ATLANTA — The last time the government embarked on a major vaccine campaign against a new swine flu, thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has already taken steps to head that off.
Vaccine makers and federal officials will be immune from lawsuits that result from any new swine flu vaccine, under a document signed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, government health officials said Friday.
Since the 1980s, the government has protected vaccine makers against lawsuits over the use of childhood vaccines. Instead, a federal court handles claims and decides who will be paid from a special fund.
The document signed by Sebelius last month grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies. It allows for a compensation fund, if needed.
The government takes such steps to encourage drug companies to make vaccines, and it’s worked. Federal officials have contracted with five manufacturers to make a swine flu vaccine. First identified in April, swine flu has so far caused about 263 deaths, according to numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.
Tony Blair was George Bush’s best buddy in the war of terror. In fact the Downing Street memo’s confirmed the position of a war criminal for Mr. Blair and others. This is not good news for any peace loving folk’s out there like you and I. Imagine if after the last 8 years Bush became head of the UN, or worse, Cheney becoming President of the U.S.! Or if Obama, messiah of hope, continued the fraudulent war of terror and occupations, er… wait…Damn -ed
The intervention came after Baroness Kinnock embarrassed Gordon Brown by admitting that the Government wants Mr Blair to take up the newly created role.
The position will come into force if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified across Europe. It is expected to carry a salary and perks package worth at least £200,000 a year.
The admission came as a close ally of Mr Blair told The Daily Telegraph that the former Prime Minister is set on landing the position which would wield considerable power and influence.
Baroness Kinnock, who was the controversial choice for Europe Minister in Mr Brown’s recent reshuffle, revealed Mr Blair was being supported for what will be a new position that comes into force if the Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified across the continent.
She said: “The UK government is supporting Tony Blair’s candidature for president of the council.
“I am not saying there has been any formal confirmation or statement from Tony but it is certainly is the government’s position. I am sure they would not do it without asking him.”
Downing Street was then forced to admit that they would back Mr Blair.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – A pretrial hearing in the Sept. 11war crimes trial was delayed Thursday when none of the five defendants agreed to attend.
The defendants were apparently protesting a judge’s ruling that the accused mastermind of the terrorist attacks and two other men would not be able to speak at the session, which was to focus on preparations for a hearing on whether two of the men are mentally competent to stand trial.
The judge, Army Col. Steve Henley, had previously ruled that he would only allow the two defendants whose mental competency was in question to speak at the hearing.
Prosecutor Bob Swann said the government believes detainees should attend all sessions and he asked the judge to grant five minutes of speaking time for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other detainees to persuade them to attend.
Also, local headline for Sonoma Co. residents: Stimulus funding still a trickle (7 youths begin work on creek as one of few tangible results of Obama’s $787 billion bailout.) -ed
Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?
Well, because that was the plan, as devised by Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Remember that Lehman Brothers, Goldman’s competitor, was allowed to go bankrupt. The Paulson crowd wouldn’t let Lehman change its status to that of a bank holding company and thus qualify for federal funds; soon afterward, Goldman was granted just such a deal, worth a quick $10 billion. Much is now made of Goldman paying back part of its bailout money, but forgotten is the $12.9 billion that Goldman got as its cut of the $180 billion AIG payoff. That is money that will not be paid back.
-Coming up All This Week — Live VideoCast & News Reports
Richard Gage, AIA at Architect’s Convention in Washington DC. -Mon-Fri: July 13-17 on the spot reports — meetings with Congress & on the floor. -Live Video-cast Lecture Thurs. at 3 & 5pm Pacific – 6 & 8pm Eastern – 10:00 & 00:00 GMT
-719 Architects and Engineers Call for New Investigation of 9/11.
-Evidence of Explosives Found in Destruction of All 3 WTC High-Rises.
-AE911Truth will be speaking individually to your Congressional Reps and Senators
The nation of Afghanistan did not attack the United States
by Dahr Jamail
US Army Specialist Victor Agosto served a 13-month deployment in Iraq with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. “What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering,” Agosto told Truthout from Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, in May, “It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it.”
His experience in Iraq, coupled with educating himself about US foreign policy and international law, has led Agosto to refuse to deploy to Afghanistan. “It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with,” he said of his recent decision, “I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong.”
Agosto’s lawyer, James Branum, who is also the legal adviser to the GI Rights Hotline and co-chair of the Military Law Task Fore, told Truthout during a phone interview on July 10 that, contrary to mainstream opinion that believes Afghanistan to be a “justified” war, the invasion and ongoing occupation are actually in violation of the US Constitution and international law.
Why are some members of Congress suddenly upset the CIA lied to them when the Agency has been guilty of innumerable crimes that are far worse?
Is Congress saying, “It’s okay to do what you’re doing, just don’t lie to us about it?” When accused of a crime in the newspapers, Jesse James used to write reporters, “I wasn’t there.” Yet it was not lying that he was hunted down for but bank robbery and murder.
Back in 1967, the CIA’s own Inspector General produced a 133-page internal report that implicated “every living CIA officer who has served as chief of the clandestine service—-Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, Richard Helms, and Desmond FitzGerald—in conspiracies to commit murder,” writes investigative journalist Tim Weiner in his book “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”(Anchor Books). That was 40 years ago, and the CIA’s path has been downhill ever since.
Now House Intelligence committee Democrats have revealed CIA Director Leon Panetta’s comments that “top CIA officials have concealed significant actions…and misled” Congress since 2001. Actually, the Agency’s been misleading Congress since President Truman authorized it in 1947. CIA lying isn’t news, it’s tradition. So is murder.
Note: This story is working off of the grounds that Barack Obama is not eligible as President because he was born in Kenya. I have heard this story floating around out there without too much evidence to support it. I have not entertained this story because it seems to be without facts, a rabbit hole. I found the original article on Cryptogon, who found it at World Net Daily, and only after trying to learn more about the attorney Orly Taitz, did the military.com site come to my attention. A good article supporting that he is a valid candidate, and President is made here and here. -ed
The attorney representing an Army major fighting deployment to Afghanistan because he believes Barack Obama is not legally his commander-in-chief is declaring victory after the Soldier’s orders were revoked yesterday.
California lawyer Orly Taitz says any service member may now refuse any order by questioning Obama’s legitimacy.
“Do you know what this means?” Taitz asked in a telephone interview with Military.com Tuesday, about an hour after hearing from Maj. Stefan Cook, the officer fighting his deployment to Afghanistan. “It means the Obama administration has blinked. They have no cards to play with. The moment I filed a lawsuit, they didn’t even fight!”
“Can you imagine what are the consequences? This is disastrous” for the administration, she said. “We’ll have no military. Because anytime any Soldier, any Sailor, any Airman does not want to follow any orders, all he has to do is call an attorney and say ‘I don’t want to follow this order because I question the legitimacy of the commander in chief.’ “
U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, the reserve soldier who says he shouldn’t have to go to Afghanistan because he believes Barack Obama was never eligible to be president, has had his deployment orders revoked, Army officials said.
In the absence of my being there in New York City to stand with the 9/11 families, first responders and survivors, I offer the following statement in support of your goal of a new investigation into the attacks of September 11th and the NYC CAN campaign to place it on the ballot for November.
At the time of 9-11, I had been an FBI agent for over 20 years. My main responsibilities by then were teaching criminal procedure to FBI agents and other law enforcement officers, mostly about 4th Amendment search and seizure, 5th and 6th Amendment law of interrogation, right to attorney and constitutional protection of rights to “free speech”, due process, habeas corpus, and against cruel and unusual punishment. A week before 9-11, I and the rest of the FBI’s ethics instructors were mandated (as a result of an earlier public FBI scandal) to give a one hour PowerPoint presentation, a form of remedial training on “law enforcement ethics” which I accomplished in a fairly perfunctory way, just reading the slides.
After 9-11, with the knowledge I had of the bitter internal dispute inside the FBI that was being hushed up but had kept some of our better agents from possibly uncovering more of the 9-11 plot before it happened, I couldn’t forget two of the slides in that Law Enforcement ethics curriculum: “DO NOT: Puff, Shade, Tailor, Firm up, Stretch, Massage, or Tidy up statements of fact.” And “Misplaced Loyalties: As employees of the FBI, we must be aware that our highest loyalty is to the United States Constitution. We should never sacrifice the truth in order to obtain a desired result (e.g. conviction of a defendant) or to avoid personal or institutional embarrassment.”
The international truth emergency is the result of fraudulent elections, compromised 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, and a continued top down corporate media propaganda. Glenn Beck recently was able to say on national Fox television news that 9/11 truth people openly supported the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Beck claimed that 9/11 truth proponents see James von Brunn as a “hero.” Beck’s statement is completely without factual merit and represents a hyperrealist slamming of a group already slanderously pre-labled by the corporate media as “conspiracy theorists.”
A truth emergency is predicated on the inability of many to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers news that creates a hyperreality of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate television news—especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone—are embedded in a state of excited delirium of knowinglessness. This lack of factual awareness of issues like election fraud in 2004, and the increasing evidence of 9/11 Commission report inaccuracies, often leaves people politically paralyzed.
Posted by Brian 
At the time of 9-11, I had been an FBI agent for over 20 years. My main responsibilities by then were teaching criminal procedure to FBI agents and other law enforcement officers, mostly about 4th Amendment search and seizure, 5th and 6th Amendment law of interrogation, right to attorney and constitutional protection of rights to “free speech”, due process, habeas corpus, and against cruel and unusual punishment. A week before 9-11, I and the rest of the FBI’s ethics instructors were mandated (as a result of an earlier public FBI scandal) to give a one hour PowerPoint presentation, a form of remedial training on “law enforcement ethics” which I accomplished in a fairly perfunctory way, just reading the slides.
