into pencil-thin vapor trails that quickly vanish behind a jet. However, chemtrails, looking initially look like contrails, are thicker, remain extended across the sky and are sprayed in varying patterns: x’s, tic-tack-toe grids, cross-hatch and parallel lines. Instead of quickly dissipating, chemtrails expand. Usually within thirty minutes, they open into wispy formations, looking like cirrus-type clouds (thin veil clouds) that persist for hours but slowly waft from the skies on our families, friends and strangers below.

Laboratory examination of those chemicals found that they were manufacturing wastes from military industry and biowarfare substances. In several laboratory analyses, the composition of chemtrails was revealed:
1. Aluminum barium
2. Aluminum Oxide
3. Bacilli and Molds
4. Pseudomonas Aeruginosa
5. Pseudomonas Florescens
6. Bacilli Amyloliquefaciens
7. Streptomyces
8. Enterobacteriaceae
9. Serratia Marcscens
10. Human white Blood Cells-A restrictor enzyme used in research labs to snip and combine DNA
11. Enterobacter Cloacal
12. Other Bacilli and other toxic molds capable of producing heart disease and meningitis as well as acute upper respiratory and gastrointestinal distress.
13. Carcinogen Zinc Cadmium Sulfide.

After chemtrails lingered, spread, covered entire skies and fell, reports of illnesses increased substantially, such as persistent hacking coughs, upper respiratory and intestinal distress, pneumonia, fatigue, lethargy, dizziness, disorientation, headaches, aching joints and muscles, nosebleeds, diarrhea, bloody stools, depression, anxiety, loss of bladder control, and nervous tics. Much of it is reported as flu and everyone but a few know that much of it is poisons dropped over our heads, inhaled, absorbed through our skins, and consumed in our food.

Using both electrostatic precipitation devices and hepa air filters to collect outdoor atmosphere samples, chemtrail researcher Cliff Carnicom and his associates have documented desiccated blood cells floating in the atmosphere in populated areas of both New Mexico and Colorado. With so many atmospheric samples containing biological components, Carnicom concludes that crimes of the highest order are being perpetrated against citizens without their knowledge or consent.

Witnesses have documented and photographed military KC-135’s, KC-105 and white unmarked jets spray chemtrails. Airport personnel and pilots confirmed specific commercial airliners leaving the long-lasting chemtrails. Although chemtrails are frequently reported, the US Government continues to deny the existence of chemtrails.

In 1994, it was established in a senate committee that the military was developing genetically engineered pathogens since the 1960’s when the military initiated a special viral cancer program with the intent to create contagious cancers for biowarfare? There is much laboratory evidence that gels, webs, powders and blood cells have been used to harbor viruses, mycoplasma and/or other bio-engineered toxins until they reach their host. Who besides the department of defense would have the money, power and inclination to besmirch our atmosphere with biological materials and have legal and media immunity?

In August 2000, observers began to report jets deploying chemtrails that looked like normal cloud formations. Three reports stated cloud formations dripped feathers and mare’s tails. Citizen-based investigators believe that, since the military and government has received complaints about the chemtrails, they adjusted the chemtrail mix to be more clandestine. Chemtrail observers, including I, continue to see fake cirrus-type clouds on top of and surrounding real cumulus clouds.

Generally, chemtrails spraying increases as clouds build. They have been spraying most areas intensely in the USA, Canada, Europe and England since 1998, including areas with no commercial path’s overhead. Even if you do not see chemtrails in your area, our food supply is being sprayed in farmlands across the USA. Frequently, I travel throughout the USA. I have observed chemtrails in at least 60 cities and farm towns that I visited since 1997. Many Americans reported seeing and feeling chemical mists fall from the sky following chemtrails. The media fails to cover the issue even though the health consequences are enormous. Environmentally conscious groups have had no luck pressing the media for coverage. Why is the media refuses to investigate and cover the story? Could it be pretense of “national security”?

Chemical weapons encapsulated in protective coatings like synthetic webbing would explain why many people who saw web-like filaments drifting down from the skies reported illness after contacting the webs. When webs were closely examined, they proved to be a man-made filaments of the type developed by both industrial and military entities. South Africans reported web-like filaments falling from an aircraft, forming a blanket like appearance across vegetation, telephone poles and fences, and E-boli soon followed. When cattle ate it, some developed large lumps on their hides, became listless and/or went blind. Examining collected material from the spray, a University of Michigan lab found pseudomonas fluorescens. That is the bug tested on Oakville residents. It can cause human infections including fatal shock. The military likes it because it glows and allows them to track its path. Pathogens, including staph and several fungi that can cause lung disease were found in the chemical mix. In what must have been in bolder military arrogant fashion, during numerous chemtrail sprays, the small town Sallisaw in Oklahoma was saturated when a web like material covered the town. Lab technicians discovered large enterobacteria. The critter was a man-developed combination of E-Coli, salmonella and anthrax that could only be a U.S. military designer bug for biowarfare.

Standing before government officials in Louisiana where the military had determined to conduct open-air germ tests, Captain Joyce Riley boldly told officials that the only acts of terrorism ever conducted on American soil were perpetrated by our own government. Is the US Government warning about terrorism yet committing acts of terrorism against its own citizens? During tests to perfect the technology, reports that aerosol barium titanate salt mixture was released from military aircraft, forming chemical trails in the atmosphere across America. Barium salts – radioactive material – were used in Libya, Panama and Desert Storm where they were sprayed and exploded over head to make people extremely sick and weak. Barium effects were accelerated and magnified by mixing and altering with other chemicals. Spectrum analysis revealed barium compounds but the other compounds were initially hidden by a shell around them. The shell, however, eventually released the other chemicals, like time-released disease-pills.

Is the military continuing open-air-testing in populated areas across the USA with dangerous chemical biowarfare, or arrogantly dumping military chemical waste on us? Whatever it is, we must stop this mass poisoning of us and our children now!

 


Texas Death Row

 

On May 3 1993, Barbara Canada and her brother Titus were killed by gunfire. Willie Tyrone Trottie, Barbara’s 23-year-old common law husband and father of their 1-1/2 year old son, was convicted of Capital murder. Having been shot five times by Titus, Willie maintains that in shock and pain, he fired in self-defense and that there is at least one witness who could have corroborated this had they been questioned at his trial. Willie was rushed through trial on to Death Row.

CASE INFORMATION
My Appeal
(In W. T. Trottie’s Own Words)

The general features of a death penalty case, As you might or might not be familiar with, a death penalty case has several special features.

The trial is essentially divided into two parts. The first and generally larger part is what might be called the guilt/innocence part of the trial, where both sides argue in the question of whether the defendant actually is guilty of capital murder (the kind that can give the death penalty).

If the jury after that part decides to find the defendant guilty of capital murder, the trial goes on to what you might call the punishment part. Here the two parts argue whether there are any mitigating circumstances, and whether the defendant presents any future dangerousness. If the defense counsel fails to convince the jury of the mitigating circumstances, the jury might give the defendant the death penalty. After the trial you can appeal to higher courts. The appeals process in a death penalty case has essentially three stages: the direct appeal, which is generally is the first post-trial review. Here you are confined to raise challenges to what is on the record of the trial.

But in what is with an ancient term are called habeas corpus-proceedings, the defendant (and his attorney) may raise questions based on new evidence about the fairness of his trial. For instance, whether his lawyer performed competently, whether the prosecution withheld important evidence or whether the jurors engaged in misconduct. The habeas appeals go first to state level, and after may also so go further to a federal level.

My appeals The same attorney that was counsel at my trial filed my direct appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) affirmed the conviction and sentence of death in an opinion delivered September 20, 1995 .

My appointed attorney, Jim L. Peacock of Houston , handles my habeas corpus appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas . That appeal was filed August 18, 1997 . In that is argued that I was not given a fair trial.

These are the main points, as stated in the beginning of this appeal (Note: Both terms Defendant and Applicant apply to me, Tyrone Trottie): Counsel at trial presented no defense to the charges against his client. Merely cross-examining the States witnesses does not a defense make. More often than not the cross examination of the States witnesses did nothing more than repeat what had already been presented, thus reinforcing the States case rather than attacking it. More egregorius still was the failure of counsel to call any witnesses to the stand in defense at the guilt/innocence stage of trial. Certainly the fact that Titus Cornelius Canada had previously waved a gun at the Defendant in a threatening manner while the Defendant had his 1 year old child in the car with him raised the issue of the Defendants right to arm himself and confront Mr. Canada regarding their conflicts. This is particularly true since there was inevitably going to be further contact between them due to the familial relationship of Mr. Canada as Uncle to the Defendants son. How the issue of self defense could be so cavalierly ignored as it was by defense counsel is hard to explain. The obvious issues which should have been raised are self defense and the right to arm and confront as to Titus Cornelius Canada and voluntary manslaughter issues of sudden passion as to both Titus and Barbara Canada. Trial counsel did not call one single witness on the Defendants behalf to properly raise these issues even though there was available evidence. Failure to properly present the available evidence or request appropriate defensive charges can not be argued to be a tactic or strategy when no other defense is offered. When the obvious and only available trial defenses are ignored by trial counsel then no other conclusion can be drawn than that there was ineffective assistance of counsel.

Applicant contends that he was denied effective assistance of counsel by virtue of his trial counsels acts and omissions; by denying applicant the opportunity to testify in his own behalf at trial, Counsels ineffectiveness in failing to seek proper jury instructions and argue self defense and the right to arm and confront. Further, Applicant would show that trial counsel failed to present important, competent, and available evidence supporting mitigation in the punishment phase of his trial. Applicant contends that, under any standard. Trial counsels action constitute ineffective assistance of counsel under the United States and Texas Constitutions.
Since the entire appeal consists of 51 pages, plus several exhibits, I will hereby confine myself to some quotes concerning the main issues.
Why was I not called to take the witness stand?
Concerning this issue, the appeal argues:
The defendant had no prior felony or misdemeanor convictions of moral turpitude which would have subjected him to impeachment at trial and was without doubt the best witness to present his defensive theories to the jury regarding manslaughter and self defense and of course mitigation. To be denied this by counsels failure to properly advise of a defendants testimonial rights and refusal to call the defendant is ineffective.

In this case, Applicants counsels failure to seek jury charges and then argue self-defense and the right to arm and confront were examples of ineffective assistance of counsel in that such a defense could have negated the States theory of multiple murder. That failure leads to a harsher punishment (death) than otherwise would have occurred if the defenses were presented. Furthermore, there was evidence before the jury specifically as to the shooting of Titus Canada that the Applicant was returning fire in self defense, having first been shot at by the deceased. The failure to properly present evidence of the defense and obtain proper instruction for the jury denied the Defendant effective counsel since there was no other theory of defense present. This type of failure to present such an important defense would constitute such an egregiously prejudicial mistake so as to presume, even from just this one mistake ineffective assistance of counsel. Mitigating factors were not properly presented. By not taking the witness stand myself, my chances were negatively affected during the punishment phase of my trial, where mitigating circumstances are presented especially since I was not in a position to explain an instance of shooting in 1990 that is not in any police files and not evidence at all:

The failure to properly advise the defendant of his right to testify and in effect prevent the defendant from testifying denied the jury the most crucial of all mitigating evidence and denied the Applicant effective representation of counsel. Since the defendant was represented on direct appeal by trial counsel it is not surprising that this issue can only now be raised by Habeas Corpus Writ. In the case at bar, Applicants trial counsels ineffective assistance was exacerbated when he failed to properly preserve the constitutional argument regarding the trial courts admission into evidence the fact that Applicant shot someone in self-defense in March 1990. See Trottie v. State of Texas No, 71, 793, Opinion Delivered December 11, 1995 , p. 13. As the Court of Criminal Appeals observed in its Opinion sustaining Applicants conviction: appellant argues that the trial court violated the Eight and Fourteenth Amendments when it admitted, at the punishment stage, evidence that he shot someone in self-defense in March 1990. We not address this constitutional argument, however, because it does not comport with the argument made in the trial court.See Trottie v. State of Texas No, 71, 793, Opinion Delivered December 11, 1995 , p. 13.

In the case at bar, trial counsels failure to introduce all mitigating evidence available was made worse by his failure to preserve what error did occur regarding the evidence that came in during the punishment stage. Taken together, the trial counsels failure to properly protect Applicants record and his failure to submit important, relevant, available, persuasive evidence on mitigation doomed Applicant during the punishment stage of his trial. Faulty instruction of the jury To avoid the all too common, but wrongful notion, that if a person convicted of capital murder is sentenced to something less than death, he will be out in the streets within just some years, it is essential that the jury gets the right information on what a life sentence would mean. This did not happen during my trial: The trial court violated the eight amendment by failing or refusing to inform applicants capital sentencing that a life sentence would require that applicant serve at least 35 years before being eligible for parole.
In Texas , a defendant who is sentenced to life in prison for capital murder must serve 15, 35, or 40 years before he is eligible for parole, depending on the date of the offense.The result of this lack of information negatively affected the jurys view in the key issue of future dangerousness.Because it is a common belief that anything less than death means that the offender would be out in the streets in a relatively short time. It is of course easier to give someone a life sentence, if you know that this means he would serve at least 35 years in prison, than if you do not know how long he would be in prison. In the words of my appeal:

The very fact that the jury is told that the Board of Pardons and Paroles controls the actual length of the sentence without telling the jury the limits of that power invites speculation by the jury and creates uncertainty in their minds on how long a Defendant would actually serve as a minimum on a life sentence.This claim is supported by what the United States Supreme Court wrote in the decision of a previous case (Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154, 114 S.Ct. 2187, 129 L. Ed. 2d 133, 1994):

Where a defendants future dangerousness is at issue, and state law prohibits his release on parole, due process requires that the sentencing jury be informed that the defendant is parole ineligible. In my case, the outcome might very well been different if the jury instruction had been correct.

The words of my appeal sum it up:
In the instant case, had the trial court instructed the jury on the correct meaning of a life sentence, jurors would have been faced with a choice of sentencing Applicant to death or sentencing him to a life behind bars in a maximum security prison until he was, at the very minimum, over fifty years old. One or more jurors very well may have voted for a life sentence had they been informed of this information, since it would have provided a rational basis for jurors to conclude that Applicant would not be a future danger if a life sentence were imposed.

Insufficient evidence in the punishment phase.
A person might be found guilty of capital murder. In the then following punishment phase of the trial, the jury asks itself if there are mitigating circumstances; is the answer to this question yes, they cannot give that person the death penalty. As my appeal states, citing the previous case Valdez v. State, 776 S. W. 2d 162 (Tex. Crim. App 1989) ,in my case the jury was not given these evidences :
The reviewing court could consider factors such as:
1) the circumstances of the capital murder offense;
2) the calculated nature of the defendants conduct;
3) the deliberateness exhibited in the crimes execution;
4) existence and severity of the defendants previous offenses;
5) whether the defendant was acting under duress or the domination of another at the time of the crime;
6) the defendants age and personal circumstances;
7) psychiatric evidence;
8) character evidence.
Concentrating on only the areas where the evidence falls substantially below that which should be necessary to justify the death penalty in this case, Applicant would show that there was no probative, reliable, competent evidence that he had a history of violence, that he entered the Canada household on the evening in question with the specific intent to harm anyone, that the only psychiatric testimony showed that the Applicant had specific, identifiable, and treatable problems that impacted his ability to judge the situation appropriately on the night in question, and that his age and personal circumstances mitigated against the imposition of the death penalty. When the evidence is viewed in accordance with the Valdez factors, one is left with the conclusion that either there is insufficient evidence to conclude that Applicant was a continuing threat to society or that the mitigating evidence neglected by trial counsel would have been of paramount importance in the trial below, in the light of the way the evidence came before the jury. In either event, with either conclusion, the imposition of the death penalty on Applicant was inappropriate and violated his rights under the federal and state constitutions.

Compounding the errors committed during the trial, one must also view the problematic admission of certain hearsay evidence from Lynn Clark, the Applicants probation officer. APO Clark testified, over trial counsels objection, that Applicant had said he had shot some man in self-defense.No charges had ever been filed, no victim was ever identified, there was no conviction, no date of the alleged offense and no location for the alleged offense. Put simply, Clark s evidence did not show an extraneous offense. Still, after that, my original trial lawyers tried to argue that this alleged shooting was self-defense, which made things worse for me:

Trial counsel argued, to the trial court and the jury, an implied acceptance of the existence of the extraneous offense with a justification that it was self-defense.This particular piece of evidence was the only direct evidence that Applicant may have been violent at some point in the past.

Read more: http://willietyronetrottie.webnode.com/case-information/case-information/
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You Can't Prove A Man Innocent If You Have Killed Them Already

 

ABOLITIONIST FOR ALL CRIMES
Countries whose laws do not provide for the death penalty for any crime
ALBANIA
ANDORRA
ANGOLA
ARGENTINA
ARMENIA
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRIA
AZERBAIJAN
BELGIUM
BHUTAN
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
BULGARIA
BURUNDI
CAMBODIA
CANADA
CAPE VERDE
COLOMBIA
COOK ISLANDS
COSTA RICA
COTE D’IVOIRE
CROATIA
CYPRUS
CZECH REPUBLIC
DENMARK
DJIBOUTI
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
ECUADOR
ESTONIA
FINLAND
FRANCE
GABON
GEORGIA

GERMANY
GREECE
GUINEA-BISSAU
HAITI
HOLY SEE
HONDURAS
HUNGARY
ICELAND
IRELAND
ITALY
KIRIBATI
KYRGYSTAN
LATVIA
LIECHTENSTEIN
LITHUANIA
LUXEMBOURG
MACEDONIA (former Yugoslav Republic)
MALTA
MARSHALL ISLANDS
MAURITIUS
MEXICO
MICRONESIA (Federated States)
MOLDOVA
MONACO
MONTENEGRO
MOZAMBIQUE
NAMIBIA
NEPAL
NETHERLANDS
NEW ZEALAND
NICARAGUA
NIUE
NORWAY

PALAU
PANAMA
PARAGUAY
PHILIPPINES
POLAND
PORTUGAL
ROMANIA
RWANDA
SAMOA
SAN MARINO
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
SENEGAL
SERBIA
SEYCHELLES
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA
SOLOMON ISLANDS
SOUTH AFRICA
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
TIMOR-LESTE
TOGO
TURKEY
TURKMENISTAN
TUVALU
UKRAINE
UNITED KINGDOM
URUGUAY
UZBEKISTAN
VANUATU
VENEZUELA

ABOLITIONIST FOR “ORDINARY CRIMES” ONLY
Countries whose laws provide for the death penalty only for exceptional crimes such as crimes under military law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances
BOLIVIA
BRAZIL
CHILE EL SALVADOR
FIJI
ISRAEL KAZAKHSTAN
PERU

ABOLITIONIST IN PRACTICE
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes such as murder but can be considered abolitionist in practice in that they have not executed anyone during the past 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions. The list also includes countries which have made an international commitment not to use the death penalty
ALGERIA
BENIN
BRUNEI DARUSSALAM
BURKINA FASO
CAMEROON
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CONGO (Republic)
ERITREA
GAMBIA
GHANA
GRENADA

KENYA
KOREA (SOUTH)
LAOS
LIBERIA
MADAGASCAR
MALAWI
MALDIVES
MALI
MAURITANIA
MONGOLIA
MOROCCO
MYANMAR
NAURU

NIGER
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SIERRA LEONE
SRI LANKA
SURINAME
SWAZILAND
TAJIKISTAN
TANZANIA
TONGA
TUNISIA
ZAMBIA

RETENTIONIST COUNTRIES
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes
AFGHANISTAN
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BAHAMAS
BAHRAIN
BANGLADESH
BARBADOS
BELARUS
BELIZE
BOTSWANA
CHAD
CHINA
COMOROS
CONGO (Democratic Republic)
CUBA
DOMINICA
EGYPT
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
ETHIOPIA
GUATEMALA GUINEA
GUYANA
INDIA
INDONESIA
IRAN
IRAQ
JAMAICA
JAPAN
JORDAN
KOREA (North)
KUWAIT
LEBANON
LESOTHO
LIBYA
MALAYSIA
NIGERIA
OMAN
PAKISTAN
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
QATAR
SAINT KITTS & NEVIS
SAINT LUCIA
SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES
SAUDI ARABIA
SINGAPORE
SOMALIA
SOUTH SUDAN
SUDAN
SYRIA
TAIWAN
THAILAND
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
UGANDA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
VIET NAM
YEMEN
ZIMBABWE

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY SINCE 1976
1976 PORTUGAL abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1978 DENMARK abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1979 LUXEMBOURG, NICARAGUA and NORWAY abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BRAZIL, FIJI and PERU abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1981 FRANCE and CAPE VERDE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1982 The NETHERLANDS abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1983 CYPRUS and EL SALVADOR abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1984 ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1985 AUSTRALIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1987 HAITI, LIECHTENSTEIN and the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC1 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1989 CAMBODIA, NEW ZEALAND, ROMANIA and SLOVENIA2 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1990 ANDORRA, CROATIA,2 the CZECH AND SLOVAK FEDERAL REPUBLIC,3 HUNGARY, IRELAND, MOZAMBIQUE, NAMIBIA and SAO TOMÉ AND PRíNCIPE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1992 ANGOLA, PARAGUAY and SWITZERLAND abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1993 GUINEA-BISSAU, HONG KONG4 and SEYCHELLES abolished the death penalty for all crimes. GREECE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1994 ITALY abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1995 DJIBOUTI, MAURITIUS, MOLDOVA and SPAIN abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1996 BELGIUM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1997 GEORGIA, NEPAL, POLAND and SOUTH AFRICA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BOLIVIA and BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1998 AZERBAIJAN, BULGARIA, CANADA, ESTONIA, LITHUANIA and the UNITED KINGDOM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1999 EAST TIMOR, TURKMENISTAN and UKRAINE abolished the death penalty for all crimes. LATVIA5 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2000 COTE D’IVOIRE and MALTA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2001 BOSNIA-HEZEGOVINA 7 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. CHILE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2002 TURKEY abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes. The FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA (now two states SERBIA and MONTENEGRO 9 ) and CYPRUS abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2003
ARMENIA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes
2004
BHUTAN, SAMOA, SENEGAL and TURKEY abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2005
LIBERIA 8 and MEXICO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2006
PHILIPPINES abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2007
ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. and RWANDA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. KYRGYZSTAN abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2008
UZBEKISTAN, CHILE and ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2009 BURUNDI and TOGO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2010 GABON removed the death penalty from its legislation.
2012 LATVIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.

Notes:
1. In 1990 the German Democratic Republic became unified with the Federal Republic of Germany, where the death penalty had been abolished in 1949.
2. Slovenia and Croatia abolished the death penalty while they were still republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The two republics became independent in 1991.
3. In 1993 the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic divided into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
4. In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule as a special administrative region of China. Amnesty International understands that Hong Kong will remain abolitionist.
5. In 1999 the Latvian parliament voted to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offenses.
6. In 2007 Albania ratified Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances. In 2000 it had ratified Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offences.
7. In 2001 Bosnia-Herzegovina ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
8. In 2005 Liberia ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
9. Montenegro had already abolished the death penalty in 2002 when it was part of a state union with Serbia. It became an independent member state of the United Nations on 28 June 2006. Its ratification of Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances, came into effect on 6 June 2006.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries

 


Child in Action,speaking to soldiers.

 

From Faktensucher

 


H3N3 and Glaxo

 

Transalated from the Greek BlogSpot Translation may not be correct.Sorry

I intended not to deal with another vaccine and in particular the widespread misinformation that comes from journalists who believe that the writings are similar to something like the infallibility of the Pope.
I say this because I sent e-mail to the journalist who had published the text that I wrote the post-ELEFTHEROTYPIA a controversial INFORMATION FOR THE VACCINE and in which I wrote:
that the newspaper should be made to repudiate the misstatements published, I believe in good faith.
He replied:
what I did was to present another view. What circulates on the Web, it circulates in the mail, all gathered on the occasion of the panic of the flu.
Nowhere do I write that their views are valid. Nowhere do not accept any of these additional opinions and write clearly “your comments”.
And the rejoinder that:
in the text are not just opinions but false news like eg:
1-Obama’s daughters will be vaccinated if not already vaccinated.
2-5 women, all nurses and therefore a high risk group who had been vaccinated, died when they died none.
Already 3-Poland and the Czech Republic forbade vaccination in countries where no such ban in the Czech Republic starting this week
4-Complaints to say that the vast majority of deaths from the “pandemic” flu occurred in Mexico, where they had become free vaccination to residents when seeking now to get the vaccines.
5-a former health minister of Finland, just as He alone himself!
All of these are not opinions but false news that people who read a serious newspaper (well after it is serious read from her first sex!) Considers them as given.
I would have never objected to display different views but with the difference that should be emphasized and what is and how serious is he who says it.
Write what the Jane Burgermeister write but he believes there is an international conspiracy by the Illuminati!
Write what the Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, the self-styled minister of Finland, but write it he also said he saved the lives of 3 times the aliens!
Thus the reader learns and what is said by various and how serious are those who say it.
I hope that in your next text will clarify that many of these scenarios are not related to the fact that publishing these to restore.
As you can see there was not no good answer for this and simply put in words eg Gougli Filandias Minister asking to bring you only the site from Greece to see the play as a serious news of her, and respectively for Obama’s daughters etc.
As I said at the beginning I would have xanascholithei the question whether the same paper of 28.11.09 there appeared an article entitled:
Economic games with vaccine … behind our backs it with an emphasis on academics, Professor of Biochemistry Department of Biology, University of Patras, Christos Georgiou.
Of course the article not only discussed our finances are games that are behind our backs!.
The article begins with the alarmism of the vaccine due to the withdrawal of a batch of vaccine in Canada because it occurred in some anaphylactic reactions at 500% more than expected!
So read the link that refers us: This is five times the expected number. None of the patients reportedly suffered long-term ill-effects. (1)
(The numbers in parentheses are the numbers from the same references in the article).
According to recent data (25/11/09) Canada 7,500,000 vaccines have been sent and the rate of side effects have been observed in all batches of the vaccine is 0.32 per 100,000 people.
From the batch of 172,000 vaccines observed in cases of anaphylaxis, this percentage was 4/100.0000, returned to control 15,000 who did not have time to use, control continues, but have not yet seen any obvious problem in the production and so and speculated statistical anomaly.
The WHO announced that they have been vaccinated in the world 65,000,000 people, until last week, and found that the pandemic vaccine is as safe as seasonal.
He then writes about 3 deaths: made within one week of receiving the vaccine, and we refer to an article from a site in the vaccination has the key title. Canada: The Killer H1N1 Vaccine. Manitoba and Quebec: Three deaths resulting from the H1N1 Vaccine. (2)
Of course the same article we read that: The news reports have highlighted deaths resulting from the H1N1 flu (often unconfirmed) ….
The 2 mentioned on the news were a diabetic woman and another 80 years.
Then under the scaremongering informs us that the government and our media have concealed that the vaccine is made in Canada is the same as what happens in our country which the ingenious investigator discovered just reading the published and accessible on the Internet patent to everyone!
This text could be missing and intimidation of the classical world: the dangerous components of the vaccine (the Pandemrix), such as squalene adjuvant (page 44) and the toxic mercuric thiomersal (page 12) [6].
So Squalene is an unsaturated oil involved in the biosynthesis of cholesterol in our body. (Page 13 of reference 6)
That is to sit in your blood vessels from cholesterol that devour hamburgers has been involved in the synthesis of squalene, which incidentally has speculated that antikarkinogono action.
Let us now look at another dangerous ingredient thimerosal for which I have already written that the WHO considers the use of safe vaccines.
In Pandemrix of GSK, a dose of 0,5 mL contains 2.5 mg of mercury and mercury is 50% of the mass of thiomersal and the mass of a dose is 5 micrograms.
One microgram (mg) is one millionth of a gram!
To funny thing is that according to the EFSA (Εuropean Food Safety Authority, data of 2004) a 80 Kg adult Greeks out a week in 40 – 160 micrograms of mercury, due to consumption of seafood.
And seafood unfortunately do not contain mercury but ethyl methyl mercury, which bioaccumulates and has a half-life (time to reduce the activity in 50% of initial) 1.5 to 2 months. (Data from the blog BioLogos)
But without misinformation and little anti-Americanism is not!
He writes: The same was done and the American company Baxter (much of which holds shares of the notorious former Defence Minister Bush, Donald Rumsfeld)
Diana gets here!
Because only the face of Rumsfeld causes most of us more important than rash that may cause the vaccine!
Only Rumsfeld has no relationship with Baxter, but the company Gilead Sciences Inc. that built the Tamiflu and of which he was president from 1997 until January 2001.
We read also below:
Another important issue raised is whether Glaxo and Baxter (which makes the American Celvapan vaccine for the H1N1 virus) was prepared years ago for a pandemic of swine flu, with all that entails. This is supported by the fact that both companies had submitted patents for such vaccines long before he found the virus in humans for the first time in March-April 2009 in Mexico. So …. when you broke the swine flu in 2009, both companies were ready by 2006.
We do not refer to the relevant link on the so-called consolidation.
Let’s look at things in order.
At a meeting of the WHO in Geneva (on 2-3 November 2005) was meeting to “review and develop pandemic influenza vaccines” [10]
In this he had invited the co-inventor of the vaccine Baxter, Dr. Kistner Otfried along with other representatives from the research laboratories of pharmaceutical companies, including Dr. Norbet Hehme of Glaxo.
This fact is, the columnist, indicative of how the WHO and the pharmaceutical companies function as communicating vessels!
In fact since it would be talking about vaccines for a possible pandemic should have cried some astrologers as qualified or even the need arthrografounta the teacher or at least me!
Course to better understand the function as communicating vessels of WHO and the pharmaceutical industry, omitted to say that in a meeting attended by 29 experts from various countries of the world, 17 scientists and industry representatives 16 of the WHO Secretariat.
Of course, if the WHO had not dealt with the flu vaccine, the same people who now believe that 62 people from all parts of the world conspired to sell us vaccines, prosecutors were labrys WHO showing indifference towards health of the people!
In 2005 was known, the fear of a pandemic mutation strain of H5N1 avian influenza, the mortality from this time reached 60% of patients.
So the vaccines that were to be built were the strains recommended by WHO and are they potentially could cause an epidemic.
A preferred composition contains three inactivated split virion antigens from the WHO recommended strains of the appropriate influenza season. (Sel12 of 6)
In what we were ready companies listed on the page exactly 23 (6) of the patent Pandemrix.
In a preferred embodiment, the influenza strain may be associated with a pandemic outbreak or have the potential to be associated with a pandemic outbreak. In particular, when the vaccine is a multivalent vaccine such as a bivalent or a trivalent vaccine, at least one strain is associated with a pandemic outbreak or has the potential to be associated with a pandemic outbreak. Suitable strains are, but not limited to: H5N1, H9N2, H7N7, H2N2, H1N1.
The fear then it was an epidemic of the H5N1 and therefore the vaccines were originally directed to him, and of course, H1N1 has been known since 1918 that may cause a pandemic! (P. 26 of 6)
If such viruses have the potential to spread from person to person, they may spread worldwide within a few months to a year, resulting in a pandemic. For example, in 1957 (Asian Flu pandemic), viruses of the H2N2 subtype replaced H1N1 viruses that had been circulating in the human population since at least 1918 when the virus was first isolated.
The Baxter and the application for patent in production of viral vaccines (9)
writes: In particular preferred embodiments the composition or comprises more than one antigen, eg 2,3,4,5,6,7, or 8, in particular of different virus strains, subtypes or types such as influenza A and influenza B, in particular selected from one or more of human H1N1, H2N2, H3N3, H5N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H2N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 sybtypes.
Nevertheless what we read?
So when you broke the swine flu in 2009, both companies were ready by 2006. Just changed the mold with vaccine-H1N1 vaccine preparation and the WHO-approved in record time! It is indeed surprising how the timing of these companies with the advent of swine flu was so … Perfect!
That followed the classical procedure done every year with the seasonal vaccine and of course because you can not predict what strain will cause a pandemic did not have time to incorporate the seasonal epidemic strain in the vaccine!
So the marketing authorization for the H1N1 vaccine was finally on September 29, 2009.
Why did you read it here *.
Derived from the office of the Public Health Agency of Canada also gives all the possible answers to questions concerning the H1N1 virus.
Finally, at the Stockholm Conference in 2007 organized by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control dealt with the issue of a technical report of the special groups in vaccines for humans with the H5N1 9 scientists in research related to vaccines and pharmaceutical companies 13 independent from various European countries. (11)
Under all that we discussed above article ends with the erudite conclusion:
And our public health services continue to reassure us, without … “Sweat the ear” about the interrelated economic-political interests!
The conclusions and comments are yours!

 


The Echelon USA Surveillance Programme: the documentation

 

In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US
National Security Agency
(
NSA
) has createda global spy system, codename
ECHELON
, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax,email and telex message sent anywhere in the world.

ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the
Government Communications Head Quarters
(
GCHQ
) of England, the
Communications Security Establishment
(
CSE
)of Canada, the
Australian Defense Security Directorate
(
DSD
), and the
General CommunicationsSecurity Bureau
(
GCSB
) of New Zealand.

These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement,
UKUSA
, whose terms and textremain under wraps even today.The
ECHELON system
is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to captureall satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this informationthrough the massive computer capabilities of the
NSA
, including advanced voice recognition and
optical character recognition
(
OCR
) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the
ECHELON

Dictionary
”) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for futureanalysis.

Intelligence analysts at each of the respective “listening stations” maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to therespective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.But apart from directing their ears towards terrorists and rogue states,
ECHELON
is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted atAmerican civilians for reasons of “unpopular” political affiliation or for no probable cause at all in violationof the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the
Constitution
– are consistently impeded by veryelaborate and complex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the USgovernment.

The guardians and caretakers of our liberties, our duly elected political representatives, give scarceattention to these activities, let alone the abuses that occur under their watch.

Among the activities that the
ECHELON
targets are:
Political spying:
Since the close of World War II, the US intelligence agencies have developed aconsistent record of trampling the rights and liberties of the American people.

Even after the investigations into the domestic and political surveillance activities of theagencies that followed in the wake of the
Watergate fiasco
, the
NSA
continues to target

 


Asia Inhales While the West Bans the Deadly Carcinogen Asbestos

 

In parts of Asia, carrying 500 grams of one white powder can draw a death sentence, but importing 1,000 tons of another lethal white dust is both legal and profitable. Asbestos, a known carcinogen banned in much of the world, is a common and dangerous building block in much of Asia’s development and construction boom. This other white powder causes 100,000 occupational deaths per year, according to Medical News Today.

While images of kids with heroin-loaded needles stuck in their arms spark public outrage, clouds of asbestos fibers in factories and on construction sites often draw official shrugs and denials. Illicit drug use does not rank among the top ten causes of death in young adults, according to a 2009 global study of adolescent health by the Murdoch Children’s Research Center in Melbourne in 2009. But in some Asian nations including China, asbestos is in the top ten causes of occupational disease in laborers, some of whom were exposed as working children. The numbers are generally thought to be higher since much of Asia’s data rely on a highly mobile workforce with high a turnover rate.

Like a sleeping grizzly bear, asbestos can be deadly when disturbed, and all along the mining, manufacturing, installation, cutting, and deconstruction processes, the mineral is turned into air-borne fibers that lodge in the lungs and cause fatal respiratory diseases, including mesothelioma.

Across much of Asia, white asbestos, also known as chrysotile, is widely used to make asbestos-cement construction material such as roofing tiles, wall panels, and expansion joints, as a fire proofer, and in brake linings and gaskets in large vehicles. As part of the process of development, people are trading bug-filled, flammable grass roofs for asbestos cement tiles and walls.

A few years ago at a state-owned roof tile factory in Vietnam young male workers clad only in shorts carried bags labeled “Asbestos-Kazakhstan.” The air was thick with white dust huffing up like steam from lava. Visiting occupational health and safety experts held their breath as long as they could; some smothered their faces in dust masks. The workers did not have that luxury. Their only protection was handkerchiefs tied bandit-style over their mouths and noses as they climbed the sides of the hoppers.

“I know it’s dangerous,” said the manager spreading his hands and shrugging, “but it’s also cheap, and people only want to buy cheap tiles.”

Drugs or Dust

“It’s just a PR campaign when they say that asbestos can kill,” Uralasbest’s Viktor Ivanov told AFP in 2007, when he headed the Chrysotile Association, an industry group based in the Russian town of Asbest. The website for Uralasbest, the Ural Asbestos Mining & Ore Dressing Company, calls the company the world’s “oldest and largest manufacturer and supplier of chrysotile.” In 2005 the Russian firm produced about a quarter of the world’s chrysotile asbestos and exported it to 35 countries (pdf): 53 percent outside the Commonwealth of Independent States (to China, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, etc.), and 13 percent within the CIS nations that had been part of the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, etc.).

Very little of the product ends up in the West. More than 60 countries have partially or completely banned asbestos, including the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The EU nations and others have completely banned both brown amphibole and white chrysotile asbestos, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified all types as a human carcinogen. Although some studies have found that chrysotile’s small fiber size makes it less virulent than brown amphibole, the WHO is unequivocal: “no threshold has been established for the carcinogenic risk of chrysotile.”

But asbestos merchants, disputing World Health Organization (WHO) data and overwhelming scientific evidence, claim that chrysotile is safe. Uralabest’s website decries “the wave of anti-asbestos psychose [sic] [that] was spread over Western Europe.” “Today’s asbestos industry is totally harmless,” Tatiana Kochetova of the Asbest-based Institute for Asbestos Projects told the Russian Journal. “There hasn’t been one case of asbestos caused disease here for many years. Locally produced asbestos does not cause any harm.”

Researchers Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedale document that the rates of malignancies dropped in Asbest only after the introduction of dust control technologies (and the dispersal of ill workers). Those same safety measures that, in any case, mitigate rather than eliminate risk are largely lacking in the countries to which Russian asbestos is exported. (McCulloch J and Tweedale G 2008 Defending the Indefensible: The Global asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival. OUP.)

Russia’s Exports

Uralabest’s product comes from Asbest, a classic monogorod, or single-industry town in Bazhenouskoye in north of Kazakhstan, along the eastern slope of the Ural ridge. The open-pit mine covers 90 sq. km. and stretches 11.5 km long, 1.8 km wide and almost 300 meters deep. There, some 10,000 workers turn out more than 500,000 tons of chrysotile asbestos annually.

In 2009, Uralasbest was forecasting production of 450,000 tons, “a significant portion of the world market,” and its FY 2006 revenues were $192 million, according to Rye, Man & Gor Securities (pdf). Russia produced 925,000 tons of asbestos in 2008, according to the US Geological Survey, almost half the estimated world production of about 2 million tons a year, and worth $900 million.

Once a state-owned corporation, Uralasbest is now privatized. More than half of Uralasbest share capital is owned through a Russian regional bank (Urals Bank for Reconstruction and Development). Stroyexport, another Russian company, owns 14 percent, and two South Africa-registered companies — Petrov & Co and Mavrol Management — own 21percent. The top managers control about 30 percent of the company (pdf). In 2007 Uralasbest entered into a joint venture with Swiss Minmet Financing Company to recover magnesium from its asbestos mine tailings. This move was meant as a hedge against the global decline in construction.

Perhaps more threatening to Uralabest’s economic future than recession is the growing awareness that asbestos is toxic, and alternatives are available. In 2000, citing Canada’s high level support for its industry as a model, Russian asbestos industry officials sought Vladimir Putin’s assistance in countering “asbestphobia.”

Russian corporations also looked to Canada’s — and Kazakh’s — marketing efforts in newly rich Asian nations. That strategy has produced rich results according to the World Asbestos Reports, and the WHO confirms that some countries have reduced restrictions and increased production and use of chrysotile.

India Imports

In 2008 India – along with Pakistan, Canada, Russia – rejected the banning of chrysotile asbestos mandated under the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC). PIC lists chemicals that require exchange of information on health hazards prior to trade. India, which imported 360,000 tons of asbestos in 2006, claimed that evidence of chrysotile’s lethality was not conclusive, and that it was awaiting the results of a major health study before joining the convention, according to Madhumitta Dutta of the Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI).

However, “India failed to inform the international community … that the [health] study was funded in part by the asbestos industry,” charged Dutta. “Still worse, the study was kept under wraps, and is not accessible to public health specialists or labor groups.”

Gopal Krishna, a consultant on clean industry and also of BANI, condemned his country’s rejection of PIC. “There is a political consensus in India to promote asbestos at any human cost,” he wrote in India Together in 2006.

Underlying that consensus are the close links between the asbestos industry and some prominent Indian politicians. “With asbestos firms being owned by politicians or the state itself, the government seems to be following a classic ostrich policy,” Krishna wrote. “The reality is that the country’s most powerful parliamentarians bless the asbestos industry.”

They include Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the chief minister of Bengal’s Communist government, who gave Utkal Asbestos Ltd. an Environment Excellence Award which it used in its advertising. Rebranding itself in 2006, the company dropped the word asbestos from its name. Now called UAL Industries Ltd., it is a major producer of fiber cement corrugated sheets and accessories under the brand Konark, and its website boasts that it “has left no stone unturned to achieve its motive of becoming the leading player in Eastern India.”

Visaka Industries’ chairman, G. Vivekanand, is the son of G. Venkataswamy, a member of Parliament, deputy leader of the Indian Congress Parliamentary Party, and a former Union Textile Minister. Vivekanand put out a fact sheet claiming that chrysotile is safe, and blamed Western media coverage of past events for generating unfounded fear.

Indian media reported that Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi encouraged Visaka industries to set up in her constituency Rae Bareli, and saw the plants as a way to boost employment and electability. The plans were fast tracked, breaking records for passage through the Departments of Environment and Forests. Visaka annually produces 600,000 tons of asbestos sheets, mostly used in roofing. One of its main marketing targets is India’s rural population, 80 to 85 percent of which now live under thatched roofs, the company website notes.

In October 2009 Visaka Industries announced it is setting up a 100,000-ton capacity asbestos cement sheet plant at Sambalpur in Orissa at an estimated cost of $8.6 million “to meet the rural demand.” It is also ramping up the capacity of its Pune plant from 65,000 to 100,000 tons per annum, according Vivekanand.

In 2007 an Indian news channel showed workers hand-mixing asbestos into rice, while a voice-over intoned that chrysotile is safe enough to use as a husking agent. The rice was later sold as premium basmati.

Dying to Work

“I have seen young men suffering from the cancers caused by this material [asbestos],” says a guard at an asbestos cement sheet factory in Guangdong, China. “The bosses don’t care, and the government intimidates us [who are] working for safety. They say we are sabotaging China’s development. Sometimes I get very frightened and cannot sleep thinking I will be arrested. I may get the disease, as the air is full of dust. I hope that someone would help me if that happened. I can’t quit. Where would I go? I have no skills and jobs are hard to find.”

This worker’s story is echoed throughout the Asia. In China alone, the official incidence of industrial lung diseases is around 100,000 per year. Experts familiar with Beijing’s official statistics would multiply that figure by three or four to get close to the real toll.

Harvard University and the World Health Organization report that occupational injuries and disease already surpass infectious disease as the major causes of death in the developing world and threaten to undermine any economic or moral imperatives gained by trade. More people die per day of workplace illness throughout the world than are killed by global terrorist attacks, wars, drugs, or by the various pandemics (such as avian and swine flu) that attract huge institutional funding, according to Sanjiv Pandita, director of the Hong Kong based Asia Monitor Resource Center.

If you consider that 100,000 per year die of asbestos alone, it is not hard to extrapolate that figure to match Pandita’s assertion. Meanwhile, the systematic erosion of trade union power and labor standards by globalization has exacerbated the problem and undermined opposition/occupational justice.

Working for Safety

Workers and activists around Asia are not convinced by industry reassurances and are getting organized. At a September 2009 meeting in Phnom Penh of the Asian Network for the Rights of Accident Victims (ANROAV),120 activists and Asian-based academics from 16 countries heard stories of frustration and harassment. Delegates charged that globalization has led to “state sponsored pimping”– governments selling workers’ bodies and lives in return for investment.

The importance of the issue, and frustration from waiting for governments and employers to act are evidenced by steadily increasing attendance at ANROAV’s annual meetings over its ten years’ existence. “While lots of money is made by CSR [corporate social responsibility] consultants, we see little change in the death rates” said Hong Chee, a Hong Kong delegate.

Mandy Hawes, an American occupational health and safety advocate, reminded delegates that occupational standards may be legal but not safe. “We should bring environmental and occupational standards into line,” she said.

Opposition to asbestos is growing and is fueled around the world by a flood of compensation demands. Claimants, dragging desperately on oxygen, have pleaded before TV cameras for compensation and an end to asbestos use.

A regional coordinating group was set up earlier in 2009 at a meeting in Bangkok. A-Ban is seeking an Asia-wide asbestos ban. It has its work cut out. As the anti-asbestos activists know all too well, bans on international trade in asbestos have been barely disturbed the industry. Like Uralasbest, companies have merely shifted their marketing focus to developing countries where environmental and workplace standards are more lax. China now absorbs 54 percent of global production, says Ye-Yong Choi of BANKO, the Korean movement that recently achieved a ban on asbestos.

He recommends a global campaign in which activists “move much more strategically and collectively. …I have felt we are too gentle in some way whilst our enemy, the asbestos industry, moves very collectively and aggressively.”

Anatomy of Asbestos

Despite industry and government denials, evidence of chrysotile’s harm was clear in lung X-rays showing unmistakable white patches indicating the inevitably deadly progression of mesothelioma–a cancer directly linked to asbestos exposure. Etched into the medical data on the corner of each film was the word “chrysotile,” the supposedly safe form of the mineral.

The X-rays belonged to Dr. Domyung Paek, chest disease specialist and epidemiologist from the University of Seoul, Korea. His collection of medical transparencies showed that work-and environment-related chest disease leaves a distinctive radiological calling card that is easy to differentiate from tuberculosis and other lung diseases.

All the victims in Paek’s X-rays were Asian workers, belying the myth propagated by some Asian labor officials that asbestosis and mesothelioma are “Western” diseases. Paek predicted that Asian nations would see tsunamis of asbestos-related diseases, marked by the gasping deaths of the pale, drawn – and often young – victims. His view is supported by Japanese researcher Ken Takahashi, who on reviewing historical and global trends, found that marked rises in incidence and prevalence inevitably preceded national bans.

Studies cited by McCulloch and Tweedale have found asbestos disease in young Russian and Kazakh workers with less than three years exposure. Victims usually die a year after diagnosis. Expensive drugs such as Alimpta and Platinol can lengthen a patient’s life by up to six months, but are well beyond the capacity of Asian workers. Palliative care, a tall order in most poor countries, is the best they can hope for.

The pain of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases can be agonizing and requires the other white powder — morphine — to provide relief. Ironically many of the countries where asbestos disease is rife, such as India, have a shortfall in the supply of legal scheduled opiates.

Around Asia

But there is no shortfall in asbestos. In addition to the raw mineral imported from Russia and other countries, Europeans keep sending old ships to India and Bangladesh to be broken up. Bangladesh needs the steel, but along with it comes tons of old friable asbestos including the more dangerous brown variety.

China, in addition to its role as major importer, also exports asbestos. The sourcing website Alibaba.com lists at least ten Chinese companies, some with ISO 9001 certification, that sell asbestos products. Tsyuyoshi Kawakami of the U.N.’s International Labor Organization’s Bangkok office found Chinese asbestos in Lao cement factories on the outskirts of Vientiane. The Lao government, currently enjoying a resources boom, is thinking of exploiting its lodes of asbestos, according to a Lao NGO worker.

There are some bright spots. Thailand, until recently one of the region’s major users (brake linings, gaskets, and roofing tiles), has reduced both importation and production of asbestos-containing goods.

Other Asian countries are beginning to rethink asbestos use. Joint research done by BANKO and Indonesian’s own fledgling anti-asbestos organization IBAN in 2009, documented asbestos on the windowsills of schools and homes surrounding two asbestos cement works in Cibinong (West Java).

Cambodia, too, is starting to recognize that its burgeoning construction industry may bring the hazardous materials along for the ride. Dr. Leng Tong, director of Occupational Health and Safety in Cambodia’s Ministry for Labor and Vocational Training told the ANROAV delegates that “Cambodia strongly commits … to eliminate asbestos from the workplaces in the region.”

“If he is serious,” Choi of BANKO commented, “it would not only gain Cambodia a huge amount of prestige in the world, but also provide a wonderful example to neighboring countries.”Source

 


Khashoggi Bank Scam Conviction:Rakesh Saxena & a Spiderweb of Crooks, Arms Dealers, Mercenaries, Politicians

(BangkokPost.com) – The Criminal Court on Wednesday handed down another 20-year jail sentence to Bangkok Bank of Commerce (BBC) former president Krirkkiat Jalichandra for embezzlement.

He is also fined for 16 million baht for colluding with two other bank executives in approving fund worth of more than 2 billion baht to Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi without asking for the board’s consideration, which broke the rule of the central bank.

Ekachai Athikomnantha, another former senior executive of BBC, and Wanchai Thammanitiwat, the bank’s former chief of the financial management division were the other two who were found guilty of embezzlement on the case and received the 20-year jail sentence.

The two were also ordered to pay fine of 16 million baht each.

Moreover, they were ordered to pay BBC for the amount of money they approved for Khashoggi, which was slightly more than 2 billion baht.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=122500
•••••••••••
Rakesh Saxena and the Spiderweb of Crooks, Arms Dealers, Mercenaries, Politicians

Gaborone/Botswana/Africa
April 14, 2006
Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Ex-Barrister-at-Law, High Court Frankfurt (M)
URL: http://www.nriinternet.com/NRI_Fraud/ASIA/Thailand/Rakesh_Saxena/index%20.htm

Rakesh Saxena is fighting his extradition from Canada to Thailand for ten years now. Let’s have a look at the spiderweb, of which he is part of.

First to mention is a veteran of arms and shady deals, a close friend of the bin Laden family for decades, an uncle of the late Dodi Fayed, the last partner of Diana Princess of Wales and brother-in-law of the owner of Harrod’s Supermarket in London, Al Fayed, his name: Adnan Khashoggi, once called the richest man on earth.

His origin is Saudi Arabia, his favorite place to live is Marbella in Spain and his favorite business are arms deals and the stock market, especially in Vancouver/Canada.

At present, however, he likes more the sand of the beaches of the United Arab Emirates, a better, because safer place to be, when arrest warrants and extradition requests are piling up.

He was involved in the Iran Contra-Affair in the 80s, in which the Pentagon sold weapons to Iran and the profits were used to buy weapons for a CIA sponsored group in Nicaragua, the Contra Rebels. Everything illegal of course, but an army man by the name of Oliver North was day and night putting documents into the shredder, when the scandal was about to be made public. It is good to have such trustworthy people in your house.

Khashoggi was also involved in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a massive washing machine for illegal money from the Medellin drug cartel, Manuel Noriega, and other druglords.

The bank was forcibly closed in 1992 after investigations by a committee of the US senate, in which Senator John Kerry featured prominently.

However Khashoggi, likeable as he is, had and has friends all over the world, so lets forget about the BCCI-Affair and move on to Thailand, to the Bangkok Bank of Commerce.

The CEO of that bank was in the 90s Krirkkiat Jalichandra. A promsing young man of Indian origin, by the name of Rakesh Saxena was introduced to him.

Saxena was wanted in India for culpable homicide, who cares, was a communist before, while studying in India, who cares and according to the slogan, who is not a communist at age 20 hasn’t got a heart, and who is still a communist age 40 hasn’t got a brain, and Saxena had brains, he forgot Marx and Engels and concentrated on fraud and corruption the big way and advised his “brother in fraud” Jalichandra accordingly both together a “duo infernale”, so to speak.

Money was pumped into a labyrinth of fake companies and “small gifts” in cash and kind were handed out to politicians and friends, a non repayable loan was given to Saxenas friend Adnan Khashoggi, amounting to only 134 million US Dollars, peanuts, so to speak.

However such big fraud, that triggered eventually the Asian Banking Crisis in 1997 cannot go on forever one time the bubble has to burst and in 1996 the scheme collapsed, however Saxena, clever as he was, left in time the sinking ship and fled to a much cooler place, Canada.

Not forgetting, allegedly to take some pocket money with him, only the laughable sum of 88 million US Dollars laughable, because the damage he and Jalichandra allegedly caused amounted to more than three billion US Dollars.

Jalichandra was not so lucky, he got arrested and has been sentenced to 30 years in prison one year ago.

Thailand wanted Saxena extradited, but Saxena did not want, had money enough to hire the best of the best of lawyers and he convinced the Government of Canada, a banker is a banker, that it would be cheaper to put him in self paid house arrest, than into a prison.
So he is still in Canada but not resting, to the contrary. He is as busy as ever.

First came Tim Spicer, the mercenary, Ex-Lieutenant Colonel, OBE, hated by the Irish because soldiers of his unit, when he was stationed in Northern Ireland, killed an innocent Irishman by the name of McBride. These soldiers were later convicted for murder.

However Spicer campaigned and lied for them, so that they were early released and then reinstated in the British Army, they are now on patrol in Iraq, where killing of innocent civilians is rather a day to day event.

Spicer needed money, Saxena had money for his adventure in Sierra Leone.

Tony Buckinghams company Sandline, of which Spicer was the chief executive until 2000, offered their service, in exchange for diamond mining rights, to ousted President Kabbah with old apartheid soldiers of the infamous Buffalo Battalion, and Koevoet, well known killer units, their motto: shoot to kill, and their battleground in those days were the newly independent state of Angola with the refugee camps of SWAPO and the illegally occupied Namibia.

The unit, named Executive Outcomes, was founded and headed by Eeben Barlow, former member of the Buffalo Battalion and then of the Civil Cooperation Buraeu (CCB) the latter an South African apartheid death squad, which can take credit for countless extrajudicial killings inside and outside South Africa including hundreds of SWAPO freedom fighters allegedly killed with poison delivered by a Dr. Wouter Basson and the bodies thrown out of a plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

Saxena offered 10 million US Dollar, he had mining interests there as well, bought with money from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, and with Saxenas/Bangkok Bank of Commerce money Spicer bought tons of weapons in Bulgaria and elsewhere.

This was the start, of what was later called the Arms to Africa Affair. Active in this scheme there were also Simon Mann and Nick du Toit, both in prison now, one in Zimbabwe, the other one in Equatorial Guinea after the failed coup attempt last year.

This military intervention was in flagrant violation of an UN arms embargo, who cares, and with the approval of the resident British High Commissioner, Penfold. When the things came out, it nearly brought down the Blair Government.

Already before their Sierra Leone job , Spicer, Mann and Buckingham had gone global in 1997, this time to the other end of the globe, Papua New Guinea for a lump sum of 36 million US Dollars to be paid by one of the poorest states on earth.

The Government there fought unsuccessfully against a rebel group on the Island of Bougainville

to get hold of a copper mine, owned by the British company Rio Tinto. The fight erupted because of the environmental disaster, caused by the mine, that threatened to destroy the livelihood of the people there.

Buckingham, Spicer and Simon Mann offered “help”, the mercenary way via Sandline and Sandline subcontracting the dreck of the Ex Out mercenaries. Also with them Lafras Luitingh, another former member of the Apartheid-CCB, who can take credit for having been involved in the murder of ANC activist Dr. David Webster on 1st May 1989 in Johannesburg and SWAPO Advocate Anton Lubowski in Windhoek on 12 October 1989.

This time round, however, things did not work out, the army under General Singorok rebelled, the Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan had to resign and Spicer was arrested and later left the country only with the help of the discrete diplomatic pressure by the British government.

Still they made their fortune, as a lot of money had been prepaid .

Meanwhile mercenary godfather and mining baron Tony Buckingham was also active in many African countries, apart from Sierra Leone and Angola, namely Congo Brazzaville, DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya Namibia to name a few.

He was specifically welcomed in Namibia, where the government made him a director of the state owned Offshore Development Company (ODC) and he used his contacts to introduce Ranger Oil Canada to the Government, successfully, Ranger got huge exploration rights. Ranger and Buckingham were close business partners for quite some time.

As a Thank You Buckingham made government officials shareholders in his company Oceanica Fisheries, and the government granted him mining rights in a Tourmaline mine near Karibib, Indigo Sky Gem and Camelthorn Mining, and allowed him to dislodge 1000 small scale miners there and to throw them onto the roadside.

Who greases well, drives well.

And South Africa’s Mine Minister Mrs. Mlambo-Ngcuka gave a prospecting license with much fanfare in 2001 to Ranger Oil, despite the well known connection to Buckingham and his mercenaries.

In Kenya he appointed Sanjivan Ruprah, a well known arms dealer, head of his mining company Branch Energy.

Sanjivan Ruprah became also a close confidant of Charles Taylor in Liberia and of Victor Bout, with whom he worked closely together. Sanjivan Ruprah helped arming the child soldiers in Sierra Leone on behalf of Charles Taylor, those, who committed horrific mayhem amongst the civilian population, including mass killings, hacking of limbs, rape, torture.

Victor Bout, called “Africa’s Merchant of Death” is a Russian, who runs a fleet of 50 russian made transport planes. He delivered weapons to the Taleban and Al Qaeda before 2001 and organized chartered flights to Afghanistan, , certainly not for tourists. Bout was fuelling virtually each and every armed conflict in Africa for the last 15 years with his weapons transport and Diamonds as payment, especially in Liberia, Sierra Leone Angola, DR Congo.

After the invasion of Iraq he was hired by American companies. Money talks and a plane is a plane. He was also busy transporting goods to Afghanistan after 2002, who cares.

Ruprah knows Khashoggi, because they shared an office address in London. Kashoggi is a friend of Saxena, Saxena is a friend of Spicer and so forth.

And Khashoggi and Saxena were not just watching, what was happening in Africa, they had also had serious business to do, Khashoggi in America and Saxena in Canada, before both joint forces and went to Vienna Austria.

In 2001 Khashoggi, via his company Ultimate Holdings, based on the Bahamas with a complicated lending scam allegedly pumped up the stock of a Nasdaq bubble company by the name of Genesis Intermedia, in which Ultimate Holdings was the majority shareholder.

The company was built around a book by a John Gray, “Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars”.He forgot to add that arms dealers and mercenaries are from hell.

Involved in that scam were Deutsche Bank in Toronto and a slew of criminal stockbrokers and after the scam collapsed in 2001, Khashoggi and his friend El Batrawi were 130 million US Dollar richer, broker houses filed for bankruptcy , the damage amounting to more than 300 million US Dollars.

Deutsche Bank has now settled out of court and is paying, still denying any responsibility, of course.

Meanwhile Saxena in Canada was busy as well. He appointed the leading opposition MP in the Canadian Parliament, John Reynolds as board member in a flimsy company called WaveTech while fighting at the same time an extradition request from Thailand in the courts of Canada. A simple word for that is most likely corruption. A friend, even when bought, in need is a friend indeed.

And he was involved in a scandal around a company in South Africa in 2004 , called Platinum Asset Management. PAM, that later on moved to Botswana and was exposed in August 2005 here by me and the local Sunday Standard.

However shared success is doubled success, so he went to good old Europe in 2000 with his friend Khashoggi. Khashoggi in person, and him being under house arrest via the phone. They linked up with a Filipino by the name of Amador Pastrana.

Pastrana had already earned himself the reputation as being a king of the boiler rooms earning him more than a billion Dollar.

Boiler rooms are cramped small offices, from where selling of shares to unsuspecting clients is organized. They apply high pressure sales pitches on their victims.

Those clients have money but no banking experience, they are neither banker nor broker

The shares they sell to pensioners, and medium income earners are worthless, artificially pumped up Penny stocks and the clients never see their money again.

The most effective and sophisticated fraud scheme to date.

Saxena, Khashoggi and Pastrana bought together the WMP Bank AG in Vienna, Austria renamed it General Commerce Bank and turned it into a boiler room, the fraud organized there amounts, according to press reports, to roughly one billion US Dollar. With 6them the convicted criminals Regis Possino, Raoul Berthaumieu and Sherman Mazur.

In 2001 the Bank was closed.

1 billion in one year.

Meanwhile Spicer did not rest either. He opened a new mercenary company after he left Sandline by the name of Aegis and the Invasion of Iraq brought him a fat contract by the Pentagon to the tune of 293 million US Dollar.

He is now overall in charge of all the mercenaries in Iraq, totaling more than 20.000, quite a few former Executive Outcome dreck.

And Tony Buckingham is busy in Iraq as well.

In 1995 he paid a courtesy call to Iraq, walking in the Hotel lobby of the Al Rasheed Hotel over a distorted picture of former US president Bush and exploring with former Iraq’s Oil minister possible oil ventures.

After he Invasion he is back, go with the flow, having good contacts with Iraqi Oil ministry officials and getting a prospecting license in Kurdistan for his company Heritage Oil.

And he quickly closed Sandline on 16th April 2004 after the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The list would be incomplete, without mentioning a group of dealers of weapons of mass destruction.

Gerhard Merz, German, alleged transport officer in the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, who was arrested in Malabo and died a few days later amidst allegations of torture, transported from 1992 to 1994 nerve gas components for Mustard and Sarin and “know how” for their production from China to Iran with an Israeli international criminal by the name of Regenstreich alias Regev and the support of the Israeli secret service Shin Bet.

Parallel to this group another group headed by an Israeli Nahum Manbar and a British Mi6 agent by the name of Richard Tomlinson also transported nerve gas components and KnowHow from China to Iran with the active support of the Shin Bet and the Mi6.

At the same time the UN weapons inspectors were searching for these weapons in neighboring Iraq

Simon Mann meanwhile is in Chikurubi Maximum Prison in Harare, Buckingham and Spicer in Iraq, Sandline closed down and Aegis opened, hiring mercenaries and doing what they did in Sierra Leone, Angola and now in Iraq: Killing innocent civilians with impunity. Source


Secret documents expose Ottawa’s tar sands enemies list (pdf)

As the Harper government works with oil companies to slander and discredit opponents of tar sands, will the supposedly impartial regulator be trusted?

(Greenpeace Canada, January 26, 2012) As controversy increases over the Harper government’s attacks on environmental groups, Greenpeace Canada today released internal government documents obtained under Access to Information legislation showing that the Harper government has explicitly identified environmental and aboriginal groups as “adversaries” in its strategy to increase tar sands exports.

“This government established a list of enemies nine months ago and has since launched a public attack on environmental and aboriginal groups that are raising concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the tar sands,” said Keith Stewart, coordinator of Greenpeace Canada’s Climate and Energy campaign. “Rather than dealing the devastating impacts of the tar sands, the Harper government is working with the oil industry to silence their critics.”

The March 2011 “Pan-European Oil Sands Advocacy Strategy” prepared by the federal government to undermine support in the EU for cleaner fuels legislation lists “National and European level Politicians (especially from the ruling and influential parties)” as a primary target.

The strategy document, obtained by the Climate Action Network under Access to Information legislation, identifies the government’s “adversaries” as Canadian NGOs and environmental organizations, Aboriginal groups, competing industries and media in Europe (although the type of media seen as an adversary is redacted).

The list of “allies” includes European industry associations and companies (with Shell and BP singled out elsewhere as “like-minded allies”), as well as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, federal government departments, Alberta, business associations and unidentified NGOs. Disturbingly, the list of allies also includes the independent federal regulatory tribunal National Energy Board.

“Canadians should be concerned when a supposedly arms-length agency that is supposed to regulate the oil industry, including conducting hearings on the Enbridge’s proposed new tar sands pipeline across British Columbia, is listed as an ‘ally’ in a political strategy to lower environmental standards in other nations,” said Stewart.

Greenpeace also released a copy of minutes from March 2010, obtained under Access to Information legislation, between high-ranking federal officials, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and former PMO official Bruce Carson. These minutes show that it was the oil industry that initially approached the government about crafting a joint strategy for “upping their game” and to “turn up the volume” in promoting the tar sands.

“The latest attacks on environmental groups are part of an orchestrated campaign by the Harper government and the oil industry targeting anyone who dares to question the wisdom of tripling tar sands production,” said Stewart. “Rather than ‘turning up the volume’ in this pro-industry public relations campaign, the Harper government needs to start listening to the legitimate concerns of Canadians on the costs of dirty energy.”

(Ecojustice, January 27, 2012) Ecojustice is calling on regulators overseeing public hearings on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project to investigate and comment on whether remarks made by the Government of Canada in recent weeks have damaged the integrity of what is supposed to be a fair and objective process.

“Comments made in recent weeks by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have cast a dark shadow over what is supposed to be a fair and open process, independent of politics,” said Devon Page, Ecojustice executive director.

“Given the impact the proposed pipeline would have on our country, it’s absolutely critical that this review process is objective, representative of all interests and conducted with integrity and fairness. This isn’t just an ethical issue — it’s about the legal principles of due process.”

The motion comes in response to recent remarks by the Prime Minister and Minister Oliver, who have singled out “environmental and other radical groups” for threatening to “hijack” the regulatory system to achieve a “radical ideological agenda” and undermine Canada’s national economic interest.

Minister Oliver has gone so far as to say that he expects the Joint Review Panel (JRP) to rule in favour of the project.

Meanwhile, internal documents detailing the government’s strategy for promoting oilsands projects overseas, released by Greenpeace yesterday, labelled environmental groups, First Nations groups and the media as “adversaries.”

According to Ecojustice, these attempts to discredit select groups — some whom are formally registered interveners in the process — and prejudge the hearing’s recommendations could undermine the JRP’s ability to carry out a fair process.

“In light of recent events, there is a real risk the Joint Review Panel will be unable to do its job effectively unless it takes steps to now protect the integrity of its own process,” Page said.

Filed on behalf of ForestEthics, Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, the motion asks the JRP to issue a public statement that both affirms its independence and requests that the government refrain from making further comments on the proceedings and its participants while the process is underway.

“The JRP is the rightful judge of whether or not the pipeline should be built,” said Page. “And given the government’s recent comments, Ecojustice believes those participating in the process — and in fact all Canadians — need to hear from the JRP that its process has not been compromised.”

Ecojustice’s motion was filed as the federal government also announced its intentions to overhaul the way regulators review industrial projects so they can be approved more quickly. Page said the government is now making it explicit that promoting the interests of industry is their priority.

“This promise to roll back legislation is consistent with a shift that we’ve seen ever since the prime minister came into power, and it’s the shift from being a steward of the natural environment to being a partner with industry.” Source


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